It is very unnerving to see a half dozen fire trucks, two police cars and ambulances lining up as it happened off Queens boulevard this afternoon. But we are okay and thank you for your prayers.
Governor Cuomo optimistically said earlier this week that there were signs that the rate of new cases was going down. “The arrows are headed in the right direction, and that is always better than the arrows headed in the wrong direction,” Cuomo said at a press conference Wednesday. He caveated that these numbers could change, and they did for the worse.
Catastrophes generate a lot of stories and rumors. Because communications become so garbled, Tomatsu Shibutani called rumors the news vine of catastrophes.
A number of the stories we hear are really just gossip passed along, misunderstandings of all the briefings, or politics disguised as fact. The stories survive because our fear is the oxygen that allows them to proceed.
The quieting of static on the informal news channels is not as exciting as tuning into the main show, but is a hard and essential task. Have you ever been frustrated by trying to move the rabbit ears antenna on a tv set. Yet, you can’t get a clear picture without doing it. Managing rumor-news is a little bit like that. Frustrating and essential!
Experts are not immune to this distortion. News media, including medical news media, are trying to be first with the news. Sometimes, the haste leads them to unintentionally perpetuate a false story. Or they go with a headline and put the caveat at the bottom of the story. You can guess that it is the headline that travels.
Ask questions, go to the source, weight the context of the claim, and remain alert and grateful to catching the mistakes in your own talk. (We should always start with ourselves.)
If we only remember reports of Cuomo’s dramatic presentation that maybe we had turned the corner, that might be because some didn’t report his caveat, which he responsibly repeated at the press conference.
I am sure that he will be even more circumspect about his future declarations. It is hard to give hope and not stumble across future facts. Maybe impossible. Only God has that authority. Remember what Jesus said one time, as recorded by the apostle John in chapter 10, verse 28 “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
In the meantime, we are all essential in tuning out the gossip, rumor-mongering, misstatements, exaggerations, and politics disguised as facts.
