Vox Corona

2020 has not been a great year. NBA great Kobe Bryant died in a horrific helicopter crash, wildfires ravaged through the Australian bush, and now the spread of the coronavirus has halted world economies as people die by the thousands. In the United States, the virus is notably having a greater effect on the minority community . In the last few weeks, reports in the news have been published almost everywhere, detailing why this disparity may be occurring. In her Washington Post article , Vanessa Williams explores the demand for information pertaining to race and ethnicity data on coronavirus deaths and infections. According to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, "This information is necessary to better inform a robust public health response in the Black community and ensure COVID-19 tests are not being administered or withheld in a racially discriminatory manner". Williams stresses throughout her article that this demand for this information is very ...

In this time of a global pandemic where information and communication has become increasingly important, an anxiety-evoking question comes to mind: who can we trust to provide information that can save our lives?  Historically, the news media has played a central role in global and national crises. However, in our current climate full of reporting discrepancies due to bias and astonishing party polarization should the media play the same role? There is legitimate concern that reporting platforms are distorting important health-related information to appeal to their parties based on decisions made in Washington. We are no stranger to “FAKE NEWS” claims by President Trump (see his full Twitter archive of these claims ), but there comes a point in a global pandemic where no matter the politics, the public deserves a clear voice – not one littered with political ads and deceiving reports.   Central to this problem is the misguidance and confusion presented by ...

The COVID Tracking Project Public access to accurate health information has become increasingly important as the United States plunges headfirst into the COVID-19 crisis. Americans have responded with urgent questions that, for many, may mean life or death: Where are people being tested for COVID? How many people have been tested? Where is COVID spreading? As members of the public seek answers, they have found little comprehensive testing data that might give them a sense of the scale of the crisis. Unlike many other nations , the United States did not quickly implement widespread testing to slow the spread of the virus. Even as testing has expanded, government authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have failed to publish complete testing data. This lack of comprehensive data hinders the nation’s ability to respond to the pandemic. Healthcare professionals cannot best direct resources where they are needed, local officials struggle to implement ...

Headlines like this might make the difference in the fight against Coronavirus South Korea has managed to deal with the CoVid-19 pandemic extraordinary well. With rigorous testing, quarantines, etc, the country reports on average 30 new cases a day now. The "flattening of the curve" or reduction of new cases is essential to ease the burden on health care providers and improve the mortality rate. The following data taken from South Korea shows this "flattening" within the nation, with just 30 new cases a day being reported as of recent days. This plays into stark contrast with how the pandemic has spread across the United States over the past few months. The graph below displays the United States' daily new cases , hovering around 30,000 as of April 15th. While the unique actions and policies of the US and South Korean governments had much to do with the vastly different outcomes seen today, the press coverage of the Coronavirus pandemic wit...

       The COVID-19 pandemic is dominating news cycles and has appeared to replace the coverage of the 2020 presidential race in the news. Only a couple of months ago, Americans were focused on the results of the Democratic primaries and President Trump’s reactions to the Democratic field narrowing. Without criticizing the heavy coverage of the pandemic, it’s worth questioning how, if at all, this dramatic shift is affecting Americans’ political knowledge going into the November elections. COVID-19’s Media Domination         Researchers have been studying the large share of reporting drawn by COVID-19. The organization Cision compared mentions of coronavirus and other common media topics between two periods of time. In the period of January 1 to March 3, 2020, mentions of coronavirus comprised 17% of the media topics analyzed, while mentions of the democratic candidates totaled 13%. Within that period, between February 25 and March 3, coronav...

Be honest: when did you really start paying attention to coronavirus coverage? Was it when it first appeared in Wuhan? When the total case number reached 100,000? Or was it when Tom Hanks was infected on set in Australia? Or when John Oliver first started talking about it on Last Week Tonight ? The intersection of entertainment media and journalism has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Its legitimacy has come into question multiple times in its various formats, from late night comedy news shows to celebrity entertainers presenting news to large audiences. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, several news media sources turned to entertainment to report on various issues related to the virus. But entertainers are just that: entertainers. Their full-time job is not to study the virus and medicine, it is to entertain. As more and more entertainers took to news media, I became more wary of the platform they’ve been given to speak on the virus, especially when it takes ti...

"Oh, we've been giving that coronavirus shot to our cattle for years. It's been around forever. If you eat cattle cubes when you're a kid and lick salt you're safe" "I'm not too worried about it. The president said it will go away in a couple of days so it's not really that big of a deal" "If you're nasty you should be [scared of the coronavirus]. If you're not washing your hands, taking care of yourself, being clean" "Uh, I think like a million people have it" While  these trivial comments  may bring out a chuckle when played on  Jimmy Kimmel Live , it is easy to forget that misinformation regarding the coronavirus is spreading like wildfire throughout the United States, and the fact that social media is available to almost everyone is exacerbating this issue. As a result, we are living in both a pandemic and an  "Infodemic." Misinformation in the social media is not a recent development since the...

The "Curve" Source:  https://abcnews.go.com/ Almost all news during the coronavirus pandemic has at one point or another mentioned “flattening the curve.” All this means is slowing the spread of the virus so the number of new cases each day doesn’t overload hospitals. During the “uphill” part of this curve, news headlines had a markedly pessimistic tinge. Now, as we are starting to enter the “downhill” part of the curve, perhaps they should stay that way. We can delineate the “uphill” time period as starting March 6 – the first day that the top New York Times featured story had to do with COVID – and running until about April 7 – the first day that  The Times’ top featured story projected a slowing death toll (and supposedly the start of the “downhill” part of the curve).  After hours of scrutiny, I discovered two major characteristics of the pessimistic headlines from this time period. First, they tend to center on one or two negative words that set the...