The lack of objective reporting in this article, and its manipulation of facts some facts to support a particular narrative -- is, to me, shocking and disturbing in terms of our future as a democracy. nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/…
2. This article presents us with the idea that the United States under Trump was a catastrophic failure in its dealings with coronavirus and that these failures are due to its inability to institute lockdown type measures and to engage in widespread testing and contact tracing.
3. Certainly there is plenty to say about state and governmental failures and I am no Trump fan. But to position the United States as completely unique, the one nation that failed compared to others who succeeded or at least did better, does not accord with the facts.
4. Nor is it at all clear that the lockdown-type mitigation efforts (or the testing and contact tracing) that this article advocates are or were actually effective. In order to support these dubious points, the article twists facts and leaves out crucial pieces of information.
5. In the context of describing the U.S.'s failures, the article's authors write: "America now makes up 4 percent of the world’s population but accounts for about 20 percent of global deaths." True. But is this due only to mismanagement? No. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource
6. center shows that many of the countries with the very lowest fatality rates lack the infrastructure to mount a concerted response to corona anything close to what has been done in the United States. These include Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Ethiopia.
7. Something else is going on here. No one yet knows for sure but it may have to do with the young median age in many of these nations (below 25 years). Meanwhile Japan, also with low mortality, does not test any but the most severe cases.
8. The article also notes that the United States "now has one of the highest concentrations of deaths, with nearly twice as many reported fatalities as any other country." This raw number is misleading when used to describe the world's third most populous nation. The relevant
9. metric is deaths per 100k of population. These show that the U.S. is actually in TENTH place worldwide, behind Belgium, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Nor is it very far ahead of France, Switzerland, or Spain. All of these nations tried lockdown measures in various degrees
10. The article also states that "the majority of deaths in the United States have come since the strategies needed to contain it were clear to state leaders, who had a range of options, from mask orders to targeted shutdowns and increased testing. Disparities have emerged
11. between states that took restrictions seriously and those that did not." The implication is that there was one proven and reliable response to coronavirus, and that higher death rates were due to leaders ignoring these clear directives. As already noted, Japan tests little.
12. If you click on the link regarding the "disparities" between states that "took restrictions seriously" and those that did not you will be taken to a graph dated Nov. 18. This is an outdated graph that does not account for the massive growth in cases and fatalities in blue
13. states with stringent measures (like California and New York) in the past two months. Also, the idea that "science" in the Covid epidemic has been consistent and that public health officials have delivered consistent or reliable advisories is not true. Public health has been
14. rife with failures. There is simply not much reliable research on what works and what does not. These are the conclusions of the World Health Organization's own 100+ page research document, created in 2019, evaluating the effectiveness of various NPIs for pandemics. It notes
15. the paucity of research on most measures and does not support masking, contact tracing, or the quarantining of exposed individuals as reliably effective. It does not even mention lockdown (i.e. the quarantining of the healthy). Indeed, lockdown on such a massive
16. scale had not been tried until China tried it. What actually occurred in China is little-known or understood, since the CCP has been very secretive and most recently refused entry to the WHO. Moreover the state of science is far more vexed and difficult than the article makes
17. it out to be. Science is not religion. It is not Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets. Scientific truths are arrived at through a years-long process of research, debate and trial-and-error. Conclusive scientific facts are simply is not possible in the first year of
18. an entirely novel virus and we should not pretend they are. There has not been a scientific consensus so far about what measures to take against Covid. Among those against the lockdown type measures that this article promotes are the dozens of epidemiologists
19. and other experts who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, calling for an end to lockdown type measures. Right now, much is uncertain, either about this virus or the best ways to mitigate it. Objective reporting would draw our attention to
20. that fact and lay out, conscientiously and truthfully, what we do and do not know. Do better NYTimes. @smervosh @ByMikeBaker @PatriciaMazzei @bymarkwalker #COVID19 #GreatBarringtonDeclaration
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