An alert bystander with a cell phone caught an unknown media outlet staging photographs of a man in a full hazmat suit holding cloths against ATMs and counters of businesses for several photo opportunities.
The man recording the video accused the man of staging photographs to ’cause fear’ in the hearts of those who would see the photos on the news later. The man appearing in the photo-ops failed to actually clean any of the surfaces.
According to the CDC, there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of even getting covid from the spread on surfaces, but this does not stop media outlets from staging photographs like these on a nearly daily basis.
The CDC suggested last spring that “it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their mouth, nose or possibly their eyes.”
The CDC website now cites several studies that suggest that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection via the fomite transmission route is virtually impossible, and generally “less than 1 in 10,000, which means that each contact with a contaminated surface has less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing an infection.”
Many have blamed the media for causing millions of people to believe in inaccurate information about COVID-19, especially by staging photos like these and refusing to cover the overwhelming science that goes against the official pre-approved messaging of media outlets.
A recent poll was taken across the political spectrum on covid case counts and hospitalization rates from covid. According to the poll – which was also recently mentioned on the Real-Time with Maher show – the more liberal you are and the more you trust the media, the more likely you are to believe in inaccurate information about covid.
The survey found that more than one-third of Americans overestimate by as much as a factor of ten the probability a person with COVID-19 will require hospitalization.
Researchers involved in the Franklin Templeton/Gallup study asked Americans in December what “percentage of people who have been infected by the coronavirus needed to be hospitalized.”
The perceptions of most people were way off from reality.
The best available estimates place the figure between 1 and 5 percent, and much less for those who have high vitamin d.
Another poll about police shootings gives us insight into how much of an effect his type of misinformation has on the average news media viewer.
According to the poll, the higher trust you have in the mainstream media, and the more liberal you are, the more likely you are to believe in inaccurate information about police shootings.
Those that have the highest trust in the mainstream media believe that almost 60% of the people killed by police are black. Those that have the lowest trust believe that number is around 30%. The real number is around 29% on average.
60% of those that categorize themselves as very liberal believe that police kill anywhere between 100 and 1,000 unarmed black people per year. 78% of those that categorize themselves as very conservative believe that number is closer to 10. The real number is about 10.
The science on mask efficacy, for example, has been for a very long time. The vast majority of decades of scientific research regarding the efficacy of masks show they do not prevent the spread of any respiratory illnesses. So why do people keep claiming that they do?
A fairly recent study from Denmark involving a sample size of 6,000 participants found that “there was no statistically significant difference between those who wore masks and those who did not when it came to being infected by Covid-19.”
Another ecological study of state mask mandates and their use – which included data from the winter case spike – has found that widespread mask-wearing didn’t slow the spread of COVID-19.
Additionally, the vast majority of gold-standard scientific research compiled over multiple decades, conclude masks are completely ineffective at preventing the spread of respiratory illnesses, and that healthcare workers wear them solely to block big droplets.
