I think most of us are all very much past the point that we understand there is a layer of manipulation in media and we have to deal with information that comes at us reflectively to the best of our ability. This article does not define how large of an actual problem COVID is now, it just lays out how media manipulation works in general.

Now, since we all are adults here and we all understand that the media gets manipulated, what are some tools we can use to understand the real state of affairs?

At least in the United States, herd immunity has been largely achieved for the time being, in conjunction with treatments and lower case levels (regardless of testing), rendering COVID less of an actual threat to a wide audience of news consumers, which is actually an OK thing.

Healthcare systems are overloaded, in part due to an aging population, in part due to mass quitting during COVID, in part due to an obscenely unhealthy and obese population, and a population that is getting older on average. People who don't know about this yet will understand when their time comes to go to the Emergency Room and they get a huge massive kick in the pants having to wait for hours and hours, or die. So that's a separate issue in it of itself beyond COVID, it's just that if COVID comes back, or any other disease comes back, healthcare availability becomes worse.

So basically, if a thing is not objectively dangerous to a wide audience, it doesn't make as much sense to report on it, because it's less relevant. You can set up an alert condition, "Red," but if that alert condition is constantly, "Red," forever, then it becomes less actionable, particularly if the result of the underlying problem behind the alert is of lower consequence.

None of this is meant to say that resources or attention should not minimize the future threats of COVID or related disasters. None of this is to say that time and attention should not be spent on biological hazards, such as the chance of another pandemic springing up from zoological sources, or perhaps new variants of COVID mutating and becoming a problem again. Nor is this meant to minimize the very real problem that players with consolidated financial capital, (read: billionaires and corporations) manipulate the media, and that we should not read media blindly and unreflectively.

There's also of course the important story of healthcare effects toward vulnerable populations, and minority populations. If that's a separate story, it merits attention, but I definitely don't think raising a Red alert for all of society is a good way to solve that problem, as people just become skeptical of alerts.

But at the end of the day, if a problem of global climate change has once again become a time-weighted larger existential threat than a particular biohazard, then it makes sense to start reporting on it again, to a with a higher degree of importance or alarm. There isn't really a reason to be, "jealous," that an article on global climate change makes the round, while your chosen pet issue did not, because if your chosen pet issue really is a big problem, people are going to eventually get interested in it, almost regardless of how much money is spent covering it up. We live in a heavily manipulated environment, but it's not North Korea (yet).

(edited for readability)