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This is not the First Time Bret Stephens has Endangered Lives [1]

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Date: 2023-02-24  

Testing in TN

Xaxnar’s excellent story, Bret Stephens - what's behind his latest column is not good. WTF NY Times? detailed the fundamental dishonesty of Stephens’ February 24 Column, The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons be Learned.” Particularly striking is Stephens’ primary reliance on one of the authors, Tom Jefferson, who is associated with far right fringe people like Jeffrey Tucker and publications like The Epoch Times, which spreads anti-vax, Q-Anon and 2020 election lies.

Stephens has been reckless since the beginning of the Pandemic. In April 2020, COVID was ravaging through New York City, killing thousands, with wartime-style field tents treating overflows from hospitals, and daily horrors unfolding outside our doors. A rational, compassionate person might use this experience to warn states west of New York to take precautions, like quarantining, social distancing and yes, masks. Instead, Stephens wrote this on April 24, 2020:

Americans are being told they must still play by New York rules — with all the hardships they entail — despite having neither New York’s living conditions nor New York’s health outcomes. This is bad medicine, misguided public policy, and horrible politics.

He used Tennessee as an example of someplace that shouldn’t have to follow “New York Rules:”

Right now, there’s a lot of commentary coming from talking heads (many of them in New York) about the danger of lifting lockdowns in places like Tennessee. Perhaps the commentary needs to move in the opposite direction. Tennesseeans are within their rights to return to a semblance of normal life while demanding longer restrictions on New Yorkers.

Governor Bill Lee used Stephens’ approach and among other things, refused to impose a mask mandate. By July 2020, cases and deaths in Tennessee skyrocketed. On July 4, 2020, I wrote, Bret Stephens' April 24 Column has Turned Deadly. Perhaps IT should have been "Canceled," noting that in a rational world, “Stephens would be writing a column begging for forgiveness, admitting how wrong he was, and pledging from now on to follow science and rationality on all subjects.” Instead, three years later, he is doubling and tripling down, writing a profoundly dishonest and reckless column misrepresenting a study and relying on right wing extremists for guidance.

And what about Tennessee today? Stephens’ libertarian paradise is now 8th in the United States in deaths per 100,000 people, blowing by New York, in 15th place, despite our city bearing the savage brunt of the first 2020 COVID wave. Yet Stephens learned nothing and plows forward with more reckless, life-threatening information.

Gail Collins has had a great career as a Times columnist, championing women’s issues, in particular, with wit and passion. But now, she’s paired with Stephens for a weekly “chat,” where they collegially swap opinions and observations. Isn’t the time for collegiality over when your partner is engaged in dangerous, recidivist behavior that threatens lives?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/24/2154833/-This-is-not-the-First-Time-Bret-Stephens-has-Endangered-Lives

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