Obtuseness At The Washington Examiner

While the Washington Examiner isn't quite legacy media, It's more Never Trump Republican, and I don't normally follow it. But yesterday I ran into a remarkably obtuse story on a supposed "new wave" of COVID by David Hogberg. Hogberg, I see, is a regular talking head and adjunct-freelance-whatever with a PhD in PoliSci.

I spend about three hours a day writing and researching this blog, and I don't get paid a penny. I assume Hogberg supports himself with his variouis gigs and has convinced people he's an expert, with his PhD and all. But as a retired amateur, I'm a far better writer and researcher than Hogberg. Here's what he has to say about the current state of COVID play:

The bad news is that the United States appears to be on the cusp of another wave of coronavirus infections. The good news is that hospitalizations and deaths may be much lower this time around.

Daily confirmed cases had been dropping since January, when they reached a seven-day average of almost 260,000. By March 22, that had dropped to just over 54,300. Now, the seven-day average stands at 66,000, an increase of 21% in a little over a week.

While cases may continue to rise, it is not likely to result in the same number of hospitalizations and deaths as experienced in previous waves.

“I agree that the number of hospitalizations and deaths proportionate to the number of cases will be less for this wave because the demographics of the people getting sick will be different,” said Dr. Manoj Jain, an infectious disease physician at the Rollins School of Public Health.

. . . On Wednesday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warned that the United Kingdom variant, known as B.1.1.7, is becoming the predominant strain in the U.S. Thus far, 11,569 cases of the U.K. variant have been confirmed in the U.S., although that number is certainly low as the genetic tracing needed to identify variants is not widespread in the U.S. The U.K. variant is 40% to 70% more transmissible than the original virus, according to Imperial College London.

Really? He's citing drama queen Dr Rochelle Walensky and Imperial College, the authors of the famous model that projected millions of dead within months in 2020? In the course of part-time research for this blog, I've discovered that the CDC itself says that as far as they can determine, the vaccines are effective against all the variants, and in the LA County health department's experience, the vaccines "provide significant protection against transmission even in very high-risk settings".

But, apparently paid by the word, he blathers on with on-one-hand-on-the-other without recognizing that there are successful COVID strategies outside the northeastern US. He leaves out the case of Texas, for instance.

Nearly a month after Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), announced he was lifting the state’s mask mandate, new daily cases in the Lone Star State continue on a downward trend, once again beating “expert” predictions of dire consequences.

When Abbott announced the end to the mask mandate, Texas’ 7-day average for new cases was at 7,259 — it’s now roughly half that. Daily cases have also declined by about half since the mask mandate was lifted. Deaths also continue to drop.

Writer Drew Holden pointed out the statistics on Twitter, noting that “when you look at mainstream media coverage about how Texas’s decision was going to be a disaster, for some reason nearly all the stories are from the first week of March, and there haven’t been really any since mid-March, before the predictions came due.”

In other words, we have a very clear situation where doing nothing was actually more effective than the policies advocated by the CDC. And this leaves out the question of why the vaccine regimens employed by the northeastern states aren't working, when California has employed a successful strategy with the same vaccines. What's different? In a few hours a day over the past week, I've found a productive line of research that's utterly eluded the beltway types.

All this is somehow eluding poor Hogberg as well. Hs Facebook profile says that while he's single, he lives in Washington, so I assume he's got at least rent and a BMW payment. If he stepped outside the one-one-hand-on-the-other mold, he might not be able to make them.