Did the press overhype the danger posed by the Omicron variant?

[Shiloh]

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/media...ces/index.html


Analysis: Did the press overhype the danger posed by the Omicron variant?
Analysis by Oliver Darcy, CNN Business
Updated 9:59 PM ET, Wed December 8, 2021

(CNN Business)A version of this article first appeared in the "Reliable Sources" newsletter.

When news of Omicron emerged over the Thanksgiving holiday, media organizations scrambled to cover the new variant and what it might mean for the world. The problem, however, was that very little was known about it at the time. And so, the absence of data created a void that was quite unfortunately filled with a lot of speculation.

The speculation about Omicron did not err on the optimistic side of things. Instead, worst case scenarios played out in stories. Scary quotes about a "Frankenstein" escape variant were plugged into headlines, chyrons, and push alerts.

The situation was portrayed as a five-alarm fire. Consuming even a tiny dose of the coverage — whether it was through television, the internet, or even a good old-fashioned newspaper — probably left a not insignificant part of the audience wondering whether the current vaccines would offer any protection at all against the variant.

"When the variant was identified basically nothing was known about the virus other than it contained dozens of mutations. There was no clinical or epidemiological data to provide any kind of context to the public," CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told me Wednesday, saying that he believes the press had "overhyped the peril" of Omicron. "Yet without any scientific foundation the public was warned that this variant could evade all our vaccines. As a consequence the stock market tanked and governments closed their borders. All of this without any data. ... Now almost two weeks out, thing look less dire."
Indeed, fast forward to present time and the actual data is presenting a different picture...

[JJackson]

Did the press overhype the danger posed by the Omicron variant? Yes, but then they have done the same for every other variant. It is the nature of the beast when a new variant arrives there is nothing to say, except that it is different at the genetic level, there is no way of predicting what, if any, difference it will make to its viral fitness or virulence. None of the variants have had any great impact although each has been hyped - D614G, E484K, Alpha, Beta, Delta and now Omicron have all made headlines in their turn but the global case count curves all look much the same - the label changes but not much else. The real impacts on this pandemic have been the vaccines and improvements in patient care in terms of therapeutics and specifically timing of their application.