THE FEDERALIST strikes again!

It seems that The Federalist has become the epicenter for bad journalism in this crisis in much the same way that New York City has become the epicenter for COVID-19 in the United States, which now leads the world in the number of COVID cases.

It's run this piece of complete hogwash to push the irresponsible and dishonest narrative that the threat of COVID is being overplayed. It falsely claims that Dr. Neil Ferguson, one of the authors of the report cited to no particular effect by a dermatologist who wrote another bizarre article in The Federalist  I blogged about yesterday, has "walked back" a statement that 250,000 to 500,000 deaths from the virus in the UK and has lowered his estimate to "only" 20,000. The Federalist cites this as proof that his prediction was "alarmist."

In fact, Dr. Ferguson's initial prediction was for an "unmitigated" epidemic, to use his word- one in which steps such as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken to safeguard public health were not taken. His new prediction is based on the fact that they have been. In other words, what he was actually saying is that the precautions The Federalist dislikes will save between 230,000 and 480,000 lives!

Here is Dr. Ferguson's response to The Federalist:

I hope that makes the point clear.

Meanwhile, Dr. Douglas A. Perednia, the dermatologist currently without a medical license who wrote the strange article The Federalist published previously, complains that the publication consistently changed his references to "COVID-19" to "the Wuhan virus." He's lucky that they didn't go the whole way and use the inaccurate and dishonest term they customarily use, "the Wuhan flu!"

He also complains that a tangential footnote about the history of intentional infection in epidemiology that mentioned "chickenpox parties" in which parents deliberately have their children contract what is now a mild and relatively harmless virus they would almost certainly get anyway to get it over with, somehow made it into the headline and became effectively the focus of the article. While I have major problems with Dr. Perednia's proposal, I don't question his motives and I don't blame him a bit for being indignant. I would be, too.