Cool. If we've learned nothing else in the past 6 months (and I certainly hope we have) it's that epidemiologists can have agendas, too.
This is their only time to shine in the sun.
No matter WHO is making it, the implication that people who aren't getting tested are necessarily spreading it, is false. And this is the implication that is coming through.
So you can defend bad journalism, or bad epidemiologists. That's your choice, I guess. Although you COULD choose to defend neither.
If there is evidence that the "test dodgers" are spreading it intentionally-- and let's be clear, that is exactly the implication-- then let's out with it. Provide the evidence.
Otherwise?
STFU
OK. The story mentions nothing about intentionality. Like nothing at all. In fact, the implication is that it's being done unintentionally and perhaps carelessly. But when we look at things that we disagree with, we very often read intentionality into it (at times I do for sure).
The thing is, there's not much evidence provided that it's bad journalism, since most journalism is propagating information people want to know, often by speaking to experts. I can't speak to the epidemiology. I'd guess they have some better sense of how these things spread, but maybe they're overplaying it.
I guess I'm defending normalcy against a level of incredulousness that renders most everything "bad." If you look at a story that modestly irks you and apply several layers of feelings to a particular phrase (the reading that it MUST be saying these people are necessarily spreading it, the argument that high ranking doctors are doing this all for the attention), you'll fall into a mud pit that everything is bad. And that's a big part of our world now, honing in on details and complaining over them. And in the end, this is to a degree mundane. If it didn't mention people spreading it unknowingly, would it suddenly fix the story? Or would that
incredulousness shift elsewhere. Now, there's a fairly good macro argument why this is bad. It's obviously narrative-ising this particular outbreak in a way that hits the feels. The state health whatever it is served it up and the reporter propagated it. There's a solid argument there's a certain cheapness, sort of the opposite of the meat packing thing, where the meatpacking outbreak made it sound like someone else's problem, this tries too much to make it sound like something that could happen to you.
