In the absence of a real deadly pandemic, tricky wording and white lies are enough to fool people. In Texas, a month ago hospitals were at capacity. That seems alarming, but a surge in deaths did not follow. We only heard about the cases. A hospital administrator and a mayor said they needed refrigerator trucks for the dead bodies. This is just a shock factor headline because the reported 3,000-4,000 deaths from coronavirus thus far only sounds like a lot as an isolated number. In a state of about 30 million, that's .0001 percent of the population over about four months. As always, they don't report the other side of the story. And perhaps they would have no need for a refrigerator truck if treatment that has been known to help was used more to treat patients.
The media just makes it seem there simply is no treatment, quickly dismissing Ivermectin, remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine and budesonide despite how they've cured hundreds if not thousands from COVID-19.
Another fact that is ignored is that hospitals are now reopening, so obviously there will be a surge in hospitalizations, especially since patients have been backlogged for so long.
Even the most Republican of politicians have to bow to the popular COVID-19 rhetoric. When one party's rhetoric is so extreme, unfortunately its opposition has to accept some of what they're saying to avoid being completely polarized. So we live in a world where media and politicians dictate our every move, whether you're on the right or left or no side at all.
In a society that's supposed to be a democratic republic, that's shocking.
I don't want to say I know the news cycles, because that's pretentious. But having worked in media for about 15 years, I am familiar with how media outlets work. They publish what they know people will read, and people will read things that shock them. The thing is, oftentimes, the truth is sobering. Once you know the whole story, it's actually not nearly as shocking. So the media has to refrain from telling the whole truth because the whole truth will take away the shock factor. A wide variety of mitigating factors will take away the impact of the news piece. Telling both sides of the story, telling the events that led to the story, telling how things like this have happened before, all of these are mitigating factors that make the story ... well, less of a story in their minds. Considering all of the crazy things happening in the world, the media can then pick and choose what stories they're going to use to shock people to serve the narrative they want to share. This is especially obvious with COVID-19, because we all know other things are happening in the world, but to sustain the shock factor the media has to maintain that the virus has changed everything. It hasn't. The media's irresponsible attention to the virus is the only thing that has taken over society.