WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Back around 2010, just before Halloween, a reporter friend retweeted a local police department’s warning to check your kids’ candy for drugs or razor blades or something like that. I asked, “Is there any evidence of something like that ever happening?”
She replied, “you never can be too safe.”
This was a good reporter, but she considered it part of her job to warn readers about dangers, even those that didn’t exist.
I bring this up today because of a new study out of Sweden suggesting that health anxiety disorder (also known as hypochondriasis) may be deadly. To the extent our news media spends its time making people terrified about threats to their health — and in the last four years, that’s a significant portion of media content — it’s harming people.
The Washington Post summed up the study this way: “People diagnosed with hypochondriasis were 84 percent more likely than people without the disorder to die of dozens of conditions, especially heart, blood and lung diseases, as well as suicide.”
The article later says, “Searching for information about their symptoms on the internet can also worsen patients’ anxiety. ‘They experience a lot of suffering and hopelessness,’ said Mataix-Cols, a neuroscience and psychiatry professor at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet.”
Which brings us back to the news media and journalists’ behavior during COVID.
Patricia Zengerle on Twitter: “FFS… boardwalk today in Ocean City, Md. No one has any self-control and we will all be in quarantine forever. pic.twitter.com/NzCWWZbnPm / Twitter”
FFS… boardwalk today in Ocean City, Md. No one has any self-control and we will all be in quarantine forever. pic.twitter.com/NzCWWZbnPm
Sunny Hostin on Twitter: “Ocean City, Maryland today. I lived in Maryland for many years. Started my legal career there. Met some of my closest friends there. Bought my first home there. Met my husband there. My son was born there. I ❤️Maryland. Reopening the economy? People will die because of this. https://t.co/vjgF0LN6xv / Twitter”
Ocean City, Maryland today. I lived in Maryland for many years. Started my legal career there. Met some of my closest friends there. Bought my first home there. Met my husband there. My son was born there. I ❤️Maryland. Reopening the economy? People will die because of this. https://t.co/vjgF0LN6xv
The Washington Post, which has great coverage this week on the dangers of health anxiety, also employs a columnist whose entire public persona for the past three years has been stoking health anxiety and assailing everyone less paranoid than her.
Libs of TikTok on Twitter: “Good evening, today is December 23rd, 2023 and Taylor Lorenz is missing Christmas for the FOURTH time because of Covid. She then accuses people who don’t wear masks in Dec, 2023 of being “selfish” pic.twitter.com/C0gWcvl9en / Twitter”
Good evening, today is December 23rd, 2023 and Taylor Lorenz is missing Christmas for the FOURTH time because of Covid. She then accuses people who don’t wear masks in Dec, 2023 of being “selfish” pic.twitter.com/C0gWcvl9en
Pradheep J. Shanker on Twitter: “Taylor Lorenz endorses China COVID policy, attacking WaPo https://t.co/3GLdNupi1Q / Twitter”
Taylor Lorenz endorses China COVID policy, attacking WaPo https://t.co/3GLdNupi1Q
