Tuesday, September 7, 2021

The Gaslighting New York Times

At the same time that the Biden Administration and the slim congressional majority are studiously doing nothing to keep millions of people from being kicked off their unemployment benefits, kicked out of their homes, protected from predatory Covid hospital billing even as the Delta variant has created a surge in cases and deaths, the New York Times cynically assures us in a front page headline that "From Cradle to Grave, Democrats Move to Expand the Social Safety Net."

They seemingly forgot to insert the word "holes" after "safety net."

Millions of people, many with no insurance, will be forced to go back to their miserable minimum wage jobs just to barely survive. But we should take heart knowing that Bernie Sanders is out there in Iowa, fighting his lonesome heart out to expand Medicare coverage to dental, hearing and vision benefits for the lucky few. Mothers facing eviction. frantic about their unvaccinated kids returning to school and day care only to be quarantined once the inevitable virus outbreak occurs, should be grateful that at least they'll continue to get their temporary $300 tax credits to tide them over, regardless of having no safety or stability in their actual housing situations.

This mere promise of a few relative crumbs in the face of overwhelming mass misery depends, of course, upon the whims of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and his moll Kyrsten Sinema of New Mexico as they threaten to side with the Republicans against this looming scourge of socialistic humanism. It also hinges upon such powerful lobbies aa the American Dental Association, which will fight tooth and nail against older people keeping their teeth by way of "onerous" Medicare coverage for their mouths. Besides, with the emergency increase in SNAP (food stamp) benefits also expiring in many states, to coincide with the forced return to school and work, people simply won't have any more time to waste on chewing nutritious food. (The Biden administration's modest increase in permanent SNAP benefits, to an average of $157 per eligible person per month beginning in October, still will not offset the expiring benefits for many recipients, which were raised to maximum levels under the Families First Act of 2020.)

If you really must persist in wasting your time worrying about your next meal or getting sick as you're forced back to work, and the kids are forced back to school, here comes the Times's resident centrist economist, David Leonhardt  to tell you that your fears about Covid are not only totally overblown, they are wildly misplaced. Although there are 160,000 new cases and 15,000 deaths from Covid occurring every single day, Leonhardt looks on the bright side.  "Only" one out of every 5,000 vaccinated Americans is testing positive for breakthrough cases on any given day, based upon one sampling conducted in a whopping three whole communities. These studies, by the way, were conducted when most kids were not yet in school. And they only apply to adults.

Leonhardt blithely writes:

In Seattle on an average recent day, about one out of every one million vaccinated residents have been admitted to a hospital with Covid symptoms. That risk is so close to zero that the human mind can’t easily process it. My best attempt is to say that the Covid risks for most vaccinated people are of the same order of magnitude as risks that people unthinkingly accept every day, like riding in a vehicle....

What about children? I’ll dig into that question in a coming newsletter.

Well, meh. Collateral damage in the weak, unproductive and non-voting population can be counted once the service economy is back up and humming and neoliberal capitalism is saved.

I am certainly no epidemiologist or statistician, and the following factoid is admittedly anecdotal, but at the State University in New Paltz where I live, where students had to show proof of vaccination before they were allowed back on campus a couple of weeks ago, there are already 56 active student cases out of 1,626 individuals tested - an increase of 10 cases since last week and a positivity rate of  3.4 percent. Since Aug. 23, there have been 76 infections and 20 recoveries. Three percent of on-campus students have been exempted from vaccination for medical or religious reasons.



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"160,000 new cases and 150,000 deaths from Covid occurring every single day"

A quick check for US numbers on September 6 : 76,060 new, 506 deaths.

Karen Garcia said...

Pardon the typo, should have read 15,000 deaths not 150,000. Yikes I am so sorry for unintentionally spreading misinformation. I got the info from an article in today's New York Times, to which I linked above. The daily case rate is an average. If the rates were indeed suddenly halved on Monday, which was a federal holiday, let's hope those figures aren't just a glitch and things are looking up after all.

Anonymous said...

Indeed, it is confusing. Google gives the numbers I quoted, but every stats website I look at give different numbers, even for the same day in the US.

Jay–Ottawa said...


Happy days are here again. 'Tis in the nature of someone called Lion Heart to talk brave, hence Leonhardt's report that, if all is not yet quite well, it's getting much better. Cheer up, reader/customer.

And 'tis in the nature of the NYT that the economy must go on and on, even if many of us (er, them) can't quite keep up for reasons serious and sometimes fatal, but thankfully clustered on the low end of statistics. We suddenly have millions more poor people. Yes, but we have more billionaires getting richer to balance the scales. As for national health, 150,000 deaths a day I cannot abide. 15,000, however, is more acceptable. As long as I'm not one of them. Stick with herds of big number; that's my advice.

David the Leonhardt works for a newspaper that is an arm of the great big machine that sells us stuff and big dreams. One must have hope in the future to buy a new pair of pricey shoes to replace the slippers we've worn out cooped up at home all day for the past 18 months. Yes, we're going out again to party real soon, so now's the time to buy that little black number. If there's a normal tomorrow just around the corner, let's do green and buy the car that gets there on batteries.

When life is good, we spend. The NYT is dependable at selling stuff because it's good at convincing us life is mostly good with a little bad thrown in, usually on a temporary basis. The advertisements are the news; the articles are the encouragement to take a second look at the advertisements. Hey, look (by force repeatedly as you scroll down the page) what the Motley Fools are telling us to buy today. Or that rainbow of deck shoes to replace your worn slippers. And, oh honey, that ultra smooth electric shaver that's been in my face along with your boobs for the past 6 months of the Times news.

Here's the news in a nutshell: Don't buy and you're a loser; Buy and you're a winner.

Erik Roth said...

The Gray Lady, that dour dowager of the establishment, however asserting claim to "the record" hasn't a monopoly on gaslight, as further exposed:

Moral Majority Media Strikes Again —
When Rachel Maddow, Rolling Stone, and others jumped on a dubious report of ivermectin overdoses, it was just the latest in a string of moral mania mishaps.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/moral-majority-media-strikes-again?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxOTg4ODYzMCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDA5NjExMTAsIl8iOiJ0S05UUSIsImlhdCI6MTYzMTEyMTAzOSwiZXhwIjoxNjMxMTI0NjM5LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTA0MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.8YP0vsjF3_PUhbDddKZ9qBQrk6AYhLYl341Wj0cy3lU
Sep 7, 2021 ~ by Matt Taibbi

After 25 Years, There’s a Reason MSNBC Can’t Look Back —
https://fair.org/home/after-25-years-theres-a-reason-msnbc-cant-look-back/
August 28, 2021 ~ by Spencer Snyder

NPR Trashes Free Speech. A Brief Response —
In an irony only public radio could miss, "On the Media" hosts an hour on the perils of "free speech absolutism" without interviewing a defender of free speech.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/npr-trashes-free-speech-a-brief-response?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxOTg4ODYzMCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDA3MTU4MjMsIl8iOiJ0S05UUSIsImlhdCI6MTYzMTI1MDc3NiwiZXhwIjoxNjMxMjU0Mzc2LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTA0MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.fKg5Sc-TXukXZ4Miqc16_sfKJGkhvdvM-yU7l_xyKAs
August 31, 2021 ~ by Matt Taibbi

Anonymous said...

1500 deaths / day, not 15.000. bad enough to make the typists hand shake though!