Mainstream media censorship of COVID-19 treatments
Analysis of media coverage for the 180 treatments we cover using
Altmetric. For all papers with a DOI, we retrieve the Altmetric "cited_by_msm_count" which records the number of ~12,000 tracked news outlets that covered the paper1. Papers are considered to have received significant media coverage if they were covered by at least 0.5% of the tracked news outlets.
c19early.org
Low-cost existing treatments
Can reduce risk
Known safety profile
More widely available
Available immediately
Can be distributed in advance for immediate treatment
High-profit novel treatments
Can reduce risk
Inherently risky—long-term and rare side effects unknown
High cost limits use
Limited production
High profit incentivizes unethical behavior
Substantial delay for development and testing
Delayed treatment due to access barriers
Why were low-cost treatments censored by the media?
A combination of factors likely led to the media's suppression of low-cost treatments:
- Politicization
led to a media environment where coverage was often framed to support a political narrative rather than to provide objective scientific information. As Scott Alexander said: "if you say anything in favor of ivermectin you will be cast out of civilization and thrown into the circle of social hell reserved for Klan members and 1/6 insurrectionists. All the health officials in the world will shout 'horse dewormer!' at you and compare you to Josef Mengele."
There was strong social pressure to discredit low-cost treatments.
- Censorship
of information conflicting with selected authorities (individuals and organizations could be permanently banned on Twitter and YouTube).
- FDA requires "no adequate, approved, and available alternatives"
in order to grant an EUA for novel high-profit interventions, creating a strong incentive for authorities to ignore or downplay existing low-cost treatments.
- Regulatory capture
biases authorities towards high-profit interventions.
- Authorities ignored most evidence for low-cost treatments
, for example the NIH references only 2% of studies in delayed, rarely-updated, biased commentaries with no quantitive analysis.
- Media coverage of science is often not very accurate
, e.g., misunderstanding confounding issues. A COVID-19 example - the media jumped on the RECOVERY HCQ RCT to conclude a lack of efficacy, but very late treatment of late stage patients (mostly on oxygen already) with an excessive toxic dose (shown dangerous in a dose comparison RCT) provides no information on the recommended early/prophylactic treatment. Basic details like treatment delay and dose are challenging for much of the media, which may favor deferring to authorities. Many studies for low-cost treatments require greater expertise to analyze. Relatively few journalists have a strong ability to analyze clinical trials and are outnumbered by the rest.
- Substantial funding from pharmaceutical advertising
biases editorial decisions towards high-profit interventions.
- PR power
- companies/teams with strong PR presence are favored in the media, which correlates with high-profit and high conflict of interest studies.
- Media was very negative in general
, inflating risk, fear, and anxieties. This may help ratings because people may feel the need to continue watching until the end of the danger. A combination of low-cost treatments greatly reducing risk conflicts with the negative narrative.
References
help.altmetric.com, help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000235983-attention-sources-tracked-by-altmetric.
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Treatments and other interventions are complementary.
All practical, effective, and safe
means should be used based on risk/benefit analysis.
No treatment or intervention is 100% available and effective for all current
and future variants.
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consult a qualified physician who can provide personalized advice and details
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