Category: Health Care

White House ‘Targeted Me by Name,’ Says Feminist Vaccine Skeptic Naomi Wolf

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When COVID-19 policy critic Alex Berenson got banned from Twitter last year, he sued them, and his account was reinstated after it was revealed that White House officials singled him out by name at an April 2021 White House meeting with representatives of social-media companies.

In June 2021, two months before Berenson was banned from Twitter, the platform banned Naomi Wolf, the famed feminist author of The Beauty Myth who had become outspoken in expressing concerns about COVID-19 vaccine risks, especially for women. In a post Wednesday on the alternative platform Gettr, Wolf said her lawyers had informed her that “documents from Missouri AG Eric Schmitt’s lawsuit” showed she had been “singled out” by “the White House itself.” You don’t have to agree with Wolf (about vaccines or anything else) to be outraged by the idea of government officials pressuring social media companies to censor controversial content by labeling it “misinformation.”

Wolf’s critics would say she has published false or, at least, unverified claims about COVID-19 vaccine risks, and my point is: It doesn’t matter.

People publish discredited nonsense every day — astrology, hello? — and have been doing so since the invention of writing. You can order books from Amazon about witchcraft and alien abductions and all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories (and if you order through my affiliate links, I’ll get a commission), but so what? If people are literate, and yet ignorant enough to believe blatant falsehoods, this points to a problem with our education system, which cannot be solved by banning the publication of things we don’t want them to read, because who will decide such questions?

Were it in my power to decide who should be banned from Twitter, my first decision would be to un-ban myself, but then there’s a long list of people I’d be happy to ban from the platform. Of course, my enemies can congratulate themselves on the unlikelihood of such a hypothetical scenario, but what about the enemies of Alex Berenson and Naomi Wolf?

Invoking the authority of “science,” political appointees at the White House used the emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to demand that Twitter censor what they deemed “misinformation” relevant to public policy. If you think that is acceptable, would you also be in favor of the White House pushing to censor critics of the administration’s policy on the economy, energy policy or military affairs?

Those who might defend deplatforming Naomi Wolf would probably argue that “misinformation” about vaccine risks in the middle of a pandemic is so potentially harmful as to justify extraordinary measures. To them, I would answer: Question the timing.

See, this has been my basic cause of skepticism for more than a year. Federal taxpayers footed the bill to make COVID-19 vaccines “free,” which in effect was a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the pharmaceutical industry. The government ordered millions upon millions of doses of these vaccines and, within a few months, a majority of the population had been inoculated. A huge public-health success, right? Ah, but this was not enough. By spring of 2021, despite the success of the vaccine program, it became clear that a certain percentage of the population simply wasn’t interested in getting vaccinated, at which point Biden administration officials began talking about the need to make the vaccine mandatory. This is where the war against “misinformation” originated, and my cynical suspicion was this: Big Pharma wanted more customers for their product, and vaccine mandates were the proposed solution to their marketing problem. It was about profits, not health.

It does not matter, for purposes of this discussion, whether you believe what Naomi Wolf or any other critic has said about the potential risks of COVID-19 vaccines. What matters is that the White House pressured social media companies to deplatform vaccine critics at the same time they were pushing to make these vaccines mandatory and, if my cynical hunch is correct, this push for vaccine mandates was basically about lining the pockets of Big Pharma — a corrupt motive, because how much do Democrats stand to gain in campaign contributions from Big Pharma?

“Follow the money,” as Deep Throat famously advised Woodward and Bernstein, and I suspect some diligent reporter could collect a Pulitzer Prize for exposing what was going on behind the scenes at the Biden White House during the time when they decided that COVID-19 vaccines should be mandatory, and that critics of their policy should be banned from social media. The whole scene reeks of corruption.

And, just incidentally, I have never liked Naomi Wolf, for reasons both general and specific. But we are living in a time of Fear and Loathing, when the going gets weird and the weird turn pro, and we find ourselves on the same side as people we never expected to become our allies.

All the good people are banned from Twitter, you know.




 

‘15 Days to Slow the Spread’

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Yes, today is a memorable anniversary. Jim Geraghty reminds us:

On Monday, March 16, 2020, the White House advised all Americans to avoid gathering in groups of more than ten and urged older people to stay at home in a set of new guidelines designed to fight the coronavirus outbreak, labeling the effort “15 Days to Slow the Spread.”
That set of restrictions later was summarized as “two weeks to flatten the curve,” a slogan that grew more bitterly ironic as the pandemic and its quarantine restrictions dragged on and on — now for more than a year. That call for a voluntary avoidance of large groups quickly morphed into far-reaching restrictions upon the most basic rights and normal activities of American citizens: Forty-three governors issued orders directing residents to stay at home and nonessential businesses to close.

Read the whole thing. I was perfectly OK with 15 days, and it didn’t really bother me much when they extended that another month. After six weeks, though, I was like, “Let’s get back to business.”

Ah, but the “experts” (and the fear-stricken women who love to have “experts” tell them what to believe) wouldn’t let us get back to business. With a full year of data now available, what do we know?

LOCKDOWNS DON’T WORK!

If lockdowns were effective as disease prevention, the COVID-19 death rate in New York would be lower than Florida’s. Instead, Florida has been wide open for months — and mostly healthy — while New York is still locked down and Andrew Cuomo killed your granny. What happened is that everybody forgot the original rationale of “15 days to slow the spread,” i.e., governments, hospitals and medical personnel needed time to acquire the protective equipment (masks, etc.) to deal with this pandemic, and there were fears that a “surge” of patients would overwhelm hospitals, especially in terms of ICUs.

By instituting a preventive quarantine for a few weeks, we were buying time to “flatten the curve,” to prevent that drastic spike of cases that would flood hospitals with critical cases. That policy actually worked — with a few localized exceptions, our hospitals were never beyond capacity, and the dreaded ventilator shortage never happened.

What lockdowns could never do, however, was to completely eliminate risk of contagion, which is what the “Karen” mob of mask Nazis expect.

Do you see the difference between “slowing the spread” (the original goal) and eliminating risk altogether? One was feasible — and in fact, we did it — but the other is irrational, and especially so once (a) effective treatment protocols were developed, (b) widespread testing was available and (c) we discovered that almost no one under age 70 died from COVID-19.

But the fear-stricken women craved perfect safety:

The general lockdowns were never about protecting the general public.
They were only about protecting Karen.

All policies oriented toward the emotional needs of such people are bad.

How strange it is that the same dimwit women who demand the government shut down everything to protect them from germs are also generally in favor of open borders and “criminal justice reform.”




 

‘A Year Without Christmas’

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Democrats everywhere are using COVID-19 as a pretext to shut down business. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is playing the Grinch:

The City of Philadelphia imposed new business restrictions on Monday that will go into effect at the end of the week. Sectors of the local economy will be required to shut down or severely curtail operations until at least Jan. 1.
“For millions of people, this could be the year without a Christmas,” said Stephen Mullin, principal at Econsult Solutions and a former city director of commerce during the Rendell administration. “We’ll see unemployment bouncing up significantly again.”
The poor will be hit disproportionately as minimum wage jobs in retail, hospitality, and restaurants disappear, he predicted. The next six weeks will be tougher than in the spring and will probably endure into the new year. And businesses are pushing back and taking their complaints directly to City Hall.

Dana Pico comments bitterly: “With a salary of $218,000, Mr Kenney isn’t worried that COVID-19 shutdowns will put him in the poorhouse; that’s reserved for the working class people.”

No matter what the media say, there is no “science” that justifies this. If lockdowns could stop the virus, we wouldn’t need more lockdowns. The original logic — first “two weeks to slow the spread,” in March, then “30 days to flatten the curve” in April — were that these measures were necessary to prevent an emergency that would overwhelm the health care system. That succeeded. The shrieking from Andrew Cuomo about a potential ventilator shortage proved to be a false alarm.

Despite what is being said about a “surge” of cases now, hospitals are not being inundated with COVID-19 patients. Doctors have developed effective therapeutic treatments; we have learned that almost no one under age 70 is at risk of dying from the disease. Why are the media and politicians inciting panic and trying to destroy the economy?




 

 

Blame New York

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What counts as “success” in fighting a pandemic?

Last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, made a controversial assessment of New York’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. “We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York,” he told PBS’s Judy Woodruff. “New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly.”
Fauci was thoroughly mocked for his praise of New York, and not just by me.
“New York did it right by forcing thousands of highly infectious patients into nursing homes and running the subways 24-7 with no cleaning and no masks for months,” said Phil Kerpen, the president of American Commitment and The Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
“These comments by Dr. Fauci are a slap in the face to the thousands of New Yorkers who suffered immensely due to the inept and fatal policy errors from Governor Andrew Cuomo,” said Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona.
“The media informs me repeatedly that Dr. Anthony Fauci has never been wrong about anything and is above criticism,” mocked Ben Domenech of The Federalist. “He just hailed New York for their response to coronavirus. Are we allowed to call out a degree of bulls**t that monumental?”

New York alone has more than one-fifth of all U.S. coronavirus deaths, and when you combine the tri-state area (New York, New Jersey and Connecticut), that’s more than 36% of U.S. deaths. Comparing the per-capita death rates, you find that Florida’s rate is 86% lower than New York, and the rate in Texas is 92% lower than New York.

Hey, did you know that The American Spectator still publishes a print magazine and that you can suscribe for $10.99 a month or $69.99 a year? I mention this because the most recent print edition includes my article about how badly Cuomo screwed up on COVID-19:

On March 2, the day after New York reported its first coronavirus case, Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared on CNN, where he declared that he was “mobilizing the public health system to contain the spread.” In an interview with CNN’s John Berman, the Democratic governor said his state was “ramping up our testing capacity,” but assured viewers that “we have no reason for concern” that the COVID-19 patient, a 39-year-old woman who had just returned from Iran, had spread the virus to anyone else in New York. Cuomo added, “What I am concerned about, if anything, more than a health issue, is the perception issue and the fear issue. I understand diligence and I understand anxiety and let’s do everything we can. But you can’t allow the fear to outpace reality, right?”
The grim reality of New York’s coronavirus outbreak soon outpaced the worst fears anyone might have imagined in early March. By mid-April, Cuomo’s state was reporting as many as a thousand deaths a day, mostly in New York City and its suburbs, with the city’s pandemic also driving up the death tolls in neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut. By late May, those three states accounted for 45 percent of all U.S. coronavirus deaths. . . .

Read the whole thing. The time-lag in print publication meant that the statistical comparisons were based on data from late May and June, but even with the recent “second wave” surge in other states, New York has still not lost its place atop the coronavirus death totals.




 

‘Fact-Based Truth’: MSNBC Demonized Ron DeSantis; Where’s the Apology?

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Mike Barnicle, Morning Joe, Monday, March 23:

“Joe, if you talk to a lot of experts — I was fortunate enough to spend most of Friday afternoon around one of the greatest hospitals in the world, Brigham and Women’s here in Boston — you find out their view of what they’re looking at and what they’re dealing with every day. And in the case of Governor DeSantis of Florida, he’s going exactly the opposite way from what the experts, the people on the front lines, indicate ought to be done. The first thing we need is the fact-based truth from public officials. That’s what they will tell you. You get it here in Massachusetts from Charlie Baker, you’re getting it from Andrew Cuomo in New York, Gavin Newsom in California, the governors of Illinois and Michigan, and you’re getting fact-based truth.”

 

So, according to Mike Barnicle, the “experts” were agreed that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was doing the exact opposite of what was needed to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Barnicle specifically contrasted Florida’s governor to the governors of Massachusetts, New York, California, Illinois and Michigan, where “fact-based truth” allegedly prevailed.

Well, where are we now, more than two months later? How did Barnicle’s “expert” opinion fare? Here are the per-capita coronavirus death rates (deaths per million residents) for these states:

New York ………………………. 1,519
Massachusetts ………………… 950
Michigan ………………………… 534
Illinois ……………………………. 400
Florida …………………………… 108
California ……………………….. 100

So, Florida’s death rate has been 93% lower than New York, 89% lower than Massachusetts, 80% lower than Michigan, 73% lower than Illinois. The only state named by Barnicle that has done better than Florida in terms of its COVID-19 death rate is California. Given that Barnicle is such a proponent of “fact-based truth,” doesn’t it seem to you that the viewers of MSNBC deserve an explanation of why he got this so wrong?

Keep in mind that on March 23, when Barnicle was busy smearing Ron DeSantis and the MSNBC chyron declared that Florida’s coronavirus cases had passed the 1,000 mark, Massachusetts had only 777 known cases. Two weeks later, however, the situation had reversed, with Massachusetts reporting 15,202 cases on April 7, when Florida had 14,707 cases. Now? Massachusetts has 94,220 cases and 6,547 deaths, compared to 52,634 cases and 2,320 deaths in Florida — almost twice as many cases, and nearly three times as many deaths, despite the fact that Florida’s population (21.5 million) is more than three times larger than the population of Massachusetts (6.9 million).

(Hat-tip: David Rutz, Washington Free Beacon.)


 

U.S. Coronavirus Daily Deaths Have Decreased 43% in the Past Four Weeks

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Since peaking April 21, the daily number of U.S. deaths from COVID-19 have decreased from an average of more than 2,000 per day to fewer than 1,200. This decrease has been mainly due to sharp reductions in the rate of death in the two hardest-hit states of New York and New Jersey.

During the week of April 20-26, there were 14,511 coronavirus deaths in the United States, a daily average of 2,073. During the week of May 18-24, there were 8,315 deaths, an average of 1,188 daily. During this period, the combined total of COVID-19 deaths in New York and New Jersey declined from 5,713 (April 20-26) to 1,639 (May 18-24), a 71% reduction. These two states have the highest per-capita coronavirus death rates in the country, and have accounted for 40% of all U.S. deaths from the disease during the course of the pandemic. The declining death rates in New York and New Jersey, however, mean that during last week their combined deaths were just 20% of the U.S. total.

 

 

As Professor Glenn Reynolds pointed out, data about the pandemic has been interpreted to reflect negatively on Republican-controlled states. Whereas the daily death rate in districts with Democrat representatives in Congress have declined sharply from an April peak, the rate in Republican areas — which has always been much lower — has “remained relatively steady,” according to a Pew Research analysis. Yet the fact is, despite this trend, the rate in Democrat districts is still nearly three times higher than in GOP districts. The huge spike of deaths in New York and New Jersey in March and April is the remarkable anomaly in the data, rather than the low, but “relatively steady,” death rates elsewhere.


 

COVID-19: The ‘Experts’ Are Clueless

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As states began reopening their economies a month ago — led by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — the media’s favorite “experts” predicted doom. We were told to expect a deadly “surge” of new cases, a “second wave” of COVID-19 infections.

And then . . . it didn’t happen.

The per-capita death rate in Georgia remains 88% lower than New York’s; Florida’s rate is 93% lower and Texas is 96% lower. In Florida last week, there were 264 coronavirus deaths, an average 38 deaths daily, which is about half of what they were averaging two weeks ago. In Texas, 151 of 254 counties have never reported a single COVID-19 death. While Georgia reported an increase last week in the number of identified infections, officials say that reflects greatly increased testing, and the daily number of reported COVID-19 deaths in Georgia has continued trending downward after peaking at 55 on April 16.

The media don’t want to accept the reality that has become apparent, namely that this disease will never become as prevalent in the rest of America as it has been in New York and New Jersey, which combined have 40% of all U.S. coronavirus deaths. The specific conditions that gave rise to the epidemic outbreak in March and April — when the New York/New Jersey region was racking up hundreds of deaths daily, week after week — simply do not exist in Texas or Florida, and are not going to exist in the future. “Experts” have been reluctant to admit this:

A coronavirus model that has been cited by the White House now projects that fewer people will die in the United States by August.
In a Tuesday update, the model revised its forecast to 132,000 deaths — which is 11,000 fewer than it projected a week ago.
Built by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the model is one of more than a dozen highlighted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its website. An ensemble forecast from the CDC, which relies on multiple models, projects that US deaths will exceed 110,000 by June 13. . . .
As states began reopening, IHME upped its forecast for the number of US deaths, based in part on cell phone mobility data that showed people moving around more. But the institute began revising its projections downwards last week, saying an expected increase in infections had not yet occurred.
Dr. Christopher Murray, the IHME director, said that might have been because of behavioral changes such as mask wearing. The institute has since described its plan for gathering data on how many Americans wear masks. It’s not clear what drove down the model’s projections on Tuesday, however.

Oh, now it’s the Magic Mask™ excuse. When are these people going to admit they simply don’t know what they’re talking about and never did?


 

West Virginia’s COVID-19 ‘Hot Spot’

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After our trip to the Longbranch Saloon in Hedgesville, W.Va., I discovered that we had actually been in more danger than I knew:

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday that West Virginia National Guard members were being sent immediately to the Eastern Panhandle because of an increasing number of positive COVID-19 cases.
Depending on their findings, Justice said he may consider making it mandatory to wear a face covering or mask while in public in Berkeley and Jefferson counties.
“We have been really watching an issue that’s been brewing in the Eastern Panhandle in Berkeley and Jefferson counties again,” he said during a news conference.
“Those numbers are not good and that’s all there is to it. Berkeley and Jefferson had 15 and 20 (new) positive cases, respectively, yesterday,” he said.
It’s time for action, but not time to panic, he said.
“We’re running to the fire. I’ve directed our National Guard to go, and go within hours, and to report back to me first thing in the morning as to all of their findings — with the assistance of the health people there — and any and everything they can come up with,” Justice said. . . .
State Department of Health and Human Resources’ numbers have consistently shown a local increase in the number of positive cases and especially during the last 10 days.
Berkeley had 191 cases on May 12, and that number had grown to 248 Thursday morning.
Jefferson had 88 on the same date, but the number had risen to 131 cases Thursday morning, according to DHHR data posted on its COVID-19 dashboard.
Justice said the increase in cases may stem from the counties’ proximity to nearby metropolitan areas like Washington, D.C., where the virus is also on the uptick. . . .
Both counties had previously been declared coronavirus “hot spots” because of their higher number of positive cases.

You’re going to see lots of stories like this about different parts of the country as statewide lockdowns end. In the case of West Virginia, which has a very low rate of infection ever since the coronavirus pandemic hit, the Eastern Panhandle was a “hot spot” only in comparison to the rest of the state, and an increase of about 45 cases in 10 days in Berkeley County is really a drop in the bucket, by nationwide standards.

Georgia, Florida and Texas have all reopened without experiencing disaster — so far, so good — but that doesn’t mean there won’t be “spikes” or localized outbreaks that cause public-health concerns. If your local area’s current level of infection is low, a couple dozen new cases can produce a troubling “spike” in the statistical trend, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in imminent danger. The liberal media have spent weeks trying to promote the narrative that corpses will soon be stacking up like cordwood in rural America (e.g., “The coronavirus invades Trump country”), but most of this is just statistical voodoo: “Look at this outbreak at a North Dakota meat-processing plant! ICU overcrowding in Montgomery, Alabama! See? We told you so!” If you examine such stories with a skeptical eye, however, you find that anomalous events are being dishonestly portrayed as examples of a “trend” that doesn’t actually exist. Meanwhile, in West Virginia:

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — State officials are moving forward with a plan to address the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Berkeley and Jefferson counties.
But people won’t be required to wear face coverings while in public, Gov. Jim Justice said during a news conference Friday.
The decision comes at the same time results have been announced for the approximately 1,600 local residents who were tested last weekend in Martinsburg and Charles Town.
Justice said officials had been compiling information on the situation from a number of sources including the West Virginia National Guard, legislators, local health departments and other state health professionals.
“The net of the whole thing, at least at this time, is that everyone concluded things are OK and aren’t at high alert,” he said.
“We want people to continue to know in Berkeley and Jefferson counties that it’s a high-exposure area. So we want them to continue to wear a mask as much as possible but we’re not going to make it mandatory,” he said. . . .
[T]here will be a greater emphasis on community testing in the Eastern Panhandle, including Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties, said Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, Adjutant General of the West Virginia National Guard.
Bill Kearns, executive director of the Berkeley-Morgan County Board of Health, said results are now available from the testing conducted May 15 and 16.
Fifteen positive cases were reported each from Berkeley and Jefferson counties, he said.
“You have to remember that we’re talking about testing 872 people in Berkeley County, which has a total population of about 119,000, so the number was relatively low,” he said.
“But out of those 872 people who tested positive, the amount only comes out to be about 1.6 percent,” he said.

Widespread testing with a low rate of positive results will produce an increase in the number of known cases, but that doesn’t mean the community is experiencing an emergency situation, and so the governor is not going to make it mandatory to wear masks in Berkeley County. This is eminently sensible, far more sensible than what is going on in Michigan, where the wretched Gretchen Whitmer has extended her statewide lockdown order until June 12. She’s doing everything possible to make sure Trump wins Michigan by a landslide in November.