PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Right-wing rhetoric and the trivialization of pandemic casualties

In the US, influential commentators and officials pushed public to accept death and illness as a new normal during COVID-19 pandemic

2021-06-01
(Press-News.org) Right-wing voices set out powerful but misleading arguments to justify inaction by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study of the rhetoric used by high-level government officials and influential commentators in the US during the first half of 2020.

In a study published in the DeGruyter journal Open Anthropological Research, Professor Martha Lincoln of San Francisco State University examined how public officials openly pushed for people to accept widespread illness and death from the virus by adopting a tone that suggested premature death was normal and the scale of death acceptable in the grander scheme of things.

She tracked remarks supporting the sacrifice of those who were more likely to die of COVID-19 because they were presumed to be elderly or suffer 'underlying health conditions'. That phrase was wielded to suggest that such people mattered less, because they did something wrong or were sick, Lincoln said.

Another catchy but misleading argument was that only one in 100 people who caught the virus would die. By spotlighting the life chances of a hypothetical individual, the statistic offered false reassurance about the broader social and collective costs of unchecked disease transmission. It also ignored other effects, such as people becoming severely ill or suffering long-lasting symptoms.

Right-wing commentators falsely compared COVID-19 deaths with non-infectious diseases, such as traffic fatalities, to push for normal social and economic activity. This ignored the reality that coronavirus cases can multiply and spread.

From President Trump down, it was argued that COVID-19 was not serious and there was no way to control its spread. "Right-wing messaging about the pandemic not being a big deal meant people could be falsely assured, especially those who looked for reasons not to worry about their risk of infection," said Lincoln. "And the fact that many of the supporting claims, such as comparing COVID-19 to a bad case of flu, had little or no basis in fact did not inhibit their circulation."

The study underlines how we should not gloss over the statements of elected officials. "In response to mass shootings, lawmakers often offer 'thoughts and prayers', which is another way of claiming that nothing can be done," said Lincoln, "but they don't impugn the people who died or suggest that they are unimportant. So it's very startling to hear these claims that pandemic casualties were insignificant, unremarkable or not worthy of collective concern."

This new rhetoric around death that was pervasive in the US in 2020 was not just tasteless or insensitive, she concluded: "I think it reveals something deeper about the speaker's world view and their vision of a moral order."

INFORMATION:

The paper, which is part of the journal's special issue "Pathogenic Politics: Life, Death, and Social Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic", can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1515/opan-2020-0104



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

RUDN mathematician found a way to boost computations for IoT devices by three times

RUDN mathematician found a way to boost computations for IoT devices by three times
2021-06-01
RUDN mathematician and his colleagues from China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, and Qatar have developed an algorithm allowing the distribution of computing tasks between the IoT devices and the cloud in an optimal way. As a result, the power and time costs are reduced by about three times. The study was published in the Big Data. With the development of technologies and devices, Internet of Things (IoT) applications require more and more computing power. The amount of data that the IoT devices need to process can be so large that it is reasonable to migrate computing to the cloud. Cloud computing provides flexible data processing and storage capabilities. But Computation offloading, meaning transferring of the resource-intensive processes ...

A new soft electronic material for human-machine-interfacing

A new soft electronic material for human-machine-interfacing
2021-06-01
A DTU research team consisting of Malgorzata Gosia Pierchala, Firoz Babu Kadumundi, and Mehdi Mehrali from #TeamBioEngine headed by Alireza Dolatshahi-Pirouz, have developed a new material - CareGum - that among other things has potential for monitoring motor impairment associated with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's. A green material with many properties The CareGum property portfolio is incredibly broad with feats such as skin-like softness, it is stretchable up to 30,000 % and has self-healing capacities reminiscent of that of natural tissues. It is printable, moldable, and electrically conductive. Notably, the electrical conductivity enables the material to respond to external stimuli ...

Oncotarget: STAT3 induces the expression of GLI1 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells

Oncotarget: STAT3 induces the expression of GLI1 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells
2021-06-01
Oncotarget published "STAT3 induces the expression of GLI1 in chronic lymphocytic leukemia cells" which reported that what induces GLI1 expression in GLI1-unmutated CLL cells is unknown. Because signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 is constitutively activated in CLL cells and sequence analysis detected putative STAT3-binding sites in the GLI1 gene promoter, the authors hypothesized that STAT3 induces the expression of GLI1. Western immunoblotting detected GLI1 in CLL cells from 7 of 7 patients, flow cytometry analysis confirmed that CD19 /CD5 CLL cells co-express GLI1 and confocal microscopy showed co-localization of GLI1 and phosphorylated STAT3. Chromatin immunoprecipitation showed ...

A fungus is major cause of death among people with HIV in the Brazilian Amazon

2021-06-01
A series of autopsies performed in an infectious disease hospital in the Brazilian Amazon reveals that infections by the Histoplasma fungus are a major cause of death in people with HIV. The study, led by Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by "la Caixa" Foundation, in collaboration with a team in Manaus, highlights the need of implementing sensitive methods to detect these infections in Histoplasma-endemic regions. Histoplasmosis is a lung infection caused by inhalation of spores from a fungus (Histoplasma), and is frequent in some areas of the US, Africa, and Latin America. In the majority of individuals with a functional immune system, the infection causes mild symptoms. However, in people who are immuno-compromised, such ...

Hi-CO unravels the complex packing of nucleosomes

Hi-CO unravels the complex packing of nucleosomes
2021-06-01
Scientists at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Japan have developed a technology that produces high-resolution simulations of one of the basic units of our genomes, called the nucleosome. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Protocols and should help improve understanding of how changes in nucleosome folding influence the inner workings of genes. Nucleosomes are the basic structural units of DNA packaging inside the nucleus. They are formed of DNA wrapped around a small number of histone proteins. Nucleosomes move around inside the nucleus, folding and unfolding, changing their orientations, and moving closer together or further apart. These movements affect the accessibility of various molecules to DNA, determining ...

Childhood cancer discovery may stop tumour spread before it starts

2021-06-01
A new discovery in Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive and often fatal childhood cancer, has uncovered the potential to prevent cancer cells from spreading beyond their primary tumour site. The breakthrough provides new insight into what triggers the process that allows cancer cells to survive while traveling through the body in the bloodstream. Researchers with the University of British Columbia and BC Cancer have learned that Ewing sarcoma cells--and likely other types of cancer cells--are able to develop a shield that protects them from the harsh environment of the bloodstream and other locations as they search for a new place to settle, or metastasize. The study has just been published in Cancer Discovery. "You ...

Browning could make lakes less productive, affecting food webs and fish

Browning could make lakes less productive, affecting food webs and fish
2021-06-01
TROY, N.Y. -- As more dissolved organic matter enters lakes across the northeast United States, darkening the lakes in a phenomena called "browning," new research shows that these waters may be growing less productive and able to sustain less life. In a study published today in Limnology and Oceanography Letters, scientists found that, rather than enriching lakes with nutrients as had previously been assumed, water more heavily laden with dissolved organic matter blocks sunlight and limits plant growth. "A key question regarding lake browning is what impact it will have on aquatic food webs, including algal growth and fisheries," said Kevin Rose, co-author ...

Right off the bat: Navigation in extra-large spaces

Right off the bat: Navigation in extra-large spaces
2021-06-01
The brain is often likened to a computer: its hardware - neurons organized in complex circuits, its software - a plethora of codes that govern the neurons' behavior. But sometimes the brain performs exceptionally well even when its hardware seems inadequate for the task. For example, it's been puzzling how we and other mammals manage to navigate large-scale environments even though the brain's spatial perception circuits are seemingly suited to representing much smaller areas. A team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science, led by Prof. Nachum Ulanovsky of the Neurobiology Department, tackled this riddle by thinking outside the experimental box. By combining an unusual research model - fruit bats - with an unusual setting - a 200 meters-long bat-tunnel - they were ...

Unraveling DNA packaging

2021-06-01
The genetic material of most organisms is carried by DNA, a complex organic molecule. DNA is very long -- for humans, the molecule is estimated to be about 2 m in length. In cells, DNA occurs in a densely packed form, with strands of the molecule coiled up in a complicated but efficient space-filling way. A key role in DNA's compactification is played by histones, structural-support proteins around which a part of a DNA molecule can wrap. The DNA-histone wrapping process is reversible -- the two molecules can unwrap and rewrap -- but little is known about the mechanisms at play. Now, by applying high-speed atomic-force microscopy (HS-AFM), Richard ...

Ethnically diverse research identifies more genetic markers linked to diabetes

Ethnically diverse research identifies more genetic markers linked to diabetes
2021-06-01
By ensuring ethnic diversity in a largescale genetic study, an international team of researchers, including a University of Massachusetts Amherst genetic epidemiologist, has identified more regions of the genome linked to type 2 diabetes-related traits. The findings, published May 31 in Nature Genetics, broaden the understanding of the biological basis of type 2 diabetes and demonstrate that expanding research into different ancestries yields better results. Ultimately the goal is to improve patient care worldwide by identifying genetic targets to treat the chronic metabolic disorder. Type 2 diabetes affects and sometimes debilitates more than 460 million adults worldwide, according to the International Diabetes Federation. About 1.5 million deaths were directly ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Health and economic air quality co-benefits of stringent climate policies

How immune cells deliver their deadly cargo

How the brain becomes a better listener: How focus enhances sound processing

Processed fats found in margarines unlikely to affect heart health

Scientists discover how leukemia cells evade treatment

Sandra Shi MD, MPH, named 2025 STAT Wunderkind

Treating liver disease with microscopic nanoparticles

Chemicals might be hitching a ride on nanoplastics to enter your skin

Pregnant patients with preexisting high cholesterol may have elevated CV risk

UC stroke experts discuss current and future use of AI tools in research and treatment

The Southern Ocean’s low-salinity water locked away CO2 for decades, but...

OHSU researchers develop functional eggs from human skin cells

Most users cannot identify AI bias, even in training data

Hurricane outages: Analysis details the where, and who, of increased future power cuts

Craters on surface of melanoma cells found to serve as sites for tumor killing

Research Spotlight: Mapping overlooked challenges in stroke recovery

Geographic and temporal patterns of screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer in the US

Cannabis laws and opioid use among commercially insured patients with cancer diagnoses

Research Spotlight: Surprising gene mutation in brain’s immune cells linked to increased Alzheimer’s risk

Missing molecule may explain Down syndrome

Donor diabetes and 1-year Descemet membrane endothelial keratoplasty success rate

Endothelial cell loss 1 year after successful DMEK in the diabetes endothelial keratoplasty study

Overactive Runx1 gene triggers early disc degeneration linked to aging

NYU Langone Health chair of ophthalmology, Dr. Kathryn Colby, honored with Castroviejo Medal at AAO 2025

Chemotherapy combination boosts overall survival in patients with EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer

FAU’s Queen Conch Lab receives prestigious international award

Post-traumatic vasospasm: An overlooked threat after brain injury

Scientists smash record in stacking semiconductor transistors for large-area electronics

Large language models prioritize helpfulness over accuracy in medical contexts

In a surprising discovery, scientists find tiny loops in the genomes of dividing cells

[Press-News.org] Right-wing rhetoric and the trivialization of pandemic casualties
In the US, influential commentators and officials pushed public to accept death and illness as a new normal during COVID-19 pandemic