Final blog post
Covid and the media
The media is absolutely vital in shaping a narrative in general, and over the past year this has been more evident than in any other time that I have personally observed.
COVID-19 is very real and very serious, and I experienced it firsthand. My entire family had it over Christmas and New Years, and we were hit pretty hard. We are all healthy people and were basically not functional for a number of days. The biggest hardship of the whole ordeal, however, was not the actual sickness. It was the fact that we all actually got sick and tested positive in increments, so we ended up quarantined for pretty much the entire month that I was back on break.
I do not have the point of view of someone who is extremely high-risk, and I understand that getting Covid is a lot more serious for someone in that boat. Although it was certainly not fun, having COVID made me significantly less scared of getting it in the future. Of course every case is not the same, but I think the loss of quality of life over the past year and the amount that the economy has tanked does not weigh well against the actual severity of the illness.
In other words, I believe it is serious but was severely overblown, and I think that the media is extremely responsible for this. People were really acting like this is the first pandemic the world has ever experienced, as evidenced in articles like this one from CNN. The title of the article “Back to normal: Why we must accept it won’t happen” is melodramatic, and irresponsible journalism. It goes on to say that many of the changes made to accommodate for Covid restrictions may be permanent, and we should be okay with that. This article was published in September, and a few months later we can say that things are a whole lot more normal. Articles like these propagate fear and pessimism, and I am sure that there is some correlation between this general attitude and the recent rising levels of depression. If people read a headline like that and do not do their own research, it would be very easy to be alarmed.
Additionally, I think the existence of social media and the accessibility of digital news, while good at times for communicating information during an international crisis, created a lot of unnecessary alarm and social issues. “Virtue signaling” became a catchphrase, instead of wearing masks when appropriate and getting a vaccine purely because they believed it was the right thing to do, people began to post about it so other people could see that they were doing the “right thing.” This added a societal pressure that did not exist in prior pandemics. It also keeps pressure on people to continue wearing masks and following social distancing after they are vaccinated for fear of looking like a “bad person.”
Consequently, I believe that the pandemic — while serious and life threatening for many — was blown out of proportion, and the media was largely responsible for that.