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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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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