On the matter of COVID-19, the government has coordinated and streamlined its messaging, but

is it the right message? What's really necessary is for the people in the government who don't know

the details to stop telling us things like there will be a vaccine in one year. That's not helpful.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Bob Garfield. And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

From the bubonic plague to the AIDS crisis to today, epidemics have exposed some of

humanity's darkest impulses. The hunt for witches, pogroms against Jews. X xenophobia unleashed societies coming to a halt.

Plus, U.S. officials impose a kind of censorship at the UN.

We've seen them object to words like sexual and reproductive health, phrases like reproductive rights,

to the word gender itself.

It's all coming up after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone with a few questions.

Should we throw our resources at trying to bar the door against COVID-19? Or trying to shield our most vulnerable from its sometimes deadly impact? Should we stockpile and mask ourselves or just wash our hands and go to work?

Is the death rate higher than we think? Please, God, tell me it's lower.

Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch.

We don't know, because the 3.4% mortality rate brushed off by the president is the World Health Organization's calculation derived mostly from the Chinese outbreak, which initially brought only the sickest to the regime's attention for which it was woefully unprepared.

As the New York Times reported,

the doctor leading the WHO's coronavirus effort expects the rate to drop by half or more once there's more data on the infected, and leading U.S. health officials suggest it could be lower

still. We just don't know.

We also don't know if the task force on messaging now led by Vice President Mike Pence

will be straight with us. On Tuesday, during one of the regular telepress briefings

...