USA Today Still Distributing Dangerously Misleading Article About Lockdown Efficacy and Safety
The business of "Fact-Checking" has thankfully been fairly well debunked. Let USA Today know that they have left up a dangerously misleading article.
Citing an array of so-called “Fact-Check” resources and some medical dude’s opinion as their sources on the monopoly on truth, USA Today published this embarrassing article in Feb 2022, full of bravado and certainty, claiming that a position paper published by economists was incorrect.
The paper in question was an evidence-based meta-analysis that examined published, peer-reviewed estimates of the impact of lockdowns on mortality from COVID-19, which came in at merely 0.2%.
The paper, “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality” was never represented by the authors or the publishing website as a peer-reviewed meta-analysis, but USA Today found some people on the internet who incorrectly described it as such, and used their error as a ding against the paper and its authors, which of course, is non-sequitur.
The paper also reported the massive economic costs of lockdowns, which is unquestionably correct and is now widely established.
But for USA Today, in their opinion, and in the opinion of their “experts”, the findings of the study were “missing context”, citing unidentified “public health and medical experts”.
“Public health and medical experts say the paper is flawed, in part due to its overly broad definition of ‘lockdown.’ Experts have also criticized the working paper's emphasis on the immediate effect of lockdowns on COVID-19 deaths instead of disease transmission. Other peer-reviewed studies have found lockdowns prevent deaths.”
They also tried to ding one of the authors, Dr. Steve Hanke, for previously “sharing what they called “misinformation about COVID-19”.
The broad brush they used in that criticism was that Dr. Hanke has shared a tweet about a person who allegedly set themself ablaze due to an issue related to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The family of the man issued a statement via their lawyer that the self-immolated man had received two vaccine doses. USA Today did not report on the status of the man’s mental health following the vaccination.
USA Today has previously been criticized for falsely labeling accurate information as “misinformation”, including the fact that the CDC had exaggerated the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
In the same misleading story, USA Today repeated, without checking, another so-called “Fact Check” opinion blog article website that claimed incorrectly that Dr. James Lyons-Weiler had been mistaken in reporting that Moderna’s early trial reported a 21% serious adverse event rate. Both the original website and USA Today took Dr. Lyons-Weiler’s accurate report of 21% out of context, attributing his report as relevant to a trial that had not yet occurred at the time he made the accurate comments.
The New York Times has since published that many people’s PCR tests may, in fact, be false positives. Many studies have now been published in numerous journals providing evidence of false positives in the PCR testing protocols, including false positives among test kit reference samples sent to labs to determine the accuracy of the tests.shows
China recently suffered mass protests over lockdowns imposed as part of their failed “zero Covid” policies, and countries who participated most enthusiastically in police state-like behavior - including lockdowns and forced vaccination, such as Australia now have some of the highest rates of COVID-19, COVID-19 hospitalizations and COVID-19-related deaths. As a result of the protests, China has relaxed its position on lockdowns.
Current data point to Australia and New Zealand being among the countries with the highest COVID-19 rates (Our World in Data:)
How You Can Help:
Email these two people @USA Today and ask them:
Does USA Today still believe that lockdowns might be effective at curbing COVID-19 and reducing deaths due to COVID-19? If not, why have you not retracted your dangerously misleading article published
If not, they should retract that misleading paper.
Maribel Perez Wadsworth, President, Gannet Media maribel@gannett.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mwadsworth
Kristen DelGuzzi kdelguzzi@usatoday.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristendel
Nicole Carroll, President, News & Editor in Chief EIC@usatoday.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicole_carroll
You might also want to remind them that listing as their “sources” a bunch of blog articles expressing someone’s opinion is woefully bad form for a professional media company. They were clearly ALL wrong.
Finally, you can also send them a gift subscription to Popular Rationalism which might help them access the objective and accurate materials and information they need to perform their jobs better and avoid publishing misinformation.
Related:
New Study Provides Yet More Evidence That COVID Lockdowns Didn’t Work
ABOUT THAT 21 PERCENT – FACT-CHECKERS TAKE NOTE
SCIENTIST STUNNED: XXXXX XXXXXXX RESEARCHER ADMITS HE DOES NOT KNOW ABOUT KEY VACCINE SAFETY FINDING. AFP.COM FLOPS IN FACT-CHECKING THE 21%
The truth is, as Charleton Heston wrote, “Modern media fills the cultural airwaves with a mist of anesthesia, so that principles and values are slowly desensitized to the coming onslaught. The new culture arrives on the heels of this propaganda. It simply moves in and takes over, like slipping a fine new glove over a numbed hand. The outcome of the war is just as devastating, but without bombs bursting, twisted bodies to bury, or rubble to rebuild. A new class, a different culture, simply takes over.”
But let’s look at specifics. Going all the way back to NY Slimes Pulitzer Prize winner Walter " I don't see no stinkin' starving kulaks in Stalin's Ukraine" Duranty (perhaps around 5 – 6 million were starved to death by Stalin in his Holodomor) to Lincoln "I have seen the future in Stalin's USSR, and it works" Steffens to fake Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, accidentally outed by another leftist, to another NY Slimes wunderkind, fiction writer Jayson Blair, who resigned in 2003 after he was outed for stories—some front page—that were fabricated or plagiarized, to Dan "I found a memo!" Rather, to Brian "I was shot down in a helicopter in Iraq in 2003" Williams, and the list goes on and on and on... such as Walter Cronkite telling us (regardless of how you felt about its rightness) that the Viet Nam war was being lost during the Tet offensive, while at the same time North Viet General Giap admitted later on in his memoirs that all was lost unless the American public was lied to and told they were losing, to Mikey Isikoff /Newsweek’s infamous May 9, 2005 issue that cited some “unnamed source” saying the Qu’ran was trashed at Guantanamo – and was later proven false, but not after many were killed in the rioting that ensued overseas (“no matter if people die… as long as their political ends are met, right?). And speaking of 9/11, don’t forget the famous – and utterly idiotic – tweet from the NYT that said “Airplanes took aim and brought down the World Trade Center.” This tweet was so intellectually vapid it deleted it shortly after. (Reminiscent of “guns kill people” articles… as if guns grow legs and fingers, and run around shooting people with no human operators. And don’t forget Vietnam reporter Peter Arnett and his famed supposed quote from a US officer that I grew up on, “We had to destroy the village to save it” – except that this was later proven to be – wait for it! – another media fake, and when pressed he never could provide evidence of who, exactly, said it. Or perhaps you prefer Charles Jaco of CNN “reporting live from Saudi Arabia” in the 1990” Iraq war…. or should I say, in front of a fake green screen. If you need a refresher, from a linked clip is a video of the broadcast (which I saw myself) or see here as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMtxbPdvzg . The fake news doesn’t care if you see this now (which is why it is allowed on co-opted Youtube), as this has already gone down the Orwellian memory hole of the general public so they don’t care. Only I suggest you should care, as they continue to do this stuff today, only even more.
Think 2022, where “fact checker” USA Today was forced to delete 23 articles over fabricated sources. USA Today’s breaking news reporter Gabriela Miranda fabricated sources and misappropriated quotes for stories, the news outlet confirmed on Thursday, after being forced to conduct an internal audit after getting an ‘external correction request’ on one of its published stories,” reports Breitbart. The 23 articles which were removed for not meeting the paper’s “editorial standards” included pieces on the Texas abortion ban, anti-vaxxer content and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Activist Post wrote: “The audit revealed that some individuals quoted were not affiliated with the organizations claimed and appeared to be fabricated. The existence of other individuals quoted could not be independently verified. In addition, some stories included quotes that should have been credited to others.” Activist also cited more gems from the toilet paper of record: “The newspaper was also lambasted by critics after it “fact checked” as “true” claims that an official Trump 2020 t-shirt features a “Nazi symbol”. In February last year, the news outlet published an op-ed which denounced Tom Brady for refusing to walk back his previous support for Donald Trump and for being “white.” The newspaper also had to fire their “race and inclusion” editor Hemal Jhaveri after she falsely blamed the Boulder supermarket shooting on white people.” Need something more recent? After the Soros violent Maidan revolution overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine, and installed their puppet Poroshenko, later succeeded by Zelensky, who had so embarrassing whoppers as the Ghost of Khiev, who shot down you-name-the-number of Russian jets alone in the early part of the Ukraine war, or the Heroes of Snake Island, who cursed the Russian navy and fought to their deaths… only the truth is that that meekly surrendered, then later were exchanged for Russian prisoners. But no matter! The Deep State will fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian, as Sen. Rand Paul said.
Then there was the 2022 Ukraine war, where 4 star general Barry R. McCaffrey/all star doofus on MSNBC posted a video game as “footage” from the war. Here’s his tweet. In the original tweet, McCaffrey wrote: “Russian aircraft getting nailed by UKR missile defense. Russians are losing large numbers of attack aircraft. UKR air defense becoming formidable.” In fact, the footage is reportedly from a video game called Arma 3, which is an “open-world” military game created in 2013. Even worse for McCaffrey, the game’s title can be clearly seen in the video’s description.
But of course, there is my all-time favourite, James Reston writing about Teddy Kennedy and his inexplicable - shall we call it manslaughter, perhaps? - of Mary Jo Kopechne by starting his story on this in the newspaper of record, NTY, with: “Tragedy has again struck the Kennedy family” (and not mentioning Mary Jo Kopechne until the fourth paragraph, perhaps as no more than presumably an afterthought). This, of course, was just after NYT writer Herbert L. Matthews – the same one who favourably covered the Marxists in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s – was one of the key people lulling the American public in the “Castro is just a cuddly democracy rebel” canard. (This, along with Ed Sullivan, interview here, which includes Sullivan’s calling Castro “in the tradition of George Washington”). Matthews turned Castro into a groovy freedom fighter, sans bell bottoms, when in fact he was a mass murderer and despot. Dr. RJ Rummel, Univ. of Hawaii, estimates Castro murdered as many as 141,000; Rummel’s web site here. Matthews was too dense to figure out Casto would become one of the top 500 or so richest men in the world Fidel Castro per Celebrity Net Worth , Forbes current ranking here). “This is not a Communist revolution in any sense of the word and there are no Communists in positions of control,” he wrote not long after the revolution. And it goes without saying how the media turned “we execute with revolutionary zeal” Che Guevara into a fashion icon. The truth about Che is known by those who lived near him, such as this article in the Yucatan Times. But suffice to say, one of my favourite quotes by him is “Yes, I know the campesinos (peasants, but who weren’t sufficiently socialist, many with Indian blood) support us now, but when we come to power, they, too, will have to be liquidated.”
"The press is our chief ideological weapon."
—Nikita Khrushchev
“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.”
- Vladimir Lenin
,
“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”
- Richard Salant, former head of CBS News
The very first time I was quoted in a newspaper - after a minor cross-country ski race - I was shocked the next the day to find they put a quote in my mouth I never said. And nothing has changed at all in over 40 years....
The fasco-Marxist left fake news back to their usual. In fact, word on the street shows a poll taken by the lamestream leftist media Nov.2022 STILL has Hilary ahead of Donald Trump by 10 points! Actually, perhaps not such a joke, as back before that election…there was this gem: Survey finds Hillary Clinton has ‘more than 99% chance’ of winning election over Donald Trump. Similarly, in 2016 before the election, the Princeton Election Consortium found Ms Clinton has a projected 312 electoral votes across the country and only 270 are needed to win cited from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html In fact, their fake news goes back hundreds of years.. such as the Great Moon Hoax, published in the New York press beginning Aug. 25, 1835, where supposedly Sir John Herschel, one of the most famed astronomers of the time, purportedly stated he discovered life on the moon. He was “not available” to the public at the time, so, just like the fake news of today, they got away with it…. for a while. And of course, there was the media-flogged Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 (shades of Al Gore, whose predictions, many would aver, are filled with the same equine droppings ) where London was absolutely, scientifically sure to be buried under 9 feet of manure within 50 years.
At the same time as the Great Horse Manure Crisis, the media also solemnly informed us – and put on official maps - all about the massive Mountains of Kong in Africa. Except that they didn’t exist either.
Back then, the goal was to sell newspapers (or start wars, like William Randolf Hearst and the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbour, or the sinking of the Lusitania, also flogged to get us into a war we had no business getting into). But today, the goal is to hawk the Deep State and fasco-Marxism, all the while racking in big bucks for the Big Media and their cronies in Big Tech and Big Pharma. Remember… the hawkers of this pablum always exempt themselves, as we have seen from Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to Venezuela’s Maduro, to here in the US Biden improperly avoiding paying Medicare taxes could owe the IRS up to $500,000, according to a Congressional Research Service report, or rich hypocrite AOC AOC’s ‘Tax the Rich’ dress designer accused of owing thousands in unpaid taxes and refusing to pay interns
Picture in link is from the NY Met Gala (or see https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-09-14/met-gala-2021-aoc-tax-the-rich-dress) that costs $30 THOUSAND dollars a ticket to attend. AOC makes $174,000 a year as Congresswoman for New York's 14th Congressional District for 2021-2022. That $174,000 income puts AOC in the top 5% income earners in the country.
Seems not much has changed from 1835, other than the technology.