But I Repeat Myself

I do not envy the lot of journalists trying to write about very nearly any of the aspects of the situation that presently confronts us in the outbreak of COVID-19. Imagine you’re a copy writer for a major newspaper, assigned to write an article on how to shorten the time to produce a vaccine against the virus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2. Or imagine you’re a J-school graduate with no practical experience of anything including actual reporting. But I repeat myself.

It’s the biggest news story of the decade and we can say almost nothing about it with confidence. It’s a virus. People are dying of it. We don’t really know how to prevent it or treat it or how contagious it is or whether any of the measures that have been put in place to mitigate the risks are actually working. And yet we’re being deluged with millions of words, most of which are meaningless noise.

This post began in life as remarks about an NYT article on how the time to produce a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. We don’t even know if an effective vaccine can be produced. How can you write an article on such a subject when you know nothing about medicine, public health, politics, chemical engineering, or business? You can write anything you care to as long as you ignore biology, politics, economics, and industrial practice. That’s the alternative that was chosen.

I am filing this post under three categories: COVID-19, journalism, and O tempora o mores, my category for laments about the sorry state of just about anything.