Inside Coronavirus — Misinformation is a 21st Century Crisis
There has been a mixed reaction on President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic with about half of Americans approving of how the President has handled the crisis. Six out of seven republicans support Trump while only one in five democrats commend the President’s actions.
It is disappointing we remain polarized in such a crisis. The different worlds we live in makes it feel like the sky looks purple, but some say red, and others say blue. In all reality, it’s probably black.
In the spirit of conflicting worldviews, there has been misinformation from all directions.
On January 14th the World Health Organization tweeted that Chinese authorities had found no evidence of human-to human transmission of coronavirus. This occurred simultaneously as a Chinese doctor was silenced by the Chinese government when warning people that healthcare workers were contracting the virus from patients.
Republicans and democrats both downplayed the virus initially. Trump was still comparing it to the flu well into March and much of his political rhetoric on the virus highlights his reelection motives. Nancy Pelosi, the Mayor of New York, and the Governor of West Virginia are among many elected officials that encouraged people to go out into public amid the beginning stages of the pandemic.
The U.S. Surgeon General pleaded false information until April saying that face masks would not help the general public. This in lieu of admitting the nation’s shortcomings on its stockpiled mask supply, all while the Czech Republic, in mid-March, mandated masks to be worn in public by everyone.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp lagged on a state-wide shutdown, telling the public on April 1st that he just found out the disease can spread through asymptomatic carriers. CNN reported this on January 31st. Astonishingly, Kemp’s office sits less than a mile away from CNN headquarters, and 6 miles away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters.
Atlanta will be an interesting case study because, along with Kemp’s incompetence, it houses the world’s most traveled airport.
The media did not do any better than the politicians. CNN referenced the disease as a Chinese coronavirus in January, yet pressed the President as acting out of line for his continuous “Chinese virus” word usage. It is clear Trump’s persistent prose corresponds with a political effort to pass blame to Chinese’s government, but that does not make it racist.
In March Vox deleted an article and tweet from late January that said the disease would not be a deadly pandemic. To be fair, in a mid-February interview with the USA Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci wasn’t too concerned about the virus’s spread, and gave no indication that it would become a national emergency. Albeit, it is questionable for news platforms to revision their reporting by deleting articles, which historians may contend is like burning a primary source in the flesh.
Trump and notorious Fox News are no different. Mike Pence defended Trump saying the President never downplayed the virus. On cue, the Washington Post responded with a video reel of 33 instances of questionable rhetoric by Trump on Covid-19. One notable clip is the President saying “this is their new hoax” when referencing the coronavirus at a February 28th rally in South Carolina.
10 days after Trump’s hoax claim, Trish Regan accused CNN, MSNBC, and democrats of exaggerating coronavirus in another attempt to impeach the President. Fox News cancelled her show immediately and fired her in late March, which Vanity Fair reports was made with some intention to sacrifice Regan if the network is sued over coronavirus misinformation resulting in people’s deaths.
In a different misinformation effort, Chinese officials are propagating a theory that the United States may have brought the virus to China. Delivery numbers on urns in Wuhan also show there may have been thousands more deaths than the number the Chinese reported. As a result, any information out of China is taken with caution. In China’s private sector, Starbucks’ biggest Chinese competitor, Luckin Coffee, is believed to have fabricated 40% of its sales in 2019.
As both China and the United States contend with their own misinformation battles, they are actively feuding while trying to hide their domestic problems from each other. When the Wall Street Journal criticized China for its coronavirus response, three international reporters stationed in China working for the Journal had their visas revoked and were ordered to leave the country within five days. In response, Trump cut American visas by 35% for Chinese state-employed journalists. In further retaliation, China escalated by banning all journalists from the WSJ, New York Times, and Washington Post.
The communication between China and the United States projects there may be more conflict in the future. Other countries have expressed anger with China. The son of the President of Brazil criticized the Chinese government’s handling of the outbreak, likening it to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, to which the Chinese ambassador to Brazil demanded an apology.
We think we know the disease came from a type of bat, but it is questionable if it came from a wet market or a lab. In February, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton suggested it may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan. Vox, Forbes, and other media outlets characterized this as a conspiracy theory early on only for the Washington Post to give legitimacy to the theory in April.
In other parts of the world, things are far from perfect, meaning Americans will fare better off than most countries because the luxury of social isolating and a better overall quality of hospital care.
The United Kingdom quickly sea-changed on a herd immunity approach when an analysis from the Imperial College projected half a million deaths if the country did no mitigation. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is currently in the ICU. Interesting enough, Sweden has been role modeling that approach with persistence despite some pushback.
Italy, Spain, and Iran have had terrible outbreaks. Turkey is rising fastest in the world. Japan is in the beginning of an accelerating outbreak and India put over a billion people on lockdown.
Among other developments, Israel’s Prime Minister, perhaps unknowingly, was using video footage from a Hallmark movie to claim Iran was under-reporting deaths. The European Union is looking at Hungary as it has abandoned democracy giving its Prime Minister rule by decree. Hungarian journalists convicted of spreading fake news in the country can be sentenced to five years in prison.
Social media has embarked on a mission to monitor misinformation. WhatsApp, the largest encrypted-chat social media in the world combats false information circulation by essentially creating a speed limit for how fast items can go viral. YouTube has deleted videos, and Medium removed an article that was circulating among prominent conservative pundits, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who met with President Trump last week.
The pandemic is a health crisis that is making us question how healthy we are in all aspects of our life. Information and news is like food and putting the wrong substances in your body leads to poor health.
We know misinformation is a huge threat, but we struggle to create a better system, so we run with the one we have. With the internet, information comes from a wide-range of sources and it feels diversified, but overwhelming most media is owned by six companies.
Like the pandemic’s exponential nature, the majority of media ownership has shrank from over 50 firms in 1983 to under 25 by 1992, and subsequently six in 2000. A lot has change but some people long for the years before the media industry converged. Trump supporters look back on the Ronald Reagan years with iconic glory, evident in their recycling of the “Make America Great Again” slogan from Reagan’s 1980 campaign. Democrats probably look back on Bill Clinton’s 1990's with awe compared to what it feels like today.
During the late 20th Century, there was a cold war going on, but the domestic polarization did not exist. We do not know why it did not exist. Perhaps it was always there, but the 24-hour news cycle provided the magnify glass we needed to see it. Fox News and MSNBC both launched in 1996. The rivalry they have formed in 24 years is aging like a fine wine, but has it made us all drunk?
Disease outbreaks are often named based on the limited information we have on them. Some that come to mind are Swine Flu, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Hong Kong Flu, and Spanish Flu. We may attribute the name from where the disease started or the animal it came from, but as history shows, we are not always correct. Misinformation has always been present, whether intended or unintended.
Fitting enough, “Chinese virus” fails as a name because we now have more information to use — the coronavirus namesake comes from its crowned-shaped appearance when microscopically viewed. When something is under the microscope, the small details come out.
