On July 5th of this year – following weeks of steady decline – the United States recorded 263 deaths from COVID-19. This was the lowest daily toll in nearly three and half months. The July 5th figure represented a 90 percent drop from the peak which occurred April 21st. On that day there were 2748 deaths from COVID-19 (see worldometers.info for data).
The sharp decrease in COVID deaths was obviously a most welcome development. One would expect it would have quickly generated a spate of celebratory headlines.
However, this is not what happened that day.
Below is a collection of links to some of the news items put forward by US media on July 5:
It is quite astonishing that among these headlines there is no mention of the 90 percent drop in the daily death toll. Reading through them, one would have no idea that there has been such a dramatic improvement. Quite on the contrary, the impression is that things are as dire as ever.
Neither are these items an inaccurate sampling of the kind of material put out by mainstream media outlets that day. The links above have been copied from Drudge Report, America’s leading news aggregator. Having begun with libertarian and conservative leanings, Drudge Report has gone to the other side and became in many ways the mouthpiece for the left-leaning media. This is especially true as far as Drudge’s coverage of Donald Trump and the coronavirus are concerned.
You may think that we are being unfair to America’s journalists. Perhaps they just did not have enough time to write their celebratory pieces the same day. Surely, one would think, the news must have been announced to fanfare in the next news cycle. Let us, then, look at the Drudge headlines from July 6, 2020:
Once again, there is no mention of the great improvement on the COVID front. Looking at the headlines, one would, in fact, get the opposite feeling: the situation is as bad as ever, if not worse. The journalists writing these stories must have been well aware of the steadily improving state of affairs and the record low daily death tolls. There can be no question that this is a concerted and deliberate effort by media outlets to make their readers believe that things are diametrically different from the actual situation on the ground.
What we are looking at here is nothing other than a gross case of journalistic malfeasance whereby mainstream journalists simply refuse to report the truth about the situation. Whenever there is bad news they eagerly amplify and exaggerate while completely ignoring any positive news or developments. To be sure, the shrewd consumer of the news should always be prepared to make allowances for bias and misrepresentation, but the level of cynicism and conniving in this instance is truly remarkable.
There are several reasons for this. To begin with, for journalists every crisis is a boon. Crises make for more dramatic reporting and increased readership. When nothing dramatic is happening, the demand for news naturally drops. In other words, crises are good news and good business for those in the news business. Journalists, therefore, suffer from a natural inclination to increase drama and create the impression of a crisis whenever possible. And the more dire the crisis, the better.
But there is an added political reason why mainstream journalists are so invested in lying about this epidemic. The more people believe that we are in a life-and-death crisis, the easier it becomes to impose lockdowns and quarantines. These in turn wreak disorder and havoc in almost every aspect of our personal and societal life: the economy, commerce, education, finances, family life, interpersonal relationships, etc. The prolonged doom-mongering and shutdowns have also inflicted psychological damage as people suffer from the loss of employment, interruption of schooling and disruption of everyday activities, routines and interactions. Increased rates of anxiety, depression, addiction, relationship abuse and other ills are the inevitable consequence.
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