Beware the Phantom Virus

Here’s some of what research has told us about COVID-19 and the latest Omicron sub-variant XBB1.5. COVID has been shown to lead to inflammation in the brain, similar to Parkinson’s disease, in what scientists have called “a silent killer.” COVID deaths are up 15 per cent globally in the past month (we’ll return to this Global News piece and its issues later). COVID has been shown to lead to blood clots in recent studies. Canada has hit 50,000 deaths from COVID. Omicron subvariants have been shown to be more resistant to PCR testing. XBB1.5 specifically has been shown to be evasive to vaccinations, even the latest bivalent edition. The disease may in fact be reactivating dormant viruses in our body. This would make sense, as COVID has reliably been shown to damage our t-cells, which are the main components of our immune system that protect us from illness.

With all these rather serious developments on the pandemic front, one question arises: why isn’t any of this front-page news across the country? Why has there not been widespread calls for masking, increased testing capacity, paid sick days, improved air filtration and action on the part of our governments and health leaders? Rather than track and cover the progression of COVID in a way that communicates the dire situation we’re in, our news media has instead chosen to consistently downplay or ignore the pandemic.

Usually for The Catch, I look at trends of coverage by the news media, i.e examining how certain stories are framed, combating misinformation or adding context. It’s often more difficult to concretely point out what isn’t being covered, especially when there isn’t a contrasting presence of reports in other outlets. But at this point it seems that the news industry’s de facto approach to the pandemic has been to relegate it to interest stories for aficionados.

One aspect illustrates the lack of coverage of these devastating facts. Let’s return to the Global News piece I cited earlier. The information on the 15 per cent rise in global COVID deaths comes from Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19. The piece explicitly notes there isn’t evidence that the new subvariant is to blame for this. While this is an important distinction to note at this time, a 15 per cent increase of global COVID deaths in one month is a massive spike, and worthy of news. So let’s examine: Where is the coverage?

CTV felt the need to run the headline “WHO says China data underrepresents COVID surge and deaths,” only sourcing Van Kerkhove for a quote that supports the notion that there’s no inevitability of a spike in deaths. Within the context of the headline this is implied to be in reference to China. The primer on XBB1.5 doesn’t mention the spike, but does mention immunity evasion. Meanwhile, in an exclusive CTV interview, former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau said Canada probably spent too much on COVID.

The CBC made no mention of the global spike in COVID deaths, choosing instead to run a story on how the new subvariant is in 25 countries. Oh and how China is to blame for underreporting cases and deaths, also by the way China loosened travel restrictions too. Meanwhile their piece on the virality of the subvariant receives a single news segment.

The Globe and Mail had no headlines about this spike. In their Coronavirus Update for the week, the “Top Headlines” section includes: China travel bans, the XBB1.5 variant being tracked in B.C, and… Canadian theatre companies’ business successes.

Of course Global News felt the need to tuck that factoid into an incomplete rundown of the new subvariant, but the piece is further riddled with issues. The overreliance on vaccinations as a solution is contradicted within the piece itself, citing a study that shows XBB1.5 evades bivalent doses. Beyond that? The article quotes Western University professor of medicine, epidemiology and biostatistic Dr. Sameer Elsayed.

If we’re sick, we stay at home, we can mask, and we should mask. And if we can stay away from other people at work, we should continue to employ social distancing measures.

It should be made clear that Elsayed is not a public health expert. However, the comprehensive lack of a systemic solution could not squarely be placed on this doctor, this particular piece, its author or simply Global News as a whole. Through the example of the 15 per cent spike in worldwide COVID deaths, we can see that news media is fundamentally uninterested in the question of how do we stop the spread of COVID. The only path is vaccinations and personal choice. Any other solution is hardly considered.

Unless the issue can be wielded against our geopolitical enemies, COVID’s impact becomes a pure hypothetical to our leaders and an unquestioning media. In a CTV interview, B.C provincial health officer Bonnie Henry responded to the suggestion that “more transmissible and less severe” is “good news” positively, “It’s good news in a sense.” Meanwhile, Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore has been trying to match sasquatch with the frequency of his appearances. Since December, he’s only appeared on Breakfast Television on January 4th, thanking healthcare workers, “anticipating hospitalizations” and “monitoring the situation.” When asked if he would reverse his March decision to lift mask mandates, he said no. He then continued to lean heavily on vaccinations as the sole solution and focused on the individualisation of masking. This stance being the direction Ontario Premier Doug Ford is hoping to cultivate.

The refusal by our news media to continually push our governments and their representatives on the true impact the virus has on our bodies and our societal systems displays their willingness to toe the line. In the Breakfast Television interview, Moore brings up RAT tests and vaccinations. No mention is made of the latest subvariant’s immunity evasion. No mention is made of the failing utility of rapid antigen tests. The last question asked by the anchor is whether unvaccinated people put vaccinated people at risk. In a world where mutations are rendering vaccinations insufficient, this line of questioning becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Even headlines that would sound alarms if covered accurately are reduced to par-for-the-course reporting. The Canadian Press’ article published in the Toronto Star coldly states that a “Predicted surge” is leading to B.C hospitals reopening emergency COVID-19 operation centres. Even within the article, the spike in cases and emergency policies are framed in such a way to downplay the situation. The centres were “initially set up to deal with COVID-19.” Following this blunting, the raw numbers seem staggering. “There were 10,226 patients in B.C.’s hospitals on Friday, a six per cent jump from 9,637 on New Year’s Eve.”

In a week, over five hundred people were hospitalized in the province due to a “predictable” surge. These centres were initially opened because of COVID. Now it’s because of “an expected surge in flu, respiratory illness and COVID cases.” Why is this surge of hospitalizations merely predictable instead of preventable? Why is the implication that they began due to COVID, but are now being brought back due to a mix of factors?

If you were to passively observe the Canadian mainstream news coverage of the pandemic, your impression would be that China has truly bungled any chance of curbing COVID in the past month or so. Beyond that, the reported information about the ongoing pandemic situation in Canada would convey only a feeling of mild concern. The overreliance on vaccination as a solution and the occasional mild questioning of public health leaders’ choices in the past (with no follow-up question) have led us to believe that the situation is under control. Not only that, the mild pushback is touted as proof that our journalism institutions are holding them to account.

In reality, our lack of public health measures and the absence of critical examination in the press have left us in a position worse than ever before. The system has abandoned us to an endless cycle of work and illness. This benefits both our governments and private corporations, who would rather obscure the truth than deliver concessions to protect us. Vaccination programs are touted to be the one and only solution to the pandemic. This is faulty. Paid sick days, widespread PCR testing, mask mandates, mandatory ventilation upgrade programs and free PPE are all necessary tools that go unmentioned. It would be erroneous to conclude any of these in isolation would be a solution to the situation. No one single approach can stop or lessen the effects of the pandemic. We need to implement all of them together to save countless lives. The choice not to do so is social murder. The choice not to hold that choice to account is complicity.

But none of this is proposed or covered in our neoliberalized news media sphere. Instead, if you looked at the pandemic coverage our biggest news media offers, COVID appears, at best, an invisible spectre looming over us. At worst, it’s just a ghost story.

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