The coronavirus spread updated in real time

[_Res Ipsa]

This article from Pro Publica is devastating. That third reagent in the CDCs test kits wasn’t even intended to detect Covid-19. Surveillance testing for a month was held up while they tried to fix a bell and whistle. https://www.propublica.org/article/cdc- ... id-19-test

Meanwhile, South Korea is now testing 10,000 per day.

[_canpakes]

Interesting article on the minor dilemma that conservative media finds itself in with regard to their messaging on the coronavirus situation:

Imagine you were the host of a show on Fox News right now, with the entire country focused on the potential for the coronavirus to turn into a pandemic. What would you be saying?

In a world where even a hint of ambiguity or uncertainty goes against everything they stand for, conservative media are positively flummoxed. Is this a threat, or isn’t it? Is it dramatic, and therefore all the more important that we rally behind President Trump’s heroic and inspiring efforts to keep us safe, or is it all a big hoax? And how can we blame the whole thing on the Democrats?

This is the dilemma they’re facing, and they haven’t yet figured out how to resolve it. Let’s take a quick tour around some of the madness:

- Rush Limbaugh saw a conspiracy at work, claiming that Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, must be overhyping the danger as a way to undermine Trump because her brother is Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general.

- Tucker Carlson claimed that the media underhyped the threat of the virus, insisting bizarrely that Americans had been told “if you think maybe we ought to take some steps to protect ourselves from it, then you’re a bigot.”

- Laura Ingraham speculated that China is trying to use the virus to damage Trump’s reelection, “if they can pull that off.”

- Bill Gertz, a writer for the conservative Washington Examiner, has been pushing the conspiracy theory that the virus “may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program.”

“The coronavirus is the common cold, folks,” said Limbaugh, saying that it was not much of a danger and it’s merely “an effort to bring down Trump” by getting everyone worked up over nothing.

One Fox News personality after another has turned their focus to Democrats with lengthy diatribes about how the opposition is politicizing the virus. “Democrats and their media cronies have decided to weaponize fear and also weaponize suffering to improve their chances against Trump in November,” said Ingraham.

Under ordinary circumstances, the ability to repeatedly pound home a single message is what makes conservative media such a potent political force. But right now they’re all over the map.

Ingraham’s point about fear brings us to the heart of their problem. Anyone even vaguely familiar with conservative media in general and Fox News in particular knows that fear (along with anger) is the very foundation of what they do. Fear is hot, fear is compelling, fear is engaging. Fear keeps viewers from clicking away and brings them back.

It’s well summarized by a line from the recent film “Bombshell,” in which a Fox News producer tells a new hire how to understand what they do at the network:

“You have to adopt the mentality of an Irish street cop. The world is a bad place, people are lazy morons, minorities are criminals, sex is sick but interesting. Ask yourself what would scare my grandmother or piss off my grandfather, and that’s a Fox story.”

When you hammer your viewers with that day after day, there’s one message that simply doesn’t fit: “Everything is fine.”

Yet that’s just the message Trump wants to send to the public, and what he’s been tweeting out (along with criticisms of Democrats, of course). We have it under control, there’s nothing to worry about, let’s all just keep buying stocks.

There’s another interesting element to this story, which is that there is a substantial body of research showing that conservatives react more strongly to stimuli that inspire disgust than liberals do.

That would make this a perfect story if a Democrat was president, causing viewers to react powerfully to information about viruses and transmission and bodily fluids, then turn their rage on the president. But they can’t encourage that now.

Going even deeper, Trump is asking his media allies to say things that undermine the fundamental argument conservatives make about government, that it is inherently inept and acts only to harm Americans, not to protect them. They could be telling stories about what a fantastic job the Trump administration is doing, but that would show government working, something they’d ordinarily like us to think is impossible.

This is very different from the actions they ordinarily praise Trump’s administration for, because those are just about cutting government and getting out of the way of the free market in its perfect wisdom. And of course, the government’s response to the virus is being carried out by the very career bureaucrats and scientists Trump has spent three years berating, making it awkward to suddenly start praising them now.

It seems unlikely that conservative media will figure out how to craft a coherent message out of this. But one particular moment seemed to perfectly capture Fox News’ problem.

On Friday, the network interviewed a man who had been released from quarantine with a clean bill of health, in a segment that was probably intended to be reassuring. Unfortunately, the man couldn’t stop coughing, and at one point took a water bottle out of the hands of his daughter, who was sitting on his lap, took a swig, and then handed the bottle back to her so she could keep drinking.

At least you can give the Fox News hosts credit for not doing what most people watching probably did, which is to shout “My god, no, what are you doing?!?” at their screens. It was great TV. But it may not have served Fox’s most urgent goal — helping Trump.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ive-media/

[_Res Ipsa]

And now the first US death, in the county south of me. This was either a traveler returning from China or that persons spouse. Those cases were identified a couple of weeks ago.

I’m feeling surrounded.

[_Bret Ripley]

And now the first US death, in the county south of me ...
I’m feeling surrounded.

There's still time to build a wall (and make King County pay for it).

[_Res Ipsa]

And now the first US death, in the county south of me ...
I’m feeling surrounded.

There's still time to build a wall (and make King County pay for it).

I wish. We’ve got an unknown source case Snohomish County. So, Skagit County is demanding a wall around both counties.

[_Bret Ripley]

I wish. We’ve got an unknown source case Snohomish County. So, Skagit County is demanding a wall around both counties.

Huh. Somehow I didn't know about the case in Snohomish. Don't take it personally, but as a precaution I'm running all your posts through a filter. (I guess I'm a little better off, with Pierce representing a DMZ.)

[_Chap]

- Bill Gertz, a writer for the conservative Washington Examiner, has been pushing the conspiracy theory that the virus “may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program.”

Odd that I heard the same story at a dinner party in a European city a few days ago. I'm happy to say it was met with the derision it deserves. The flip side to this kind of nonsense is the 'Americans did it to damage the Chinese economy' stuff pushed by Russian surrogates.

[_Res Ipsa]

I wish. We’ve got an unknown source case Snohomish County. So, Skagit County is demanding a wall around both counties.

Huh. Somehow I didn't know about the case in Snohomish. Don't take it personally, but as a precaution I'm running all your posts through a filter. (I guess I'm a little better off, with Pierce representing a DMZ.)

Maybe we’ll pay for Skagit’s and King will pay for yours. Here’s to hoping Pierce stays Covid free!

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

- Bill Gertz, a writer for the conservative Washington Examiner, has been pushing the conspiracy theory that the virus “may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program.”

Odd that I heard the same story at a dinner party in a European city a few days ago. I'm happy to say it was met with the derision it deserves. The flip side to this kind of nonsense is the 'Americans did it to damage the Chinese economy' stuff pushed by Russian surrogates.

Ha. It was a Dean Koontz plot point:

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/wuhan-viru ... vel/162725

- Doc

[_Gunnar]

Interesting article on the minor dilemma that conservative media finds itself in with regard to their messaging on the coronavirus situation:

Interesting article indeed! Thanks for posting it. It corroborates and strengthens the sinking feeling I already had that Trump and his administration of corrupt sycophants and enablers, plus Fox news, by their very nature and low regard for any realities that discomfit them renders them virtually unsuited to mounting a fully reasoned and maximally effective response to the corona virus crisis, or, for that matter, virtually any other very serious or existential crisis. Trump only sees what he wants to see and what he thinks he can turn to his personal advantage