Upside Down Media Coverage

Of all the poor journalism exposed by the current novel coronavirus (the initial "Nothing to worry about stories", then the reactionary "Trump denies Governors' Requests for Ventilators Stories" which National Review's Rich Lowry reviewed), the current Media implications that Democratic governors who toe the line on shelter-in-place orders are the heroes of the pandemic while science-hating Republican governors (and those protesting) who want to move toward opening are evil are among the most bizarre.

The Guardian's Josh Wood published a story praising Kentucky's Democratic governor for acting so quickly, compared to Tennessee's Republican governor, and suggesting that the former's Beshear saved lives with his quick action.

"Combined with his quick pandemic response, his calm, empathetic daily briefings have seen his popularity explode in recent weeks." This is an example of mood-affiliated praise that the media piles on Democrats and never Republicans, even though these assessments of "calm and empathetic" might be considered subjective.

The story purports that Kentucky has fared much better as the number of cases in Kentucky didn't rise as quickly as in Tennessee, but the story doesn't really take into consideration a number of factors that may explain that. Other important factors to consider are the populations of the two states (Tennessee has about fifty percent more people than Kentucky), the population density (Tennessee's is approximately 50% higher), and the urban environment (Tennessee has two sizable cities). All of these would help explain, in part, why Tennessee's numbers are higher than Kentucky's even had they reacted at the same speed.

Secondly, the reliance on total cases may be misleading. As of yesterday, Tennessee had nearly twice as many cases as Kentucky, but as the story points out, this could potentially be because of disparities in testing capacity. The better number to look at is deaths.

Again, as of yesterday, there were 166 deaths in Tennessee and 171 deaths in Kentucky. So, even though Kentucky's governor reacted more quickly, and has the smaller population and population density, there are more reported deaths in Kentucky! In fact, when comparing the number of deaths per population to the population density, Tennessee ranks 10th for fewest deaths. Kentucky ranks 19th. So who's actually doing better?

Who's doing the worst? New York. Democrats and the Media are currently working on a Draft Cuomo movement so he can be the Democratic Presidential nominee because of how well he's handled the Coronavirus, which defies common sense. Most of the criticisms lobbied at Trump for poor performance can also be applied to Cuomo. Neither of them took January and February to prepare, to stockpile medical equipment, testing necessities, to prepare their populations for a coming pandemic. They actually performed very similarly to each other, and to most elected officials. Neither really expected the pandemic to have a large effect. Both were wrong. But Cuomo was more wrong, given the especially gruesome impact it has had on his state.

The fact that he receives as much praise for his handling, in fact, that all Democrats do, while Republicans receive only scorn despite the fact that their responses weren't all that different from each other and the data suggest that the outcomes are worse in Democrat-led areas shows how upside-down the coverage is.