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Former NYT Reporter Alex Berenson Rips New Yorker For COVID-19 ‘Panic Porn’

June 22, 2020 | By  Paul Bois | The Daily Wire |  

Photo by Desiree Navarro/WireImage

“Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson scolded The New Yorker this weekend for pushing more COVID-19 “panic porn” with hospitalization numbers the magazine later acknowledged were inaccurate.

As highlighted by Fox News, John Cassidy of The New Yorker published a piece last Friday arguing that parts of “Red America” were headed toward a COVID-19 disaster based on hospitalizations in states that relaxed lockdown measures.

“[In Florida], 12,673 people were hospitalized, compared to the 8,553 a month ago, according to the COVID Tracking Project,” reported Cassidy.

Berenson called out Cassidy on Twitter for misrepresenting the numbers because those total hospitalizations go all the way back to March and did not shoot up a full 4,000 in a month.

“It should come as no surprise that the most crucial and scariest fact in this New Yorker piece of panic porn is wrong: [Cassidy] reports that 12,673 people ‘are hospitalized’ in Florida with [coronavirus], up 4,000 in a month. Nope…” Berenson said. “12,673 HAVE BEEN hospitalized in Florida since hospitalizations began in March. The vast majority of those patients are home now. Florida has never had over ~2,000 people hospitalized with [COVID-19], 3.5% of its total hospital beds. Which presents a slightly different picture.”

“Saddest part is that [Cassidy] is generally a good reporter. And ~13,000 hospitalizations would be a big number — almost as many as NY at the peak. But the media is so in love with the disaster narrative, so ready to believe the worst, that that figure raises no eyebrows,” he continued.

On Sunday, thanks to pressure from Berenson, The New Yorker edited the piece to say, “In Florida, 12,673 people have been hospitalized, compared with a cumulative total of 8,553 a month ago, according to the COVID Tracking Project.”

A note at the bottom of the article now reads: “A previous version of this piece incorrectly described Florida’s hospitalization count.”

Berenson scolded the New Yorker for putting the correction at the bottom, “where no one will see it.”

“Journalism in 2020 (there is a correction note at the bottom, where no one will see it)…” Berenson tweeted. “Sad part is I’m half-surprised they fixed it at all. Guess they had no choice.”

Alex Berenson has been at the forefront of the battle against the COVID-19 misinformation fear campaign since the lockdowns gripped the nation.

Speaking with Fox Nation in May, Berenson said that the evidence increasingly shows that the COVID-19 projections were based on questionable science that has been proven false.

“The virus appears to be less dangerous than we thought it was a month ago,” he told Fox Nation. “The economic devastation and the societal devastation of the lockdowns appear to be greater than even the worst projections were a month ago.”

Berenson then argued that politicians and public health officials put themselves in a difficult situation by implementing such harsh measures without having the evidence to back it up.

“What I think is that people took a very, very aggressive action a month ago without necessarily thinking through what the economic or societal consequences were going to be,” said Berenson. “Now more and more evidence is coming out that we responded too harshly, that maybe we should have taken smaller steps and seen what happened before we went to the place we went. And it seems to me very, very hard, both for politicians and for the public health establishment, to acknowledge this and to walk us back in a reasonable way.”

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June 11, 2020 | By Alex Berenson | 

“This panic is likely to prove even more embarrassing than previous panics. Here’s why: the media is both confused and conflating several different data points in an effort to stir hysteria. (Stop me if you’ve heard this before.)

What do I mean?

2/ So: you’ve heard positive tests are up in several states. True. The media refers to these as “cases,” as if positive tests have clinical significance by themselves. They do not. The vast majority of people with positive tests do not become ill enough to need hospitalization…
3/ Much less intensive care or ventilator support. For people under 50, this is true in the extreme. But the daily age distribution of positive tests is rarely if ever supported…
4/ Second: you’ve heard overall hospitalizations are up in some states. This is also true. THIS IS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG. Overall hospitalizations are rising because people are returning to hospitals for elective (and in some cases very necessary) surgeries that were postponed…

5/ Now, in some of these states COVID-related hospitalizations have also risen (though they make up a tiny fraction of overall hospitalizations). Scary, right?

No. When people go to the hospital for elective surgeries they are now routinely tested for COVID…

6/ Whether or not they are symptomatic. Hospitals have financial and legal as well as medical incentives to do this. IF THEY ARE POSITIVE, hospitals will report them as COVID patients (since, technically, they are), EVEN IF THEY HAVE NO COVID SYMPTOMS.
7/ This fact accounts for the bizarre disconnect between the fact the number of people going to emergency rooms with influenza-like or COVID-like symptoms is NOT rising (and remains in the low single digits) even in states reporting more hospitalizations…
8/ As well as the fact that fewer hospitalized cases are now progressing to ventilators (I can’t swear to this in every state, but it appears to be a trend)…

9/ And the fact that deaths no longer seem to have any relationship to case counts in many states (true even accounting for the fact that deaths lag).

The question you should be asking yourself: why aren’t Europe and Asia seeing post-lockdown spikes if this trend is real?

10/ And don’t say masks. Masks are not routine in Europe. So either COVID is somehow different post-lockdown in Europe (and different in different states, too)… or this is just one last gasp of panic porn.”

 


 

 

COVID-19 turning out to be huge hoax perpetrated by media

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