The Virus vs The Viral
Trump repeatedly said Covid would just go away. In March of 2020, his current co-president claimed that there would probably be no new cases in the US by the end of April. Five years and 1.2 million American deaths later (and more than 20 million worldwide), those predictions have been proven wrong. But the people who made them are in charge and a different kind of misinformation has taken hold. David Wallace-Wells in the NYT (Gift Article): The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else. (But truth was one of Covid’s other victims.) “Though the world has been scarred by all that death and illness, it is considered hysterical to narrate the history of the pandemic by focusing on it. Covid minimizers and vaccine skeptics now run the country’s health agencies, but the backlash isn’t just on the right. Many states have tied the hands of public health authorities in dealing with future pandemic threats, and mask bans have been put in place in states as blue as New York. Everyone has a gripe with how the pandemic was handled, and many of them are legitimate. But our memories are so warped by denial, suppression and sublimation that Covid revisionism no longer even qualifies as news.”
+ A few related items: WSJ (Gift Article): Mystery Disease Linked to Bats Kills Scores in Congo. And, Bird Flu’s Spread Among Dairy Cows Appears to Be Picking Up Its Pace. And, FDA meeting to choose flu vaccine composition canceled without explanation. And, Inside the Collapse at the NIH.
