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Did this pervasive level of criticism, animosity, and negativity exist a hundred years ago during the last serious pandemic? Every week there's some new crisis.
by pdog 6y ago
Did this pervasive level of criticism, animosity, and negativity exist a hundred years ago during the last serious pandemic? Every week there's some new crisis.
It feels like the entire media is always trying to highlight the next systemic failure. "This is wrong." "This failed." "We don't have enough ventilators." "New York cases are surging." "California cases are surging." "We don't have enough PPE." "We don't have hand sanitizer." "We don't have masks." "We don't have enough tests."
Are things actually this consistently bad, or does the media magnify the negative and ignore the positive developments (of which there are plenty)?
It's like the difference between acute inflammation (which is good for the body when it's fighting an infection) and chronic inflammation (which causes a lot of problems).
- wittyreference 6y agoIt also happens to be the case that Houston is the major processing center for all of the major lab groups for the south/southwest. They literally pointed at the single most congested part of the network, during a period of global supply shortages, and went "well, that's not working well." Well, yeah, it's not fucking working well. We're cranking out tests and running analyses at an unprecedented level. And we're doing a decent job of ramping up, actually, but not perfectly evenly across the board. My healthcare center is not particularly large or particularly well-connected. We've been getting our tests back in 3 days. At one point our partner started getting too heavily inundated, things were lagging to 5 days, so we switched to another that didn't require shipping to Houston for processing. We're back to 3 days. But we're lucky - we're small enough that we don't have to partner with a Houston-based center. Others aren't.
- mikeshank 6y ago> does the media magnify the negative and ignore the positive developments (of which there are plenty)? The media crafts its daily narrative with an eye on objectivity and plays right down the middle. Just the facts, always. To suggest otherwise is quite dangerous.
- jazzyjackson 6y agoI suppose ever since newspapers were invented they've done whatever they can to attract readership fact is the news needs their audience to feel that news is essential to their daily life, and if it was just good news I could make the choice to watch something a little more interesting, but by choosing stories that feel urgent and dramatic, they create the urgency to stay tuned to 'stay informed' No one needs to stay informed of the good news, although I do miss when the late night shows would make fun of light hearted news that was a once daily reminder that there's a lot going on in the world that's not american politics
- xyzzyz 6y agoNo, a hundred years ago people accepted that death from infectious disease is common and got on with their lives. Certainly they had no months-long lockdowns at the time.
- jschwartzi 6y agoActually many municipalities did lock down in response to the Spanish Flu epidemic here in the US. The epidemiological studies of these cities are in part why we chose to lock down this time too.
- xyzzyz 6y agoYes, but they locked down for much shorter than we did. San Francisco had restrictions in 1918 for just over 1 month, for example. Nowhere you’d have found things like 5 months+ lockdowns like we have now in many places, with no end in sight.
- xenospn 6y agoBecause everyone actually stayed inside, unlike this time around. Lockdowns don't work if people ignore them.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoDo you have evidence that this is true? It's pretty hard to believe that people were more willing to stay inside in an era when nobody had the Internet or even TV.
- aantix 6y agoIt was a ghost town around here. And now, a few months later, we're seeing the affects of the lockdown. Businesses are closing everywhere. It's incredibly sad. The vulnerable should have stayed isolated - cleansed everything from the outside. That ensures their safety. The healthy should have been able to go forward. Responsibility without control is cruel. Financial debt accumulates, but hey, stay inside, don't go to work.
- king_magic 6y agoI mean, in the United States, 149,324 deaths is a systemic failure. Another 834 today, and the day isn't over. Do you not think that constitutes a massive crisis?
- pdog 6y agoThat's my point. The Spanish flu killed 750,000 in the United States at a time when the population was around 100 million. It was certainly a massive crisis. What was the reporting like and how has it changed?
- mr_toad 6y agoPeople had lower expectations of healthcare back in the 20’s. Many of the vaccines we have today didn’t exist, and there were no antibiotics.
- oneplane 6y agoI think it was actually relatively the same. Different styles etc, but there were people back then that didn't feel like distancing or wearing a mask and there were laws put in place that would land you in jail if you went out without a mask. And there were protestors against that, just like now. And they too got infected, spread it around and some died. It's an excellent (sad) example of history repeating itself. On the other hand, things aren't all that comparable. Consider the distances people travel, the amount of people that use the same space, but also the amount of single-use things we have now that we didn't have (at scale) back then (even simple things like spoons, napkins, cups). People love to make comparisons, but it's not always as useful or helpful as one might think (even if we went all the way down the rabbit hole and tried to find all the variables between now and then).
- ModernMech 6y agoBack then there was hardy any reporting at all. They tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible. It’s the whole reason it was called the “Spanish” flu, as Spain was the only country accurately reporting on the crisis, which made it seem like a problem unique to them.
- 6y ago
- graeme 6y agoAmerica is objectively doing terribly with covid-19. Massive business disruption combined with massive cases. The view from outside america is of widespread mismanagement and systemic failure. It is a death blow to America’s perception as a competent world power to be relied upon. In this context, negative headlines are hardly surprising.
- jjcon 6y ago> America is objectively doing terribly with covid-19 They’ve had fewer deaths per capita than Italy, UK, France, Sweden and plenty others... not doing great but also in plenty good company.
- therealdrag0 6y agoReminds me of the “wear a mask or go to jail” from 1918 https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-campaigns https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-public-health-cam...
- tinus_hn 6y agoDid they have newspapers that depend on 24/7 crises and ‘breaking’ disasters to survive, and had the reach of today’s online outlets?