Containing the Corona virus requires reliable news coverage and facts from US President Donald Trump. However, the Trump administration has been preoccupied - until the last year of the presidential term - with other wars: unconstitutional pressure on immigration; its approach a lot to fabricating a war with Iran; and the imprisonment of children in cages along the southern borders of the United States; not to mention engagement with foreign governments In pursuit of personal gain. But it is the arrival of the Coruna virus, the infectious disease of the respiratory system, that is threatening this presidency, which adopts a strategy based on all accounts, but not on the truth.

Trump has a basic support base, made up mostly of people most vulnerable to Corona, who are the elderly - especially those who may resist taking proposed intervention measures - at risk. Trump may have to stop his famous election campaigns in the middle of the election season, but what is even more cruel to him is that he will have to build a goodwill alliance with the press, if he wants to contain the virus to be successful, in order to launch a unified and coherent message.

Press coverage is essential

Recent epidemics, such as swine flu, avian influenza, and SARS, none of which have reached the level of spread to the Coruna virus, have shown that frequent and accurate press coverage and information are an essential part of an effective response to fighting the disease. When SARS emerged as the first epidemic in the twenty-first century, Hong Kong found itself in a panic by a 14-year-old pupil, who spread a false rumor that the city was being quarantined. He wanted to imitate the site of a local newspaper, in the tactics still favored by media misinformation campaigns to this day.

When Vietnam experienced a measles outbreak in 2014, citizens became frustrated by the lack of information and began organizing protests on Facebook. At the beginning of the current Corona virus outbreak in Wuhan, China, the government punished those who reported cases of the virus, and arrested citizen journalists who tried to report cases from within the city, accusing them of spreading false information. The virus might have been avoided if a severe campaign was organized early enough to effectively contain it and provide a clear picture of what was happening. But if the US administration does not trust the press, then how does the government manage a health crisis while persuading people that the press is not true? America may be on the verge of discovering the consequences.

From the moment Trump signaled his finger to reporters, who were covering his first press conference in January 2017, chanting "You are fake news" the president kept doubting the truth of the news and dispensed with the search for the truth. Now the electoral year has coincided with the emergence of a rapidly spreading epidemic that can be contained only through the rapid transfer of reliable information, and for this reason Trump's tactical war on the media can do great harm to him.

Behavior change

Studies have shown that reliable news and information during a pandemic can help change behavior and reduce disease spread. Openness and precision among health agencies, governments and the media can help save lives.

However, the relationship between the US presidency and the truth is poisoned, even when Trump announces, through Fox News, that the death rate from the disease was likely to be less than 3.4% of the cases reported so far, and that the press jumped over what he considered Try to improve the image of dire.

In his first press conference on the Corona virus last month, Trump spoke a lot about this issue, saying that the infection was the same as the flu, and that the administration had done a "tremendous job" and that one day the virus "would disappear." A week later, 11 people died, 100 others were confirmed, and more than 2,700 people were quarantined in New York, followed by the closure of entire schools in the Pacific Northwest, at least in part because of the government's unwillingness.

Inefficiency in responding to this catastrophe is evidenced by the lack of inspection of entry ports, improvised quarantine operations for injured people coming across the sea, a lack of testing equipment, and an epidemiological team formed by the Barack Obama government, but dismantled by Trump.

From the CDC website, which is difficult to navigate, to confusing press conferences, the official media response to the United States government has been very poor. On the contrary, the daily briefings of the World Health Organization, including its presence on social media, which has a large number of followers on the application of Tik Tok, provide a useful source of information, as is the case with university research sites and some regional governments .

For the press, the Corona virus is her own test. The circus covered the primaries for Democrats and absorbed national news, and those dramatic scenes of this vast and historically diverse field, in which two elderly White Men Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, two excellent contestants, challenge another elderly white man, Trump. But the heat of the race inevitably cools, and it weakens when the shelves become empty of goods and travel restrictions hit both the economy and the population.

It is now the responsibility of the American national press to provide consistent and accurate information, in the midst of the cracking media landscape, to many different audiences, which are more important, at the local level. The most threatening of the scene is the incorrect information that can constitute an "epidemic", the deception and the coverage that causes panic, which increases the burden of reporters responsible for correcting and reducing the mass of misconceptions.

News reports

Epidemiologists have traditionally relied on news reports to help determine how cases spread during epidemics, and this often means local news. News organizations, such as the "Seattle Times", which have canceled their online payment program to provide free information, and have contributed to their reports from the West Coast Virus Spread Center; but for other societies, where there are fewer local reporting organizations, or no , Sending detailed and timely messages will be more difficult. Corona virus is not a political problem in itself, but the political aspect is to deal with the disease and reveal its implications.

Recent epidemics have shown that frequent and accurate press coverage is an essential part of an effective disease response.

Trump may have to stop his famous election campaigns, but what is more cruel to him, is that he will have to build a goodwill alliance with the press, if he wants to contain the virus to be successful, in order to launch a unified and coherent message.

Inefficiency in responding to this catastrophe is evidenced by the lack of inspection of entry ports, improvised quarantine operations for injured people coming across the sea, a lack of test equipment, and an epidemiological team set up by the Barack Obama government, but dismantled by Trump.

3.4%

3.4%, as Trump said, the death rate from the disease is one of the cases reported so far.