Debunking the Latest Round of Covid Hysteria By Isaac Schorr & Brittany Bernstein
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/debunking-the-latest-round-of-covid-hysteria/
Welcome back to “Forgotten Fact-Checks,” a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we talk Omicron, preview the upcoming January 6 coverage, and tally 2022’s already growing list of media misses.
Age of Omicron
The pandemic has been a wellspring for poor reporting and analysis for portions of three calendar years now, with reactions to the spread of the Omicron variant serving as a catalyst in the opening days of 2022.
Some habitual hysterics, including Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, a public-health scientist who previously taught at Harvard, have sought to use the emergence and spread of Omicron to argue for more restrictions and mandates, mocking the idea that it’s milder than previous iterations of the virus. Feigl-Ding even went so far as to suggest that “whoever arrogantly pushed the ‘#Omicron is mild’ [narrative]” be fired. In support of his theory, Feigl-Ding points his more than 600,000 Twitter followers to rising pediatric-hospitalization rates.
However, these data neither vindicate Feigl-Ding’s perspective, nor convict those he’s criticizing. A report from the New York Times indicates that overlapping cases attributable to both the Delta and Omicron variants – as well as lower vaccination rates in children – are what’s driving the rise in hospitalizations. The fact that the vaccines were approved later for children than they were adults, as well as the lack of consequences of infection for them relative to their parents and grandparents, has resulted in fewer of them being inoculated.
Moreover, the rising number of hospitalized children who have tested positive for the virus include many who arrived at the facilities with other medical issues. In fact, the Times report stated that “around the country have reported positivity rates as high as 20 percent among children. But the vast majority were asymptomatic and arrived at the hospital with other health problems.” What’s more, one study of southwest Pennsylvania – where Omicron has emerged as the leading variant – showed that “the proportion of pediatric admissions requiring intensive care services had dropped by half since early fall, and has continued to fall in the last month.” Pediatric coronavirus hospitalizations still have yet to come close to matching the typical amount of seasonal pediatric flu cases seen in a year.
We won’t call for a sudden change in Feigl-Ding’s employment status, but a cease-and-desist order on his context-free declarations would be appreciated.
Meanwhile, despite its valuable reporting on pediatric cases, the Times too fell prey to Omicron sensationalism, fretting that “Puerto Rico Faces Staggering Covid Case Explosion.” It takes until paragraph 13 for the story to acknowledge that only 317 Puerto Ricans, on an island of 3.2 million, have been hospitalized with the disease.
Does Omicron represent a threat to public health as a result of its considerable virulence? Absolutely. But all indications are that it is in fact a milder form of the disease.
January 6 Ratings Grab
CNN has announced a special January 6 anniversary event, live from the Capitol Building to be hosted by Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper on Thursday. Ostensibly, the event is meant to honor “the heroes who protected our democracy in the face of an insurrection.” But the real motivation behind it is staring us straight in the face.
Last January 6 was a dark and dangerous day, caused by a recklessly self-absorbed president. But ultimately, it did not represent the existential threat to American democracy that CNN’s treatment of it might lead you to believe it was. In fact, the dramatization takes away from the real heroes – such as Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman – and places it instead on self-serving politicians like Congressman Bennie Thompson, the January 6 committee chairman who objected to the results of the 2004 election.
But institutionalism doesn’t sell like partisanship, and riots don’t sell like “insurrection.” And if there’s one thing you should know about CNN, it’s that it will single-mindedly chase ratings, however elusive they may be to the network
Headline Fail of the Week
A New York Times editorial declares that “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now,” and argues that the Capitol riot continues in the form of threats against elected officials, Republican-sponsored election integrity legislation, and Donald Trump’s existence.
But this is a rhetorical trick. Trump is a terrible actor, the merits of individual bills can be debated, and threats against public figures have been a mainstay for thousands of years, but the declaration is not meant seriously, nor can it be defended on its merits. The president of the United States inspiring and egging on a riot at the Capitol cannot reasonably be compared to broadly-supported legislation requiring voters to display identification. Indeed, the editorial board admits to their true motivations for the claim by urging Democrats to “make use of what remaining power they have to end the filibuster for voting rights legislation,” a euphemism for the unconstitutional power grab that is H.R. 1.
Progressives have yet to convince the public of the bill’s merits. Doing so by calling its opponents complicit in an ongoing insurrection is the sole, and dishonorable, objective of the editorial.
Media Misses
-The Dallas Morning News highlighted a TikTok video posted by Senator Ted Cruz’s 13-year-old daughter last week in which she said that, while many people judge her at first glance based upon her father, she really disagrees with “most of his views.” The story was reminiscent of similar breathless takes in the media when the 15-year-old daughter of George and Kellyanne Conway began posting pro–Black Lives Matter and anti-Trump sentiments on Twitter and TikTok in 2020. If you ask us, teens being rebellious is not news.
-The House Judiciary Committee Republicans’ official Twitter account deleted a tweet on Friday after it was accused of spreading misinformation about Covid-19 booster shots: “If the booster shots work, why don’t they work?”
The account did not draw attention to the fact that it had deleted the tweet, or that it had been inaccurate. Studies show that those who have received booster shots are less likely to get infected with Covid-19 and, when infected, overwhelmingly have mild illness.
–Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer believes that “the specifics of what Amy Wax says in any specific moment of any specific podcast are less important than her immense Overton window-shifting value in slowly helping to retire the long-standing GOP consultant class pablum of “illegal immigration bad; legal immigration good!” Wax, in an interview, asserted that Asians have tendencies toward “single-minded focus on self-advancement, conformity and obsequiousness, lack of deep post-Enlightenment conviction, timidity toward centralized authority (however unreasoned), indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism, and excessive tolerance for bossy, mindless social engineering, etc.”
It’s a line of argument as unpersuasive as it is condemnable, and immigration restrictionists like Hammer should be among the first to reject it for both reasons.
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