‘Normal created a vulnerable world that was more prone to a pandemic, but less able to cope with it.’
But as he watches the United States
eclipse 9 million confirmed cases and 220,000 deaths, he questions if the job
he’s been doing has been enough, Yong told hundreds of viewers Thursday during
the annual Amanpour Lecture, hosted by the University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of
Communication and Media.
“I constantly feel like the work is
inadequate. Even though I have tried as hard as I can and produced work at a
pace that I didn’t think I could achieve in March, it still feels like not
enough,” Yong said. “The stakes are so high, the number of potential stories so
many.”
In a 90-minute discussion streamed
live on the Harrington School’s social media platforms, Yong discussed what
it’s been like covering the worldwide health crisis and how the U.S. has gotten
to this point in the pandemic.
As the U.S. enters its third surge
of the virus, more than 70,000 new cases are being diagnosed daily, Yong said.
On a day when the U.S. recorded a record 88,500 cases, he noted a silver lining
is that doctors have gotten better at treating the virus and those who contract
it have better odds of surviving. But, he added, health-care workers still lack
sufficient supplies of personal protective equipment, are exhausted after months
of battling the crisis, and – because outbreaks are occurring nationwide – are
unlikely to see an influx of assistance from health-care workers from
less-affected states.
“America’s mishandling of COVID-19
is not just to do with Donald Trump, although he is central to it,” Yong said,
“but because of the cavalcade of preexisting vulnerabilities that the virus
found and exploited.”
Those longstanding vulnerabilities
include: systemic racism and segregation that has left people of color
disproportionality vulnerable; a health insurance system in which many poor
people are without access to adequate health services; a public health system
that lacks the workers needed to do effective contact tracing; crowded prisons;
understaffed nursing homes; poorly ventilated buildings prime for
super-spreader events; and social media platforms geared to spread
misinformation faster than it can be debunked.
“Throughout this year, people have
longed to go back to ‘normal’ and wondered when that could happen,” Yong said.
“But my argument to you is that normal led to all of this. Normal created a
vulnerable world that was more prone to a pandemic, but less able to cope with
it. And normal will leave us vulnerable to the next pandemic, a crisis that is
an inevitable. A matter of when and not if.”
Yong, whose science writing has also appeared in National Geographic, The New Yorker, Wire, Nature, New Scientist, and Scientific American, says covering the pandemic has been the hardest challenge of his 14-year career.
In March, when he was given the
assignment, he said, his editor gave him the “mandate to take the biggest
possible swings.” His 19 stories include looks at the U.S. response, the debate
over the need for face coverings, how the immune system works, the fact that
many survivors battle long-term symptoms after beating the virus, and a look at
how the pandemic could play out if President Donald Trump is reelected.
“I’m trying to predict the
zeitgeist, to answer big questions that people have almost before they even
realize that they have them,” Yong said. “Questions like how the pandemic will
end? Why is this all so confusing? Why is what I am seeing in my community
different from what I’m seeing in the news? Why do we seem stuck making the
same mistakes? How did we come to this?”
In his writing, he said, he’s trying to bring together fragments of information into an understandable picture, connecting the dots between what’s happening now and what has happened already, clearing up misconceptions and trying to prevent future ones.
He said he’s
received thousands of emails from readers over the course of the pandemic,
including those from people affected by long-term health issues from the virus
who felt their stories had finally been told, and from those who have used his
stories to bridge gaps with friends and family who had dismissed safety
precautions.
“I’ve often likened the pandemic to
a rising flood or raging torrent, some chaotic body of water that threatens to
drown us,” he said earlier in the night. “And I think good journalism can offer
… a solid landmass in the middle of all that on which we can stand and observe
what is happening without getting swept away by it.”
Through questions from moderator Jason Jaacks, professor of multimedia journalism, students, and URI professors Judith Swift, Sunshine Menezes, and Emily Pechar Diamond, Yong elaborated on numerous tips for journalists covering the pandemic.
He stressed that
journalists worried about lacking the science expertise to cover the pandemic
should “ascend the learning curve through good reporting and by talking to the
right experts,” and urged journalists to include women and people of color in
their reporting to provide important views that would otherwise be lost.
For student journalists who may be
facing the same learning curve while also learning the craft, he offered:
“Focus on the quality. Don’t think about what your sources think about a piece.
Don’t think about what the professors think about a piece. Make sure that the
integrity of the work is solid, that you have covered all your bases and that
you’ve done your due diligence. Recognize that a lot of this comes from
experience and that you actually need to keep on doing the work and pumping
stuff out to be better at it.”
The Christiane Amanpour Lecture
Series was endowed in 2008 by Amanpour ’83, Hon. 95, the longtime CNN chief
international anchor and global correspondent. To view a video of the Yong
lecture, go to the series webpage.