Context matters on coronavirus, for the media and the economy

Buttressing this grim toll, the terror was duly brought home with word that the number of infections in Australia "also continues to rise" by which was meant it had crept into the mid-70s.

Had the 10 or so new cases identified in the preceding 24 hours not occurred, would reports have noted that new infections had plateaued (as they supposedly have in Hubei), buoying hopes that an outbreak on Australian soil was contained?

Not likely. News bends towards the spectacular by its very nature.

This is already problematic.

Discourse on (anti)social media has been its usual sewer of partisan exaggeration and subjectivity, but mainstream media have done reasonably well in informing audiences on the outbreak's parameters.

That said, the comparative modesty of the local infection rate has, arguably, been underplayed.

This raises a question. Could the coverage be just as useful, but a fraction less alarmist?

Examples might include referring to an incremental increase in Australia, as just that - say, "inching up" rather than "continuing to rise".

Reports could highlight the fewer than 100 cases (to date) out of a population of 25.5 million, despite extensive overseas travel and faster-rising infection rates abroad.

Or that, of the 90 or so cases, nearly all had recently arrived from, travelled through or lived with people from global hotspots.

And finally that most, perhaps all, will recover except for those physically compromised by age or underlying conditions. Not that this delineation is comforting for people in these categories, we should remember.

Still, given that at any one time around 1 million Australians are off abroad, globe-trotting, coming and going, the low numbers here are pretty newsworthy.

Context matters. Media companies can look to their own past reporting for this.

An ABC story from August 18 last year noted that as winter ended, a staggering 217,000 Australians had succumbed to influenza despite a colossal 12.5 million vaccinations that season.

Of those cases, 430 had died. 430! And that was just to August (there was no mention of a corresponding spike in toilet paper sales associated with that outbreak).

The great bog-roll rumble of 2020 tells us the tendency to mass-panic is closer to the surface than authorities realised, meaning there are grounds for this self-reflection.

And of course, good grounds to ask whose interests are served by a surplus of fear over balance.

Media must pursue the facts but curb their enthusiasm. Language counts.

A national broadsheet's splash headline on Saturday declared "Tax breaks, cash to ease virus panic". This was scarier than it was strictly accurate. How can cash, or lower taxes, "ease" the public "panic" about infection?

Of course, one can see what the story was driving at - that fear itself is a contagion, and that the economic behaviour it induces will wreak havoc beyond the virus's eventual reach.

These are the two dimensions of the pandemic mindset.

The infection fear is unedifyingly obvious.

Hoarding loo paper and pointlessly wearing surgical masks, to the clear detriment of the health system, is a panic with direct antisocial connotations.

Without minimising the danger, nor forgetting the tragic loss of life so far, media could reinforce that this outbreak remains predominantly a northern-hemisphere crisis.

Of the three deaths so far, all have occurred in elderly patients with particular vulnerabilities: one was a 78-year-old Diamond Princess tourist travelling in Japan, one was 84, and another was 95.

With luck, and the right infection control measures, the overwhelming bulk of Australians will not contract the virus, nor perhaps know somebody who has.

But escaping COVID-19's destructive economic influence will be next to impossible.

The global fallout could hammer Australia's already pallid economic growth through its trade impacts alone.

Thus, the otherwise directionless Morrison government faces its defining question. How to respond?

Scott Morrison is working with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann on a multibillion-dollar stimulus package aimed primarily at buttressing business confidence.

READ MORE:

While principally an economic challenge, the situation is freighted with recent political combat.

Morrison and his ilk built their careers on misrepresenting Labor's GFC success in steering Australia around the economic sink-hole into which comparable economies tumbled.

Central to the Liberal attack was pretending that the GFC was a chimera - a fiction made plausible by the very efficacy of Labor's pre-emptive stimulus spending.

And it worked. Voters gave Labor scant credit for avoiding a catastrophe that never materialised.

Think about it. Who regularly credits their GP for a life free of polio?

As architects of Labor's electoral flensing, Morrison et al may view some public fear right now as insurance - adding to their credit in the unlikely event of avoiding a recession, or more likely, mitigating their punishment if they become the first government to preside over a recession since 1982-83.

But now they must be bold. Trying determinedly not to be Labor is the wrong mindset and would constitute a threshold mistake.

It is a big test for an outfit that is much faster to the messaging around a problem than its solution. Its bushfire-response advertising after bungling the crisis was as shameless as it was quick.

Like business confidence in the pre-coronavirus economy, public confidence was lamentably flat going into this crisis.

Will Morrison rise to this challenge, or will a PM known for his marketing wiles rather than his policy depth fall short?