By FRC's Ruth Moreno
Yesterday on Washington Watch, Tony Perkins sat down with Andrew Bostom, associate professor of family medicine at Brown University, to discuss the media's politicization of the coronavirus.
It is no secret the media wants to use the pandemic as a club to wield against President Trump and the Republican Party going into the election, and one of their favorite tactics has been fearmongering. COVID is a serious disease, of course, but evidence is now surfacing that some governments, as well as the media have focused almost exclusively on the trends and numbers that paint a negative picture rather than a more balanced, honest look at the numbers.
"There's lots of reassuring information they could be sharing in lieu of this fearmongering," Bostom explained.
Florida, for example, was fully opened up by the end of September, and their hospitalization rate has remained low. There has also been little increase in positive tests, suggesting the lockdowns may not have as much of an impact on the virus as Democrats want them to. Nationwide, despite the steps taken toward reopening, only about two and half percent of hospital visits are for COVID-19, leading Bostom to conclude that "the broad picture for the United States is one of reassurance."
Good epidemiologists agree that even amidst serious health crises, one thing you should never do is make people panic. President Trump and his administration have taken necessary precautions to slow the spread of the disease while still maintaining a positive outlook, even when the president himself was infected and hospitalized.
Bostom agreed that it's been good for the country that President Trump has kept an even keel, calling the draconian lockdowns enforced by state governors "far worse than the disease itself." And, as stated, they don't seem to help very much even with the virus -- all they do is block transmission for a short period of time. As soon as they are lifted, the virus spreads again.
None of this has stopped the media from painting the coronavirus as a death warrant for anybody infected.
The people who are really at risk from the coronavirus are, of course, the elderly. The old and sick must be protected. But keeping healthy people from the workplace is not helping anyone, especially the vulnerable. Hospitals must be kept running, and life, for most people, must go on.
Bostom went on to discuss the unfortunate fact that some governments are hiding their numbers regarding the coronavirus, preventing us from getting the true picture of what is going on. Bostom said he was "very disappointed" in his home state of Rhode Island, which has made it very hard to know how much the state has flattened the curve regarding hospitalization rates, death rates, and even infections.
Instead, as Bostom put it, "they will take any little uptick and stick that on the front of the web page. And I think this is being done all over the country."
The media has hidden the truth about the coronavirus from the American people, but it is not too late to expose them for their politicization and fearmongering. People deserve to know the facts amidst this crisis, and the media should be ashamed that they are putting lives and livelihoods on the line for the sake of their left-wing agenda.
