Local covid journalism still sucks
Covid is virtually gone. Deaths are less than two a day. But local news media let the medical establishment fan fear, encourage wearing useless masks and push more boosters despite their harms.
I used to work at the Pittsburgh Trib and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, both of which, like virtually all newspapers in America, have been sinking for a decade like the Titanic.
I sent this rant in reaction to a Jan. 15 Trib story by Paul Guggenheimer about how local medical experts are not surprised by the spike in covid cases in Pittsburgh to the Trib's editor, my former colleague Luis Fabregas.
But what I complain about could apply to all the print and electronic news media in town.
The Rant:
I can’t believe that there are people in charge of the medical system in Pittsburgh who are still encouraging everyone to wear masks and to get boosters shots.
What planet are they living on?
Masks are virtually worthless at stopping viruses. Dozens of studies say so. Even St. Fauci used to say so in his early manifestations.
Boosters are now seen as doing little to help people and are beginning to be suspected of causing more harm than good to people who get them.
Forget doing non-stories like this one about a doctor at UPMC not being surprised by the expected spike in cases, which they cannot count or keep track of with any accuracy. The numbers of cases and deaths from covid, especially in Pittsburgh, are minuscule.
Please provide some perspective:
— The pandemic is over; people are not dying at a significant rate; the latest variant is like the flu, at worst. Two (2) deaths a day since Dec. 29 in a county of 1.1 million? I bet more Pittsburghers die of the flu every day — or from falling off ladders.
— Hospitals are under no stress from covid cases — and in Pgh they never really were, despite the non-stop medical/media hysteria of 2020/21.
— Please stop counting the number of cases like they mean anything anymore.
— Please tell us the ages of the people who were hospitalized or who died. It’s guaranteed they were as they’ve always been — more than 80 percent very old and already very sick/unhealthy and living in nursing homes. (93 percent of US 1 million deaths were of people age 50 or older and 56 percent are older than 75)
— Please try to put an end to the stream of medical BS from people like Yealy, who continue to push the official party line like it’s still 2020 and act like we don’t know anything about covid, its most vulnerable victims and the growing concern about the harmful effects of multiple vax shots.
Here’s a spike story for the Trib — look into whether Pittsburgh has seen a spike in excess deaths since 2020 to see if there have been any, and to see how many were caused by covid and how many by other things like suicide or heart attacks or cancer that was not treated because of lockdowns and the focus on covid patients.
Or how about a story about why no one — no one — in the national or local media is asking heart doctors/vaccine experts about Pittsburgh native Damar Hamlin’s heart attack and what caused it?
And, for extra credit, how about doing this obvious story that no journalism outfit in this town wants to touch — Franco Harris’ sudden death and its cause.
Why is it still unknown? Maybe it was a stroke, a heart attack or an accident or even a suicide. But since no one in the media is asking, we’ll never know.
Note: Paul Guggenheimer sent me an email pointing out that doctors were not encouraging everyone to wear masks, just those who are immunocompromised. A fair point. Hyperbole on my part. But as I responded, masks are as useless for the immunocompromised as they are for everyone else. — BS