When establishment media outlets report on health scares these days, many Americans no longer react with automatic fear. They react with suspicion.
And after the media’s performance during COVID — years of nonstop panic, public shaming, contradictory “expert” guidance, and relentless pressure campaigns surrounding vaccines and lockdowns — journalists should not be surprised by that reaction.
On Tuesday, CBS News ran a headline that immediately triggered that familiar post-2020 skepticism:
“Ebola strain in Congo-Uganda outbreak has no vaccine, no treatment for often deadly symptoms.”
Before COVID, most people probably would have read that headline with straightforward concern. An Ebola outbreak in Africa? Of course people would hope for containment, treatment, and safety for those affected.
But after years of media hysteria surrounding COVID, Americans now read headlines like that differently. The language jumps off the page. “No vaccine.” “Deadly symptoms.” It feels engineered not merely to inform, but to provoke anxiety.
That skepticism deepens because many Americans remember exactly how aggressively major media organizations promoted official narratives during COVID while dismissing or attacking legitimate questions. Journalists who once claimed to “follow the science” often behaved more like political enforcers than skeptical reporters.
So now, when another disease story appears with emotionally loaded language, many readers instinctively wonder: here we go again?
Another example surfaced this week in a Today headline about hantavirus:
“Will the Hantavirus Outbreak Cause a Lockdown? What Experts Want You to Know.”
There it is again. “Lockdown.” “Experts.” The same vocabulary that dominated 2020 and conditioned millions of people to expect emergency powers, restrictions, mandates, and nonstop fear-based coverage.
The problem for media outlets is that many Americans now understand the actual differences between these diseases and COVID.
According to the CDC, the Bundibugyo strain involved in the current Ebola outbreak spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids. It is not airborne and does not spread through casual interaction. Hantavirus similarly requires close exposure conditions and does not spread easily person-to-person in the way respiratory viruses do.
In other words, despite being far deadlier on an individual basis than COVID, these viruses are far less likely to trigger worldwide outbreaks.
But modern media incentives often reward panic over perspective.
Fear generates clicks. Crisis drives engagement. Endless “breaking news” banners keep audiences glued to screens. And after COVID transformed public health into a permanent media obsession for years, some journalists now seem unable — or unwilling — to step away from that cycle.
For many Americans, the distrust goes even deeper than simple frustration with sensational headlines. They watched major outlets repeatedly elevate worst-case scenarios during COVID while minimizing uncertainty, suppressing dissenting opinions, and presenting evolving guidance as unquestionable truth.
That experience fundamentally changed how millions of people consume health reporting.
Today, when audiences see phrases like “trust the experts” or warnings about potential lockdowns, they no longer react with automatic compliance. Increasingly, they react with exhaustion — or ridicule.
Comedian Jim Breuer captured that sentiment in a stand-up routine that went viral for mocking the repetitive, almost hypnotic tone of COVID-era messaging.
“And then the news cockatoos come out,” Breuer joked before mimicking screeching birds.
“Watch the news! Watch the news! Trust the experts! Trust the experts!”
He continued parodying the flood of contradictory pandemic messaging:
“Trust the science! CDC! Dr. Fauci! Mask on, mask off, two shots, one shot, two masks! Squaaaaawk! Comply! Comply!”
The routine resonated because it tapped into something many Americans now feel instinctively: a belief that modern media too often treats fear as a business model and public obedience as the desired outcome.
