{"id":12305,"date":"2020-04-15T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12305"},"modified":"2020-04-13T18:39:59","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T01:39:59","slug":"the-power-of-media-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-power-of-media-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Media Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost two weeks ago I offered at NRO a few synopses<\/a> of various theories about why California \u2014 which, for a variety of reasons, had seemed so ripe for a New York\u2013style epidemic \u2014 had nonetheless strangely been exempt at least for a while from the virus\u2019s spread. I included the pedestrian possibility of some previously acquired \u201cherd immunity,\u201d given the state\u2019s singular exposure from November to January 31 to direct flights from China, including those from Wuhan, and initial CDC and media reports last year of an unusually early and severe assumed flu hitting the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within a few days, I was hit by media inquiries and private calls asking about my ongoing \u201ccoronavirus antibody testing studies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite ad nauseam corrections that I had never claimed in the NRO article or elsewhere to be a doctor, much less an epidemiologist or a conductor of any such study, and that the Hoover Institution is not a medical school, the fake news still spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got dozens more calls and emails from private citizens who thought they had the virus and wanted confirmation of that supposed fact, in order to venture out and help others with antibodies. Some said they wanted \u201cin\u201d immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others called saying they were scared that they had an unknown illness and wanted confirmation of what it had been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And some were from Chinese media sources wanting such \u201clab\u201d confirmation that earlier herd immunity developing in California pre-2020 was the final proof needed of an American origin, rather than a later Chinese genesis of the virus. (Oddly they apparently assumed that if any such future study were to show some sizable herd immunity in California, and thereby suggest an earlier outbreak than what was assumed in late January 2020, it would not mean the Chinese were lying about the first dates of the infection. Would the Chinese media wish to explain why flights from Wuhan to the U.S. were open throughout January when, for mysterious reasons, the Chinese themselves had blocked travel earlier than the ban from Wuhan to other parts of China?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Almost two weeks ago I offered at NRO a few synopses of various theories about why California \u2014 which, for a variety of reasons, had seemed so ripe for a New York\u2013style epidemic \u2014 had nonetheless strangely been exempt at least for a while from the virus\u2019s spread. I included the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3ct","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12347,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/do-the-media-even-exist\/","url_meta":{"origin":12305,"position":0},"title":"Do the Media Even Exist?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 5, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness If we lived in a fair and just world, most of the current media would simply go away and try something else. The problem is not that reporters are human and therefore sometimes err. The rub is not even that they are poorly educated\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11819,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/journalism-is-dead-long-live-the-media\/","url_meta":{"origin":12305,"position":1},"title":"Journalism is Dead\u2014Long Live the Media!","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on. 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