Because of coronavirus, I am at risk, self-quarantined — and incredibly angry at Sean Hannity

I am not someone prone to panicking, but the simple fact is I have multiple respiratory issues and a handful of relatives who don't know how to protect themselves because they only watch Fox News

Anyone who knows me can tell you this: I am not person who panics. I don’t rush to the grocery store in a storm. I’m definitely not one to stock up on toilet paper (that’s what Amazon Subscribe and Save is for, friends). I don’t believe in apocalyptic views of the world, and I really do prefer optimism to chaos theory.

But I have also suffered, for my entire life, with unfortunate respiratory issues: asthma, repeated bouts of bronchitis, regular colds. When I delivered my second son, I contracted bacterial pneumonia in the hospital. That sickness, and a host of other snafus, nearly killed me.

Two weeks ago, before the world had completely descended into full pandemic mode, I was diagnosed, first, with bacterial bronchitis. It got better with antibiotics, but then it got worse. When my community presented with cases of Covid-19 this week, I realized that I was one of the vulnerable among us. Staying at home was not a matter of protecting others from me; it was a matter of protecting me from others.

Out in the world, though, things looked quite different. People were hoarding food, toilet paper, and bare necessities. My elderly in-laws, in Florida, seemed to know nothing of the disease. They didn’t know, for instance, that the disease was respiratory in nature, that it affected older populations, and that it could spread with a handshake. I was (and continue to be) surprised by how I, a panic-averse person, had ended up with the right information, while so many people have gotten it wrong.

Last night, Fox News’ host Sean Hannity welcomed Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas to spread some disinformation on-air. “In light of how China has unleashed this plague on the entire world through their dishonesty and their lack of transparency and corruption, it’s even more urgent that we examine Joe Biden’s decade-long record of being wrong on China,” the sitting Senator said.

“Why are they getting away with lying to the world the way they did? And if they would have told us the truth, we all could have had all hands on deck to help,” Hannity shot back.

Fox News is the most-watched cable news network in America, averaging 3.5 million primetime viewers (compare that with CNN, who averages about half of that.) It also caters to an older crowd — a crowd that, it just so happens, is more vulnerable to the virus that has now spread throughout the continental United States, with no real signs of slowing.

Blame the administration, yes, because they have been slow to react, have failed to take adequate responsibility, and have not done their due diligence regarding the obvious dangers of the disease. But blame large outlets, too, for failing to take responsibility.

Media should not be about good and bad actors, and, yet, here we are. CNN’s coverage, to put this in perspective, has focused on how Coronavirus — or Covid-19 — is spread, what its symptoms are, and what demographics are most likely to fall victim to it. On the same night that Sean Hannity fomented fear and mistrust in the presumptive Democratic nominee, Chris Cuomo, his CNN cable timeslot competitor, featured Dr Sanjay Gupta, for a segment on how to properly wash hands and disinfect a home to prevent the further spreading of coronavirus. Which is why my own mother-in-law did not know that she was at risk for contracting a disease that, at her age, could prove fatal. Her news stream had only told her that China had manufactured a crisis, not that said crisis — wherever it originated — was dangerous to her particular population, and preventable.

It’s not any media outlet’s job to tell us anything besides how we can steel ourselves against the worst of this. As a person who typically sees crisis as overcorrection, and who very much believes that you already have more toilet paper than you need — and, also, as a person who has opted to remove herself from society because her lungs are not that good all of the time — I find misinformation to be far more dangerous to the function of a prosperous and safe society than any single virus.