Did Coronavirus Vaccine Story Run Same Day as Reports of Kobe's Death?
News of the NBA legend's death overshadowed the emerging COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. in late January 2020.
David Mikkelson
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share via Email
Image via panpilai paipa / Shutterstock.com
USA Today published a front-page article about the development of a COVID-19 vaccine the same day Kobe Bryant's death was reported.
At the end of January 2020, one news story grabbed the attention of most Americans: the death of retired NBA basketball star Kobe Bryant and eight other people in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. That tragedy dominated the U.S. news cycle for several days afterwards, while not so many Americans were paying much attention to the emerging COVID-19 coronavirus disease that at the time had (apparently) sickened only a handful of persons in the U.S.
Fast forward a couple of months to March 2020, and COVID-19 was a global pandemic capturing the attention of virtually all Americans as state and federal agencies scrambled to implement means of keeping the virus from spreading while providing medical care to persons already sickened by it. Some readers were then surprised to see that two months earlier, USA Today had run a front-page article (in the same edition that reported Bryant's death) about a "rush" to "develop a vaccine for coronavirus":
The pictured article about a coronavirus cure did indeed run in the print edition of USA Today on Jan. 27, 2020 (while the online version of the article was dated Jan. 24). The report noted that "Drugmakers are hustling to make a vaccine to counter the rapidly spreading respiratory virus that has sickened at least 1,975 people in China and five in the United States":
This timing should have come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to the news at the time, even if only a few Americans had been affected at that point. The disease caused by the novel coronavirus was dubbed COVID-19 because it was initially reported in 2019, and by the time the USA Today article was published, some 36 million people in Wuhan and three other Chinese cities had been put on lockdown, the CDC had confirmed the first coronavirus cases in the United States, and other COVID-19 cases had been reported in Thailand and South Korea.
Alltucker, Ken. "Drugmakers Are Rushing to Create and Test a Coronavirus Vaccine. Here's How They're Doing It."
USA Today. 24 January 2020.
Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany. "Timeline: The Early Days of China's Coronavirus Outbreak and Cover-Up."
Axios. 18 March 2020.
Did a Conservative News Site Admit Its Voter-Fraud Claims Were False?	American Thinker joined the likes of Newsmax in issuing a correction to various claims it...
Are the Trumps Looting the White House?	A photograph of someone carrying a bust of Abraham Lincoln out of the White House...
Is the Donald J. Trump State Park in New York Real?	Somewhere in upstate New York, gigantic signs advertise this park.
Is Martial Law 'Imminent' Before Biden's Inauguration?	Seems odd that a pastor in rural Texas would be the first to get the...
Will January 2021 Feature a Full 'Wolf Moon'?	It's so named for the canines heard howling in the winter months.
Were Panic Buttons Removed From Democratic Lawmaker's Office Prior to Insurrection?
Did Rep. Boebert Tweet About Speaker Pelosi's Location During Capitol Riot?
Was 'TRUMP' Carved into a Florida Manatee's Back?
{{{collectionCurrentNum}}} OF {{{collectionTotal}}} ARTICLES
{{{collectionTitle}}}
You are viewing an article from a collection. See the whole collection.