Partisan Media Miss Good News

A couple of conservative news outlets report on the damage caused by leftist institutions due to poor Covid reporting by left-mainstream media and poor pandemic policy by the left, specifically in New York state.

'Left-mainstream' media, you say, Gus?

Yes. It's not the main point of my post, but I have thought for some time that we now have two mainstream media, one catering to each of the two dominant political tribes of the country. Both of these part-report news and part-spin it to promote its side's political agenda/maintain an audience.

To get (actual) news, one must: (1) Read between the lines. (2) Ignore insults. (3) Consult other sources. (4) Actively apply one's mind, knowledge, and experience to any claims of knowledge.

Before providing an example of the last, let me say that, although I don't agree with everything either piece says, they both make points worth thinking about. The first piece, at Issues and Inights, calls out media alarmism about Covid, this time about the latest wave of an allegedly supercontagious variant that was supposed to get everyone sick, vaccinated or not. The second rightly makes a case that mandate-crazy governments are undermining rule of law.

Both are valuable points, but I have a bone or two to pick with Issues and Insights, following the formula I recommend for getting actual news from partisan media.

Consider the following:

Why are we still acting like everyone is at equal risk from COVID, when out of more than 1 million COVID deaths recorded in the United States, only 538 involve children under age 4, and just 1,195 are between ages 5 and 18, according to the CDC? Why isn't the public being told that those over 65, who make up less than 17% of the population, constitute 75% of the reported COVID deaths? [bold added]

These are worthy questions, and I agree with the story's earlier observation to the effect that case underreporting can only improve the already good news about low case fatality rates in this apparently fizzling and hardly catastrophic "wave."

Covid is getting closer to a health concern more on the level of colds or the flu: But if lefties want to keep treating it like it's the plague, the righty media can't seem to help attacking expertise as such:

Good news: The vaccines will reduce your risk of death from Covid if you're over 65! (Image from via Our World in Data, license -- more info.)

Almost nothing uttered by "experts" over the past two years has turned out to be true. Mask mandates were ineffective. Lockdowns were massively expensive failures. The vaccinated and boosted keep getting COVID -- including President Joe Biden, who not long ago was issuing blistering attacks against the unvaccinated, saying "your refusal has cost all of us." [bold added]

Really?

The left oversold the vaccines from the start and the right has variously claimed they're dangerous and/or "don't work" from the start. The truth is that the vaccines are safe and, while they don't provide sterilizing immunity, they have greatly reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from the virus.

So, sure, if by "works" you insist that the vaccines don't keep us from catching Covid at all, then they don't. But if by "works," you mean they lessen the severity of infection, they do. Either of these propositions can have implications for those of us who follow news in order to find out what's going on. So let's get to the bottom of this.

Let's follow the lead of Issues and Insights, and take a closer look at the good news on case fatalities for the risk group that they themselves admit is high-risk: Those over 65. And let's ask if "the experts" were wrong about vaccines.

Oops!

Perhaps this variant is less-deadly to begin with, but it sure looks like "the experts" were right about vaccines reducing serious risks. But I guess someone was too pissed off about Fauci to think straight.

That's a shame, because just eyeballing this graph shows that even a single shot reduces one's likelihood of dying from Covid by at least 75%. (And I personally can feel less bothered that I'm still on the fence about boosters: It would seem that they might help me from catching Covid at all if I get them over and over again, but don't matter all that much in terms of absolute risk as far as what I'm concerned about.)

If vaccines "work" (and they do in terms of lowering risk of serious disease and death), conservatives should quit saying they don't and leftists should quit trying to stir up panic every time there's a new variant -- in a virus everyone (except apparently journalists) has known from the beginning would mutate frequently.

I see good news -- and two sides so invested in saying gotcha! to each other that they can't be bothered to know about it.

-- CAV