The COVID Panic Police

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   The ivermectin narrative also fit neatly into a broader trend in COVID reporting: alarmism. The terrified tone of so much pandemic reporting, understandable early on when so little was known about the virus and when vaccines were not yet created, has become a permanent feature despite gains in treatment and the protection offered by mass vaccination. It is a form of path dependence whereby the default position for reporting about a new virus variant, for example, or about new treatments for COVID symptoms, begins from a point of panic rather than dispassionate fact-gathering.
   This was evident with much of the reporting on the Delta variant. As COVID cases (overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated) began to rise this summer, albeit with thankfully lower death rates, news outlets shifted away from discussing the raw number of COVID hospitalizations and deaths (which would help readers put the recent wave in context) and instead talked about percentage increases that made the situation sound far more dire than it was—especially given the availability of free vaccines.
   Story after story on cable news and in newspapers emphasized the dangers of the Delta variant and its supposed deadlier nature (which proved not to be true). In late July, the Washington Post ran a fearful story with the headline “The War Has Changed,” citing an internal CDC slide presentation about the Delta variant that emphasized breakthrough infections (which have proven not to be as widespread as stories suggest) and that claimed (falsely) that Delta was as contagious as chickenpox. By early September, the New York Times front page featured stories such as “Covid deaths surge across a weary America as a once-hopeful summer ends.”
   There are a few notable exceptions to this trend. David Leonhardt at the New York Times has used his morning newsletter to debunk several COVID-related panics, most recently analyzing the available data regarding breakthrough cases of COVID in the vaccinated population. (His finding: The vaccinated have a 1-in-5,000 chance, at worst, of being hospitalized due to a breakthrough.)

At least two of these things are clear: 

First: the media and the left generally is dedicated to panic-mongering.

Second: one way they effect this is by stressing whichever measure sounds worst. Oh and, of course: avoiding any mention of the fact that the average COVID death is a person older than the average person lives with four comorbidities. It does kill young, healthy people...but apparently not all that much. But the fact that these things are rarely mentioned--and weren't mentioned at all for nearly a year--itself tells us a lot. Information sources honestly dedicated to getting us the truth would be blaring such information at least once a week.