First, a quick refresher on how the media botched the initial coverage: On Jan. 23, authorities in Beijing sealed off Wuhan, a city of 11 million in China’s interior, to contain the virus. Much of the media response was to downplay this harbinger of the deadly global threat to come. “Don’t worry about the coronavirus,” BuzzFeed wrote on Jan. 29. Worry about the flu.” On Jan. 31 – the same day the Trump administration imposed a ban incoming visitors from China – the “explainer” news site Vox was telling readers, “Is this going to be a deadly pandemic? No.” On Feb. 1, the Washington Post ran an article headlined, “Get a grippe, America. The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now.” On Groundhog Day, the Post was saying, “Past epidemics prove fighting coronavirus with travel bans is a mistake.”
To be fair to the media, they were publishing this garbage because “experts” were also spouting the same nonsense. You know, those people with all those fancy credentials who know what’s going on. (You should be chuckling now.)
In retrospect, it’s hard to deny the mainstream media’s initial downplaying of the threat was very wrong, or that it was partly a result of kneejerk antipathy to the Trump administration’s travel ban – which in retrospect looks like a prescient move.
But it was so RACISTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT *hair catches fire as triggering intensifies*
Turns out that Covid-19 is not racist, and will ride here on any carrier that hitches some transpo and strolls onto US soil. Funny how a virus has no ideology, nor does it respect human ones. Who could’ve imagined that?
Again, thank fucking god for Zeynep Tufekci. Been reading her for years, for good reason, and she really came through as the MVP of this whole shitshow.