The COVID-19 Narrative and Journalistic Malpractice

For four months we have been watching a media smokescreen and misinformation campaign.

I was originally going to make this a Facebook post, but then I decided it would probably get removed by some self-righteous, virtue signaling, social justice warrior patrolling the feeds so I moved it to the blog

The media has done nothing but tell us how everything that has gone wrong or is bad regarding COVID-19 since day one is Donald Trump’s fault. They show us death counts, infection rates, compare us to other cherry picked countries, and not to mention selective data mining, and have shaped and perpetuated a narrative that kept the nation captive and ignorant.

However, as usual, a casual review of ALL the data as well as putting ALL the data into proper context, will render a very different story. 

The true story.

Listening to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and every other left of center news network (even FOX), will lead you to believe we are number one in every terrible category that has anything to do with this virus. We are also told that President Trump is ignoring the problem. But that’s how cherry picking works.

If we look at the top 20 nations for “observed case-fatality ratio” you’ll find the U.S. at number 12 with Great Britain #1 by a mile. In the U.S. the number of confirmed cases with the number of confirmed deaths is at 3.4%. Great Britain is at 15.2%… EVEN with all the admitted mistakes in record keeping from all the states, EVEN including deaths from shootings and car crashes that were counted as COVID deaths, we are at 3.4%. But that’s just not good enough for the media nor it’s desired narrative. Because that puts the U.S. in the company of countries like Bolivia, Columbia, and Guatemala. A country of our resources and wealth shouldn’t hanging with “THOSE” countries they say and being “12th worst in the world” is nothing to brag about.

Except, we’re not 12th worst in the world…IF you don’t cherry pick data. When you look at how America’s CFR compares to other similarly developed countries you see a much different picture. The U.S. actually has a lower CFR than Japan. What? How is this possible? Japan has been lauded by our news media as a shining example. But if the U.S. is doing better than Japan why are we so bad in the media’s eyes? Hmmmm?

When we look at TOTAL CFR (case fatality rates) the U.S. isn’t anywhere near the top of the list nor is it in 12th place. When we compare all cases and deaths worldwide the U.S. comes in at number 56… Of course we’d rather be dead last on that list, but 56 spots from the top should at least suggest that we are far from the incompetence the media portrays day after day.

The media would also have you believe we are the absolute worst when it comes to testing for COVID. Except we have tested over 53,000,000 people and our per capita test numbers are only behind the tiny countries of Luxembourg, Bahrain, and Israel. Bet you haven’t heard that report before.

How did we get to such a high number of tests in such a short amount of time and why haven’t we done more? That’s a great question. But you’ll have to ask the CDC why it made testing in the early phase of the disease so difficult to do. Like only allowing people who had traveled to China to be tested. In the beginning of this mess, testing or developing tests by private companies, universities, etc, was literally blocked by the CDC and FDA which was reported in the Wall Street Journal. Then, when the CDC finally started shipping tests to the states, many of them were defective.

Testing ONLY improved when the White House removed some of the regulatory road blocks that kept private labs, medical facilities, and universities from developing their own tests and testing methods. Once private industry jumped on board to help with the testing, the tests got better and the results more accurate. Gee, imagine that? Government screwing things up while private industry makes them better. Hmmmm, again… No mention of this problem nor the solution by your “free press.”

Then we moved into the Mask Era. Every day the Trump administration was pounded for not mandating masks as if a President can simply make laws by Royal edict… Can you imagine the 

attacks if Trump had actually done that? He’s already a dictator for…doing…something Pelosi and Schumer don’t like. I think…

However, let’s go back to March when the media was reporting this: “U.S. Health Officials say Americans shouldn’t wear masks to prevent Coronavirus – Here are 3 other reasons not to wearthem.” Democrat Congressman and Deputy Assistant Impeachment Cheerleader Eric Swalwell even tweeted, “Stop wearing face masks. #Coronavirus” on March 4, 2020.

Yet here we are after a complete 180, creating another angry and divisive issue for people to fight about. Yet, a recent Pew Research poll showed 65% of Americans wear one when in public places and that poll was done BEFORE Trump went public with his support of wearing masks and the media was hounding Trump to force mask wearing because according to them no one was. Wrong again newsies.

But the biggest club the media chosen to bash the president is Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). During a March press conference, President Trump made the horrific and now famous or infamous statement suggesting HCQ could be helpful in treating COVID-19. You’d think he had just told Americans to drink poison and bleach! Oh wait, the media did say that… And for the next week we were told Trump isn’t a doctor and he doesn’t know anything and he’s trying to kill people.

CNN went so far as to find a story in Nigeria of Chloroquine poisonings and blamed THAT on Trump. All it took was for the arch enemy of the media to say something positive about anything and the media would be immediately against it.

The FDA, which had previously given the green light to HCQ for some COVID patients, suddenly gave it the red light citing a study that claimed there were dangerous side effects like blindness and heart attacks. The media went on a blitz telling the public they could die of heart attacks or go blind if they listened to Trump! But then, the study the FDA was pointing to was retracted by the authors citing bad data and unverifiable records. I’m sure you remember the media coming out immediately with a retraction and apology for scaring the bejeebers out of everyone. No? Oh, that’s because they didn’t say anything about it.

Then in July a newer study published in the International Journal of Infectious Disease, came out saying HCQ DID help to “significantly lower the death rate” in COVID patients. Even a Yale Epidemiologist wrote about the positive benefits of HCQ in treating COVID-19 in Newsweek magazine. Dr. Harvey Risch published a study showing the drug is effective for treating the virus.

Now, these doctors who have come out and spoken the truth from studies and their own experience treating COVID-19 are being threatened, fired, black listed, and called quacks. Thousands of doctors worldwide have prescribed this medication in a protocol with Zinc and other medicines with success, yet the media and certain people in our government at the federal and state levels are doing all they can to silence this debate. Why?

It’s a 65 year-old drug that is used for many illnesses, but mainly Lupus and Rheumatism. It is derived from a natural medicine called Quinine, which comes from a tree bark. It has been proven safe for and used safely for decades in this country. So why the pushback?

Imagine how different this conversation would be if ANY Democrat had come out in support of this treatment rather than Donald Trump. You know it would be like night and day.

HCQ is cheap and plentiful and it’s been around so long it doesn’t have a Patent. And maybe that has something to do with this whole controversy. No one makes any real money on this drug. Any pharmaceutical company can produce it. There is no exclusivity. No big bucks. Not that money is a motivator or anything…

You may also remember the COVID Parties being thrown all over those “evil” Republican states like Alabama. CNN took the lead reporting how college students in “Republican States” were throwing parties to see who would get COVID first. They were even betting on it! With real money!!!! But then a Journalistic Icon decided to dig into the story. No, not the New York Times. Wired magazine did the digging and they found “no credible evidence” of COVID parties taking place. Their headline read “COVID Parties are not a thing.” None of the other media reports were true. CNN had failed again.

This is just a small sampling of the kind of media reports droning away day after day on TV and the web. Yet, day after day they are exposed as inaccurate or blatantly false. Truth no longer appears to be the standard of quality journalism, at least on the national stage.

The standard now is political and the standard bearer looks a lot like the Democrat party.