Watching the news, you might think that the coronavirus is a massively contagious and deadly disease sweeping across the country and mowing down everyone in its path. But the reality is somewhat different. Many hospitals around the country are actually having to lay off workers due to not having enough patients. And others are having to create fake patients to make it look like they’re actually busy.
That was the case recently at a Michigan health center that created fake patients in order to make it seem to TV crews that it was doing brisk business. In fact, so few people were coming in to take coronavirus tests at its drive-in facility that it had to require its employees to pose as patients and drive their cars through so that camera crews could get a good shot. That’s a disturbing example of how much of the coronavirus coverage isn’t actually reporting on what’s happening, it’s managing the narrative around the virus.
Newspapers and online news sites are full of videos and photos of hospitals, health centers, and morgues. Pictures of patients on ventilators, nurses in full protective gear, and stacks of body bags are supposed to enforce the narrative that COVID-19 is uniquely destructive, a plague that needs to be fought tooth and nail. But increasingly, more and more people who are actually viewing what is happening on the front lines are blowing the whistle on what is really happening and how the media are twisting everything to make it seem like it is worse than it really is.
We have to remember that this is the same media that has to hype up every thunderstorm, every snowstorm, and make even mundane daily news seem dramatic, all in order to maintain viewership. And with the dominant narrative today being that coronavirus is dangerous, President Trump failed to stop it, and only Democratic politicians have been effective, that’s what the media is going to parrot.
Americans who actually want to be informed have to look behind the photos and videos they’re seeing on TV and the internet, realize that they’re being edited and manipulated to push a narrative, and do their own research to find the truth. If they fail to do that, they won’t be able to effectively push back against further government encroachments on our liberties.