RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/08/the-press-is-already-trying-whip-up-a-new-pandemic-panic/
Oh, no! With the planet still unlocking and some parts still tightly buttoned down, and with the world economy plummeting, “China Researchers Discover New Swine Flu with ‘Pandemic Potential,’ ” blares CNN. “Scientists Say New Strain of Swine Flu Virus Is Spreading to Humans in China,” shrieks the New York Times. Say it ain’t so!

Okay, it ain’t so. Not in any meaningful way. The media should go back to “murder hornets,” or find another asteroid with a chance in a zillion of hitting Earth.

The virus in question, G4 EA H1N1, is genetically descended from the H1N1 swine flu that caused what the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in 2009. G4 shows “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,” said a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

But … there are a few little caveats.

First, while the Times says the virus “is spreading silently in workers on pig farms in China,” that means pigs-to-humans and that’s been going on for so time. “This is not a ‘new’ new virus; it’s been very common in pigs since 2016,” tweeted Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington. “There’s no evidence that G4 is circulating in humans, despite five years of extensive exposure. That’s the key context to keep in mind.”

Okay, but it’s a swine flu !!! Um, yes, pigs appear to play a role in most strains of flu, along with birds. Specifically, the massive swine farms of China are “mixing bowls” to produce new flu strains.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/07/bret-stephens-the-gray-lady-and-the-great-a
A small piece of advice for anyone preparing a submission to the New York Times: do perform a thorough background check on each and every person you intend to cite.

A spike in the level of outrage on Twitter is by no means a rare event. Regular users are accustomed to glancing over at the “Trending” tab to see who or what has raised people’s hackles that particular day. It is not so common, however, for that type of spike to be generated by something published in America’s newspaper of record, still less an instance of outrage that should prompt the editors of said newspaper to issue a major correction and an “Editor’s Note.”

Many will recall that Twitter went into meltdown on June 3, after the New York Times published a bellicose op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) titled “Send In the Troops.” But this is not what I have in mind. The event to which I’m referring took place at the end of last year, and although it is but one squall in a vast and tempestuous sea of online indignation, I believe it offers some valuable insights into cultural trends in the English-speaking world.

The kerfuffle began when Bret Stephens—whose journalistic career, even before the event in question, had not been completely divorced from controversy—published a column titled “The Secrets of Jewish Genius.” In the column, Stephens argued that the reason Jews have made such outsized scientific and cultural contributions is not that they are smarter than other groups, but rather that they have benefited—over the course of their history—from certain beliefs, practices and traditions. These would include being asked “not only to observe and obey but also to discuss and disagree” and understanding that “everything that is intangible—knowledge most of all—is potentially everlasting.” In fact, the column’s original subheading was “It’s not about having high I.Q.s.” (Stephens even went so far as to say “what makes Jews special is that they aren’t,” suggesting that explanatory coherence was not his primary concern.)

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084

President Trump calls it the “fake news.” I’ve tried to steer mostly clear of that term, but it just gets harder and harder. You keep thinking that it must be possible to turn to some newspaper or TV news channel for just some basic information on what is going on in the world. But it turns out that the desperate effort to come up with something, anything that will defeat the Republicans or the President requires distorting or suppressing even the most basic facts of what is happening.

There were three years of the Russia, Russia, Russia collusion hoax. Has any media outlet that promoted that fraud ever issued any sort of apology or correction? If so, I have never seen it. Ditto for the Ukraine “quid pro quo” that wasn’t. Just this past weekend, Trump gave what I thought was a very decent and unifying patriotic speech at Mt. Rushmore. Here is the text. For every major left-wing media outlet, it was “dark” and “divisive.” Try reading the text and see if you can find that. Could they really think that nobody would read the text?

But then, the significance of Trump’s speech is a matter of opinion. Let’s consider a matter much closer to simple fact: the number of daily cases and deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the U.S. Figures are reported daily, with charts going back to February, at various places, including a site called Worldometers that I have frequently linked. While there are reasons (that I have discussed in several posts) to think that these data might not be fully accurate, they are still the basic data that we all are working with.