Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson scolded The New Yorker this weekend for pushing more COVID-19 “panic porn” with hospitalization numbers the magazine later acknowledged were inaccurate.
As highlighted by Fox News, John Cassidy of The New Yorker published a piece last Friday arguing that parts of “Red America” were headed toward a COVID-19 disaster based on hospitalizations in states that relaxed lockdown measures.
“[In Florida], 12,673 people were hospitalized, compared to the 8,553 a month ago, according to the COVID Tracking Project,” reported Cassidy.
Berenson called out Cassidy on Twitter for misrepresenting the numbers because those total hospitalizations go all the way back to March and did not shoot up a full 4,000 in a month.
“It should come as no surprise that the most crucial and scariest fact in this New Yorker piece of panic porn is wrong: [Cassidy] reports that 12,673 people ‘are hospitalized’ in Florida with [coronavirus], up 4,000 in a month. Nope…” Berenson said. “12,673 HAVE BEEN hospitalized in Florida since hospitalizations began in March. The vast majority of those patients are home now. Florida has never had over ~2,000 people hospitalized with [COVID-19], 3.5% of its total hospital beds. Which presents a slightly different picture.”
“Saddest part is that [Cassidy] is generally a good reporter. And ~13,000 hospitalizations would be a big number — almost as many as NY at the peak. But the media is so in love with the disaster narrative, so ready to believe the worst, that that figure raises no eyebrows,” he continued.
2/ 12,673 HAVE BEEN hospitalized in Florida since hospitalizations began in March. The vast majority of those patients are home now. Florida has never had over ~2,000 people hospitalized with #Covid, 3.5% of its total hospital beds. Which presents a slightly different picture. pic.twitter.com/POpoAIV9AP
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) June 21, 2020
On Sunday, thanks to pressure from Berenson, The New Yorker edited the piece to say, “In Florida, 12,673 people have been hospitalized, compared with a cumulative total of 8,553 a month ago, according to the COVID Tracking Project.”
A note at the bottom of the article now reads: “A previous version of this piece incorrectly described Florida’s hospitalization count.”
Berenson scolded the New Yorker for putting the correction at the bottom, “where no one will see it.”
“Journalism in 2020 (there is a correction note at the bottom, where no one will see it)…” Berenson tweeted. “Sad part is I’m half-surprised they fixed it at all. Guess they had no choice.”
Sad part is I’m half-surprised they fixed it at all. Guess they had no choice.
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) June 21, 2020
Alex Berenson has been at the forefront of the battle against the COVID-19 misinformation fear campaign since the lockdowns gripped the nation.
Speaking with Fox Nation in May, Berenson said that the evidence increasingly shows that the COVID-19 projections were based on questionable science that has been proven false.
“The virus appears to be less dangerous than we thought it was a month ago,” he told Fox Nation. “The economic devastation and the societal devastation of the lockdowns appear to be greater than even the worst projections were a month ago.”
Berenson then argued that politicians and public health officials put themselves in a difficult situation by implementing such harsh measures without having the evidence to back it up.
“What I think is that people took a very, very aggressive action a month ago without necessarily thinking through what the economic or societal consequences were going to be,” said Berenson. “Now more and more evidence is coming out that we responded too harshly, that maybe we should have taken smaller steps and seen what happened before we went to the place we went. And it seems to me very, very hard, both for politicians and for the public health establishment, to acknowledge this and to walk us back in a reasonable way.”
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