I have never been “canceled,” but that may be about to change. Not because of any unsubstantiated claims that I am about to advance, but because of whose book I am reviewing. That would be former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who’s been removed from various social media venues.
At least I never joined the “Twitter-verse” or Instagram, so I won’t miss them.
Fortunately, Regnery Publishing has given Berenson a forum, publishing “Pandemia,” a well-researched, mostly measured, often entertaining book that questions the orthodoxy, however shifting and morphing, of anti-COVID policies, as presented by our “public health mandarins,” as he describes them.
As our “pandemic epoch” crests past the two-year mark, nearly everyone has gotten something important wrong about this terrible, Wuhan-spawned virus, its genesis, impact, potential containment, and treatment. That includes public health officials, elected politicians, scientists, appointees, journalists, news consumers like me, and, of course, the Chinese Communist Party.
Dismissed by some as a conspiracy theorist, Berenson and his writings look more credible each day, as one pillar of “science” or another crumbles.
Among Berenson’s strong points are his juxtapositions of the economic and psychological costs of COVID lockdowns and mandates, versus purported benefits of those measures. Thirty million Americans filed for unemployment insurance within the first two or three months of the pandemic. With that came a not-surprising increase in suicides, depression, and other symptoms of mental illness. There was a 50 percent increase in emergency room visits for suicide attempts by female adolescents in winter 2021, as compared with the same period in 2019. Learning and achievement in schools using virtual lessons or masks-in-class has markedly declined.
When Berenson posited that “only 3% of airborne particles are blocked by cloth masks,” he was dismissed as a virtual flat-earther. Now, some of his public health expert-critics, always following the science, are echoing Berenson, suddenly urging heavy-duty N95 and similar masks on the public. Good luck to us all with today’s supply chain challenges.
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, in his polemic against Berenson, declared him “The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man.” Yet, Thompson apparently twisted on-the-record statements and written answers from Berenson, taking them out of context in that cover article. Berenson, on the other hand, treats his targets dispassionately, quoting them accurately, as we should hope a reporter with major newspaper experience would.
Berenson, while treating COVID with seriousness, points to the hysteria generated by public health officials and uncritical journalists. One survey revealed that Americans believed they had “a 25% chance of dying” from coronavirus, if they were infected. Berenson accurately rebuts this with data demonstrating that the actual risk was only 1 percent as fatal as the perceived risk.
Of course, older people and those with comorbidities were and are at higher risk than the general public.
Each week comes a study or revelation suggesting that Berenson got lots more “right” than did the censors of social media or most public health officials. Research from Johns Hopkins University just exposed the truth that lockdowns had virtually no impact on morbidity. What?
Finally, perhaps in response to U.S. public opinion and Canadian truckers, mask mandates are being relaxed (though not yet for school children in New York and elsewhere). Still, the mandates and vaccine/masking rules are being applied and lifted in herky-jerky, inconsistent ways.
Just as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was lifting her mask mandates, here’s a troubling anecdote from last week: A friend took her teenage daughter to see a show on Broadway. They presented proofs of vaccination and wore masks into the theater. During the play, the mom’s mask slipped below her nose, prompting an usher to shine his flashlight in her eyes, gesturing at his own nose. Toward the end of the show, the lady’s mask dropped again, giving the usher an apparent rush of power. He compelled our friend (and naturally, her daughter) to accompany him away from her seat, up the aisle, and into the lobby.
There were five (count ‘em, five!) NYPD police officers waiting, ready to enforce the law on this otherwise law-abiding mother-daughter duo from Queens. The mom dejectedly exited the theater, rather than trigger a summons of some kind. Surely those NYPD officers preferred to be apprehending an actual criminal. But there they were, standing around in a tranquil lobby, waiting for a “droopy mask” felon to appear.
Recently, I saw Alex Berenson on TV, cautioning against taking any of the current booster shots. Is his advice sound? Like the health professionals and the rest of us, he is likely to have gotten something wrong about the pandemic and its spread. But I can’t judge his latest assertion.
I, for one, am glad he wrote “Pandemia” and that he continues to do independent research and ask incisive questions. His critics treat him as though he’s a dangerous ideologue, but he isn’t. Earning his chops at The New York Times, Berenson remains, to me, first and foremost a reporter. And he is a fine, even iconic journalist. He is fearless in questioning those public health mandarins, relentless in conducting inquiries, and unafraid, obviously, in following the statistics and research, even if his interpretations are, or more correctly, were unpopular.
If you believe, as our Framers did and as I do, that more speech is always preferable to suppressed speech, you will be grateful for Berenson’s continuing work.
As James Thurber once advised: “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”
