Ron Desantis on the COVID Year: Don’t Trust the Elites

'For months we were told to “trust the experts,” but far too often over the past year those who were most influential in our society proved incapable of rising to the moment'

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The Covid-19 pandemic represented a test of elites in the U.S., from public-health experts to the corporate media. The results have been disappointing. Policy makers who bucked the elites and challenged the narrative have been proven right to do so.

To begin with, highly publicized epidemiological models were as consequential as they were wrong. The model produced by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London—which erroneously forecast millions of non-nursing home Covid deaths in the U.S.—sparked panic among public-health elites and served as the pretext for lockdowns throughout the U.S. and Great Britain. The lockdowns failed to stop the virus but did a great deal of societal damage along the way—damage that a more targeted approach, seeking to reduce total harms, would have been able to avoid (and did, in places like Sweden and Florida).

Similarly, models predicting massive shortages of hospital beds helped to precipitate the disastrous policy—enacted by states like New York, New Jersey and Michigan—to send contagious, Covid-positive hospital patients back to nursing homes. States like Florida that rejected the models and adopted policies to protect nursing-home residents had comparatively lower nursing-home mortality rates as a result.

The reliance on faulty models was matched by poor public messaging. Elites sent conflicting messages about the efficacy of cloth masks, the uniformity of risk across age brackets, the danger of outdoor transmission and the practical benefit of taking a Covid vaccine.

Perhaps most damaging to public trust was the public-health campaign urging “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” This short-term mitigation, we were told, was necessary to buy time to prepare hospitals for any patient surges. But that reasonable aim was soon transformed into a lockdown-until-eradication approach that left no end in sight for most Americans. Going from “save the hospitals” to “zero Covid” represents one of the greatest instances in history of moving the goal post.

Lockdowns proved a huge boon to America’s corporate media, which primed its captive audience with fear and partisanship. Everything the corporate press did regarding Covid coverage was inseparable from its yearslong obsession with attacking Donald Trump. Weaponizing Covid in an election year superseded any obligation to present the facts with needed context and perspective.

Florida cut against the grain of elite opinion and bucked the media narrative.

While it was abundantly clear by May that schools represented low-risk environments for the spread of Covid and that the consequences of prolonged school closures were potentially catastrophic, the corporate media did its best to obscure the data and stoke fear and panic among parents and teachers. After all, the media had to take the position opposite Donald Trump.

Had the media presented the data on schools in a rational fashion with proper context and perspective, it is quite possible that the extended school closures we’ve seen in lockdown states would have been untenable and millions of students would be in markedly better shape academically and socially.

For months we were told to “trust the experts,” but far too often over the past year those who were most influential in our society—in public health, government and media—proved incapable of rising to the moment.

Florida cut against the grain of elite opinion and bucked the media narrative. The result is open schools, comparatively low unemployment and per capita Covid mortality below the national average. We cannot simply undo the harm caused by flawed policies advocated by our elites, but we can resolve that we never let this happen to our country again.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

7 Comments
  1. ken says

    This Wall Street article shows the little Hitlers of the world are getting antsy. Notice the article gently tells the reader how ‘wannabee tyrants’ were misled by the ‘experts’ and the epidemiology models. Like they had no way of knowing that locking down entire populations, destroying economies, and killing the elderly would not stop the spread of any disease. They were innocent and only doing what the ‘experts’ thought best.

    Horse Hockey!

    With the exception of two or three, every government on the planet was doing the same thing. In the US, governors and even low life mayors and other scum were dictating rules that were obviously designed to worsen the health of people. Worse,,, nazi police were enforcing them. For this to happen there had to be collusion on a world level. Climate Change, Eugenic oriented Billionaires/pharmaceuticals/political party’s,,, all paying off governments to lock down their citizens to reduce carbon and populations.

    And at every stage they screamed and still are screaming “the science” Well ‘the science’ PROVES that no isolated covid 19 virus exists. The science proves masks do not prevent the spread of any virus. No science exists showing that locking down entire populations reduce the spread of any virus or other pathogens. And no science exists demonstrating the use of experimental drugs being necessary for an alleged disease with a 99.87% recovery rate.

    No,,, this was all planned out but now they’re having problems convincing people the risk of dying or a debilitate disease like Bells Syndrome or blood clots is worth it rather than suffering a few days of an illness not proven to even exist.

  2. Mr Reynard says

    Ron . First I don’t agree with your comment “Don’t Trust the Elites”\It should be actually, Don’t Trust the psychopathic, homo-paedophle scums !
    ” ?

  3. Jack says

    Western Elites have developed a herd mentality. They now constitute for the most part a neoliberal club and are inclined to march in lockstep. They see their futures inextricably linked to the “New World Order” and desperately want to avoid being expelled from that exclusive club. Very few remain with the ability to think independently, outside of the box and with the courage of their convictions.Their biggest enemy is the independent journalist who dares to expose and criticise them.Unfortunately Mass media and social media has been used very successfully to virtually lobotomize the bulk of the western population who are blindly accepting the official narrative and are being led by these elites down a path towards Orwellian serfdom. I put my support behind the independent journalists who are our first line of defence against this march towards fascism.

  4. Andra says

    The DeSantis POV needs to be urgently shoved down the throats of every scum gov’t official in every country in order to urgently return everyone to their unhindered daily lives. Enough with opinions, endless writings, speculations, bs from the “Faulcies” of the world. Get out in the fresh air.. Toss the face infection generators. Walk into somebody just to say hello!! “Just Do It !” (Thanks, Nike.)

  5. Play says

    This agenda has been in the works for years… there is no virus, there never was one.. it’s called the common cold.. wearing a mask Will make you sick. S wise you breath in you own toxins ( CO2) the body has 4 channels of elimination (bowel,urine, skin, breath) if you wear a mask all day long your simply breathing in your bodies waste … wake up, stop being ignorant. This is happening because they want total control but removing our freedom…

  6. Play says

    Sorry for the delay typos spell check corrector…

  7. Joe_Below says

    Let’s skip the B.S. The entire point behind the scam was exposed right at the beginning. They came out with, “the only way we’re going to get through this is with a vaccine!” or something to that effect. Before it was even really publicly identified what the issue was.

    The fact that this came from the lips of none other than Bill Gates tells you all you need to know. Mr. Population Reduction himself. A man who publicly made previous statements linking lowering the planet’s temperature by “doing a good job with vaccines” after linking global warming to the size of the population.

    COVID (or the fake news thereof) was all about driving people towards a sterilizing vaccine. That’s all we need to expose.

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