Fear, COVID-19, & the Media in America

I was reflecting the other day, feeling that mental fuzz that has clouded my brain this past year in the face of all our systems being challenged and showing their cracks. I realized: this is the most uncertain time I have ever experienced.

Each generation faces their traumatic events. As a millennial, 9/11 was our first major tragedy. In the blink of an eye, America’s seemingly impenetrable borders and might were violated for the first time since Pearl Harbor in 1941, and thousands of innocent lives were lost.

For a brief time, we were united. Bumper stickers proclaimed “These Colors Don’t Run,” a new wave of people joined the military; all citizens mourned with our champion city: New York. Things appeared clear cut: we, within our borders, were the victims; they, on the outside, were the enemy. Yet, in some ways the terrorists did win in leading us to question our own security, forever required to remove our shoes and fly with liquids in tiny containers.

2008 brought the second knock: the Financial Crisis and subsequent Great Recession. I graduated college that year, and literally moved to New York City the week Lehman Brothers crashed. Suddenly, we fell into the greatest economic recession since 1929, and required the government to bail out the system. We with our expensive degrees in liberal arts went unemployed, suffered through multiple unpaid internships, tried to find jobs in cafes and retail despite being promised “dream jobs” right out of college. Others hid away in the ivory tower accumulating master’s and law degrees (and debt).

Nonetheless, we soldiered on. Both 9/11 and 2008 were traumatic events that attacked one system squarely on the nose (national security, the economy), but other activities kept calm and carried on. After 9/11, we still attended school, played football games, and airplanes took flight. Society got back on the horse. In 2008, with lighter pockets we could still meet up for a beer, spend time in a bookstore, or go out dancing. Society got back on the horse. There were outlets to decompress and escape. In 2020, did the horse gallop away and leave us in the dust?

“Stay safe!”

Starting in 2020, we have been faced with a shakedown of multiple systems simultaneously in a way that is transforming what “normal” will look like on the other side. In early 2020, the terror came from outside the country in the form of COVID-19. Inside, the terror took multiple forms: getting the virus and spreading it. Then, “us” and “them” factions quickly formed, generally along political lines: maskers versus anti-maskers, etc. The government stood in the interim, scrambling to shut down businesses, schools, bars, restaurants, entertainment, travel, and instill curfews. For the first time in history, we have quarantined the healthy, not just the sick. There was no way to decompress, no escape save Netflix.

“Stay safe!” became the catch phrase.

Yet, life is radically unsafe. Plagues and sickness have been on this earth since the dawn of time and many have been much deadlier, such as the Bubonic Plague, the Spanish Flu, and HIV. Now, we feel terror at a slight sore throat. Is 2020 the year we outlawed risk? The ideal of safety has taken place above physical human connection. By nature, an ideal is unattainable.

At what cost?

Make no mistake: the virus is real. People have died and continue to die. I lost my own father. I held the funeral on Zoom.

In an attempt to stop the spread, citizens were placed under home lockdown, their jobs and money source removed, been inundated with news and restrictions, then expected to survive on periodic handouts from the government. We stood frozen and confused, rubbing our groceries with rationed Clorox wipes, wondering when to use the next square of toilet paper.

Some chose to stay inside indefinitely. We know that mental health struggles, including anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, and stress/trauma related disorders, have increased greatly. Domestic violence and child abuse has also increased, even though the statistics cannot reflect the full story. Many cases go unreported because victims are stuck and silenced in threatening home situations, exacerbated by lockdown. Patients with other conditions, such as cancer, and even pregnancy, wait longer for care. Many have faced birth and death completely alone.

Less dramatically, we all weigh a series of risks and choices before doing normal and inane tasks, such as going to the grocery store. “Is it safe??!” Socially, we are creatures programmed to see each other outside of computer screens, so even virtual hangouts do not fully satisfy.

All of these factors add up to a very high cost. Relentless anxiety. Struggles with identity and purpose without a job. Financial strife. Prolonged treatment of serious illness. Violence. It is very difficult to fight a war against a thing you cannot see.

“Bringing you the truth!”

Has the media (mainstream and social) has assisted in perpetuating societal fear? Ever changing statistics and emotionally loaded language quickly became mind numbing. On CNN, an infection and death ticker graphic permanently occupied the screen. What if, in any given year, there was a ticker of deaths due to the regular flu? Cancer? Nationwide car accident death totals?

What if we instead chose to highlight how many millions have recovered from the virus? We know that many people who died from COVID-19 had various pre-existing conditions, yet the cause of death by COVID-19 contributes to the overall statistic, possibly inflating the lethality of COVID-19 alone.

The New York Times, a longstanding pillar of journalism, has been bleak in its COVID-19 reporting. Its morning reporter, David Leonhardt, has issued the following headlines over the past year: “Five Signs of Failure: No. 1, No Sign of a Flattening Curve” (April 3, 2020), “7 Reasons We Can’t Yet Reopen America: We’re Making Progress, But Not Nearly Enough” (April 20, 2020), “The Unique U.S. Failure to Control the Virus” (August 6, 2020), and “The Virus is Still Winning” (Jan 4, 2021), among others.

Each headline wields loaded language to elicit a reaction from the reader, who presumably is full of their own emotions from being a human in 2020. He states that the United States is failing, and uniquely so. In April 2020, we had been dealing with the virus for hardly over a month. Flailing, yes. Our response was clumsy and inconsistent. But he postures our failure in comparison to the strict authoritarian handling of the virus in parts of Asia, and European countries that are significantly smaller than the United States. Each country fighting COVID-19 had its own set of circumstances, and even those who appeared successful initially (Sweden, South Korea) also suffered from various second waves as time wore on.

In “The Virus is Still Winning,” (January 4, 2021), Mr. Leonhardt writes, “The biggest factor that will determine how many more people die from the virus isn’t likely to be the precise effectiveness of the vaccines or even the speed of their rollout. The biggest factor is instead likely to be how much we reduce the spread of the virus over the next few months, through a combination of mask wearing, social distancing and expanded testing. Those efforts can cut caseloads — and, by extension, deaths — more rapidly than a mass vaccination campaign can.”

In contrast, I was a bit surprised to see a glowing article about our virus progress on February 1st, under the line “Infections aren’t what matters.” He writes, “The news about the vaccines continues to be excellent—and the public discussion of it continues to be more negative than the facts warrant.” (You don’t say!) “Many people are instead focusing on relatively minor differences among the vaccine results and wrongly assuming that those differences mean that some vaccines won’t prevent serious illnesses.” He points out that the vaccine will eliminate the lethality of the virus, and “we don’t need to eliminate it (the virus) for life to return to normal.” Interesting, considering two virus variants are also on the move, and the government and media have capitalized on caseloads for the past year in support of societal restrictions.

Looking at these two excerpts, one can wonder: which version is correct? Certainly information and guidance has changed over the past year. Yet, in January he is lukewarm towards the vaccines, and in February sings their praises, scrutinizing citizens for responding with skepticism. Should we buy into the vaccine or not? Interestingly, when linking to the full articles outside of the NYT morning newsletter, several fall under the “Opinion” category. This is not specified in the morning newsletter, which I receive to read the morning news, not the morning opinion.

News has become increasingly a matter of individual journalistic opinion, and the blurred lines between fact and opinion have an increasing chokehold on our society. I also have a sneaking suspicion that it is acceptable to report positively about our COVID-19 progress now that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named no longer resides in the White House. Speaking of which, the vaccine news arrived one week after the November presidential election. Had that much anticipated news arrived but a week prior, I do wonder if anything would have changed.

Are there monsters under the bed?

COVID-19 has been undoubtedly grievous and challenging to us all. Only time will tell the full story and consequences.

Looking back, did the 9/11 terrorist attacks make us more patriotic? More suspicious? Now, all citizens pay a cost in time and regulations every time we fly, and taxpayer dollars to support increased security. Did the Financial Crisis of 2008 break the nation’s trust in capitalism, in a way that 1929 did not? The divide continues to increase between Wall Street and Main Street. In 2020, did COVID-19 plant fear into us, or expose a dormant fear for our safety, security, and of the opposing political party? We have become a people afraid, pointing the finger and issuing the mandate. What has the cost been for you?

Fear can be isolating and ultimately divisive. Confusion and uncertainty removes the ability to properly assess our present reality, and trust a better tomorrow. This fear is killing the ability to keep our beloved small businesses afloat, educate our children, have a reasonable political conversation, and even say no to increasingly intrusive regulations in our lives. Everything has a cost, and this is a high one. We would do well to extend our wariness of our country towards the media we ingest simply by picking up our phones. We can weather this virus without being terrified all the time. We can also ask ourselves: the more fearful and divided we are, who wins?

The inescapable phrase echoes from the walls closing in like the Star Wars trash compactor, “WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER!”