Disingenuous Journalism

I've mentioned it many times before. When it comes to mainstream journalism, it's important to pay attention to the facts, and read the accompanying analysis with a great deal of scepticism. Unfortunately, most people do the exact opposite. They skip lightly over the facts and end up taking the journalist's advice without noticing the flawed logic of her analysis.

As an example of a factually correct, but logically flawed article, I came across this one, written by a certain McKenzie Beard.

The article starts off by noting that as of August of this year, more vaccinated people have been dying from Covid than unvaccinated people. This is part of a troubling trend, as the author correctly points out:

• September 2021 saw 23% vaccinated Covid deaths against 77% unvaccinated.
• January 2022 saw 42% vaccinated Covid deaths against 58% unvaccinated.
• August 2022 saw 58% vaccinated Covid deaths against 42% unvaccinated.

What the rate is today is not mentioned, but the trend is presumably intact. If so, being vaccinated is likely to be a net negative when it comes to surviving Covid within a few months from now. However, this is not mentioned by the author.

Another thing that isn't mentioned by the author is the fact that the vaccines are causing illnesses of their own. There are studies that lay a link between the vaccines and a recent surge in heart disease and cancers. There's also the unresolved issue of excess deaths. If the vaccine had a net positive effect on the population, we would have negative excess deaths by now.

An honest analysis would point out these two facts:

1. Vaccines will likely be a net negative in preventing deaths due to Covid in a not-too-distant future.
2. Vaccines are the likely cause of the current surge in new illnesses, and why we have a persistently high excess death rate.

The logical conclusion would be to immediately halt the vaccination effort and to start prosecuting those who promoted it. But this is not what the journalist arrives at in her analysis.

The journalist quotes an expert named Cynthia Cox who tells us that our problems can be remedied simply by taking the boosters. The reasoning is as follows:

• More than 50% of people are vaccinated, so it is logical that more than 50% that die are vaccinated.
• Many vaccinated individuals are old and frail and naturally prone to dying when infected by Covid.
• The vaccine requires boosters in order to remain effective.

An honest analysis of this would tell us that the vaccine doesn't work very well. To be vaccinated used to mean protection from illness. Now it means protection from death, but only if fully boosted. But the journalist doesn't seem to notice this weakness in Cox's argument. She focuses instead on a report that seems to contradict the overall finding related to Covid deaths in August.

This report claims that vaccinated people were 6 times more likely to survive Covid than unvaccinated people, and boosted people were as much as 12 times more likely to survive. How this ends up with 58% of all covid deaths being among the vaccinated is not explained. However, the analysis was focused on a very specific Omicron variant that hardly killed anyone, so there might be an explanation buried there somewhere, if only the journalist had done her job and dug it up.

My guess is that the study showed that extremely frail individuals gain a short-term benefit from the vaccine. But that's hardly a good basis for a push towards mass vaccination.

The journalist continues in the same disingenuous vain by rolling out a chart that does nothing to support her argument.

The chart is provided by a political commentator named David French, and it seems to show that vaccines have been a great success. However, it merely shows graphically the above-mentioned waning of the vaccine's effectiveness. The vaccine started off more effective than natural immunity, but the gap between vaccine immunity and naturally immunity stopped growing as early as April 2022.

David French has simply presented a graph that proves the overall thesis of the sceptic. Had the journalist done her job, she would have gotten hold of more recent data, which would most likely be showing the gap between vaccinated and natural immunity closing.

Instead of doing her job, the journalist goes onto pushing the vaccine onto everybody, including children as young as 5 years of age, for the spurious claim that it might save grandma.

Offering to Molech

By Charles Foster - Illustrators of the 1897 Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us http://associate.com/photos/Bible-Pictures--1897-W-A-Foster/page-0074-1.jpg, Public Domain, Link