The Hispanophone media´s penchant for hyperbole went on full display at Telemundo´s Al Rojo Vivo with Maria Celeste Arraras, who devoted the entire edition of the news magazine that aired on Wednesday, March 10, 2020 to countering President Trump's call for the use of sanity vs. panic, regarding the threat of the coronavirus spreading in the United States.
Arraras in effect did just that, as you can appreciate in this video- taking the liberty to call the COVID-19 a “pandemic” -a practice the World Health Organization warned against, stating that “Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly; if misused, it can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death”.
MARIA CELESTE ARRARAS: Worldwide, there are already a hundred countries reporting cases of Coronavirus. Technically it is a pandemic, although officially they have not cataloged it as such for reasons that, well, are too long to explain.
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The virus causes mild, almost imperceptible symptoms in about 82% of cases, while for the other 18% it´s very different. In such cases it enters the body and causes damage with the force and speed of a hurricane.
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ARRARAS: Everything is connected.
MARTY: This virus is a systemic thing and is damaging all the organs.
It begs the question: why would she call it a pandemic and then deny her viewers an explanation? In addition, Arraras not only ignored the advice from the World Health Organization who, in effect, characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic the day AFTER Arraras´ report, but she seemed to contradict herself when stating, only seconds after her apocalyptic pandemic statement, that only a small “minority” of people will suffer severe cases of the virus.
Relying on the know-how of doctor Aileen Marty, an expert on infectious diseases at FIU, Al Rojo Vivo produced a morose three-minute video, complete with horror music and frightening graphics, an excerpt of which you can see above, complete with the forewarning of a cataclysm: “This virus is a systemic thing and is damaging all the organs.”
That's what you call being caught red handed.
Click ´Expand´ to view the complete transcripts of the referenced portions of Al Rojo Vivo with Maria Celeste Arraras, as they were aired on Telemundo, on March 10, 2020:
MARIA CELESTE ARRARAS: Worldwide there are already a hundred countries reporting cases of coronavirus. Technically it is a pandemic, although officially they have not cataloged it as such for reasons that, well, are too long to explain. But in the United States there are nearly 800 confirmed cases, 28 deaths. However, the figure is suspected to be higher, since thanks to the absence of available evidence there are cases that have not yet been diagnosed. That's what we're going to talk about, but that's what we've deployed correspondents both to the East and West coast of the United States and to key countries like China and Italy. They're waiting for us to start. At the studio, we also have doctors and experts in the field and we will also have on satellite from Los Angeles, another expert on hand to answer all your questions.
Scientists have made it known that coronavirus attacks people in different ways depending on their health condition. The virus causes mild, almost imperceptible symptoms in about 82% of cases, while for the other 18% it´s very different. In such cases it enters the body and causes damage with the force and speed of a hurricane. The following report shows how this disease progresses in the most severe cases, which as we say again, is the larger minority.
For most patients, the new coronavirus starts and ends in their lungs, because like the flu, it's a respiratory disease.
DRA. AILEEN MARTY: It is a virus that when it enters a person's system, it gets into the blood and can reach all the organs.
ARRARAS: The disease can reach three stages: in the first few days of infection the new coronavirus invades quickly and kills the lung cells, congesting the airways. It starts with a runny nose, coughing and sneezing. For the vast majority of sufferers, the symptoms do not progress, but in some cases, when they enter the second phase, patients develop pneumonia together with symptoms such as shortness of breath. That's when phase two comes in and the immune system is activated to defend the body from the invading virus. But in the case of coronavirus, the remedy instead of helping worsens the patient’s condition.
MARTY: Yes, the first (sic), immune system sees this virus and starts working in a very dramatic way because it wants to eliminate it and doesn't know what it is. It throws in a barbarity of chemicals, and what happens with those chemicals is that they become liquid that goes to where there is normally air in the lungs. It's like you're drowning in your own liquids.
ARRARAS: Precisely during the third phase, lung damage causes respiratory failure. A lung affected by coronavirus in the third phase has lesions that make it look like a beehive. Experts say these holes are likely to be created by an overactive immune system response that builds scars to protect the lungs, but they also harden the lung. When the coronavirus invades the lungs in that way, it starts a chain reaction that affects the vital organs one by one, through the bloodstream. It first attacks the liver, it being a vascular organ, so the coronavirus can easily invade. Next come the kidneys, and it is capable of causing kidney failure in extreme cases.
MARTY: Inside the functional parts of the kidney, a combination of antibodies and viruses and things accumulate and then it becomes something that no longer allows the kidney to work properly.
ARRARAS: Everything is connected.
MARTY: This virus is a systemic thing and is damaging all the organs.
