We have reported any number of times that Fox News was in serious danger of being held liable for possible deaths associated with people watching Fox and believing the entire pandemic is a hoax and that hydroxychloroquine was effective in treating COVID or even possibly preventing it.

Now a scientific study adds to that danger for Fox confirming that “consuming” Fox News is a hazard to one’s health. From Talking Points Memo.

The researchers looked at geospatial data derived from anonymized cell phone data and cable channel position by ZIP code around the country. They found that a 1% increase in Fox News viewership in a zip code reduced social distancing by 8.9%.

We test for and measure the effects of cable news in the US on regional differences in compliance with recommendations by health experts to practice social distancing during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use a quasi-experimental design to estimate the causal effect of Fox News viewership on stay-at-home behavior by using only the incremental local viewership due to the quasi-random assignment of channel positions in a local cable line-up. The average partial effect of Fox News viewership in a zipcode implies that 1 percentage point increase in cable viewership reduces the propensity to stay at home by 8.9 percentage points compared to the prepandemic average. We find a persuasion rate of Fox News on non-compliance with stay-at-home behavior during the crisis of about 33.5%-50% across our various social distancing metrics.

Obviously these studies are exceedingly difficult. It is hard to measure the degree that someone watches Fox News and it is hard to separate watching Fox with the overall political nature of the protective measures in a community.

I live in a red red state and I don’t know how many people are able to sit and watch Fox versus those who are conservative Trump supporters who intend to follow his lead.

But the people suffering the consequences would be getting sick and dying right now, while the numbers compiling who lived wear and believed what will take the next few months to compile then a while more to evaluate the statistics.

It does fit the entire pattern and we’ve predicted that Fox will continue to distance itself from Trump going forward.

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Peace, y’all

Jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom