It's bad enough that much of the media reporting and decisions by government leadership during the pandemic is lacking in or completely devoid of sound scientific evidence. I've posted blogs in the past about
Today's post is about the way decisions are being made makes it seem like the primary goal of those in charge is instilling fear into their constituency. For the most part, it's fear motivating those constituents to blindly follow anti-constitutional mandates, ineffective procedures, and psychologically damaging limitations.
This blog focuses on an inaccurately reported statement by the CDC about immunity.
Nearly all media presentations of current events have been edited by that media in some way. That's what happened to a CDC report on the extent of immunity a person achieves after having COVID-19 and recovering from that infection.
This is what I saw as a Notification on my Twitter feed on August 15 or 16.
Read my blog about immunity and you'll see that NO immunity works that way.
My first thoughts were
- How can CDC release that erroneous statement?
- Does that mean that COVID-19 mutates so rapidly that after three months it's like you never had immunity? [BTW: If this was the case, the only way to end the pandemic is to have everyone get the disease in a three month period.]
I stewed until Monday morning when I decided to begin this blog series. When I clicked on the link from the "News for you" post I arrived at this site
As I read through the list of responses to this Tweet, I came across this
I scrolled down the responses. Here are two of my favorites.
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| 1. Notice blame is focused on the writer's displeasure with the CDC's response to the "fake news." |
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| 2. Although the first sentence in his response is a phrase I don't condone, the condemnation of the faulty reporting (hopefully just poor proofreading) is important. |
Somewhere around 2,700 twitter users saw this post and reacted to it. The chances are twice that many saw it. Unfortunately, nothing can erase the first impression of the bogus statement. This misrepresentation happens a lot on page 1. Those might be retracted day(s) later on page 6, long after the damage is done.
I searched for the number of readers of an ABC press release to the public. I couldn't find that information. I did find these numbers and considerable reaction to this post on Twitter on August 17.
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| Not as many as I thought there might be, but that's 3x the reactions to the error on mainstream Twitter. |
How many already frightened people were hit with more horrific "news" that wasn't true this time?
One person is too many.
This should not be happening.
I hope this post causes you to consider what was really said or posted when you read, watch, or hear a "fact" or "statement" on any media platform.
This takes you to the Twitter reactions to that News for the image at the beginning of this post.
Next week I'll take a look at another type of reporting error on this virus and its impact.
SEO: News, journalistic errors, misinformation
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