By now, you’ve all seen how numerous conservative pundits have actively downplayed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak. For instance, Esquire’s Jack Holmes noted that Fox News continues to serve up a barrelful of misinformation on a daily basis, even though the bulk of its demographic is 60 and older—the people most at risk from this scourge.
But much of what we’ve heard on the fair and balanced network is a model of sanity compared to a recent video issued by right-wing radio host Dennis Prager of “PragerU” fame. On Thursday, he posted a video to YouTube and Facebook saying that all this talk about closing schools and shuttering public gatherings is a lot of fuss over nothing.
Prager points out that kids aren’t as likely to be affected by coronavirus as older people. He forgets, though, that kids can be carriers and spread the disease to older people. And he also forgets about the teachers, the administrators, the support staff.
He also pooh-poohed Harvard and other universities going online only. Um, Dennis? A good number of students from universities of Harvard’s stature come from areas where coronavirus has become a tiger by the tail. Do you want to chance them infecting a campus of 20,000-plus students?
To close, Prager repeated what has become an all-too-familiar far-right shibboleth—we aren’t going into a panic over the flu. What about all the statistics that show coronavirus is several times more lethal than the flu? Or that we don’t have a vaccine for it?
Prager either doesn’t know or doesn’t understand that the whole point of these measures is to keep the health care system from being overwhelmed, as has already happened in China and Italy. That’s what they mean by “flattening the curve.”
And it’s rather ironic that he likened this to the flu. The whole reason this thing has become a monster is because it mushroomed in the middle of flu season, when hospitals are already stressed. Things should lighten up once flu season ends, but until then, we need to get used to our lives being upended in a heartbeat.
Bottom line—what Prager is saying isn’t just wrong. It’s dangerous. And what makes it even more outrageous is that Prager is considered a major news source by many fundies. Indeed, Charisma magazine has it linked up prominently on the front page of its news site.
Prager is getting a little bit of pushback for this garbage. But it’s not enough. Let him have it on YouTube and on Facebook, and give him an earful on his personal Twitter and on PragerU’s Twitter as well.