Brian Stelter Slams 'Sensationalist' Headlines About COVID-19 Infections Among Vaccinated People

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Brian Stelter says its time for the media to seriously reflect on how it is covering the new surge in COVID-19 cases, criticizing “sensationalist headlines” surrounding vaccinated people getting infected with COVID-19 that don’t provide the proper context.

“It is, as so many public health officials have said, a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated,'” Stelter said on Sunday during his broadcast’s opening monologue. “So the news coverage needs to reflect that.”

But Stelter said that the media, instead, focuses too much on covering cases of people who got COVID-19 despite being vaccinated, even though CDC data shows that vaccinated people only account for 0.004% of hospitalizations in the country and 0.001% of deaths.

As an example, he compared headlines from the Washington Post and the New York Post. On the NY Post’s front page, a graph of squares was shown representing the 161 million Americans that have been vaccinated. Of them, only about 1,150 have died, a total marked with a red square so small it had to be magnified. The Washington Post, meanwhile, ran a headline about a town in Massachusetts where 75% of new cases were among vaccinated people, but did not note until the end that only a precious few of those cases led to hospitalizations.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/brian-stelter-slams-sensationalist-headlines-190152002.html

[Skittles]

1. disappointed with the Washington Post

I expect better from them.

[Blue_true]

2. Yes. They let the NY Post out perform them on this one.

How low can one fall?

[PortTack]

3. Me too! If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem

[abqtommy]

4. I had to look up Brian Stelter since I didn't know who he is. Now I do.

"Brian Patrick Stelter (born September 3, 1985) is an American television anchor who is the chief media correspondent for CNN and host of the CNN program Reliable Sources. Stelter is a former media reporter for The New York Times and the editor of TVNewser. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Stelter

[DENVERPOPS]

5. Great comment YMBL nc

[lagomorph777]

6. I'm with Stelter on this.

[Deminpenn]

10. +1

nt

[Poiuyt]

7. You really need to dig deep into the recent covid news articles to find someone saying that

the chance of vaccinated to vaccinated transmission is really small.

I just saw this and got a kick out of it:

"We know that the vast majority of the spread is still by unvaccinated people. And I think that that is the part that's been lost in the messaging from the CDC," said Dr. Leana Wen, visiting professor at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health.

"The problem is not with the vaccinated. The problem remains with the unvaccinated. And the way that we can get out of this pandemic is to increase vaccination rates," she said.

"So the CDC should actually be saying, 'Look, the reason we're doing indoor mandates is because the unvaccinated cannot be trusted to put on masks. That's why the vaccinated also have to be putting on masks.'"

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/01/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/index.html

[Deminpenn]

9. That was an interesting op-ed by Wen

The CDC messaging has left something to be desired that's for sure. These couple of studies of outbreaks in MA and WI claiming vaccinated people are as infections as unvaccinated are the cover CDC is using so they don't have to say what Wen says (bolded above), but ymmv.

[Hortensis]

21. That vaccinated-to-vaccinated spread is really small, and unvaxed

people are still the big transmission vector, is not something I'd picked up on in all the noise about vaccinated people getting infected. Definitely worth pointing out in discussion about containing and ending this pandemic. Thanks, Poiuyt.

[Poiuyt]

22. You're very welcome

Sometimes we just have to read the fine print.

[Hortensis]

23. +100.

[LeftInTX]

24. It is significant enough for mask wearing and social distancing

I don't believe we need to panic, but I had started to go back to my pre-covid routine. Now, I'm pretty much back to covid.

Mild covid is probably not fun......

My daughter caught from someone unvaccinated. She was fine, but she works with developmentally disabled children. She had to do contact tracing and had to live with "what if". Fortunately, the kids did not catch it. (She only had contact with 4 clients, which helped)

Being "all open" puts a monkey wrench in everything.

[Hortensis]

26. So glad about the children, and that your daughter's fine.

We're back to pre-vax precautions also. My husband has to continue physical therapy but is now wearing N-95s for his sessions. That said, our nation seems to have hit an inflection point with delta on top of vaccines, and attitudes are changing fast, empowering more control. Thank goodness.

[Kali]

8. I've seen bullshit alarmist claims here on DU

fearmongering does not help

[uponit7771]

13. +1

[triron]

11. The Albuquerque Journal was guilty of this. But they are owned by republicans. Go figure.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Ironically, the figures in this article are wrong

"CDC data shows that vaccinated people only account for 0.004% of hospitalizations in the country and 0.001% of deaths"

0.001% is one hundred thousandth. But if 1,150 vaccinated people have died (and that figure does seem roughly correct), then that would mean 115,000,000 people have died in total. Clearly that's wrong, even if they were talking about total deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

Whatever the actual figure is (over what period is it 'fair' to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated deaths? Completed vaccinations built up over 2021, saying "vaccinated people only account for 0.001% of deaths" is hugely misleading.

[uponit7771]

14. If it was ten times that much its still miniscule relative to the unvaccinated. Vaccinated are not

... near the risk that the unvaccinated and there are too many headlines and even post on DU suggesting that we are.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. The true figure, from the beginning of the pandemic, is 0.188%

So that's one hundred and eighty eight times as much. If you just take the deaths in 2021 (when vaccination started), it's 0.44% - four hundred and forty times as much. The article has completely screwed up its figures, which is incredibly stupid when the writer wants to criticise other parts of the media.

[Celerity]

16. +1

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. It turns out they took the figures for "what happened among all people vaccinated"

and said those are the proportions of vaccinated hospitalization or death among the total hospitalization or death.

So they turned "1 in 100,000 vaccinated people have died from Covid" into "1 in 100,000 people who have died from Covid were vaccinated".

Figures used properly here: https://www.axios.com/chart-vaccinated-americans-delta-covid-cases-b93710e3-cfc1-4248-9c33-474b00947a90.html

[AllaN01Bear]

17. so, hes a dr. now eh?

[Wounded Bear]

19. I agree. Headlines regarding breakthrough infections have been horrible...n

Hyperventilating over the miniscule number of breakthrough infections may sell papers and get clicks, but it doesn't help public health efforts to get jabs in arms.

[Initech]

20. Yeah the fearmongering is insane.

The sad thing is that it gives more fuel for the anti-vaxxers and the morons to run amok.

[gulliver]

25. No journalist who hasn't passed basic statistics should be allowed to use statistics at all.

They absolutely ruin every statistic they touch.