5 ms·

As I recall, the media applied plenty of scrutiny to any claim that Covid might be less deadly than the media coverage suggested, the breathless uncritical repo

by makomk 5y ago

As I recall, the media applied plenty of scrutiny to any claim that Covid might be less deadly than the media coverage suggested, the breathless uncritical reporting lent almost entirely in one direction.

krrrh 5y ago
Important to clarify that much of scrutiny went in the other direction, cutting down concerns about how bad things could get in January and February of 2020.
- mikem170 5y ago
  After that I still saw a pattern where the media kept proffering worst case scenarios at every step, with no studies to back them up, even contradicting known science. The most recent example of this is fear-mongering headlines indicating that the vaccines would not be effective against variants. This might be expected behaviour for the flu, but not a coronavirus.
DubiousPusher 5y ago
You misunderstand me. I'm not referring to the virulence nor the deadliness of Covid-19. More to the tangential "scientific discoveries" that were credulously reported as they were published by doctors with little review or time to coroborate. Some examples -claims about hydroxychloroquine -claims about various other drug cocktails -claims of a new covid related inflammatory disease in children -claims about transmissibility to animals from humans Just to name a few.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  > claims about transmissibility to animals from humans I think that ones true, no? Ferrets, big cats, house cats , dogs, bats and mink (with hundreds of mink to human spread in Denmark) seem to be able to get it. Probably a bunch of primates too beyond gorillas. But not chickens and pigs (in the small study I dug up). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(20)30089-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5... https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/... This is all a big deal since it means that, even if we vaccinate every human, it might stick around in wildlife and re-infect humans again after it mutates or as immunity decays.
  - DubiousPusher 5y ago
    It's not about whether it's true or not. It's about whether the media could know it was true in the time they reported it. Which they could not because they reported it before any study could be done.

by makomk 5y ago

krrrh 5y ago

Important to clarify that much of scrutiny went in the other direction, cutting down concerns about how bad things could get in January and February of 2020.

mikem170 5y ago
After that I still saw a pattern where the media kept proffering worst case scenarios at every step, with no studies to back them up, even contradicting known science. The most recent example of this is fear-mongering headlines indicating that the vaccines would not be effective against variants. This might be expected behaviour for the flu, but not a coronavirus.

DubiousPusher 5y ago

You misunderstand me. I'm not referring to the virulence nor the deadliness of Covid-19. More to the tangential "scientific discoveries" that were credulously reported as they were published by doctors with little review or time to coroborate. Some examples -claims about hydroxychloroquine -claims about various other drug cocktails -claims of a new covid related inflammatory disease in children -claims about transmissibility to animals from humans Just to name a few.

Scoundreller 5y ago
> claims about transmissibility to animals from humans I think that ones true, no? Ferrets, big cats, house cats , dogs, bats and mink (with hundreds of mink to human spread in Denmark) seem to be able to get it. Probably a bunch of primates too beyond gorillas. But not chickens and pigs (in the small study I dug up). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(20)30089-6/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5... https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/... This is all a big deal since it means that, even if we vaccinate every human, it might stick around in wildlife and re-infect humans again after it mutates or as immunity decays.
- DubiousPusher 5y ago
  It's not about whether it's true or not. It's about whether the media could know it was true in the time they reported it. Which they could not because they reported it before any study could be done.