New research from two Ivy League academic powerhouses shows that the mainstream media played a crucial role in ramping up fear and terror over the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).
Experts from Dartmouth College and Brown University pored over tens of thousands of articles about the Chinese virus that were published over the past year and the vast majority of them pushed overwhelmingly "negative" narratives about the novel disease.
"The most striking fact is that 87 percent of the U.S. stories are classified as negative, whereas 51 percent of the non-U.S. stories are classified as negative," wrote study authors Bruce Sacerdote, an economics professor at Darmouth; Ranjan Sehgal, also of Dartmouth; and Brown's Molly Cook.
Though the study does not delve all that deeply into the social ramifications of this constant negative coverage, it is safe to say that the reason tens of millions of Americans are still freaking out about face masks is because they believe the media's lies that the Wuhan flu is going to get them unless everyone goes anti-social and shelters in place forever.
Even when Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) case numbers were plummeting between April 24 and June 27 of last year, most major media outlets were still pumping out nonsense about "rising cases" and new "surges" and "waves" of the virus that never actually panned out as real.
Consequently, a CBS News poll found from last June found that most Americans, at least those who watch television, were scared to death of the Chinese virus and felt as though the "fight" to contain it was going badly.
This poll, ironically enough, was used to churn out more "bad" news about how the United States was collapsing under the weight of a virus that almost nobody was observing in real life beyond their screens.
Corporate media confused Americans into falsely believing that young, healthy people were at risk of dying from Chinese germs
Based on the media's misreporting about the Chinese virus, participants in a July Franklin Templeton-Gallup poll indicated that they had a very poor understanding of the actual risks associated with "catching" it.
While the vast majority – about 92 percent – of all deaths associated with the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) occur in people who are over the age of 55 and fat, many Americans have been falsely led astray by the media into believing that younger people are also at risk, the poll found.
As it turns out, those under the age of 25 account for a mere 0.2 percent of deaths blamed on the Chinese virus, which poll participants overestimated by a factor of 50.
All of this was to be expected based on the media's fake news coverage concerning the virus. We never heard about the bulk of "cases" that fully recovered, many without symptoms. Instead, we only heard about ventilators, people dropping dead in the streets, and of course non-mask-wearers "killing grandma."
"Overly-negative Covid-19 reporting has implications well beyond individual feelings and practices: Those who've been led to an exaggerated perception of their personal risk are more prone to support strict government policies to counter the virus," reports Brian McGlinchey for Stark Realities about another negative outcome of all the hysteria.
Even in areas where cases had been going down, the mainstream media continued to harp on them with negative reporting. When Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds lifted her state's mask mandate back in early February, the media was ready and waiting to with headlines such as "Welcome to Iowa: a state that doesn't care if you live or die" – this one was compliments of The Washington Post.
To keep up with the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19), be sure to check out Pandemic.news.
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