Opinion | The Coronavirus Is More Than a Disease. It s a Test. – The New York Times

A truism of our times is that media hysteria quickly envelops every major story, with social media virality and cable-news imperatives combining to make any domestic controversy feel like Watergate, if not Fort Sumter, and any international incident feel like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand until the next story rolls around and last week s crisis is forgotten.

So it s been striking to watch media coverage of the coronavirus, which has now officially shaken free of its Chinese origins with outbreaks in Italy, South Korea and the Middle East, take a somewhat more muted tack these last few weeks. Of course there has been terrific reporting, much of it from my colleagues at this newspaper, on the surreal developments in the illness s Wuhan epicenter.

But there has also been a strange lack of urgency in the arenas best known for their hysteria. Cable news has remained fixated on the presidential campaign, social media has been paranoid at the fringes but otherwise calm or even oblivious, our president (not typically one for threat deflation) expressed confidence that Chinese containment and spring warmth would suffice to halt the virus s spread, and respectable opinion has circulated stern warnings about overreaction, xenophobia and panic.

via www.nytimes.com

Goodness, Ross Douthat is about as wrong as he can be, at least in where he is coming from. He seems to admire the lack of hysteria he sees in the mainstream media. I’m all for lack of hysteria although I certainly feel its icy fingers groping around. I credit the CCP’s remarkably effective misinformation campaign and Americans’ focus on their work instead of on the real news bubbling just under the surface.

I was going to say Americans’ laziness, but we all are not so much lazy as just preoccupied with our lives, which are about to be shaken up for a long time to come, unless I am wrong, which I am frequently enough. And I hope I am now.

I have linked to plenty of stuff from which the attentive reader and viewer can figure out that we are in the midst right now of a full blown pandemic which will soon be big enough that even our lazy (and they are lazy) media sorts will be unable to ignore. The coronavirus is undoubtedly circulating even as we speak in large American cities, including San Diego, and it won’t be long until cases begin to pop up. Maybe we will get a hold of some test kits. Maybe we can stop sending them to the CDC. Maybe state and local governments can start reporting the numbers of infected persons. Maybe I will win the next mega-lottery. I can always hope.

Ultimately, I expect our response will be the usual confused mess of political posturing by some people combined with heroism on the part of people who deserve but rarely get any credit. I expect coronavirus will be the big issue of our next presidential election, which means Bernie Sanders is absolutely a threat. I expect it will be a low turnout election, which, who knows, might cut in his favor.