Once the coronavirus pandemic is all over, and the world recovers from the plague of COVID-19, a lot of stock will be taken of all that we have lost. There will be hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and millions more altered for the worse, many of which irreparably so. We don’t make the timeline for when this recovery period arrives, the virus does, and because of that, it’s all unknown.

What we do know is that there will be a lot of institutions that just can not exist anymore, simply because they’re way too dangerous to public health. Two examples are FOX News Channel and the wet markets in Asia. Half a world away from each other, and existing in completely different spheres of influence, both are getting people killed due to their complete recklessness. We’ll start with the latter, as that’s where this all (and by that our current hellscape within which we’re all currently inhabiting got started.

Watch this VOX video, in fact watch it a couple times just for all of it to sink in:

As University of Houston Professor Peter Li points out in the video: “The majority of the people in China do not eat wildlife animals. Those people who consume these wildlife animals are the rich and the powerful –a small minority.”

As Sam Ellis of VOX writes: “This video explains how the people of China are themselves victims of the conditions that led to coronavirus. The virus is affecting many different countries and cultures, and there is never justification for xenophobia or racism.”

He’s absolutely right. And it’s also not xenophobic, or racist, or culturally condescending, or culturally arrogant, to point out that the Chinese government needs to eradicate this practice immediately. More importantly, they need to make sure it never returns.

Yes, animals that we in this country consider cute, cuddly, and in some cases literally family, are regarded as food over there. While that may be deplorably offensive to many of us, the moral debates amount animal rights must be saved for a different time and space.

Public health must come first; period, point blank.

As the video points out, patient zero for COVID-19 emerged from a wet market in Wuhan, and this wasn’t the first time. Ellis writes: “In 2003, a virus very similar to SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a market in Foshan, China. It caused the SARS disease, which spread to dozens of countries and killed nearly 800 people.”

After absorbing all this, I also strongly suggest you watch this video from 60 Minutes Australia, a segment which shows a journalist going undercover to expose the wet markets. The segment also gives a glimpse into daily life in Hong Kong, some aspects of which we already experiencing.

It also features an interview with Gabriel Leung, a Professor at the University of Hong Kong who is considered the world’s foremost expert on coronavirus. Unfortunately, the wet market atrocities aren’t confined to just China- they’re found in several Asian countries.

Now that we’ve covered the spark that initially inflamed the pandemic, let’s look at the gasoline which fanned the flames. Multiple news outlets have covered extensively how poor the United States response to this has been. It will stand up as an example, throughout history, of how not to handle a pandemic crisis.

The ABSOLUTE WORST thing you can during a situation like this is downplay its severity. Or even worse, deny that it even exists. Enter FOX News Channel, otherwise known as Trump/MAGA state television.

Watch this video:

Now be sure to watch this video as well:

Sure, FOX, or as I call it Faux Noise Channel did terminate Trish Regan for her “coronavirus is a hoax” b.s. but that’s just whacking one mole in a game where dozens are popping up all the time. It’s not just her, it’s even not just FOX, it’s the entire far right wing conspiracy theory loving racism partaking in media machine.

It’s Rush Limbaugh, OANN, Alex Jones….pretty much anyone who ever uses the following phrases: “the deep state,” “MAGA,” “Keep America Great,” “America First” etc. So how does this problem go away?

Ideally, the “invisible hand” of the so-called “free market” would deplatform these trolls and nutjob. The consumer, in an ideal world, would just stop buying what is poison in information form. What you have is poison labeled as medicine, but once the consumer has repeatedly been told it’s poison, no matter what packaging it comes in, and they still consume it, well, then you need legal intervention.

FOX’s ratings numbers show that Americans are not intelligent enough, or sane enough (or they are, but their racism gets in the way) to turn off FNC for good. So the judicial system has to run its rule over them. This is the classic example of “the first amendment does not give you the right to yell ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theatre.”

People are dying and will die because they believed what they saw and heard on FOX. (And in Trump’s daily press briefings, but that’s another post for another time). A lawsuit could be coming, but that opens up a whole lot of questions. Is it class action? Who is the primary defendant? How do you prove liability?

What’s happening now isn’t even about Republican vs. Democrat, right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal. This is a whole lot serious than bitching about Barack Obama wearing a tan suit or conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and Seth Rich.

Something needs to happen because FOX is dangerous propaganda, and it’s going to make this pandemic a whole lot worse than it needs to be.

Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No,  I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation. 

You can follow Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com on Twitter here and his cat on Instagram at this link.

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.