Coronavirus, Fear, and the Credibility Gap
The situation with Coronavirus has been evolving rapidly the past 10 days or so. I've tried not to spend much time on it in this blog because it's not the sort of topic I want this blog to be about. But Coronavirus has become so dominant in current events that I need to catch up a bit on it here. As an example of what I mean by dominant, I checked CNN.com a moment ago; ten out of ten of its top stories are all about Coronavirus.
Public concern over the Coronavirus crossed a tipping point about 10 days ago. That's when China admitted that the number of cases, and number of deaths, was higher than previously reported. Public fear spread not just because the numbers suddenly shot higher, showing the disease was more dangerous than previously estimated, but also because a credibility gap was introduced. China revealed that protecting the political image of its central Communist Party as in-control had been more important than accurately sharing facts. After that nobody trusted anything they said. Indeed, friends of mine with family in China all whispered, "Whatever they're saying even now, assume the truth is 5x worse!"
It wasn't just China that was suppressing news for political self aggrandizement. Around the same time it came out that Iran had a large cluster of infections they'd been suppressing news on, and a secretive religious sect in South Korea admitted hiding a large cluster, too.
Lest you think, "Oh, hiding damaging news to boost or protect political image is something dictatorships do," consider what's happening in the US. The president appointed VP Mike Pence, a science denier, as Coronavirus czar. "Science denier" includes, in this case, public positions that the theory of evolution is wholly untrue, that human-caused climate change is a hoax, and when governor of Indiana, refusing to make available a proven HIV treatment, instead telling sickened people that he would pray for them.
Unsurprisingly, after setting up pray-it-away Pence as the person we're somehow supposed to trust to actually do the hard work, Trump himself has taken to Twitter and fawning media friends each day to pound on the table that Coronavirus is under control in the US, spread disinformation about its risks and how it spreads, and deride fears about it as a hoax. Even as news headlines roll in day by day showing increasing numbers of infections and a government repeatedly unprepared to handle it, those facts are a hoax. A hoax perpetrated by his political and media opponents to make him look bad!
Let that sink in for a monent.... The motivations we have to read between the lines to infer about China, our president is literally declaring about himself out loud.
In this context it's no wonder Coronavirus worry is gripping the US. It's obvious our leaders are out to lunch on the seriousness of the situation and, worse, continue lying to us about how bad it is.
Public concern over the Coronavirus crossed a tipping point about 10 days ago. That's when China admitted that the number of cases, and number of deaths, was higher than previously reported. Public fear spread not just because the numbers suddenly shot higher, showing the disease was more dangerous than previously estimated, but also because a credibility gap was introduced. China revealed that protecting the political image of its central Communist Party as in-control had been more important than accurately sharing facts. After that nobody trusted anything they said. Indeed, friends of mine with family in China all whispered, "Whatever they're saying even now, assume the truth is 5x worse!"
It wasn't just China that was suppressing news for political self aggrandizement. Around the same time it came out that Iran had a large cluster of infections they'd been suppressing news on, and a secretive religious sect in South Korea admitted hiding a large cluster, too.
Lest you think, "Oh, hiding damaging news to boost or protect political image is something dictatorships do," consider what's happening in the US. The president appointed VP Mike Pence, a science denier, as Coronavirus czar. "Science denier" includes, in this case, public positions that the theory of evolution is wholly untrue, that human-caused climate change is a hoax, and when governor of Indiana, refusing to make available a proven HIV treatment, instead telling sickened people that he would pray for them.
Unsurprisingly, after setting up pray-it-away Pence as the person we're somehow supposed to trust to actually do the hard work, Trump himself has taken to Twitter and fawning media friends each day to pound on the table that Coronavirus is under control in the US, spread disinformation about its risks and how it spreads, and deride fears about it as a hoax. Even as news headlines roll in day by day showing increasing numbers of infections and a government repeatedly unprepared to handle it, those facts are a hoax. A hoax perpetrated by his political and media opponents to make him look bad!
Let that sink in for a monent.... The motivations we have to read between the lines to infer about China, our president is literally declaring about himself out loud.
In this context it's no wonder Coronavirus worry is gripping the US. It's obvious our leaders are out to lunch on the seriousness of the situation and, worse, continue lying to us about how bad it is.