What is to be gained from this deliberately negative & misleading reporting?

[SmilingAloe]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8836891/Vaccine-expert-warns-facemasks-social-distancing-needed-summer.html

The Daily Mail is reporting on something that is actually pretty positive in such a negative way.
The head of Oxfords vaccine trial team is saying we will hopefully have a successful vaccine ready by early next year (2-3 months away!) and that although obviously it will take a while to roll it out we will be able to start scaling back restrictions throughout the early part of next year and hopefully be back to something approaching normal by next summer.
This is good news surely?!

Dr Fauci in the states has also said be believes that life will be returning to normal in the US by next spring/early summer.

What is to be gained by reporting this good news in such a negative light?

Surely people should be encouraged to see the next two/three months as a final push to keep the NHS functioning through this difficult winter but that there almost certainly is a light at the end of the tunnel?

Yes I agree. There are so many people who are all doom and gloom about how long things will be difficult and how they can't stand it because there is no end in sight.

Weirdly I think many of these people are the same ones who accused others ( including me,) of scaremongering in March when we were talking about the things that could happen soon ( lockdowns, mask wearing etc). I think catastrophising about how terrible things will be and how it won't ever get better is terrible for your mental health. I was worried about all of this in March and I have been unhappy and depressed since at various points but I also believe things will get better reasonably soon ( as in 6-8 months or so). I always thought it would take 18 months or so to get through the worst and we are almost halfway there now.

I think things will start to improve massively in the spring and next summer will be a lot better. Maybe not completely back to normal but almost.

Yep, vaccine news is very promising 👍

Same positive reports in Germany, where our health minister says the vaccine program here should start in the first 3 months of 2021

There's a lot of anti-vaxxers around and conspiracy theorists not all of them obvious
and
both Covid doomsters and the Covid denialists can think it helps their cause to say a vaccine won't work,
or will take many years

"What is to be gained by reporting this good news in such a negative light?"

e.g. if someone wants to end all SD, masks etc and let it rip "because it's just flu" 🤦🏻‍♀️
they have to persuade people the vaccine won't come next year, or most people would want to keep the SD until then

whereas if we believed there won't be a vaccine for 10 years, then we'd have to abandon the current SD strategy - it's only feasible for a limited period

Because negative news sells.

We basically have two loud opinionated lobby’s on the left and the right. They are dogmatic and tribal. They take an opinion and then seek validation in misinformation and fake news. In the case of the media they create the falsehoods. Their simple solutions to complex issues are just lies. They know it and they don’t care.

In the middle are people who are realistic and who know problems need complex solutions that involve consensus and compromise. They morally don’t want to lie and offer a trite slogan and quick fix.

Take note that these people don’t argue with their opposite number on the left and the right. They argue with the centre. It’s the centre that the hate. People who are politically fluid and who look at evidence before forming opinions.

Whether on the left or right these people are threatened by thinkers and people who seek consensus. This is the core of their attacks. The issue doesn’t matter.

Agree OP, however the press has been negative from day one. As well as in investigation into the governments handling of Covid when this is all calmed down, there must be an investigation into the press handling of it too.

I didn't read it as very negative.

They are talking about another nine months of SD which is quite a stretch.

@SmilingAloe

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8836891/Vaccine-expert-warns-facemasks-social-distancing-needed-summer.html

The Daily Mail is reporting on something that is actually pretty positive in such a negative way.
The head of Oxfords vaccine trial team is saying we will hopefully have a successful vaccine ready by early next year (2-3 months away!) and that although obviously it will take a while to roll it out we will be able to start scaling back restrictions throughout the early part of next year and hopefully be back to something approaching normal by next summer.
This is good news surely?!

Dr Fauci in the states has also said be believes that life will be returning to normal in the US by next spring/early summer.

What is to be gained by reporting this good news in such a negative light?

Surely people should be encouraged to see the next two/three months as a final push to keep the NHS functioning through this difficult winter but that there almost certainly is a light at the end of the tunnel?

It's called being realistic compared to your happy clappy interpretation.

The Daily Mail ‘reports’ in the way it does to sell newspapers and get clicks. Very little of the slant they take on things relate to reality.

I agree. Even a vague timeline from reputable sources would make folk more likely to say ok, I can do this for a few more months.

@AgentCooper

I agree. Even a vague timeline from reputable sources would make folk more likely to say ok, I can do this for a few more months.

But the whole point is this is all guesstimation. Noone knows. We could be lucky and it runs its course and ends itself. It could mutate into something less or more severe. We could find that a vaccine works today but not for mutations. Its all guess work.

I'm not a dm fan but it's saying that yes a vaccine maybe available in early next year, eg March or April, not the 3 months @SmilingAloe believes and inferred. And that even still that's not a magic wand as very few people would be eligible and it would take a bloody long time to get vaccinated numbers up, so the current precautions are with us for the medium term if not longer.

It really isn't rocket science! Except for those living in cloud cuckoo land.

Bad news sells papers/keeps you in advertising revenue. I think the way the press has behaved in this country is highly irresponsible

One thing that's amazed me this year is how little patience people have - nine months doesn't seem very long to me but people act as if a three week lockdown (as it was originally sold) is an unbearable eternity

@shoofle

One thing that's amazed me this year is how little patience people have - nine months doesn't seem very long to me but people act as if a three week lockdown (as it was originally sold) is an unbearable eternity

I guess whether 9 months is a long time or not depends on your situation. For me, 9 months is a slog but doable. The hardest bit is that my family live abroad and I haven’t seen them since Christmas (and they haven’t seen their young grandchildren, who obviously change a lot in the 18 months it’ll likely be before we see them again). But our income is currently ok, we live in a comfortable house. For my friend who has lost her job and livelihood as she works in a ‘non viable’ industry, who is a single mum with no support, 9 months feels like an eternity. I’m not sure it has much to do with patience.