‘Pittsburgh Seemed Like a Virus Success Story. Now Cases Are Surging’

‘Pittsburgh, a sister city to Wuhan, China, saw only modest cases for months. In the last two weeks, cases are suddenly soaring’
The headline and content of this July 12 article about how Pittsburgh has dodged the Covid-19 bullet are a perfect example of what the irresponsible Panic Media does day-in, day-out, and what a journalistic joke the NY Times is.
It makes a big ominous deal out of the fact that the number of positive Covid-19 cases in Pittsburgh is spiking, surging, etc., among the young and healthy — people who rarely, rarely die of C-19 or are even hospitalized.
But it contains no perspective.
No context.
No numbers or statistics about Pittsburgh’s rising or falling deaths or hospitalizations.
No mention that no one under 20 has died in Allegheny County (pop. 1.2 million) in four months.
No mention that as of July 3 only 12 of the  county’s 187 C-19 deaths were people under age 60.
No mention that as of July 6 Pittsburgh (actually Allegheny County) has not reported more than 2 Covid-19 deaths per day since May 21.
No mention that only 40 of the people who died of C-19 in Allegheny County since the war on the coronavirus was declared in March DID NOT reside in a nursing home or care facility.
It’s  not until 15 paragraphs into this sloppy, misleading, panic-pushing, negatively spun article about spiking positive-test case numbers that the reporters get around to mentioning the positive news:
“There has been a modest if notable rise in hospitalizations, but so far very few Covid-19 patients at the major hospitals are in need of ventilators, hospital officials say.”
It’s the only hint that despite the headline and the NYT editors’ secret hope, Pittsburgh is not being slammed with a tsunami of new C-19 deaths.

1 Comment

  1. BoatSchool on July 13, 2020 at 10:08 am

    All the ‘news’ that fits (the narrative) we print.

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