I got the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine five days before its use was “paused” in the United States.

Hours after the injection, I developed a low-grade fever and a headache that lasted about a day (which is the same reaction I generally have to a flu vaccine). Once that faded away, everything went back to normal — until the news broke that the vaccine had been linked to six cases of rare blood clots that could not be treated with heparin — the standard treatment for most blood clots.

The media’s full court press on the issue meant that before noon that day I had heard dozens of people speculating about the risks of that particular vaccine. I heard it several times while I drove my son to school. I came home and settled in to work, and it was on every station — experts talked about the potential symptoms and the risks. A headache, they said. Localized pain in the legs or abdomen. (RELATED: COVID Is Far More Likely To Cause Blood Clots Than Vaccines Are, Study Finds)

Now, normally I am not prone to anxiety. I don’t panic, even in high stress situations, but before I realized what was happening, I had been sucked in by the media’s constant bombardment. I found myself wondering whether I should call my doctor and at least let her know I had gotten the vaccine and could be at risk. I asked myself, “Does my head hurt? Do my legs hurt? Seriously, do I need to call the doctor? Do I need a head CT to check for a blood clot? WHAT DO BLOOD CLOTS FEEL LIKE?” I could feel the tension building from head to toe and my stomach twisting itself into knots.

And that was when I stopped myself, forcing my brain to ask the questions the way I should have in the first place. Does my head hurt? Sure, maybe a little, but it’s April and I’m allergic to almost everything blooming outside. Do my legs hurt? If they do, it’s probably because I swam a mile this morning. Do I need to call the doctor? Doubtful, since this condition has only affected six people out of nearly *seven million.* The only question that mattered was whether any of those pains were out of the ordinary — at which point, a call to the doctor might be warranted.

I realized as I quickly talked myself down from the ledge that if one day of media coverage could make me — a painfully rational and decidedly not anxious person — panic, even momentarily, what must a full year of “COVID-19 panic porn” have done to those who are more susceptible than I? How many people have been crippled by anxiety because a 24/7 media has devoted wall-to-wall coverage to coronavirus — without balancing the fear factor against the fact that only 1-5% of cases require hospitalization and the overall survival rate for those without comorbidities is nearly 99%.

Comedian Bill Maher made a note of this during his Friday monologue, pointing to a study that showed “panic porn” based American media coverage of COVID-19 was overwhelmingly negative — even when the data was pointing to positive trends like lower infection and hospitalization rates and the development of several effective vaccines. The result of that, he said, over 40% of Democrats believed the risk of hospitalization (actually 1-5%) was over 50%. (RELATED: ‘How Did Your Audience Wind Up Believing Such A Lot Of Crap?’: Bill Maher Rips Liberal Media For COVID ‘Panic Porn’)

And we’ve seen some of the other results already. Mask mandates that don’t end with vaccination or herd immunity. Airlines kicking families off flights because a two-year-old won’t tolerate a mask. Schools that remain shuttered despite the scientific consensus that it’s safe for students to return to their classrooms. The never-ending stream of TikTok videos attempting to shame people into compliance just so that they can feel safer.

And media outlets, when they could have amplified the successes of people like Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who targeted both his state’s testing and vaccine responses to take care of the most vulnerable populations first — lionized Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo even as his executive orders sent thousands of COVID-positive seniors into nursing homes. And if that wasn’t enough, CBS’ “60 Minutes” then rolled out a widely-discredited hit piece on DeSantis.

Journalism is failing Americans, scaring them with blanket coverage of the potential dangers and the risks without tempering that coverage with real data and mitigating factors. Despite having a job that makes me inherently skeptical of media hysterics, even I bought the “panic porn” on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, however briefly. Now, I’m sending it back.