"Background immunity" -- A new pandemic management goal suggested by Dr. Fauci

Last update: Tuesday 2/1/22

In a recent interview for the NY Times' "The Daily" podcast, Dr. Fauci introduced a new goal for our management of the pandemic that the editor of this blog had not encountered before. It is a useful replacement for "herd immunity" because herd immunity cannot be achieved in the context of variants like Omicron.  Dr. Fauci proposed what he called "background immunity" as the new goal for communities striving to achieve a new version of normal living as the two year pandemic evolves into a lingering endemic.

 

More COVID fake news in the NY Times -- Party affiliations determine pandemic concerns

Last update: Tuesday 2/1/22

People used to say that reasonable minds could disagree. Nowadays too many of us seem to have forgotten that we can't have reasonable disagreements unless each of us really tries to see the rationality in the other's positions. So today's tale of fake news at the NY Times is a recent article by David Leonhardt, one of its best reporters, an article that interprets some unexpected findings from a NY Times survey of people's concerns about the pandemic.

COVID fake news in the NY Times -- Missing the forest for the trees

 Last update: Tuesday 1/24/22

Although Donald Trump spent every one of his 365 days in the White House denouncing criticism that he called "fake news", all good liberals and progressives knew that the real fake news was on conservative media, like Fox News. It was easy to recognize Fox fakes. They were lies, often blatant lies. So when the defeated president proclaimed his biggest Big Lie that he had actually won the 2020 election, and by a super majority, his proclamations received endless amplification by the mavens on Fox and other conservative outlets.

This blog note is not about conservative fakes; it's about the fake news that is often featured in the headline stories of the NY Times and other mainstream media. Whereas Fox make no effort to disguise the absurdity of its fakes, the facts in mainstream fake tales are mostly true; the lies are more difficult to perceive because they are embedded in the misleading contexts in which the facts are presented. 

The CDC needs to be reorganized from top to bottom ... Part 2 (Biden's Turnaround Artist)

Last update: Tuesday 1/11/22

This is the second part of a two-part blog note that responds to the spate of criticism that the incumbent director of the CDC has recently received because her "messaging" has been so confusing. By contrast, this two-part note argues that the CDC became deeply dysfunctional before President Trump took office and continues to be dysfunctional under President Biden. The confusing illogic of some of its most important pandemic guidance cannot be fixed by slicker "messaging" from its director. (Click here for Part 1)

The CDC needs to be reorganized from top to bottom ... Part 1 (Trump's Disdain)

Last update: Saturday 1/22/22

Ever since the CDC issued its confusing guidance last week that cut isolation times in half for most people, it has come under pressure from the media and anonymous sources inside the Biden White House to deliver clearer "messaging", with most of this pressure focused on the CDC's director, Rochelle Walensky. 

Avoiding the CDC's systemic blunders and flip flops

Last update: Friday 1/7/22

The Centers for Disease Controly (CDC) has blundered many times throughout the pandemic. It blundered under President Trump and it continues to blunder under President Biden. The wonder is not that it blunders so often; the wonder is that it makes the same kind of blunder again and again and again. Almost two years into a lethal pandemic, why does the CDC still fail to understand that one size does not fit all? What will it take for the CDC to acknowledge that one guidance is not appropriate for all of our fifty states and territories???