Covid coverage by the U.S. national media is an outlier, a study finds.

When Covid cases were rising in the U.S., the news coverage emphasized the increase. When cases were falling, the coverage instead focused on those places where cases were rising. And when vaccine research began showing positive results, the coverage downplayed it, as far as Sacerdote could tell.

I wonder if this relentless media negativity is what at least partly led to so many people being terrified to so much as go outdoors even after vaccines were widely available. The US media spent a whole lot of time to make it seem like the vaccines don’t work, or barely work, and that there was basically no real benefit to them. And the liberals were perfectly onboard with this. That, by the way, probably cost dozens of thousands of lives by reducing the vaccination uptake. Good work, libs.

Some of the negativity I believe was in reaction to the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and anti-any-restriction people out there. The press figured if it went the most negative possible people might be more supportive of restrictions. Of course, this backfired and also completely traumatized people like Alice Goldfuss and many others. Those folks are going to need years of therapy to deal with that.

Fear-mongering is both profitable and it makes audiences happy. Well, “happy.” It does appear people like living in fear in a way, though. Perhaps it’s comforting? I can’t really say.