Harrington School of Communication and Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI 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\u2019t think I could achieve in March, it still feels like not enough,\u201d Yong said. \u201cThe stakes are so high, the number of potential stories so many.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a 90-minute discussion streamed live on the Harrington School\u2019s social media platforms, Yong discussed what it\u2019s been like covering the worldwide health crisis and how the U.S. has gotten to this point in the pandemic.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 because outbreaks are occurring nationwide \u2013 are unlikely to see an influx of assistance from health-care workers from less-affected states.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica\u2019s mishandling of COVID-19 is not just to do with Donald Trump, although he is central to it,\u201d Yong said, \u201cbut because of the cavalcade of preexisting vulnerabilities that the virus found and exploited.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThroughout this year, people have longed to go back to \u2018normal\u2019 and wondered when that could happen,\u201d Yong said. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In March, when he was given the assignment, he said, his editor gave him the \u201cmandate to take the biggest possible swings.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to predict the zeitgeist, to answer big questions that people have almost before they even realize that they have them,\u201d Yong said. \u201cQuestions 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\u2019m seeing in the news? Why do we seem stuck making the same mistakes? How did we come to this?\u201d<\/p>\n
In his writing, he said, he\u2019s trying to bring together fragments of information into an understandable picture, connecting the dots between what\u2019s happening now and what has happened already, clearing up misconceptions and trying to prevent future ones. He said he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve often likened the pandemic to a rising flood or raging torrent, some chaotic body of water that threatens to drown us,\u201d he said earlier in the night. \u201cAnd I think good journalism can offer \u2026 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through questions from moderator Jason Jaacks, professor of multimedia journalism, students, and äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ 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 \u201cascend the learning curve through good reporting and by talking to the right experts,\u201d and urged journalists to include women and people of color in their reporting to provide important views that would otherwise be lost.<\/p>\n
For student journalists who may be facing the same learning curve while also learning the craft, he offered: \u201cFocus 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Christiane Amanpour Lecture Series was endowed in 2008 by Amanpour \u201983, Hon. 95, the longtime CNN chief international anchor and global correspondent. To view a video of the Yong lecture, go to the series webpage<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Nov. 2, 2020 \u2013 In the last eight months, science journalist Ed Yong has written 19 consecutive stories for The Atlantic about the COVID-19 pandemic \u2013 stories that range between 2,000 and 8,000 words chronicling the nation\u2019s failed response to the crisis, the science behind the virus, and the work of scientists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,18],"class_list":["post-75792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-harrington-school-of-communication-and-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}