Speaking of tinfoil hats, it's a shame about The Federalist.
In fairness, we didn't know last spring that having COVID-19 probably conveys only several months' immunity.* We still don't know for sure how long immunity lasts. The examples of SARS and MERS, both of which are relatives of the virus that causes COVID, might have suggested caution when The Federalist ran an article advocating that we seek volunteers to be infected with it and spread it throughout the population to achieve "herd immunity." To his credit, the dermatologist without an active medical license who wrote the article (an outrageously irresponsible piece which caused Twitter to temporarily suspend The Federalist's account) protested that it was an editorial decision by the magazine rather than his own intent, which resulted in the virus which has by now killed over 260,000 Americans in about nine months being referred to throughout the article as "the Wuhan flu."
Hey. I myself was slow to pick up on the problem with the "Wuhan" part. Ebola is named after a river in Africa near which the virus first appeared; its relative, Marburg, is named Germany's city where it was first described. Why not "Wuhan" after all?
Well, that quickly became all too clear. Random people of Oriental heritage began being assaulted on busses and in other public places by racist morons who apparently thought that their race made them personally responsible for the pandemic. Not that President Trump noticed, of course. Or cared. To this day, he calls it "the Chinese virus."
The "flu" part also was standard in Trumpworld back then. In case you've forgotten, our outgoing President claimed back then that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu and would simply "disappear." Well, COVID isn't as lethal as some iterations of influenza. But it's much, much more contagious. We will never know exactly how many of those who have died in this pandemic might have been saved if the Administration had not so consistently and so aggressively minimized the threat it posed and become a reliable and prolific source of inaccurate information and outright nonsense about it. The Federalist seemed to approve.
According to the CDC, between 12,000 and, in a bad year, 61,000 Americans die each year of the seasonal flu. In the case of COVID-19, we exceeded the latter figure in three months. At this moment, COVID has killed about 238,000 Americans in the eight months since March.
The very concept of "herd immunity" has always been problematic. How, exactly, do we go about isolating the elderly and those at special risk from COVID from the rest of the population while infecting 65% or so of the population with the virus within the same finite window of at most several months? That's never been made clear. But last October 4, the American Institute for Economic Research issued a statement from a small minority of specialists called the "Great Barrington Declaration," advocating the same "herd immunity" approach the article in The Federalist suggested- only without the "chickenpox parties" to deliberately infect people. The overwhelming majority of the experts were appalled. The World Health Organization flatly called the strategy "unethical." The epidemiological community's consensus is that such an approach is utterly impractical and could easily result in a million deaths.
The White House disagreed. The Federalist did, too. And siding against the experts' overwhelming consensus in support of a handful of crackpots advocating a policy the best evidence suggests would kill a million people is not a particularly effective way of either establishing or maintaining credibility or even to come across as a responsible source of information.
Masks have become as much a political issue as a public health measure. President Trump is notorious for his reluctance to wear one not only before contracting the virus himself but afterward, apparently wrongly believing that he is permanently immune to re-infection. Yet, the primary purpose of masks isn't to protect the wearer. If that alone were the issue, the libertarian argument that mask mandates are an imposition on individual freedom might have some merit; after all, if a person voluntarily chooses to assume an increased risk of infection by going maskless, who has the right to stop her? But in fact, the primary purpose of masks is not to protect the wearer but others. Asymptomatic COVID is common enough that many who contract the virus never know it. And even infected persons who eventually develop symptoms are contagious before that happens; in fact, the period immediately before symptoms appear maybe when the virus is most contagious.
There is no doubt that the wearing of masks is effective. One study has indicated that the universal wearing of masks could save 130,000 lives by February. But The Federalist continues to minimize the threat posed by the virus and support the irresponsible partisan line of the Trump administration.
I would never have suspected the staff of The Federalist of being authoritarians, or protectionists, or lax in their concern for America's national security. Yet the good conservatives who staff the magazine have apparently decided that "owning the libs" is a higher priority than the Bill of Rights and lined up behind a president who tries to intimidate the press, advocates (and practices) violence against peaceful demonstrators, and suggests that its opponents should be jailed. It supports Mr. Trump's ruinous trade war with China and his Lindbergeque "America First" isolationism. Despite at least 140 documented contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian nationals between Mr. Trump's election in 2016 and his inauguration, The Federalist has consistently dismissed concerns about that unseemly statistic as a "witch hunt," uncritically following the White House line. And now, despite an utter lack of evidence that President-elect Biden's victory over Mr. Trump last week was tainted by the fraud the President insists deprived him of victory, once again, The Federalist is uncritically following the utterly indefensible lead of the White House.
I certainly would never have expected The Federalist to be a leading disseminator of inaccurate and misleading information about a pandemic. The publication is now disseminating nonsense to cast doubt upon an election's legitimate result with whose outcome it disagrees.
"They lie, they lie, they lie, and then they lie," senior editor Mollie Hemingway says of the media. Well, so does Mr. Trump- and so does The Federalist. There is no "massive evidence of vote fraud" any more than COVID-19 is just the flu or capable of being defeated by "chickenpox parties." In fact, there is no evidence of significant fraud at all. Just the President's usual aggrieved whining and badly-documented, purely anecdotal stories. It's hard to regard The Federalist's coverage of the election's aftermath as anything other than rabid partisan raving.
Yes, undoubtedly, the crazy third of the nation will believe the unfounded stories of fraud. But then, half the nation believes anything Donald Trump says, or anything they jolly well want to believe, regardless of the evidence- or lack of it. And The Federalist does nothing for its reputation for responsible journalism by elevating partisanship above truth and the minimal requirements of honest journalism.
I attended the same church with Molly Hemingway when I lived in the Washington area several years ago. Several months ago, she accused her media colleagues of deliberate dishonesty on Twitter. I responded by suggesting that she had laid aside her principles to "own the libs" through her President's uncritical support. She responded that I lacked charity toward those with whom I disagreed politically.
Given the context, I thought her accusation ironic. But it also raises another question. Mollie Hemingway is a very bright woman. Before Mr. Trump took office, she had always seemed a woman of strong insight and firm integrity. But Donald Trump has corrupted a great many people I once admired. Suddenly, Ms. Hemingway began spouting arrant, shrill, partisan nonsense, and defending the indefensible.
What, I wonder, would she consider a charitable response? She knew full well what Donald Trump was when he first announced his candidacy. She is far too intelligent not to know better now. Questioning her intellect was not an option. Would that have been more charitable, had it been plausible? Or should I have concluded that she was a hypocrite who didn't really believe in the Bill of Rights and free trade and didn't really support America's interests over and against those of Russia before? I remain unsure of what more charitable conclusion I could reach than that Mollie is better than what she's been doing these many months. That affirming that and pointing out the contradiction was the most charitable and most reasonable thing to do.
Is Mollie lying? How about the others who write for The Federalist? Well, I'll be more charitable than Mollie is. I believe that she believes everything she writes. I have no reason to think that the same isn't true about her colleagues. But I also believe something the Trump era has taught us ever so well: that one can believe all manner of unlikely things if one wants to badly enough and that neither evidence nor logic is necessary to pull it off.
Mollie, btw, undoubtedly really believes that the Park Service didn't use tear gas against the protestors in Lafayette Park to deny them their First Amendment rights- she claims that they were "rioters," rather than peaceful demonstrators- so that the President could be photographed holding up a Bible in front of an Episcopal church. She is wrong about the tear gas. Or so, now, says the Park Service- as well as the National Guard. There were undoubtedly people throwing bricks and bottles, as witness the testimony of Park Service police. But that neither establishes that the demonstrators were generally violent enough to warrant their disbursal, or that Mr. Trump just happened to decide to walk to the church because once the demonstrators were conveniently out of the way, he could, so what the hell?
Matthew Cochran's inaccurate article in The Federalist entitled "America Won't Trust Elections Until The Voter Fraud Is Investigated" is built on two false premises. The first is that anyone but that anyone our tantrum-throwing President and his partisans has any misgivings about the election. The second is that they would accept the result- or any other news unfavorable to Mr. Trump- no matter what the evidence. Four years of willful gullibility on their part suggest otherwise.
At the same time, it's tough to see how anyone can possibly take The Federalist seriously anymore as a source for anything but hysterical writing, wild and inaccurate accusations, and the worst kind of partisan propaganda. And that's a shame. It's not only complicit in the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans from COVID and the corruption of the pro-life commitment of countless well-meaning people into a hypocritical willingness to sacrifice the aged and infirm to the same utilitarian philosophy used to justify abortion, but now it's actively involved in helping a sociopathic President who is concerned only about his own interests to selfishly undermine our faith in the democratic process without any real evidence to indict the result of Tuesday's election.
It's become no better than Breitbart or Gateway Pundit. And it's a shame because The Federalist once seemed to be so much more than that.
*Since I wrote this, a study has come out that implies that, in fact, for most people, immunity to COVID-19 lasts more than a few months, and perhaps in some cases even for years. It's unclear whether "immune" people are merely protected from the symptoms of the disease, though, while still able to harbor and transmit it to others. Again, other coronaviruses become seasonal and mutate over time; if COVID follows that course, herd immunity still would be an impractical strategy for eradicating it or even preventing an ongoing death toll from periodic outbreaks. And booster shots will undoubtedly be required even once effective vaccines are available for everyone.
A longer period of immunity would mitigate the most obvious objection to the practicality of seeking "herd immunity" as a strategy for defeating the pandemic, although it would not eliminate it. As a strategy for defeating the virus entirely, it's hopeless. And even a longer period of immunity leaves the fatal objection to a strategy of seeking herd immunity standing: at least until an effective vaccine is available, the cost of such a strategy would be a huge number of unnecessary deaths we as a society could not accept without severe social, psychological, and ethical disaster. Dr. Fauci and nearly all of the experts (except a very few, like the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration) maintain that it could be as high as a million deaths, most of which could be avoided just by waiting for a vaccine.
Sorry, Mollie. Sorry, Federalist. Any way you look at it, the approach you advocate for dealing with this virus is impractical, irresponsible as hell, and would be a social and ethical catastrophe hard to distinguish from negligent homicide on a mass scale.
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