New York Times liberal David Leonhardt has had plenty of dumb things to say about the pandemic.
Exhibit A, this remark he made back in October on CNN: “When people quit or get fired because they won’t take the vaccine, I would think of that — there is some really good news there.”
A month before that, he said Republicans were rejecting vaccines at a higher rate than Democrats, in large part because conservatives had “grown hostile to science.” Then he acknowledged in a subsequent column that health officials were deliberately withholding information from the public, “as happened with masks,” and said their “refusal to acknowledge uncertainty can undermine officials’ credibility.” (When conservatives doubt what their leaders are telling them, it’s because they’re “hostile to science.” When Leonhardt does it, he’s just being a skeptical journalist!)
In June 2020, he made the arrogant declaration that “We know how to slow the spread of the coronavirus,” and pointed to South Korea as a sterling example of one of those countries that had “avoided outbreaks or beaten them back.” A few months later, the deputy commissioner of the nation’s health department would say, “We are facing our biggest ever coronavirus crisis because the current wave is neither temporary nor regional, but steady and nationwide. We don’t have one central cluster that we can shut down with a focused testing and isolating campaign…”
And so, Leonhardt doesn’t get any credit for his Johnny-come-lately attitude about how Democrat and media-championed restrictions on the economy, social life, and schools have severely retarded this country. Plenty of people knew that was the case from the beginning and when they said so aloud, elitist dummies like Leonhardt denounced them as reckless science deniers hellbent on ushering more spread of a deadly virus.
But it’s wild anyway that, for becoming more vocal lately about the harm Democrats have done to children and the economy with their beloved lockdowns, Politico decided it was time to let a bunch of miserable liberals trash him. And do it anonymously!
Reporter Joanne Kenen wrote last week that she had viewed a letter sent to the Times “from a group of prominent pandemic experts” who called Leonhardt’s Covid analysis “irresponsible and dangerous.” Who were these so-called “prominent” experts? We don’t get to know. Kenen said when she got ahold of the letter, it came “with the full list of signatures withheld.”
How, then, does she know any of the names are “prominent”? Moreoever, how does she know they’re “experts” at all? Maybe we shouldn’t ask. We wouldn’t want to seem “hostile to science.”
But Kenen even declined to identify someone she interviewed directly and who said that “the majority” of Leonhardt’s opinion pieces “downplay risk, downplay prevention.” This assessment, according to Kenen, came from a physician “at a prestigious academic medical center.” If that’s true, and we’re talking about a matter of life and death, and that a prominent writer is misleading millions of people about the risk to their health, there is literally no reason for a doctor to hide his name when making such a milquetoast accusation. And there is literally no reason for a reporter like Kenen to allow it — other than that she’s simply crap-stirring and continuing to feed the alarmism that invites Democrats to continue hyping up their control-freak restrictions.
These people swear that they’re not enjoying the pandemic, that “everyone” wants to be done with it. No, they don’t.
Leonhardt isn’t a sympathetic victim in this smear campaign. But he’s a useful reminder that the people we’re told incessantly by the national media to listen to and trust are in no way forthcoming or honest.
