Predictable, but still fascinating.
According to a recent study, "Misinformation During a Pandemic," which I learned of via the Washington Post, the "infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’s Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences."
The study's authors found that an increase in "viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with approximately 32 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14 and approximately 23 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28."
"Carlson warned viewers that the coronavirus might pose a serious threat from early February, while Hannity first ignored the topic on his show and then dismissed the risks associated with the virus, claiming that it was less concerning than the common flu and insisting that Democrats were using it as a political weapon to undermine the president."
By April, Carlson, in his covid coverage, had caught the Fox News Primetime Virus, which eats hosts' brains while accelerating uncontrollable mouth movement. The irony is that the more aggressive the debilitating progression of the illness, the higher one's ratings — which means a secondary pandemic of needless deaths through disinformation.
But it was Sean Hannity who pioneered the rather peculiar, televised art of slandering the power of covid-19, which involved, literally, the excited killing of his own viewers.