The Elephant in the Room

How the media shape our views about Covid (and everything else)

“The Morning” from the NY Times shows up in my inbox. It’s called “Covid’s partisan errors.” Writer David Leonhardt then goes on to describe how Republicans “tend to underestimate” and Democrats “tend to exaggerate” Covid risks.

Okay, I’m thinking. Maybe we’ve got something here.

Leonhardt shares some polling with us. A Gallup and Franklin Templeton survey of some 35,000 Americans finds that “both liberals and conservatives suffer from misperceptions about the pandemic — in opposite directions.”

Misperceptions. Totally. I’m with you so far…

Leonhardt then lays out those misperceptions:

More than a third of Republican voters, he writes, believed that asymptomatic people couldn’t spread the coronavirus. Another third said that Covid killed no more people than the average seasonal flu or annual car crashes.

Yup, I’m thinking. Unsurprising.

On the other side, Democrats thought more people had been hospitalized for Covid symptoms than had, and that more children had been affected than were.

Again, sounds about right, given the Democrats and Republicans I know…