Guess What's Back

Remember SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19? Well, if you don't, National Public Radio wants to remind you.

"Just like all previous summers since the pandemic began," the NPR website notes, "COVID-19 cases are ticking up again, even while other health threats make more headlines."

Yes, and?

The accompanying story is okay, but doesn't offer much in the way of information that a reader or listener could directly act on. So the whole thing comes across as "Hey! This virus is still around out there!"

Which, in the absence of any concrete information about what people should, or should not do, makes the story seem more like a trivia piece than a useful news story. I understand that the NPR audience, being somewhat on the leftward side of the political spectrum, was more invested in the social measures that were in place to combat the spread of the disease back in 2019 and 2020, but there's no action for them to get behind now. And so the story takes on an air of "here's one more thing to concern yourself with." And I'm not sure what that does for anyone.