The mainstream media across the United States has changed the way the epidemic is reported, and no longer emphasizes the new cases in a single day

In the past two years, the number of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have been widely used as a barometer of the spread of the epidemic. But after the advent of Omicron, the statistics were messed up and many news organizations began to rethink the way they reported it.

According to the Associated Press, Katherine Wu, a reporter for The Atlantic, said: "This is a data disaster. ”

These figures generally only reflect reports from health authorities and do not include self-tests at home or people who have been infected without their knowledge. Also, holidays and weekends can also cause data lag. So the actual data may be much higher than the reported data.

For this reason, the Associated Press recently told editors and reporters to avoid emphasizing the number of cases in reports about the outbreak. For example, it is no longer just a matter of focusing on a particular country or state that has set a record number of cases in a single day, because such reports are not reliable.

Other media outlets are also becoming more cautious about the use of data.

People queuing up in Los Angeles for nucleic acid testing. (Image source: Associated Press)

For example, when NBC reported a spike in new crown cases on Monday (10th), it used the average data of one week, and on Tuesday (11th), it only used the "tidal wave" of new cases.

In Tuesday's coverage of the Senate outbreak hearing, CNN reported on the average for the past two weeks. MSNBC used a variety of reporting methods, such as listing the 5 states with the highest number of reported cases in the previous 3 days.

The Washington Post's reporting page on the outbreak, Guide to the Pandemic, uses weekly averages and compares to the previous week, with Tuesday's results showing a 56 percent increase in the number of cases over the past week. A Chart for the New York Times contains data for each day, but it also includes trends in the number of cases and deaths over a two-week period.

Some argue that hospitalization rates and mortality rates are a more reliable reflection of the covid-19 pandemic's impact on current society, but these figures have also been questioned recently. Tanya Lewis, editor of Scientific American, said hospitalizations are in many cases accidental, such as when someone is hospitalized for other reasons and is surprised to find out that they test positive for nucleic acid.

Gary Schwitzer, a lecturer at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, said that while flawed, the number of cases should not be ignored. The data, he argues, could indicate a trend in which parts of the U.S. have been hit harder, as well as predict broader societal impacts, such as where hospitals will be hit or where staffing shortages will occur.

Still others in public health and journalism argue that while painful, the current surge in cases could bode well for good news. In an article published in The New York Times, David Leonhardt and Ashley Wu point out that this could be a sign that COVID-19 is becoming an endemic disease with which people will coexist, rather than a devastating epidemic. (End)