MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-05-08 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] The Times dedicated to keeping very one shut
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/coronavirus-us.html
Years ago, when talking to my grandfather about some city scandal, my
Grandfather said to me, "I'll beleive it when it is in the Times". It
is hard to remember now how rock solid dependable that the Times
reporting was. Not only did they report from all over the world, a
reporter in nearly every outpost, but they bent over backwards to
refrain from the use of any adjatives that would seem unecessary to
reporting facts, and never giving even a mustard of opinion in its news
reporting sections. Of course, this is long after the period that the
Times intentionally overlooked the gulag to promote Uncle Joe Stalin, so
those of our generation was spoiled.
It was a birth right of every New Yorker to expect a quality paper every
morning. It was an encyclopedia of world events, and the tick of
history. We awaiting with anticipation for the delivery of the Sunday
Times on the way home from the subway, week after week, as the paper was
delivered and put together 2:30AM after a Saturday night out.
I read the paper today and it tears my heart out. It reads like phone
calls on WFAN now. It started its decline in the late 1990's with the
times slipping editorial content into its front page article and marking
it "News Analysis". Even these News Analysis was clean compared to what
is passed as from page news today. There vitriolic response to Donald
trump has been insane. Years ago, Presidents would come and Presidents
would go, but the Times functioned from a position of strength in the
knowledge that long after Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush,
Obama would come and leave.. the Times would still be there, steadly
reporting the news.
Today, the Times reports as if any day would be the last day of its
publication. It reports like it is desperate to be heard over the
chorus. I have no idea why they feel the compulsion to yell all the
time now at the reader. It has become a sophisticated political rag on
every issue, reporting strictly from their biases and smothering
contrarian opinions. There assault on sensible reporting has been
disheartening. We long ago now lost a reliable foundation for clear
facts. Now admittedly this article is from the opeds, but a number of
Times articles and reporters have been hell bent on keeping everyone
locked up and in fear.
Before reading this article, recall that we all know that this virus
will bounce back and the modeling and the lock up was designed to
flatten the curve so to prevent overwhelming our healthcare system. It
would seem that we only partially managed to reach those goal. But
locking everyone up was never a long term plan, because we can not
either obtain herd immunity or eliminate this virus through a general
public lock up. Instead, we have turned this lock up's continuation
based on eliminating morality due to the virus and the comorbidities.
This has always been a red herring.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Opinion | The Virus Is Winning
By Nicholas Kristof
5-7 minutes
Magical thinking won’t protect us.
President Trump insisting last month that coronavirus testing was
states’ job.
Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
When Michael T. Osterholm, a prominent epidemiologist, heard that the
White House coronavirus task force was “ramping up” its work this month,
he was elated. Maybe now the United States would finally tackle the
virus with the seriousness needed.
Then he realized that he had misheard. The task force wasn’t “ramping
up” but “wrapping up.”
“I was in shock,” said Osterholm, a professor at the University of
Minnesota. “We’re just in the second inning.”
The White House plan to disband the task force is in characteristic
disarray, with President Trump reversing course on Wednesday and saying
that the task force would continue but change its focus. The confusion
perfectly reflects the incoherence of the American “strategy” toward
Covid-19.
Vice President Mike Pence had earlier said that the disbanding of the
task force was possible because of “the tremendous progress we’ve made”
against the virus.
Hmm. It’s actually the virus that has made tremendous progress,
eclipsing heart disease to become the No. 1 cause of death in the United
States. In less than two months, we have lost more Americans to the
coronavirus than in the Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq wars
combined.
While Spain and Italy have emerged from their Covid-19 outbreaks and
enjoyed significant falls in new infections, that has not happened in
the United States. For five weeks, new daily infections in the United
States have been stuck roughly in the 25,000 to 30,000 range, declining
only a bit.
Even the small decline in new cases in the United States is misleading,
for it’s simply a result of great progress in the New York City
metropolitan area. Exclude New York and new cases in the United States
are still increasing.
About half of states are easing some restrictions this week. But to
manage the reopening safely, we need massive levels of testing and
contact-tracing — and one more sign of how we have bungled our Covid-19
response is that while testing has, very belatedly, increased
significantly, on most days the United States is still testing fewer
people per capita than Britain, Iceland and Portugal.
Trump announced back on March 6 that “anybody that wants a test can get
a test”; this is still not true.
Nor have we compensated for testing kit shortages by embracing
widespread testing of sewage to look for the virus in wastewater, as the
Netherlands has done. Even in impoverished Pakistan, sewage testing has
been widely used to monitor polio virus outbreaks, so the United States
should be able to use sewage testing for surveillance of the coronavirus
and early identification of hot spots.
While the United States has poured $3 trillion into relief from the
effects of Covid-19 — money that will run out soon and that hasn’t
prevented young children in one in six households from not having enough
to eat — the nation hasn’t invested nearly enough in science and in the
scientific tools, like testing, vaccines, therapies and research, to
combat it.
“We’re significantly hampered by lack of funding,” said Anne Rimoin, an
epidemiologist at U.C.L.A. who studies transmission of the coronavirus
by people who are asymptomatic.
Bravo to those local leaders who acted early and saved many lives — I’m
thinking of Govs. Jay Inslee of Washington, Gavin Newsom of California
and Mike DeWine of Ohio — but governors are now in an impossible situation.
It makes sense to experiment with reopening in areas with fewer
infections (perhaps using randomized controlled trials to gain a better
understanding of what is safe), and epidemiologists note that there’s a
particularly good case to be made for reopening parks and beaches if
social distancing is practiced. But we still don’t have the testing and
contact-tracing to be confident that we can get the easing right or to
clamp down quickly when we get it wrong.
And Trump and Pence still seem oblivious.
“By Memorial Day Weekend we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic
behind us,” Pence told Fox News only two weeks ago. That magical
thinking seems to be shared by many politicians and investors alike.
Let’s be very clear: There’s huge uncertainty, so we need great humility
in looking ahead, but most epidemiologists anticipate a long, wrenching
struggle against the virus.
“If we have a big wave in the fall, it’ll make everything we’ve had so
far seem not all that serious,” said Osterholm, whose infectious disease
institute recently issued an excellent and sobering report about the
road ahead. “But that’s the reality of this. I tell people my job isn’t
to scare you out of your wits; it’s to scare you into your wits.”
A new Columbia University study suggests that we may face a rebound in
deaths by late this month because of the easing of restrictions, just as
a model used by the Trump administration shows deaths increasing to
3,000 daily by June 1.
“This is here to stay, in all likelihood, until we have a vaccine, and a
vaccine could be a year or two away,” said Tom Frieden, former director
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Or it could be never.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the
editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our
articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters-at-nytimes.com.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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