THE MEDIA AND THE VIRUS: American press coverage of Covid-19 was first dismissive, then alarmist—but always condescending.

It would once have seemed strange for a man in Tedros’s position to adopt the saccharine slogans of protest marches. Just so, it would once have seemed strange for a medical doctor to rate protecting people from racial offense a higher priority than saving lives. That it no longer seems strange is part of the story of the Covid-19 pandemic.

That story is one of compounding failures. During the early stages of the unfolding crisis, the WHO failed to take the coronavirus threat seriously, to question China’s official claims about its outbreak, and to coordinate a global response. In January, February, and early March, while the WHO was still declining to label the coronavirus a pandemic—partly because that label carries, according to Tedros, “significant risk in terms of amplifying unnecessary and unjustified fear and stigma”—the American media were also failing, systemically, to sound the alarm.

As it unfolded in the media, the story of the pandemic was initially that of a nonevent. On January 31, Vox ran a supposedly comprehensive “explainer” about the coronavirus. There was no need for Americans to wear protective face masks, Vox said, and “really no reason to worry.” On Twitter, Vox was still more blunt: “Is this going to be a deadly pandemic? No.” The hectoring tone and sham certitude are Vox specialties. But Vox wasn’t alone in dismissing the virus. USA Today, the Washington Post, Canada’s National Post, and many other outlets treated the Wuhan virus (as it was then known) less as a matter of objective concern than an instance of mass hysteria.

Their cardinal error, in almost every case, was to rely on the WHO, an organization at best egregiously mistaken and at worst politically compromised, carrying water for the Chinese Communist Party and President Xi Jinping.

Read the whole thing. As Glenn likes to say, “Think of the press as a psychological warfare operation against normal Americans and you won’t go far wrong.”