I wonder how long the pandemic would have lasted if the majority of its media coverage was prepared by health and science reporters rather than political journalists and pundits?

We would be out of restrictions and only a few mask mandates.

We kind of had that here in NZ to start with. Aside from a few career contrarians, the media largely reported what the govenment health experts were saying. This meant we had overwhelming support for government anti-Covid measures and managed to eliminate it for nearly two years.

can we have a health/arts/science news outlet? I would watch that.

I mean NPR was close at one point, but no longer.