This kind of reporting seems counterproductive. A more helpful headline would be something like, “In locked down Italy, life is mostly normal.” The body of the

This kind of reporting seems counterproductive. A more helpful headline would be something like, “In locked down Italy, life is mostly normal.” The body of the article is OK, but the tone seems intentionally negative when the same facts could easily have been presented hopefully. One of my biggest concerns is that places in the United States, or other countries, will adopt aggressive social distancing policies early, while the number of cases is low, and then the backlash against those policies will be that “this is hell, and the virus isn’t even affecting that many people.” That can lead to pressure to drop the policies prematurely when the virus is nowhere near contained yet. This is a great opportunity for responsible journalism to strike a tone of optimistic “we are all in this together, it is very serious, but if we all do the right thing we should be OK.” Fear mongering on the one hand, or dismissal and backlash on the other, are both extremely harmful — But good for Clickbait and selling ads. We really need the media to resist that during this emergency.