RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/biden-administration-obama/

These past, few, head-spinning weeks, journalists have rushed to identify Joe Biden’s next “historic” staffing choice with the gusto once reserved for finding Malaysian Air 370 or Lindbergh’s baby. This is all window dressing.

A more useful headline for those keen on ignoring election fraud might have read something like, “Who Will Pull Strings in Biden Puppet Regime (Presuming There Is One)?” I will attempt to answer that, but first some sample headlines:

ABC News: “Biden announces historic picks for foreign policy and national security Cabinet posts.”

NPR: “Biden Announces More Historic Picks For His Economics Team.”

CBS: “Biden announces key cabinet picks, including historic firsts.”

Going deeper still, CNN’s Kate Sullivan cites seven “historic firsts” in Biden’s administration, including such exotica as “first Latino and immigrant” Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and “first woman of color and first South Asian American” to serve as Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

What might make these seven individuals even remotely newsworthy is not their sex or ethnicity, but the fact that all were appointed to previous positions by Barack Obama. Four of them also served under Bill Clinton—one presumes just figuratively.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/12/04/donald_trump_a_street-fighting_man_144778.html

Politics is like boxing. Prize fighters maneuver and look for weaknesses to attack within a set of rules that are designed to protect them and limit mayhem within the ring. But Donald Trump is not a boxer performing in the ring by a sanctioned set of rules. He is a street fighter who flouts the rules. He showed Republicans they can win by breaking the conventions that set limits on party conflict — limits that protect us by preventing party competition from dissolving into civic turmoil.

After the 2012 elections that gave President Obama a second term in the White House, the Republican National Committee did an autopsy, “The Growth and Opportunity Project,” to examine why Republicans lost to Obama. Again. The party concluded that it needed to do a better job appealing to Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and gays if it wanted to be competitive in the future. The GOP needed to modernize its program to attract growing segments of the American electorate. 

But another analysis, called “the missing white voter” thesis, circulated. It offered a different explanation for the GOP’s defeat. Political analyst Sean Trende argued that 6 million downscale white workers were missing in action; they didn’t vote, costing Mitt Romney the election. In other words, there was another path forward for the GOP to win other than trying to keep up with demographic trends as outlined in the “Growth and Opportunity Project.”

Enter Donald J. Trump, the street fighter who ignores the rules of political combat. 

He articulated a program and perfected a style that attracted and mobilized these missing white voters. His norm-shattering nihilism matched perfectly this group’s lack of faith in a Democratic Party that reflected the “woke” obsessions of educated elites, mistrust in a government that was captured by special interests, lack of hope in a future that consisted of dead-end jobs, and little confidence in democracy that didn’t work for people like them.

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/12/02/denigrating-hoover/

Matt Larson (“Hoover has gone too far,” Nov. 19, 2020) cited me among others in his Stanford Daily angry attack on Hoover Institution scholars. He alleges that we at Hoover are purportedly “more interested in making money and promoting right-wing politics than in doing actual academic research.” Larson also charges that “Hoover fellows constitute a veritable wall of shame. They have been involved in just about every type of skeezy behavior imaginable.” These are serious writs against our institution and yet mostly leveled without substantiation.

My colleagues can address these particular loaded charges of “every type of skeezy behavior imaginable” in their own fashion. But to the degree that these unfounded stereotypes pertain to me, and for the record, I have never received any compensation for media appearances. I am not “making money” on corporate boards. Nor have I ever worked in “right wing politics” — or on any campaign of either party. I am a registered independent voter without party affiliation, and the author of over 20 scholarly books on classical, agrarian and military history and culture. Scholarship, and its dissemination among the broader public, are the major criteria by which all Hoover senior fellows are annually reviewed.

Writing additional political, cultural and social commentary, or appearing on air to discuss written work, is not spreading “disinformation.” That is a false charge that Larson also lodged by focusing solely on one particular television interview I did on Fox News — in part, ironically critical of election coverage on Fox News. But even within such a narrow focus, Larson’s allegations are an unfortunate conglomeration of falsehoods, misrepresentations and half-truths. 

The media relish negative news. “If it bleeds it leads” still holds, and perhaps it’s never been truer than in the COVID-19 era. Every day the news highlights the spread of the virus and tells the sad stories of some of its victims.

And yet, much of the media does not pay sufficient attention to the good news regarding improved treatments and survival of patients with the coronavirus. In contrast with the international media, the American press has been unrelentingly negative in its COVID coverage, even when there is good news to tell. That negativity is part of what fuels a culture of fear that affects local, state and federal politicians and the decisions they make.

But there is a lot of good news to tell. The case fatality rate from the virus has dropped sharply since March. The infection survival rate is 99.95 percent for people under 70 and 95 percent for people over 70. Hospitals are much better equipped to handle patients, with improved ventilator protocols, improved management of outpatients and new therapeutic strategies to provide relief and recoveries. Moreover, thanks to multiple ongoing clinical trials around the world, there may soon be a safe and effective vaccine.

By contrast with their focus on COVID deaths, the media have paid scant attention to the enormous medical and psychological harms from the lockdowns in use to slow the pandemic. Despite the enormous collateral damage lockdowns have caused, England, France, Germany, Spain and other European countries are all intensifying their lockdowns once again.

By lockdowns, we mean the all-too-familiar shuttered schools and universities, closed playgrounds and parks, silent churches and bankrupt stores and businesses that have become emblematic of American civic life these past months. The relative dearth of reporting on the harms caused by lockdowns is odd, since lives lost from lockdown are no less important than lives lost from COVID infection. But they’ve received much less media attention.

The harms from lockdown have been catastrophic. Consider the psychological harm. Reader, since you’re reading this in lockdown, you can undoubtedly relate to the isolation and loneliness that these policies can cause by shutting down typical channels for social interaction. In June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that one in four young adults had seriously considered suicide. Opioid and other drug related deaths are on a sharp and unsurprising upswing.

The burden of these policies falls disproportionately on some of the most vulnerable. For example, isolation led to a 20 percent increase in dementia-related deaths among our elderly population. Moreover, retrospective analysis of the lockdown in the United States shows that patients skipped cancer screenings, childhood immunizations, diabetes management visits and even treatment for heart attacks.

Internationally, the lockdowns have placed 130 million people on the brink of starvation, 80 million children at risk for diphtheria, measles and polio, and 1.8 million patients at risk of death from tuberculosis. The lockdowns in developed countries have devastated the poor in poor countries. The World Economic Forum estimates that the lockdowns will cause an additional 150 million people to fall into extreme poverty, 125 times as many people as have died from COVID.

Though there has been some coverage of lockdown harms, the media have not paid the same attention to it as they have to COVID deaths. If there is a COVID-death tracker, there should be side-by-side with it a lockdown-death tracker.

The lack of balanced media attention towards the good news about the virus and the costs of lockdowns comes with its own cost. Without a balanced approach to COVID news, the public cannot make informed choices about COVID policy, such as school closures. Even a diligent citizen cannot make an informed judgment about the wisdom of continuing lockdowns if only their benefits are emphasized and their costs downplayed. The media have an obligation to show both.

Latino seniors suffering from COVID-19 need help now
Florida officials were asked to avoid public statements on…

Finally, the neglect of the good COVID news breeds panic and fear, which is never a good public health strategy. The public should know that the pandemic will not be here forever. While these are challenging times – and, for many families, life-changing times – like every other pandemic in human history, the COVID-19 pandemic will end. With wise and informed policy choices, we can reduce its ultimate toll of death and human misery.

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research. Prof. Bhattacharya’s research work focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 and on effects of COVID-19 lockdown policy. He is the co-author of the Great Barrington declaration.

Christos A. Makridis, PhD is an assistant research professor at Arizona State University, a non-resident fellow at Baylor University, a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a senior adviser at Gallup. Christos previously served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @camakridis.