“Atrocious” is perhaps a bit strong, but headlines don’t count, right? Is that not one of the defenses erected by “journalism” fan-boys to protect click-baiting sensationalism by the media?
We saw two very locavore Austin stories in the last day that got our goat. First, Austin broadcaster KUT reported that “Austin Public Health’s Preliminary Data Shows Construction One Of Top Industries For COVID-19 Cases.” The inside baseball here is that Austin’s mayor, Steve Adler, banned construction, except for “affordable housing,” in his first shelter-in-place order. We derided Adler’s order in this regard, and were delighted when the Governor Abbott big-footed it a few days later.
Among the happy few on Austin’s political right, word spread that the city, irritated as it was to have been stomped on by the State of Texas, started testing the workers at construction sites in the hope of finding a hot mess of cases, all of which leads back to the KUT story, which reports vaguely, to wit:
Austin Public Health officials say they’re still crunching the numbers, but their investigations so far show construction joins long-term care facilities, health care and grocery stores as the industries hit hardest locally by COVID-19. The officials say they are still working to determine exactly how many cases have originated and spread from construction sites.
Never mind that this strikes us as the flimsiest reed upon which to hang the construction industry. The article and its redoubtable author, Jennifer Stayton, does not appear to say, or even ask, whether any of those construction workers, or their families, are among the minuscule number of people in Central Texas actually hospitalized with the Covid. Why not? If they don’t end up in the hospital, then who cares? Or did we not hear the number because construction workers, who are outside working hard under the Texas sun all day, are young, fit, not fat, and have strong lungs and plenty of Vitamin D circulating in their systems? Is it possible that not one of them have ended up in our hospitals?
Yes, it is possible. That would, in fact, be the single most relevant question. But neither Ms. Slayton nor the Austin public health bureaucracy is ‘fessing up, or even recording that the question was asked and not answered.
Then there is this sub-headline from Austin Patch: “2 weeks after Abbott directed the state economy to reopen, 7 more in Travis County have died and the illness count grows by 117 in 2 days.” Yeah, well, if you believe the WHO, which people who gun for Texas Governor Greg Abbott are oriented to do, “[a]mong patients who have died, the time from symptom onset to outcome ranges from 2-8 weeks.” So, yeah, Abbott’s reopening order had nothing to do with most, if not all, of those deaths.
It would be so refreshing if reporters, especially local reporters, would spend a few minutes with the search engine of their choice before throwing gasoline on the social fire.