‘The Costs of Selling COVID Fear’

James Surowiecki:

When the CDC changed its guidance on masking earlier this week — recommending, among other things, that even vaccinated people start wearing masks in indoor public spaces in areas of substantial to high Covid transmission — it cited “unpublished data” as a reason for its decision. The next day, the internal CDC document that seems to have prompted the shift was published — by the Washington Post. And when major news media got a look at, the message they sent vaccinated people was pretty simple: “Panic!”

This reaction was not justified by the actual data in the CDC document.

Headlines matter, and the headlines for these stories have been grossly misleading.

★ Monday, 2 August 2021