From JC

Speaking of the Washington Post, the paper also ran an unintentionally hilarious pandemic performance review yesterday, or maybe it’s a limited hangout, or a partial sideways apology, or something, headlined “How We Got Covid’s Risk Right But the Response Wrong.”

See? They were right, even though they were wrong. More Orwellian double-think! It’s all so very, very nuanced.

The article was labeled an “analysis,” and authored by Bloomberg business commentator and former Harvard Business Review director Justin Fox, who apparently drew the short straw for having to frame the paper’s abject covid failures and hysterical fear-mongering as “successes” — successes, that is, if you squint really hard and look at it in just the right light. And also backwards through a telescope.

Justin got off to a terrific start by immediately explaining he was qualified to cover covid since 2020 even though he has “no background in epidemiology or even health journalism,” since “I can multiply, divide and make charts.”

My son Luke, who just turned thirteen, can also multiply, divide, and he makes great charts. I guess we’re all experts now!

Obviously feeling very generous, Justin credited himself for his 2020 estimate of a 1% covid fatality rate, since he didn’t fall for the obviously-wrong CDC and W.H.O. and their much higher 2-3% estimates. Of course, one percent is a chucklesome exaggeration all by itself, but the rest of the article swelled with even more belly laughs, like Justin’s claim that the CDC’s covid death estimates were “almost certainly undercounts, because in the early days the lack of testing meant many Covid-caused deaths were attributed to other maladies.”

Hahaha! I’ve personally reviewed hundreds of covid death certificates and coroner reports. My favorites are the covid gunshot wounds, covid tumbles off of roofs, and covid motorcycle accidents, but the great variety of covid nursing home trip-and-falls comes in at a close second.

Justin also quoted Bill Gates, even though he’s not a medical professional or a scientist. At least he tried to credit whatever dumb thing Bill was saying. Justin labeled the software billionaire a “well-informed amateur epidemiologist.” Hahaha! You really can’t make this stuff up.

Justin even claimed lockdowns “seem to have saved lives when implemented early enough.” We just need to do them earlier. If only we could implement lockdowns before pandemics start. I wonder whether Justin thought of that idea.

But anyway, after all that, Justin got down to brass tacks, the hideous point of the awful apology tour. After congratulating himself so many ways, and whole expressing great magnanimity and praiseworthy open-mindedness, Justin ultimately allowed that “the US did an awful job of balancing Covid’s risks with the costs of fighting the disease,” and even conceded that Sweden “ended up with one of the most successful and sustainable Covid management efforts among Western countries.”

How about that? Sadly, Sweden need not apply to the Washington Post to get its reputation back. This brief, footnoted admission is probably as much credit as Sweden will ever get, even though it deserves to be included in the title of every textbook about pandemic management from here on out. Still, the Nordic country is enjoying the best revenge, the quiet victory of being right.