The real number is debatable because of defective tallying practices where coronavirus is given as cause of death even if there was no specific reason for doing

The real number is debatable because of defective tallying practices where coronavirus is given as cause of death even if there was no specific reason for doing so; hospitals are incentivized to do so because it results in funding. But aside from that, let's not be so naive, eh? The media runs on sensationalism. The pandemic has been grossly mismanaged and there is absolutely no reason for the draconian lock down we're under. There hasn't been for 10 months. It was justifiable in the beginning because we didn't know what we were dealing with, but we have a much better grasp now and we know who is at risk to permit a much more fine-grained approach. Furthermore, much of the media fear mongering is driven by an ignorance of immunology and epidemiology. We have to remind ourselves that what we often "know" about the world beyond our own local lives is what we glean from the media filter. We should always approach that kind of knowledge with a bit of humility and caution. Journalists are not, shall we say, the creme-de-la-creme. There's also the political angle. As Rahm Emanuel once said, you shouldn't let a crisis go to waste. There is a great deal to be made during a pandemic like this, monetarily, socially, politically, and otherwise, the so-called Great Reset[0] functioning as perhaps the paradigmatic example, whatever you happen to know or think of it. Put yourself in the shoes of an ambitious but morally unscrupulous politician or billionaire. Would you so easily end the pandemic given the opportunities it presents, given how rare of an opportunity it poses for doing things you could not do under the usual circumstances? Even if you weren't quite sure what to do with it, you would at least have the instinct to know that the rarity of the situation merits careful consideration, though in this case, you would have had plenty of time to consider them (and frankly, think tanks are in the business of anticipating things; there are no doubt papers that describe how, if a certain set of circumstances were to emerge, certain political goals could be realized). So yeah, announcing variants of COVID is fine per se, as long as such things are contextualized. The media is often an instrument of decontextualization which leads to confusion and poor judgement (just think about how they report scientific articles, not as one exchange in the cacophony of scientific publications, but as some Definitive Judgement of The Science!). At this point, I have no problem acknowledging the merit in the OP's quip, namely, not that we be cynical, but that it's high time we started employing some common sense instead of just drinking the media Koolaid. [0] https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/ https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/