Public Health or Profits?

What drove media coverage of Covid19?

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.

When U.S. President Joe Biden appeared on 60-Minutes last Sunday- in a pre-recorded interview with CBS news correspondent Scott Pelley- most viewers probably expected Covid19 to come up.

It came as a bit of a surprise, however, when President Biden declared the pandemic “over”; adding, “no one is really wearing masks anymore.”

While the President admitted Covid19 would likely still take some work on the part of the Biden Administration, it was his expression of unvarnished optimism which garnered the most media attention.

Immediately, news companies from the New York Times to Politico set up an out-roar, unleashing a barrage of breathless news coverage, desperately trying to claw back President Biden’s words.

But while Mr. Biden’s declaration may have caught corporate news media outlets off-guard, it didn’t surprise everyone in the country. There are many places in the U.S. where life returned, by and large, to pre-Covid19 normal quite some time ago.

Mr. Biden’s other comment- that no one is wearing masks anymore- may have come as quite a shock to those of us still living in certain parts of the country.

On the streets in some cities it’s clear people are indeed still wearing masks- outdoors and in summer- maybe a good many of them, too, depending on the demographics of the district in which you live.

Strangely enough, for the purposes of analyzing Biden’s comment, it is Democratic Party voters who are likely to take the most convincing that the pandemic is indeed over.

Republican voters and those living in more conservative red states have been accused on news and social media of not taking the pandemic seriously enough from the beginning. Conversely, Democratic Party strongholds still have in place some of the most stringent and strict Covid19 mitigation measures in the world.

Nor can it be denied that those living in Democratic areas are most likely to still be seeing a high percentage of masked people in their daily lives. Why this should be, what drove such a stark contrast between red and blue state attitudes on the subject of Covid19 safety precautions is perhaps a question for all the ages.