Of headlines and real life

I keep seeing ever-more-alarming headlines warning of some new strain of the Pestilence.

The latest variant is super-duper-extra alarming!  Not only does it evade the Holy Vaccine, but it doesn't show up on any of the current tests, and it has no symptoms!  Oh, noes!  Anyone around you could be infected!  You could be infected, and you'd never know it!  PANIC!!!!!!

This is seriously getting into N-Ray territory, only with a claim that N-Rays are dangerous.

Meanwhile in the actual world, the Elder Strains are still around, still infectious, and sometimes causing the classic symptoms: I recently learned that a college classmate is in the hospital (in SoCal), slowly recovering from two weeks of Coofmonia.  Apparently he was vaxxed, and had been following the California rules, but he ended up in the hospital anyway.  At least he is recovering.

Also: regular old flu is still a thing, and can still be deadly.  Losing sight of that by focusing narrowly on one particular virus, however novel, is counterproductive.

The mainstream press has long been very bad indeed at presenting the public with the information needed for threat assessment, and the past couple of years have been really over-the-top bad in regard to information about threats, risk factors, mitigation measures, etc.