Music and cultural festivals: canceled. College and professional sports: Canceled. Studio tent pole movies: delayed indefinitely. What choice did they have, really? For the Universe’s sake, Tom Hanks is infected. When an American treasure–the man who embodies Mr. Rogers, Walt Disney, Woody, both Captains Sully and Phillips, and David Freakin’ S. Pumpkins–succumbs to the unstoppable pandemic, it’s time to start taking things seriously.

The apocalyptic zeitgeist pervading both legacy and social media seems as inevitable as the spread of Covid-19 itself. From the pervasive imagery of barren store shelves, ghost metropolises, and people packed like sardines for airport screenings, there is a creeping sense that we’re only a few short weeks from waking up to Parademons and terraforming world engines.

But there is hope. Just as the Flash emerged from this dark future to warn Bruce Wayne in 2016’s Batman v. Superman, brave prophets have come forward to stave off further disaster with equally vague advice. We are told that, though there is darkness ahead that may be unavoidable, we can mitigate the damage if we seek to “flatten the curve.”

You’ve probably seen the graphic by now, the visual representation of the wisdom behind social distancing and the folly of business as usual in these trying times. The widely circulated graph, like Flash’s cryptic admonition, was missing some vital information. While limitations of inter-temporal communications (and the necessity of dramatic tension in storytelling) are to blame for the obscurity of Barry Allen’s message, what could possibly be the reason behind a graph without numbers, without any perspective to differentiate between the calamity that underestimating the threat could cause and the near miss that we can hope for if we accept the conventional wisdom?

Such obfuscation is necessary to sell the narrative that what we’re experiencing is drastically different–more serious and perilous–than the last novel virus that hit humanity. Numbers on the graph would allow direct comparisons to such previous pandemics as H1N1, H3N2, H2N2, to the the over 12,000 American deaths in 2009-2010, the 100,000 American deaths in 1968,  and the 116,000 American deaths in 1957-1958. Devoid of context, it can be assumed that the projections without drastic changes would be catastrophic to life as we know it and that the flattened curve we should shoot for would be well beyond the seasonal flu but just short of calamity.

It allows society to blame Trump, regardless of what happens.

Before you tune me out as a Trump sychophant, consider that I was once very nearly a never Trumper. During the 2015 Republican debates, I once said the words, “Fuck Trump,” and truly meant them. Even after he got the nomination, I feared what either his election or defeat would mean for the values and institutions I hold dear. In November, I held my nose and voted… for Gary Johnson.

I recognized that the country was heading into uncharted territory, but I held out hope that the difference could be positive. To my delight and horror, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. There was significant change, surprisingly positive by my estimation. There was a vision behind the Trump presidency, one that had been marginalized for generations, demoralized and routed election after election with a steady parade of defeat and lukewarm options. For once, this vision–that of the forgotten men and women–had made itself known, and the forces that had long been crowding it out would not take defeat lightly.

Those who had been on the winning side of that steady march, who’d consistently seen the chains moved in their favor, rerouted their juggernaut into a resistance. The audacity of Trump and his supporters was something they weren’t used to, and they took every opportunity to remind the general public that it was “not normal.” Any narrative that could bury that audacity was propped up, no matter how credible, no matter what its tenuous relationship to reality.

Wishful thinking brandished an independent council investigation into the potential of Trump as a Manchurian candidate, possible campaign finance violations, and finally an all out impeachment push. When this latest attempt crashed and burned, there was little doubt that there would be another, but just what form it would take was anyone’s guess.

Nature, it seems, has provided. A virus–nothing to sneeze at (heh), but all the same not entirely without precedent–has arisen, and with it another opportunity to cast differences of opinion as existential threats. From all the same sources that sounded the refrain before we hear “this is not normal.” This will get you, and your little old granny too, and Trump hasn’t done a damn thing to stop it.

After grasping at straws for three and a half years, Trump’s enemies finally seem to have gotten to him, just not in the way that they hoped they would. It remains to be seen whether efforts to unseat him electorally will be successful, but in some senses they’ve already won. They got to him. They made him sweat; made him change course. They forced his hand, giving him the option to stand by and be perceived as bearing callous responsibility for any deaths Covid-19 will cause, or else to react in some draconian way that could rightly be criticized.

Essentially, he ignores their hype and is a murderer or he buys in and he’s a tyrant. He’s seemingly taken a middle road, taking measures that, while perhaps within the legal scope of the Presidency, are hardly in keeping with the sober reality many of his supporters see right in front of them. His enemies have stirred up enough uncertainty that he himself has begun to doubt the vision that elected him.

A similar thing happened with that other Knightmare scenario. Just as much of society had bristled at the current of politics and public policy, many comic book fans had similar reactions to the formula that had dominated the cinematic adaptations over the past decade. They saw the entertainment value of Marvel movies as a welcome advancement of their cause, but were miffed at the apparent half measures. Here were big budget, live action depictions of stories they’d only dreamed of seeing on the big screen, but in many ways they were regressing to the juvenile, shallow fare that comics had clawed for decades to mature beyond.

Enter Zach Snyder, with a vision radically departed not only from the blockbusters that had set the recent tone, but from the source material itself. For many it was uncomfortably different, but for many it was a refreshing vindication. Regardless of the tangible results however–a solid box office return for Man of Steel and one of the biggest openings in history with Batman v Superman–negative hype proved too pervasive for the powers that WB to ignore. Among others, a major sticking point with audiences was that confusing cameo from the Fastest Man Alive and all the seemingly convoluted plot threads that came with it. Without getting into the specifics, of which tremendous personal tragedy played no small part, the vision wasn’t appreciated and Snyder was invited to no longer spearhead the DCEU. The vision was instead co-opted, sullied others might say, and what should have been the greatest triumph of DC’s cinematic aspirations, 2017’s Justice League, became their greatest embarrassment and frustration. 

This box office face plant put into perspective, however, the negativity surrounding the Snyderverse. Whatever degree of critical disappointment and underperformance his entries had been, Justice League made them look like golden geese. Moreover, those who were content to sit back and enjoy his take on the franchise before the whole debacle, have risen to Snyder’s defense with a trending hashtag all their own. The blowback to WB’s capitulation has now far surpassed the bad press that led to it in the first place.

While November may yet prove disappointing to the hopes of MAGA country as it did to Snyder and his loyal Spartans all those years ago, we’ll know well before then how accurate today’s tea leaves are. Despite Trump’s limited, yet significant, capitulation, his detractors have already begun damage control on all the doomsaying, with some lamenting that if disaster can be averted it will appear in retrospect that it was much ado about nothing. Some have even gone so far as to say that the less harmful Covid-19 ultimately is, the more justified the decisions to cancel this, that, and the other are. In essence, if this does turn out to be just a run of the mill virus, that is in fact proof positive that the unprecedented measures were necessary and worked like a charm.

Some doomsday prophecies don’t come true because they’re cut off at the knees, seeming convoluted only because their intended arcs were never allowed to come to fruition. Others don’t come true because their intention was never to shed light on the truth, but rather to instigate panic to distract from truth, to prime a skeptical populace for policies that can’t stand on their own ideological merit.

So what are we to make of all this? Fear is not a reliable compass. It leads astray citizens and presidents, studio executives and audiences alike. Decisions made out of fear–fear of basic facts of life like occasional surges of illness and of the wrath of the mob–have a way of backfiring. The economic hardship that will result from entire industries in upheaval, roller coaster stock markets, deferred educations and opportunities will be quantifiable after all this shakes out. Sadly, so will the death figures. Death, however, is a fact of life. It happens every day. We wish it wasn’t, but, unfortunately, it is very normal. Panics are not. Empty grocery stores and interrupted lives are not. Finally, your opinions and your actions are your own to determine. We should be open to persuasion when compelling cases are made, but we should be wary of any narrative that tells us to believe, to do, or else.