Calling out media analysts for calling out the media on COVID reporting

At Nieman Lab last week, Kendra Pierre-Louis had a callout for much of the mainstream media for treating COVID too lightly. Some of the angles, like firing away at David Leonhardt and his repeated "return to normal is just around the corner," are like shooting fish in a barrel. Definitely, the issue of public health being "public" is important.

Others, like not holding CDC head Rochelle Walensky to account on what percentage of the US population has various comorbidities, is good. 

One thing missing? 

She doesn't dive into if the MSM slacked off more after Jan. 20, 2021, and I'll just leave that there. I say it has, and for that reason.

But, what really got me was this:

“The cases are dropping from extremely high to very high. We still have a high baseline of Covid throughout the year, basically,” ... says Lucky Tran, the director of science communication and media relations at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Uhh, no.

In reality, COVID cases, and especially deaths, are not only FAR below "extremely high," they're also VERY well below "very high" and in fact pretty well below just "high." 

My go-to site for stats since the start of the pandemic, Worldometers, has the receipts, and I'm going to focus on deaths, even while noting that Long COVID is real, and of course, is among the land of the living.

Last week the US had approximately 500 deaths. Now, that's nothing to sneeze at, pun intended or not, and accepted or not. But, it's not that bad, and yes, really.

That's 25,000 deaths a year when annualized.

Or, just a little more than ONE HALF our annual car accident death count, which sadly increased in the pandemic for a variety of reasons.

That said, not everything "good" is even as good as Pierre-Louis presents. 

First, the "but flu is seasonal" angle. It wasn't always. And COVID will probably become at least quasi-seasonal soon enough. It may already be doing so.

Second, the comorbities. Many of them are serious, but per Wiki's list, many of them are also comorbid to other diseases, including the flu.

Third? Take some of Long COVID. Wiki says that one of symptoms mentioned by an interviewee, mast cell activation syndrome, according to a two-footnote observation, has been "increasingly over-diagnosed or misdiagnosed."Another, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, has, by best estimates, 500K-1M cases. It also notes that it's most common among teens and many sufferers grow out of it by their 20s.

As for the People's CDC angle and Emma Green's story, about which I've blogged before and which was not fantastic but also was not horrible? No, she didn't call anybody communists, though she did use the phrase "those people." The ONE use of "communists" in her story was from one of her interviewees, denying it, shortly after her own "those people" phrase.

And, if we're going to use phrases, even before I got to that portion of the piece, I was already thinking of People's CDC and wondering if Pierre-Louis was a "fellow traveler." 

Beyond that? As I blogged a few weeks after that initial piece about the People's CDC and Emma Green, a site as respected as Stat said "both sides" (per Idries Shah, there's actually more than two sides) on COVID and public health issues lacked nuance. Also in that piece, Nancy Messionier, a known name, noted there's still not an agreed-upon definition of Long COVID, something Pierre-Louis doesn't note.

This is true indeed. Per my knocking on Pat the Berner two months ago, not just lack of nuance but hysterics and misinformation can still come from "both sides."

And, since I called him a People's CDC fellow traveler by the end of that piece, and in for a penny, in for a pound, I'll go ahead and call Pierre-Louis that, too.

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Update: I don't need these people panic-mongering over the new "Arcturus" variant, either (though they will anyway). Here's the facts, per Forbes, referencing the World Health Organization.

"(Arcturus is) a new variant under monitoring (VUM), which isn’t as serious as a variant of interest (VOI) which isn’t as serious as a variant of concern (VOC)."

My full Tweet went on to say:

So, stop panicking, and stop inciting panic, People's CDC and fellow travelers.

There you go.

The piece goes on to link to WHO's definition of a VUM. As for the top level, a VOC? There are none, right now. Again, stop panicking or panic-mongering.