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What the Media Won’t Tell You About COVID

What the Media Won’t Tell You About COVID

By John R Guardiano on November 29, 2020

COVID data tell a different and more positive story than the fear and alarmism propagated by the media.

The media, the politicians, and the public health experts are all warning about a dark and dangerous winter ahead. The dreaded “third wave” of the virus, we are told, is about to crest and with potentially devastating consequences for us all.

“Wave Three of the pandemic continues its rise, and America continues to be blanketed with new cases of COVID-19. This month has seen a million new reported infections a week,” said Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation.

“For the next two or three months, we’re in the fight of our lives,” declared New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Fox News Sunday. “There’s a lot of private-setting transmission [of the virus] going on.”

“In the two days since Thanksgiving, there have been 346,000 new confirmed COVID cases in the United States and 2,700 deaths.

“Of course, we won’t know for a while how bad the surge of cases and deaths due to Thanksgiving weekend travel will be,” said Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.

Progress. Of course, no one wishes to downplay the pandemic, which has killed far too many Americans (an estimated 266,000, according to John Hopkins’ Coronavirus Resource Center). But as the old English proverb has it, it is always darkest just before the dawn.

A review of the data suggests that maybe, just maybe, things aren’t as bleak as the media, the politicians, and the public health experts suggest.

After all: since COVID hit our shores last February:

  • we have developed more effective treatment regimens and therapeutics;
  • increasing numbers of patients have been treated on an outpatient basis and correspondingly fewer, relatively speaking, have been hospitalized; and
  • the holy grail—safe and effective vaccines—are just a couple of months away from becoming widely available.

Perspective. No, this doesn’t mean all is well and that we’re “out of the woods,” as they say. But neither does it mean that that fear and alarmism should guide us.

What it does mean is that perspective is required; and that the assumption of reasonable risk is a necessary and integral part of life—with or without a pandemic.

President Trump has been a weak and inept leader, but he got many things right. He was especially right when, in October, he implored Americans not to let COVID-19 dominate them and ruin their lives.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” Trump said.

You’re gonna beat it. We have the best medical equipment. We have the best medicines, all developed recently. And you’re gonna beat it…

Don’t let it take over your lives. Don’t let that happen. We’re the greatest country in the world. 

We’re going back to work… We’re gonna be out front… I know there’s a risk; there’s a danger, but that’s OK…

Don’t let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world… and they’re all getting approved. And the vaccines are coming momentarily. 

Admittedly, Trump blows a lot of smoke; but as the data shows, he’s not wrong. If you’re young and healthy, you have little to worry about. But if you’re older and have underlying health conditions, you are at heightened risk.

Either way, though, the mortality rate is remarkably low. Consider:

  • COVID-19 case fatality rate in Germany: 1.5%
  • COVID-19 case fatality rate in the United Kingdom: 3.6%
  • # of vaccines now being fast-tracked into development: 6

The following three charts are equally illuminating. Their source:

Risk Factors for COVID-19 Mortality among Privately Insured Patients: A Claims Data Analysis of 467,773 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from Apr. 1, 2020, through Aug. 31, 2020

—Published Nov. 11, 2020, by FAIR Health, Inc., in collaboration with the West Health Institute and Marty Makary, MD, MPH, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

COVID Mortality Rates

AgeAll COVID PatientsCOVID Patients With No Comorbidities
0-180.01%0.00%
19-290.03%0.02%
30-390.08%0.06%
49-490.21%0.14%
50-590.55%0.40%
60-691.23%0.97%
70+5.19%2.74%
Overall Mortality Rate Irrespective of Age0.59%

  • COVID-19 patients who died w/a preexisting condition: 83.29%

  • COVID-19 patients who died w/out a preexisting conditions: 16.71%

COVID-19 Diagnoses v. COVID-19 Deaths

AgeCOVID-19 DiagnosesCOVID-19 Deaths
0-186.61%.11%
19-2918.15%.94%
30-3917.35%2.40%
40-4918.51%6.72%
50-5921.43%20.05%
60-6913.13%27.35%
70-794.82%42.43%

COVID-19 Mortality and Hospitalization Rates February-August, 2020

Month
(Year 2020)		Mortality RateHospitalization RatePercent of Total COVID-19 Cases (Feb.-Aug. 2020)
February4.9%35.1%0.5%
March3.5%20.5%11.7%
April1.9%9.2%23.6%
May0.6%5.8%16.5%
June0.4%5.4%22.7%
July0.2%3.7%20.8%
August0.0%1.1%4.2%

Even though the percentage of COVID-19 cases was lowest in February, the mortality rate (percent of individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 who died) and hospitalization rate were at their highest.

 

Those rates declined in March but were still high compared to the months that followed.

In other words: the hospitalization and mortality rates have been decreasing even as COVID caseloads have been increasing. This suggests, clearly and compellingly, that the worst is behind us and better days lie ahead.

Feature Photo Credit: WUSA-9 (CBS Washington, D.C.)

What’s Happening: Thur., Nov. 26, 2020, Thanksgiving

What’s Happening: Thur., Nov. 26, 2020, Thanksgiving

By John R Guardiano on November 26, 2020

The Supreme Court upholds religious liberty against discriminatory COVID restrictions; Trump pardons Gen. Flynn; and new data shows masks are largely useless and the schools should be open.

Studies, Data Show COVID Doesn’t Spread in Schools and Classrooms

The question about transmission is the primary question in schools.

In a study of 35,000 kids in North Carolina, there’s not a single case of transmission from child to adult out of 100 infections.

Insight for Education studied 191 countries, looking at the countries that reopened, and found that it did not drive the pandemic or outbreaks any further.

And Utah, which has the best data on schools, found that any increases or outbreaks were attributed to teens, and that infection was on off-campus congregate settings—namely, the parties, not the classrooms.

So it’s pretty clear the classroom is extremely safe, and the transmission from kids to adults is minimal.

—Marty Makary, MD, MPH, Professor of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

The Story with Martha MacCallum, Fox News, Nov. 20, 2020

The Virtuous Meaning of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has been a time to stop and take stock of the blessings enjoyed by family and community.

As the English settlers overcame the trials they faced that first year in Plymouth, qualities that Americans have come to honor as integral to our national identity were on full display: courage, perseverance, diligence, piety.

These are the virtues that helped to shape the American character.

The Pilgrims displayed another virtue, one they practiced every day and which stood at the heart of the First Thanksgiving. Cicero called it the greatest of the virtues and the parent of all the rest: gratitude.

—Melanie Kirkpatrick, as cited by James Freeman, in the Wall Street Journal, Nov. 25, 2020

Feature Photo Credit: Mike White, Fine Art America.

Biden’s Cabinet Picks and the Media’s Bastardization of ‘Diversity’

Biden’s Cabinet Picks and the Media’s Bastardization of ‘Diversity’

By John R Guardiano on November 25, 2020

True diversity involves a diversity of thought and professional backgrounds, not a quota system for blacks, Hispanics, and women.

President-Elect Biden made his first cabinet appointments this week. These new officials will have vast legal authority to establish new policies on such contentious issues as immigration, trade, foreign policy, the budget, energy, et al.

Yet, to the media, what is most important about these new officials is not the policies that they espouse, but rather their racial, ethnic, and gender identity.

“Biden Will Nominate First Women to Lead Treasury and Intelligence, and First Latino to Run Homeland Security,” declares a headline in the New York Times.

“The racial and gender mix of the expected nominees also reflects Mr. Biden’s stated commitment to diversity, which has lagged notoriously in the worlds of foreign policy and national security,” says the Times.

Progressive Dog Whistles. Of course, “diversity” is a code word—or dog whistle, if you will—for racial, ethnic, and gender preferences.

The idea is that supposedly disadvantaged minority groups—principally blacks, Hispanics, and women—need to be favored in the hiring or selection process because they have been historically excluded or discriminated against.

These supposedly disadvantaged minorities, moreover, are said to bring a fresh or unique perspective, which needs to be heard in the workplace and in the corridors of power.

Of course, no one would dispute the importance of affirmative efforts to be inclusive and considerate of all Americans regardless of their race, ethnicity, or gender. However, it is unfair (and bigoted, quite frankly) to favor certain groups of people because of their race, ethnicity, and gender.

We ought to be color-blind and racially indifferent—as well as blind and indifferent to a person’s ethnicity and gender. These are, or at least ought to be, largely meaningless categorizations in the workplace and in the corridors of power.

After all: blacks, Hispanics, and women do not all think alike. Their views are as varied and multifaceted as any other group’s. So to speak of a “black perspective,” an “Hispanic perspective,” or a “woman’s perspective” is typically wrong and misguided.

And yet, the left has infused our culture and our politics with an unhealthy obsession over racial, ethnic, and gender identity—as if these categorizations are what matter most.

This obsession is also a disservice to the officials so categorized. It reduces them to cardboard cutout representatives of a group rather than individuals with minds of their own.

Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board points out in an editorial about “Mr. Biden’s nominee for Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, [and] Avril Haines, who will be director of national intelligence”:

Both deserve better than to be described as “the first Latino” to run DHS, or the “first woman” at DNI, as the press insisted on describing them. The media’s insipid preoccupation with identity politics obscures what’s important. How about what they think?

Exactly. True diversity involves a diversity of thought. Different policy views and professional backgrounds are what matter, not whether a cabinet official is black, Hispanic, or a woman.

Let’s put the focus where it belongs: on what Biden’s cabinet officials think and the policies they espouse.  That’s the discussion our nation needs and the debate the American people deserve.

Anything less is a disservice to those who serve.

Feature photo credit: Biden cabinet picks Alejandro Mayorkas (L), Janet Yellen (C), and Avril Haines (R) (Getty Images/Alamy, courtesy of the BBC).

Trump Must Move On or the GOP Will Lose the Senate and the Country

Trump Must Move On or the GOP Will Lose the Senate and the Country

By John R Guardiano on November 21, 2020

Trump’s failure to acknowledge that he lost jeopardizes GOP chances in Georgia and risks handing control of the Senate over to Chuck Schumer and the Democrats.

President Trump lost his bid for reelection by being a weak and incompetent leader who failed to provide leadership when it mattered most, during the pandemic.

Now, by failing to show grace and magnanimity in defeat, he is in real danger of causing the Republican Party to lose two critical Senate seats in Georgia.

Catastrophe. As we have reported here at ResCon1, this would be a catastrophe for the United States.

That is because if the Democrats win these two Senate seats, they will control the Senate and thus have the ability to enact a host of radical legislative proposals that would effect an irreversible transformation of American politics and our very system of government.

Think D.C. statehood, the end of the filibuster, packing the courts, repeal of corporate tax reform, new tax hikes, “Medicare for All,” the “Green New Deal,” compulsory unionism, et al.

Indeed, the stakes could not be greater than they are right now in Georgia.

Yet, Trump seems not to care. Instead, his focus is on himself and his failed presidential bid.

Weak Leadership. Trump, of course, is too weak and insecure to admit that he lost. Consequently, he and his toadies are concocting ludicrous conspiracy theories to explain his defeat.

This wouldn’t matter except that Trump is consuming all of the political oxygen that otherwise would go to these two critical Georgia Senate races.

As Kimberley A. Strassel explains in the Wall Street Journal:

The biggest risk is that Republican base.

The GOP is optimistic it can win back suburban and older voters who feel conflicted about Mr. Trump but still want a check on progressives.

None of that will matter if GOP voters in rural and exurban areas stay home, angry or frustrated by the presidential election.

Adds the Washington Examiner: 

At this point, Trump’s efforts are more likely to damage the Republican Party, and more specifically, undermine its chances of winning the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia for the two Senate seats that remain undecided.

GOP control of the Senate rests on those races; the party must win at least one of them to retain its majority. And that majority is all that stands in the way of a Congress dramatically more capable of passing damaging and extreme left-wing legislation after Jan. 20.

The president’s efforts to reverse the election result and stay in office for a second term are not going to succeed. Without a chance of succeeding, they have become distractions from the really important task of keeping the Senate in Republican hands.

In Georgia, Trump is setting Republican against Republican.

“The largest shadow hanging over Republicans,” reports McClatchy’s David Catanese, “is what the outgoing president will do.

Trump, who has been almost entirely consumed with his campaign’s far-fetched legal challenges to his own election defeat, briefly praised [David] Perdue and [Kelly] Loeffler in a Tuesday evening tweet.

But GOP officials don’t expect Trump to get more directly involved—if he chooses to at all—until the presidential election result is finalized and his court battles are exhausted.

[Former Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican], indicated that Trump likely wouldn’t be helpful to Perdue and Loeffler if he hasn’t conceded his own defeat.
Enough is Enough. President Trump’s failed reelection bid is now history. For the good of the Republican Party—and more importantly, the good of the country— Trump needs to acknowledge this and move on.
 
He needs to focus his efforts on the future, not the past.
 
Trump needs to help mobilize the Republican Party for this Battle of the Bulge moment to defeat the forces of progressivism, which are threatening to take the Senate and, in the ominous words of Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, thereby “change America.”
 
Trump’s legacy, such as it is, hangs in the balance. More importantly, the future of our country is at stake.
 
Feature photo credit: GOP Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, courtesy of 41NBC.com.
Tuberville: Wrong about Some Things, but Right about the Nazis Being Socialists

Tuberville: Wrong about Some Things, but Right about the Nazis Being Socialists

By John R Guardiano on November 15, 2020

The media think they caught Senator-Elect Tuberville speaking idiocy, but the real idiots are in the media.

When a politician misspeaks or says something that appears to be egregiously wrong, one of two things happens, and for two distinct reasons:

One. The remarks are mostly ignored and downplayed. The media recognize that the politician misspoke, or got something wrong, but don’t think his remarks are indicative of some larger and more important truth about the politician.

Everyone, after all, misspeaks and gets things wrong from time to time—even (and perhaps especially?) President-Elect Biden! It’s no big deal; there’s nothing to see here. Let’s move on.

Two. However, if the media believes that the misspoken or erroneous remarks reflect some larger truth about the politician—i.e., that he is ignorant and stupid—then his remarks are publicized and played up.

So it is that the media have castigated Senator-Elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) for making remarks that they believe are obviously ignorant and boneheaded during a recent interview with the Alabama Daily News.

As the New York Times reports, Tuberville

misidentified the three branches of the federal government, claimed erroneously that World War II was a battle against socialism, and wrongly asserted that former Vice President Al Gore was president-elect for 30 days.

Tuberville is a former football coach at Auburn University. He defeated former Republican Senator and Trump Administration Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the GOP primary.

Conservatives warned Alabama voters about Tuberville. He is “amazingly ignorant on national issues,” reported Quin Hillyer in the Washington Examiner.

“The national media,” he added, “will have a field day with Coach Tuberville.”

So this is no doubt the first of many Tuberville comments that the media will hold up as an example of Republican ignorance and stupidity.

Unfair enough. Despite the glaring double standard, if Tuberville or any other politician makes a boneheaded comment, they should be flagged and called out.

Of course, it would be nice for a change if Democratic politicians also were flagged and called out when they misspeak or say something stupid.

Errors. Be that as it may, Tuberville obviously erred when he referred to the House, the Senate, and the executive branch as the three branches of the federal government.

In fact, the three branches of the federal government are the executive branch or the presidency, the legislative branch (Senate and House), and the judiciary, which includes the Supreme Court.

The separation of powers, moreover, was designed to keep any one branch of government from having too much power; it was not designed to prevent any one political party from monopolizing the three branches of government.

And no, Al Gore was not President-Elect for 30 days before the Supreme Court intervened to stop a partial and selective recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court.

Still, Tuberville’s larger-scale point about allowing the political and legal processes to exhaust themselves before declaring a winner in the 2020 presidential election is perfectly sound and legitimate.

World War II. As for his claim that World War II was a fight against socialism, well, that, too, is not exactly right. There were many self-avowed socialists, after all, who were passionately anti-fascist, and who eagerly took up arms against Hitler.

It would be more precise to say that World War II (in Europe) was a fight against German Nazi imperialism, genocide, and tyranny.

With that obvious acknowledgment or caveat, let it also be said: Tuberville is not completely wrong. He makes a legitimate point.

The Nazis, after all, called themselves the National Socialist German Workers’ Party for a reason: As Jonah Goldberg observes, “they were socialists.“

National Socialists or Nazis. Goldberg knows of what he speaks. He has written the definitive book, Liberal Fascism, on the collectivist or socialist roots of American progressivism, Russian communism, Italian Fascism, and German Nazism.

As the Amazon writeup for Liberal Fascism explains:

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”).

They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education.

They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life.

The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control.

They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage.

These are indisputable political and historical facts. So yes, in a very real sense, Tuberville is absolutely right:

His dad did, indeed, fight in World War II to free Europe of socialism—a particularly virulent and genocidal strain or variant of socialism, to be sure, but socialism nonetheless.

Media Ignorance. Yet, this hasn’t stopped clueless media types from smugly berating Tuberville for his supposed ignorance about World War II.

But in truth, it is they who are ignorant, not Tuberville. They are ignorant of the collectivist or socialist nature of German fascism or Nazism.

Conclusion. It is perfectly fine to criticize Tuberville if or when he makes genuinely stupid and erroneous remarks; however, people in glass houses really should not throw stones.

The truth is that many journalists and wordsmiths are guilty of the same sins—political and historical ignorance and a gross lack of understanding—for which they so smugly castigate Tuberville.

They could use—we all could use—a little more humility, introspection, and learning before casting stones.

Feature photo credit: Senator-Elect Tommy Tuberville, courtesy of Al.com.