Coronavirus Making Rightwingers Even More Crazy

Right-wing figures eager to downplay the coronavirus pandemic's death toll have hit on a new idea: filming quiet hospital parking lots.

In recent days, a growing number of pro-Trump personalities decided that the way to prove that the media was over-hyping the pandemic was to film places outside hospitals where cars and ambulances show up to drop patients off.  If the entrances were quiet and the parking lots mostly empty, they claimed, that was proof that the coronavirus’ effects had been overstated.   Inspired by the #FilmYourHospital hashtag, which has trended on Twitter and was originally started by a QAnon conspiracy theorist, people across the country started filming hospitals.

As proof, the typical wingnut would tweet about a brief trip to a hospital, claiming that he didn’t see evidence of the coronavirus from outside the buildings, saying something like “I personally visited a hospital and did not see any unusual traffic.”

 

A former Fox radio show host  tweeted a video of a quiet hospital entrance, which has been viewed more than 1 million times on Twitter. “This is what it’s like in reality.  Very quiet, very calm out here. Not much going on at all.”

Another right-wing personality posted video from two Los Angeles hospitals--  “They are very quiet & EMPTY,” said a tweet that has been retweeted nearly 20,000 times. “We are not being told the truth. Why?? Let’s get #FilmYourHospital trending. We ARE the news now. We can’t trust the news. Post pics of ur hospital here!”

There are plenty of holes in this idiotic argument. Medical staff treat patients inside the hospitals, after all, not in parking lots.  The videos also don’t consider that, as hospitals cancel elective surgeries and ban visitors, fewer people could be parking at the hospital. The videos also don’t take into account the fact that coronavirus patients are likely isolated from the rest of the hospital, meaning they can’t be easily seen by walking past an entrance or lobby.

But, chief among the holes in this theory is the myriad of direct testimony and evidence that has been offered from officials inside the hospitals, who have described horrifying conditions of human suffering, medical triage, and rapidly increasing death tallies—so much so that refrigerated trucks are being used to take away corpses.  If the virus deniers are correct, then thousands (nay, millions) of patients, doctors, nurse and health care workers are in cahoots with the news media and lying about what's happening to them.  Scientists and federal officials at the CDC, HHS, DHS and DOD must also be lying.  Totally ridiculous.

And yet, a wild conspiracy theory that plays off the idea that the media is trying to make Donald Trump look bad is, for some, too hard to avoid. The fixation with filming hospital parking lots made it to Fox News, where contributor Sara Carter referred to the videos of quiet hospital entrances as somehow suspicious.

“You can see it on Twitter, Steve,” Carter told Fox host Steve Hilton. “People are saying ‘film your hospital,’ people are driving by their hospitals and they’re not seeing . . . anyone drive up. So people are wondering what’s going inside their hospitals.”   Boy, are these people really, really stupid.