In tabulating the debilitating effect of Fox News on its cult, Stelter summarizes the results of another a Pew Research Center poll, It "asked people to identify their main source for political news, then they asked a series of questions about the virus. Compared with all U.S. adults and CNN and MSNBC fans, Fox fans were less likely to say the outbreak was a major threat to their personal health, more likely to say the threat was exaggerated; more confident that local hospitals would be able to withstand the surge. Fox fans were also more likely to express more confidence that a vaccine would be available in the next few months, contrary to the expectations of virtually every expert. And [as noted above] they were far more likely to say that they treated Trump's televised briefings as a source of news."
One issue that arose after Stelter completed his book was the arrival of Dr. Scott Atlas, who joined Trump's pandemic team in August. Called that anti-Fauci by some, Dr. Atlas was given a Fox News platform as early as the first few days of May, when he was hosted by Marth MacCallum on "The Story>"
It is worth noting that, while bloviating on "The Story," Dr. Atlas rejected the projection, issued by the University of Washington's Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), of more than 134,000 American Covid-19 deaths by August 4th. That projection was way too high, according to Dr. Atlas. (Victor Garcia, "Dr. Scott Atlas bashes latest coronavirus model, says there's 'no scientific evidence' to keep schools closed," Fox News, May 4. 2020).
But, as it turned out, IHME was right and Dr. Atlas was wrong. According to a report in The Guardian on July 29, 2020, American deaths had already exceeded 150,000.
Since then, Dr. Atlas has continued to downplay the threat to Americans posed by Covid-19. Trump and Fox have given him platforms to do so. Yet, a disturbing article in the Washington Post on August 31st, titled "New Trump pandemic adviser pushes controversial 'herd immunity' strategy, worrying public health officials" (by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Josh Dawsey) suggests that Dr. Atlas not only believes that the U.S. can dispense with much of the testing for Covid-19 - which would fit nicely with Trump's reelection strategy of keeping detected cases low -- but also appears to be a proponent of the "herd immunity" that might result if more younger Americans are allowed to become infected and, presumably, survive that infection.
Another issue that has arisen since Stelter completed his book concerns the Trump administration's tactical surrender to the virus - at least until a vaccine comes along. A September 2, 2020 article in Politico reported: "Just eight weeks from election day, the White House has stopped trying to contain the coronavirus shifting instead to shielding the nation's most vulnerable groups and restoring a sense of normalcy.
The change is part of a concerted effort by the White House to increase public approval of President Donald Trump's pandemic response and bolster his reelection chances by sharply reducing Covid-19 case counts and the number of deaths and hospitalizations attributed to virus, according to five people familiar with the strategy.
'It has to do with the president wanting to shift the attention away from testing,' said a Republican close to the administration who has advised elements of the response. 'The challenge is that they didn't want to find more cases. They didn't want the numbers to keep going up.'" (David Lim and Adam Cancryn, "Trump pivots to narrow coronavirus testing strategy as election looms," Politico, September 2, 2020).
Clearly, Trump has the blood of tens of thousands of Americans on his hands. Not only did he fail to take the pandemic threat seriously in the months of January through mid-March, he also failed to use that late March shutdown to better prepare for renewed outbreaks, once the economy reopened. As a result, the U.S. went from having a total of some 68,500 cases on April 1st, to having more than 65,000 per day, by mid-July.
Insofar as Fox News, with the exception of Tucker Carlson in certain instances, has parroted Trump, it, too, has blood on its hands. Especially Hannity who, on March 9th, called media concerns about the virus "hysteria" and the "new hoax.
As linguist John McWhorter told Stelter, "Hoax is a potent word, in being an angry and mean one. It's the quintessence of Trumpian self-expression." Yet, the word applies more to the words and actions of President Trump, Fox News, and the Fox cult than it does to the rest of Americans.
When thinking about the Fox cult and its brainwashed embrace of President Trump, some words uttered in 1866 by philosopher John Stuart Mill come to mind: "I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it." Mill's observation suggests that stupidity drove aggrieved white conservatives to Fox in the first place and Fox rewarded them by making them dumber still.
Thus, the Fox cult that continues to support Trump and Hannity during America's long national nightmare.
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