The following very level-headed article, adapted from a Stephen Pinker book, hits the nail squarely on the head in explaining why we get a relentlessly negative stream of news stories. The sad fact is that bad things happen in an instant; while good things take time to come about. COVID-19 came as a bolt out of the blue.
We know that year-on-year death rates are more than double the norm - this isn't media exaggeration. We also know how overprepared the Nightingale Hospitals were in expecting a 'tsunami' of patients which didn't appear.
We know that the virus can be lethal to those who are susceptible.
We don't yet know what percentage of infected people will eventually die.
Ken would say the media were to blame for the lockdowns and restrictions because of their negative and hyperbolic news coverage early on. On the other hand, it's just as plausible to say the authorities were preparing for something based on scientific reasoning and mathematical modelling, which predicted a worse case scenario of 600,000 deaths without any interventions,
Anyway, I strongly reconnect you read the article:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/f...-media-negative-news