With justifiable fear running strongly it is a tragedy that the public has a difficult time getting unbiased analysis regarding the pandemic. Journalism has deteriorated to the point that it is often unrecognizable from propaganda and disinformation.
Investigative journalism used to start with “Let’s see where this leads us.” Currently, most “investigative journalists” start at the end and works backwards to “prove” a conclusion. The only ones that are entitled to do the latter are people like me that write “Opinion.”
But even then, we “nonjournalists” would prefer not to win the “Fastest Thrown Under the Bus by a Newspaper Award” for writing nonsense conclusions based on bad biased research regardless of the topic. There is not a single issue regarding the Covid pandemic that is simple.
But then again, this is the world that we live in. “The Oregon Department of Education [ODE] is now ‘trying to undo racism in mathematics’ by providing training for ‘ethnomathematics’ because white supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer and goes so far as to contend there shouldn’t be wrong or right answers.”
Let’s hope that someone tasked to teach “ethnomathematics” is not responsible for doing the calculations for things like building bridges and skyscrapers.
David Wallace-Wells is an American journalist and deputy editor for New York magazine. Mr. Wallace-Wells just cranked out—and I say this with admiration, even awe—9,000 words titled “How the West Lost Covid.” This is a prime example of “Let’s see where this leads us.”
Wallace-Wells quotes from many genuine experts in medical fields with expertise on the pandemic and keeps his own conclusions to a minimum. And that is what makes this article a must-read.
Francois Balloux, an infectious-disease epidemiologist and computational geneticist at the University College of London: “It’s not obvious that different measures taken in different places have clearly led to different outcomes. The country that had the strictest lockdown for longest in the world is Peru, and they were absolutely devastated. I think the slightly depressing message is that there is not just a set of policies that will bring success and can just be applied to any place in the world.”
Balloux: “If you read the national press from any country, be it Germany or Switzerland or France, whatever [like the Philippines?], there’s a strong feeling in most places that, actually, the situation is the worst locally.”
National leaders and health ministers have been vilified. That is to be expected since critics have something to complain about even if they offer limited if any solutions. However, the answer may have been given early last year but few were listening.
March 13, 2020, Mike Ryan, WHO’s executive director of health emergencies: “What we’ve learned through the Ebola outbreaks is you need to react quickly. You need to go after the virus. Be fast. Have no regrets. You must be the first mover. The virus will always get you if you don’t move quickly.”
“If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection. And the problem in society we have at the moment is everyone is afraid of making a mistake, everyone is afraid of the consequence of error. But the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralyzed by the fear of failure.”
In an environment that is always dominated by politics, fear of failure always dominates.
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis provided by AAA Southeast Equities Inc.