How Fox News gave Joe Biden and America at least another year of the pandemic
Fox isn’t a weather vane of the right; it’s the wind.
Republicans, White Evangelicals and rural Americans — three different ways to describe the same Fox News viewers — continue to be the least vaccinated groups in America.
And Media Matters has totaled the numbers that help explain how this happened:
Fox’s efforts to undermine the coronavirus vaccines really kicked into gear following President Joe Biden’s inauguration. According to a Media Matters analysis, in the 254 days since Biden took office (from January 20 through September 30), Fox undermined the vaccination efforts at least once on 238 of the days (94%). The network’s efforts to undermine inoculations increased as we got further into Biden’s presidency; from January 20 through March 31, Fox undermined the vaccine effort at least once on 80% of the days (57 out of 71), but from April 1 through September 30, the network undermined the vaccine efforts at least once on 99% of the days (181 out of 183).
So on April 1, 2021, the network kicked it’s “just asking questions” routine about the vaccine into warp speed.
Why does April 1, 2021 matter?
The beginning of April saw the peak of vaccinations in America, peaking at a staggering 5 million doses a day. That’s when Fox figured out that the most dangerous side effect of the vaccine for the right was Joe Biden’s very strong approval ratings on Covid-19, despite even the confusion of the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine being placed on a brief hold by the FDA and CDC in mid-April.
From Navigator Research’s polling on Biden’s first 100 days, released at the end of April:
So Tucker and the rest of the nation’s most popular cable “news” channel got busy spewing doubt all over the vaccination effort with the same sort of rigor they apply to all of their smears.
They did this knowing the real story is how miraculously effective the vaccines have proven to be, even against the far deadlier Delta variant. Nearly all the Covid-19 deaths we’ve been seeing have been among the unvaccinated, who are 11 times more likely to die due to the novel coronavirus.
We know that Fox knows how effective the jabs have been. That’s why the company requires their employees get vaccinated or submit to constant testing. And not one Fox employee has quit over this “tyranny.”
What has Fox’s vaccine “skepticism” done to America?
The nightly heaping of propaganda salted with the channel’s traditional recipe of racist misogyny disguised as distrust of the government helped replace widespread optimism that the worst of the pandemic was over with a return to sense that the worst is still yet to come.
(Coincidentally, this chart looks remarkably similar to the most popular chart referenced to track Joe Biden’s approval rating:
.)
And don’t forget the body count, especially in places where more Republicans live and Fox News isn’t just on the TV, it’s in the air, the water and the auto mechanic’s waiting room.
From Charles Gaba’s ACASignups.com:
The redder or Trumpier a county, the more Covid-19 deaths since June 30, 2021, almost as a rule.
Worst of all, Fox’s anti-vax campaign has helped erase any hope of achieving herd immunity before the Delta began to dominate.
Fox isn’t a weather vane of the right; it’s the wind
When Fox turns against something, the entire conservative hive mind does too, as the entire movement feels the drive of the story and seeks to latch into it in order to garner airtime and/or notoriety. This means they produce more vaccine skeptical content to feed their social media, radio shows and blogs, snowballing the death.
Yes, Fox is just following the lead of Donald Trump and then Ron DeSantis, who favor mass human sacrifice to Covid-19 over public health strategies that have been repeatedly proven to work. But with Trump off social media and Fox imitating cable channels hitting smaller almost insignificant audiences (who probably still watch some Fox), Fox matters most.
Killing off Republican voters at a time when there are fewer and fewer Republicans to kill off seems like a bad political strategy. But it’s mostly happening in the places Republicans can most afford to lose them. So the general malaise and damage the channel has done to Biden’s presidency and America has definitely been worth it the media arm of the Republican Party. No matter how hypocritical, nonsensical and deadly their attacks may be.
Good for Republican politicians, deadly for actual Republicans.