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The Right-Wing Pundits Who Got the Pandemic Wrong Double Down
The cost of conspiracy theories and a broken news media
The sudden explosion of COVID-19 cases caught North America by surprise. Yes, many of us were watching the developments in Europe with a wary eye, worrying about testing failures and expecting the problem to grow. But few were anticipating the zero-to-a-hundred eruption of cases that turned normal life into a ghost-city lockdown in just a handful of days.
But it’s one thing to underestimate a pandemic, and it’s another to completely deny that it exists. Weeks before the coronavirus closed most of the civilized world, right-wing pundits blanketed the airwaves, arguing that the only appropriate response was to laugh into the growing stormclouds.
One of the better-known examples is Drew Pinsky — ostensibly a medically trained doctor — who devoted hours of airtime to attacking supposed COVID-19 hysteria. At one point he famously described the risk of dying from coronavirus as less likely than being killed by an asteroid (an event responsible for virtually no recorded fatalities in all of human history).
To his (very minimal) credit, Pinsky recanted his coronavirus claims after lockdowns swept the country. He released the usual deflection-filled non-apology (it wasn’t just me…
