In "Recommended Reading," the New York Times wrings its hands about the "emptiest downtown in America" -- San Francisco. It says in the post-pandemic world "tech workers are staying home" and buying their expensive salads in the suburbs. The Times doesn't seem to know that San Francisco is home. It is a bedroom community. All the tech workers live there, and work in the suburbs. It's been a reverse-commute for 20 years. If the streets of San Francisco seem abandoned these days, maybe look to something other than post-pandemic work habits. How about the homelessness crisis caused by policies advocated by the Times for decades?
Covid-2019
Covid-2019
Sunday, December 18, 2022
You can't tell the bad news from the good news when you can't tell what's news. In "Recommended Reading," a selection of stories from the last 24 hours claiming that Covid cases in China will "explode" as they come out of lockdowns, and at the same time that China is locking down. We used to think the truth is out there somewhere. Now we're not so sure.
Covid-2019
Saturday, December 17, 2022
When we were being taught journalism a half century ago, this headline from The New York Times in "Recommended Reading" would have gotten us a failing grade: "Just How Bad Is the 'Tripledemic'?" Before you even read the first paragraph, it has tricked you into accepting that there is a "tripledemic" in the first place. First it invents a new word which, by interpreting in your mind, you are forced to give meaning to, freighted by all its constituent connotations; and second, it constrains you to consider only the question of how bad it is, not whether it even exists.
Covid-2019
Friday, December 16, 2022
Allow "Recommended Reading" to give you another booster shot in your program of immunization against junk science. It's a study, published in no less than the American Journal of Medicine, finding that people unvaccinated against Covid are 48% more likely to get in traffic accidents. Apparently no control for age (you people tend get vaxxed less, and they get in almost all the accidents). In the paper, having clearly implied causality (why else write the paper), the authors disavow it. What else, they wonder, could lead to these results? "One possibility relates to a ... belief in freedom that contributes to both vaccination preferences and increased traffic risks." We show you this because it is pathetically funny. But it's also terrifying that a once-proud journal palms off such politicized musings as science.
Covid-2019
Thursday, December 15, 2022
In "Recommended Reading," a virtual debate. The Commonwealth Fund says vaccines have prevent millions of Covid hospitalizations and deaths. Our friend Alex Berenson feels differently. Or... instead of wallowing in yesterday's science you could luxuriate in tomorrow's with a wonderful explainer from the Wall Street Journal on the breakthrough in fusion energy production at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory's National Ignition Facility.
Covid-2019
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Today in "Recommended Reading," an interesting high-level think-piece on the concept of "pandemicism." It's a particular mindset that elevates potential mortality from communicable diseases to a place of primacy versus all other possible causes, driving a uniquely intense frenzy of fear and concern out of all proportion to the actual dimensions of the threat (as opposed to any other). The author suggests multiple possible explanations, including pecuniary self-interest. Nah. Couldn't be. Saint-like institutions like NIAID, WHO and the Wuhan Virological Laboratory would never be tainted with self-interest. Would they?
Covid-2019
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Now we know what CDC Director Rochelle Walensky meant when she warned back in March 2021 of "a recurring feeling I have of impending doom" about Covid. That was right when the Omicron wave collapsed, and the world settled into not caring much about the pandemic anymore. A bureaucrat's worst nightmare is when the emergency is over. Now, in "Recommended Reading," a great story about how she can't even get calls returned on Capitol Hill. It's over.
Covid-2019
Monday, December 12, 2022
In "Recommended Reading," the New York Times runs a shameless autohagiography by Dr. Anthony Fauci. One especially galling element his self-nomination for sainthood for saving the world from HIV-AIDS (the Dallas Buyers' Club would disagree as to his true role). And, of course -- you knew he was going to say this -- he writes, "our fight against Covid-19 has been hindered by the profound political divisiveness in our society. In a way that we have never seen before, decisions about public health measures such as wearing masks and being vaccinated with highly effective and safe vaccines have been influenced by disinformation and political ideology." In other words, disagreement as to public policy -- the very core of the job of politics -- is an unacceptable interference with the preconceived notions of the bureaucrats who carry it out.
Covid-2019
Sunday, December 11, 2022
The report of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis has been published. It's inevitably a partisan product. Just as inevitably, it mentions not one single solitary word about the lethal mandates by blue state governors such as New York's Andrew Cuomo for nursing homes to accommodate infected persons, leading to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Practically a genocide. Nope. The Committee finds that the only problem at nursing homes is that the staffs were underpaid. Not one word about gain-of-function research. Not. One. The word "leak" as in "lab leak" never appears. Not. Once. It's all in "Recommended Reading," just in case your doctor has told you you're not getting enough hypocrisy.
Covid-2019
Saturday, December 10, 2022
In "Recommended Reading," further damning evidence from the Twitter Files liberated by Elon Musk. In the pandemic, Jay Battacharya, a distinguished professor of Medicine at Stanford, started tweeting his reasoned skepticism about hard lockdowns. Twitter staff didn't have the courage or the decency to openly ban him from the platform -- no, they didn't want him to be able to complain about their suppression of his scientific viewpoint. Instead, they covertly "shadow-banned" him so that the algorithm determining which tweets are "trending" would ignore his. He could talk. But no one could hear. Now the cowards are exposed. No wait. This story too is being "shadow banned." The mainstream media like the New York Times doesn't even think it's worth a mention.