At the height of the pandemic, news were extremely erratic, with many journalists assuming a primarily pessimistic viewpoint. For instance, in his article “How Long Will a Vaccine Really Take?”, published on April 30, 2020, Stuart A. Thompson casted doubt on the statements by Trump’s Administration. Particularly, Trump’s experts believed that “a vaccine could arrive in at least 12 to 18 months” (Thompson, 2020, para. 5). The author created a graph, in which he outlaid 2033 as the year when the vaccine would be distributed for the first time.
It is now evident that this prognosis was clearly false. I remember that an official statement according to which the US community could access the first vaccines as early as December 2020, which was eight months after the publication of the article. Specifically, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (2021) notes that “Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine” was issued on December 11 “for individuals 16 years of age and older” (para. 6). Surprisingly, Trump’s Administration’s promises of soon availability of vaccines were realized despite the overwhelming skepticism such statements inspired in the general public, while more pessimistic attitudes were misleading in hindsight.
However, there were also cases when journalists’ pieces were correct opposed to official statements by the World Health Organization. Today, people are used to associating letters of the Latin alphabet with new COVID strains. However, in the first months of the pandemic, there was no indication of mutations. Such a discrepancy was observed by Jessica Hamzelou on March 5, 2020. She referenced WHO’s statement “there is no evidence that the virus has been changing” and compared it to the news of two different strains being reported by a Chinese study (Hamzelou, 2020, para. 1). It is evident now that the virus was changing and still is, thus making WHO’s statement inaccurate. Currently, the media are more reserved when discussing the possibility of future variants (Nkengasong, 2022). The same caution is exercised by WHO that states that Omicron is not the last strain and it is too early to announce the end of the pandemic and take off masks (Misinformation that Omicron is ‘the last COVID-19 variant’, 2022). Overall, the news media provided trustworthy information surrounding pandemic-related developments that had really transpired, but proved inefficient in making prognoses.
References
Hamzelou, J. (2020). Coronavirus: Are there two strains and is one more deadly?. NewScientist. Web.
Misinformation that Omicron is ‘the last COVID-19 variant’ fuelling uptick worldwide: WHO. (2022). Web.
Nkengasong, J. (2022). There will be another variant. Here’s what the world can do now. The New York Times. Web.
Thompson, S. A. (2020). How long will a vaccine really take?. The New York Times. Web.
U.S. Food & Drug Administration. (2021). FDA approves first COVID-19 vaccine. Web.