“In a social media age, people do believe they are entitled to their own facts,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist who teaches politics at UC Berkeley and USC. When the president of the United States says he believes the global mortality rate for the disease is lower than public health officials have reported, he said, „it’s not hard to see how many other Americans would decide that they can decide for themselves how big of a threat it is, too.”
Health officials in Santa Clara County, home to the San Jose Sharks, took things a step further Monday night, moving from advice to a ban on public gatherings of at least 1,000 people for three weeks in the county of nearly 2 million people. The mandatory order is effective Wednesday in the county with 43 confirmed cases of coronavirus, Sara Cody, the county’s health officer said. The Sharks have played three home games since her call to limit large gatherings, and the MLS’ San Jose Earthquakes, which played Saturday at their home stadium.
Skeptics might point out that the true mortality rate of the new virus — arguably one of the most important characteristics of any disease — remains unknown. Public health authorities acknowledge that the number of confirmed cases, particularly in the United States, is almost certainly an undercount because of limited testing and the mild symptoms that some experience. If that is true, the mortality rate would likely be much lower in the United States than 3.4 percent, the global estimate from the World Health Organization.
Adding to the confusion are different recommendations and responses from official channels — even within the San Francisco Bay Area, where it’s not unusual for residents to cross multiple county lines for work or entertainment.
There were 88 confirmed cases in California as of Saturday morning and another 21 people on a cruise ship off the coast of San Francisco that had tested positive. Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide emergency. Some major employers, such as Facebook and Twitter, have encouraged their Bay Area employees to work from home.
Stanford University announced Friday night it would move its classes online for at least two weeks, while the Elk Grove Unified School District, the state’s fifth largest, initiated the nation’s largest cancellation of classes thus far due to coronavirus.
But the outbreak has been concentrated in pockets of the state, so to many the threat is still somewhat abstract, given the low number of confirmed cases relative to California’s population of 40 million. All the uncertainty can make it challenging for people to assess their own risk and for crowd-centric businesses, from the Sharks to the Los Angeles Lakers, to decide whether the game will go on.
“Folks are getting two conflicting messages: The county is saying, ‘Don’t go to the Sharks game,’ but the Sharks are saying, ‘Come to the game,'“ said Melissa Michelson, a political science professor at Menlo College in the Bay Area. “It’s easy for people to rationalize listening to the Sharks and still going to the game — ‘Wouldn’t the Sharks cancel the game if it was truly not safe?'“
About two hours northeast, Charles and Joanne Wilson were touring the state Capitol on Friday with their young granddaughter after flying in from San Juan Capistrano. They said they’ve been careful about what news they read and have heard of conspiracy theories about coronavirus as a biological weapon.
„In today’s world with the internet, you have to be careful about what you read. Look for the facts and the reliable sources,“ Charles Wilson said.
Google is trying to steer users to accurate information and protect them from scams, CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post Friday. Those entering coronavirus-related search terms will likely get an „SOS Alert“ with a curated collection of news stories and World Health Organization links. The company is also on alert for „phishing, conspiracy theories, malware and misinformation,“ Pichai wrote, and has blocked thousands of ads meant to profit from the outbreak.
But not everyone trusts mainstream news outlets, a sentiment fanned in recent years by the president’s „fake news“ labeling of reporting that is critical of his administration.
“I think the ‘fake news’ phenomenon has unquestionably caused a fairly large segment of our population to really doubt anything they see coming out of the news media,“ said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. „And what people doubt is true tends to align with what they want to believe is not true. In some ways people are able to choose their own reality.“
Politics can also get in the way of medical expertise, said state Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), a physician who has been outspoken about the harms of false online information on vaccines. Pan said he worries about President Donald Trump’s impact on the public’s reaction to coronavirus when he downplays concerns or lashes out at those critical of his administration’s response.
“People have to trust their public health authorities. There aren’t enough police and national guards in the world to make people do something they are supposed to do if they’re not willing to do it,” he said. „So when it comes crunch time, whose voice is it going to be that’s going to have that level of trust and authority that people will follow and take seriously?”
Cynicism about institutions like the media is hardly limited to the political right, Schnur said. “Donald Trump talks about fake news. Bernie Sanders talks about corporate news,” he said. “They’ve both been working overtime to convince supporters not to believe what they read in the news or see on television and now the stakes are a lot higher.”
And, of course, there are fewer local reporters available to cover important developments. County public health departments „are struggling to have their message heard amid the din out there from so many different voices with so many different agendas,“ Snyder said.
„Some of the people who showed up at the Sharks game,“ he said, „might not have even heard the county’s warning.“
Source: politico.com
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