Media watch: The COVID Spike That Wasn’t
CNN reported that “Texas is seeing the highest number of new coronavirus cases and deaths just two weeks after it officially reopened,” implying that reopening led to a resurgence — which, groans RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende, is “simply wrong.” In fact, the “rate of increase has remained virtually unchanged since early May” in the state’s large metro areas. Since “COVID-19 does not kill quickly,” the latest Texas deaths were “mostly seeded before the reopening,” and the data suggest the rising infection numbers result from increased testing, not an uptick in cases. Notably, “the percentage of tests being returned positive is at a two-month low.” CNN’s “misfeasance or malfeasance” — a “major media company spreading what is dangerously close to disinformation” — erodes “overall public confidence in an important institution for democracy.”
Libertarian: #MeToo’s Memory-Holing
After Tara Reade alleged that Joe Biden had assaulted her, many #MeToo leaders said they’d “never claimed that all women should be believed,” notes Reason’s Robby Soave — in “a transparent attempt to rewrite history.” As Soave notes, Hillary Clinton captured the “movement’s central tenet” when she said “every survivor of sexual assault” has “the right to be believed.” Simply put, “#MeToo advocates demanded a presumption of belief for every individual who claims to be a sexual-misconduct victim.” To say anything else “is, to use a term beloved by victims’-rights advocates, gaslighting.”
Foreign desk: Uniting Against China
“Far from correcting course” after covering up the coronavirus crisis, “the Chinese Communist Party is doubling down in its attempts to squash any criticism,” sighs Michael Auslin at The Hill. Yet “all the threats and insults” against countries and organizations that dare question the origins of the pandemic, “redolent of the worst Soviet diatribes during the Cold War,” might actually weaken Beijing’s standing — especially if democracies “work together, presenting a united front in the face of Chinese intimidation tactics.” Since “democracies still have enormous power, wealth and appeal,” they could work to prevent Beijing from “picking off the needier nations with aid or intimidation tactics.” A united China playbook would be the first step toward “transparency and equality” in the West’s relationship with China.
Pandemic journal: How Florida Got It Right
The coronavirus response in Florida, where “the disaster so widely predicted hasn’t materialized,” is “the opposite of the media narrative of a Trump-friendly governor disregarding the facts to pursue a reckless agenda,” observes National Review’s Rich Lowry. Gov. Ron DeSantis & Co. “followed the science closely from the beginning, which is why they forged a nuanced approach.” Sunshine State officials ignored the models that quickly proved wrong, instead examining the evidence from abroad, which showed the elderly were most at risk. So “Florida went out of its way to get COVID-19-positive people out of nursing homes, while New York went out of its way to get them in, a policy now widely acknowledged to have been a debacle.” As DeSantis told Lowry, “if I can send PPE to the nursing homes, and they can prevent an outbreak there, that’s going to do more to lower the burden on hospitals than me just sending” gear to hospitals.
Iconoclast: Our Predictable Crises
Central Michigan faces “a serious ecological crisis” as “flooding has led to the failure of multiple dams along the Tittabawassee River” — and it “was predicted years ago,” laments The Week’s Matthew Walther. But it’s the sort of problem “no one wants to address until it’s too late, not just in Michigan but across the United States, where the phrase ‘crumbling infrastructure’ has been with us so long that it too is probably on the verge of collapse.” We’re “incapable of meaningful action until we find ourselves in the middle of a totally predictable crisis.” Indeed, many problems cited during the coronavirus pandemic — “the dangers of nursing homes, racial inequality, social atomization” — should have been “dealt with long before we found ourselves faced with a novel virus. Instead, we waited as we always do until the dams burst, metaphorically and otherwise.”
— Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Kelly Jane Torrance