At his blog, Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen explains why it’s in the interest of media outlets to publish bad news and, generally, create a sense of panic about COVID-19:
if you do public health, your status incentives are to deliver warnings, not potential good news.
Your status incentives are always to hedge your bets, and to be reluctant to introduce new hypotheses.
Your status incentives are to steer talk away from the virus “simply continuing to rip,†even if you are quite opposed to that outcome. Other than hitting it with an immediate scold, you are not supposed to let that option climb on to the discussion table for too long.
Your status incentives are to discourage individuals from thinking that they might be have some pre-existing level of protection. That might lead them to behave more irresponsibly, and then you in turn would look less responsible.
Since public health commentators are so concerned with “doing good by us,†they fail to see that their altruistic (and status) motives in these matters mean they do not end up telling us the truth. Not the entire truth, and not upfront in a very prompt matter.
None of that is a new phenomenon.
When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
You never read about a plane that did not crash
is a similar sentiment. So what’s different? Two things which may not be unrelated: social media acting as an echo chamber and the extreme polarization of our politics.
Same goes for the protests doesnt it? A bunch of people sitting generates no interest. Anyway, this is hardly news. If it bleeds it leads has been true for years. That said, I thought Cowen got the T cell thing wrong. It hasn’t gotten a lot of coverage in the popular press as T cells arent as easy to understand or a intuitive as antibodies. People kind of understand the idea of antibody tests. T cells? Not so much, besides which we still haven’t sorted out the roles and impact of T cells and Covid yet. Antibodies were easier.
Steve
Much like listening to the weather report.
90 million people under threat of extreme heat! Sells better than, warmer today and the next before cooling into the weekend.