When Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he stressed the importance of Americans taking the coronavirus outbreak seriously.
“This is yet another attempt to impeach the president,” Fox Business host Trish Regan said March 9.
“At worst — worst case scenario — it could be the flu,” Fox News medical correspondent Marc Siegel, a physician, said March 6.
“All the talk about coronavirus being so much more deadly [than the flu] doesn’t reflect reality,” Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said March 7.
In fact, the coronavirus is deadlier and more contagious than the flu, and thousands have already died around the world because of it.
Over the past week, many Fox hosts and personalities have pivoted to warning viewers about the dangers of coronavirus. But the weeks they spent downplaying it may have already affected the public response.
As my colleague Philip Bump wrote, “Republicans and Fox News viewers are both about as likely to say that the media broadly has either slightly or greatly exaggerated the threat posed by the virus,” according to new data from the Pew Research Center.
On Wednesday, Fox host Sean Hannity pushed back on criticism of his early coronavirus coverage.
“This program has always taken the coronavirus seriously and we’ve never called the virus a hoax,” Hannity said last night.
But nine days earlier, Hannity did just that.
“They’re scaring the living hell out of people and I see it again as like, ‘Oh, let’s bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.’”
Fox did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
