Fear

I know the world's gone mad – that much has been evident for a long while – but even I could hardly believe my ears yesterday when every radio news bulletin led on the same 'story': an extremely small-scale study, not peer reviewed, has suggested that one of the Covid vaccines might not be very effective against mild cases of one of the strains (the 'South African' one) of Covid; whether it's effective against serious cases is not known. This is a top-of-the-bulletin story?! And it's still being repeated today... What is going on here?
The authorities are keen to present the current crisis as a 'war' against the virus, but in wartime is it not the job of the broadcast media to raise morale, rather than lower it, still less lower it with a total non-story? You'd almost think they were trying to create a climate of fear, wouldn't you? But surely that can't be the case...