What I don't Understand About Alex Berenson Is His Business Model

Alex Berenson, who apparently prefers to be called a "former New York Times reporter", but whom I would probably call a sometime COVID skeptic, was permanently banned from Twitter this past weekend for the post at right. As I've been pointing out here, his wording is actually a fair summary of recent public remarks from figures like Drs Fauci and Walensky: in fact, they've made statements themselves that the vaccine stops neither infection nor transmission. News reports routinely cite individuals who've been hospitalized after the two jabs, and regional masking rules have been reimposed on the clear principle that vaccinated people can transmit the virus.

Various figures have urged Berenson to sue Twitter, but I think this is incredibly bad advice. If he were to do this, he'd be sinking millions of dollars into a doubtful, years-long process of negotiations, injunctions, verdicts, and appeals that would divert his energy from any other projects. Even if some lawyer would take the case pro bono, just being the plaintiff is effectively a full-time, highly stressful job. For what?

Twitter isn't a serious platform, but Berenson does represent himself as a serious guy. Twitter is for posting zingers, and serious people like the late Rush Limbaugh have called it a "behavioral sewer". Jack Dorsey is doing Berenson a big favor, whether either recognizes it or not. But Berenson isn't taking the lesson -- he's simply moving from Twitter to an equivalent forum, Substack, and continuing just to post zingers.

Other than Twitter and now Substack, plus media appearances, his other COVID related effort has been just a four-part, self-published pamphlet, Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns. You buy these online through sources like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Frankly, I can't imagine that he makes more than latte money by selling these. You can subsidize his Substack tweets if you join his channel, but again, I can't imagine he can even fill up his car's gas tank with that money.

Why is he doing things this way? The words I would use for his project might be "desultory" or "inchoate". This allows legacy media to discredit him, when as far as I can see, events are continuing to prove him right. Last spring, The Atlantic published at hit piece, The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man, that claimed

Berenson has a big megaphone. He has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News’ most-watched shows. On Laura Ingraham’s show, he downplayed the vaccines, suggesting that Israel’s experience proved they were considerably less effective than initially claimed. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, he predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness and death in the U.S.

Except that, well, since then, his statements on Fox have been borne out. Israel's experience post vaccines has in fact resulted in a case rate that suggests vaccines had no effect:

The US also experienced an uptick, as Berenson predicted:

The CDC's response has been effectively to acknowledge that vaccines have proven far less effective than originally proclaimed, now recommending an indefinite regimen of boosters.

Berenson's problem is that he's using a gadfly strategy with people who won't hesitate just to swat the gadfly. Berenson has no platform -- even just a blog -- where he can articulate his arguments in a consistent, accessible location where people can find links to his data and see his predictions without having them mischaracterized by his opponents.

And as far as I can see, even if he ran an unmonetized blog on a platform like Blogger, he wouldn't be out all that much money, though he has options for monetizing even there. Maybe the problem is he went to Yale. It's a shame to see real ability going to waste.