By popular vote: The worst COVID take of February 1-21, 2020.
Context: Early mask advice continues to be cited by COVID minimizers to this day. The concern over shortages was real, but even well-meaning lies damage credibility. businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-adv…
As for minimizing the risk of pandemic, that's also aged poorly. While no one wants to be wrong, the risks of were asymmetric. Overhype it and you may look foolish. Many reporters and government officials chose to underhype instead.
Context: More than 0.1% are vulnerable, because more than twice the number have died in many places—soon, in all of America.
And those who would survive an infection aren't necessarily unharmed by the infection and their lives aren't "destroyed" by avoiding infection.
And zero have died from the vaccine—any deaths are much, much rarer than 0.1%.
In the clinical trials, tens of thousands of volunteers got them and there were ZERO deaths caused by the vaccines. In fact, more deaths occurred in the saline control groups. fda.gov/media/144245/d…
I've read commentary about "bad takes" accounts that they're degenerate because they only dunk & avoid dialog. Posting images w/o tags is supposedly prevents dialog. Fair criticism.
So as an experiment, I called out a bunch of folks amplifying nonsense.
Context: The "John Hopkins report" was a writeup of an online presentation that included a wildly incorrect quote that there had been no increase in overall deaths.
Context: One could imagine Fourth Amendment problems with contact tracing data collection. But a challenge to a regulation with criminal penalties requiring restaurants in Los Angeles to collect such information was voluntarily dismissed after denial of preliminary injunction.
It's a worse COVID take than a legal take. Why tell 81,500 followers (and any government agents) where you are, but refuse contact if it turns out your server has the virus?
Context: When cases were rising in October, Trump said it was just because testing was rising. That was wildly, irresponsibly wrong, as 3000 deaths a day for the last month show.
What Trump and Jordan either don't understand (or hope their followers don't understand) is the *rate* of positives was up then and down now. The trends are real, not an artifact of people testing (which folks do more when they think they might be sick).