April 22, 2020

Watching Sean Hannity Is Worse Than Smoking Three Packs a Day

You’ve probably already heard the news that watching Sean Hannity is dangerous to your health, but you want to see the chart, don’t you? Here it is:

This is from “Misinformation During a Pandemic,” and it shows the increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths in counties that had high viewership levels of Sean Hannity’s show—where he pooh-poohed the danger of the pandemic—compared to Tucker Carlson’s show—where he told people to take the pandemic seriously. The Hannity viewers took his advice, and a lot of them ended up dead as a result:

Our estimates imply that a one standard deviation greater viewership difference is associated with 2 percent more deaths on March 21, 5 percent more deaths on March 28, and 8 percent more deaths on April 8, and 10 percent more deaths on April 11.

Of course, Hannity is small potatoes compared to the big kahuna, Donald Trump. I wonder how many people he’s killing every day?

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

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Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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