The (Very Selective) Covid Wars

By David Corn  March 4, 2023

Officials in protective gear in front of a funeral hall in Wuhan, China, in December 2022 during a Covid outbreak. Kyodo/AP

There is a Hollywood trope: Aliens from outer space attack the Earth, and governments and people across the globe put aside their petty differences to combat the existential threat. (See Independence Day.) Isn’t it pretty to think so? It’s a lovely fantasy. But it’s just that: a fantasy. How do we know? Covid—that’s how. The pandemic posed a serious threat, yet as it killed hundreds of thousands in the United States and ravaged the economy, we did not unify as a nation with the common purpose of defeating this virus. Instead, the response to Covid was politicized, and we squawked and squabbled over how to respond, who to listen to, and what steps to take, with much of the debate propelled not by honest disagreements over science and policy but by bad-faith accusations, political concerns, and conspiracy theories. In the meantime, over 1.1 million Americans have been killed by the virus, with several hundred still dying each day, and an untold number suffering from long Covid.

And the Covid wars continue. In recent days, conservatives have renewed the fighting on two fronts: the origins of Covid and the efficacy of masking. These were highly contentious during the first years of the pandemic, and the latest skirmishes have been triggered by two new articles that the right has seized on as ammunition.

The first was a study about masking and other preventative measures. A few weeks ago, Cochrane, a well-regarded UK-based nonprofit that conducts meta-analyses of scientific studies, produced a paper with a straightforward title, “Do physical measures such as hand-washing or wearing masks stop or slow down the spread of respiratory viruses?” The study, which reviewed the findings of 78 other studies, concluded, “There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks…The pooled results…did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.” Tom Jefferson, the lead author of this paper, declared, “There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.”

A-ha, screamed many conservative commentators, we were lied to! The public health experts and the libs were wrong to demand we mask up and to mask-shame us when we cried out “freedom!” and refused to don this oral prophylactic. More prudent readers noticed that the paper stated that the evidence was not fully definitive and the case was not closed: “The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect.”

There were other reasons to eye this paper with caution. As Kelsey Piper wrote in Vox:

The review includes 78 studies. Only six were actually conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, so the bulk of the evidence the Cochrane team took into account wasn’t able to tell us much about what was specifically happening during the worst pandemic in a century.

Instead, most of them looked at flu transmission in normal conditions, and many of them were about other interventions like hand-washing. Only two of the studies are about Covid and masking in particular.

Furthermore, neither of those studies looked directly at whether people wear masks, but instead at whether people were encouraged or told to wear masks by researchers. If telling people to wear masks doesn’t lead to reduced infections, it may be because masks just don’t work, or it could be because people don’t wear masks when they’re told, or aren’t wearing them correctly.

To repeat: Only two of the 78 studies focused specifically on Covid and masking. Piper notes one of these found “very solid evidence for the benefits of masks” and the other identified “limited but encouraging evidence.” But when lumped in with the 76 other studies, these findings got lost in the wash. As Lucky Tran, a scientist and public health communicator who holds a PhD in biochemistry, wrote in the Guardian, “The paper mixes together studies that were conducted in different environments with different transmission risks. It also combines studies where masks were worn part of the time with studies where masks are worn all the time. And it blends studies that looked at Covid-19 with studies that looked at influenza.”

The bottom line: Proclaiming masks don’t work is wrong and perhaps dangerous. There obviously needs to be more research. Yet the libs-got-it-wrong Covid crowd is triumphantly celebrating. As are those on the right who pushed the idea that the virus resulted from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.

About a week ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Energy has concluded that the pandemic likely originated with that lab. Once again, there were gleeful a-ha’s, as conservatives exclaimed, We knew it! There was much jawboning about how advocates of this theory were once derided as conspiracy theorists and sometimes even censored. But yet once more, these Covid warriors were hyping a limited piece of information. As the Journal noted, four other intelligence-related US government agencies and a national intelligence panel still say the pandemic was probably the result of natural transmission, and the Energy Department’s lab-leak assessment was made with “low confidence.” (The FBI is one element of the US government that concurs with the department’s finding.) And this news does nothing to bolster the MAGA-ites who claim the Chinese commies purposefully unleashed Covid on the United States and the rest of the world. (See Dumbass Comment of the Week below.) A lab accident is not an attack. But as to the origins of Covid…who knows? There is still no firm consensus.

In each of these cases, there are lessons to be learned. During the pandemic frenzy, the public health community had a reasonable desire to rein in disinformation. This was especially true, given that the guy in the White House was pumping out falsehoods: Covid isn’t so bad, it’s not going to hit the United States hard, it will go away in the spring, bleach might be a cure. And Donald Trump himself went from hailing Chinese President Xi’s efforts to contain Covid to dubbing it the “Chinese virus.” In this environment, public health officials and other commentators undoubtedly made mistakes and in some instances probably went too far in dismissing ideas that they at the time considered unhelpful or misleading. (This does not include ingesting bleach.)

Now would be a good time for sober reflection on that. Instead, we get right-wingers exaggerating the new information and using it to discredit the experts they’ve been assailing for the past three years. They believe they have won the Covid wars.

But here’s a key point: Who set the agenda for this battle? Why are these the only questions that are being debated? There is little public discussion of how Trump responded to the Covid crisis. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died on his watch. Deborah Birx, Trump’s own Covid adviser, estimated in October 2021 that 30 to 40 percent of the 738,000 Covid deaths that had occurred by then could have been averted had the Trump White House taken the necessary steps to slow the spread of the virus. That means Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic resulted in 220,000 to 295,000 preventable deaths. Moreover, Trump’s politicization of the pandemic spurred vaccine hesitation on the right that likely caused the higher Covid death toll in counties that voted for Trump. To be crass, his actions (or inactions) killed his own supporters.

Why are we not talking about all that? It’s not even front-and-center as Trump seeks a return to the White House. He failed to protect the nation—and he leads the initial (and largely irrelevant) 2024 polls for the Republican presidential contest. We certainly need to understand whether masking and lockdowns helped contain the virus—and to sort out how the Covid disaster began—so we can better prevent future pandemics and better respond should (make that, when) another one strikes. These matters can be fiercely (and responsibly) debated. But we should not forget how one man’s ineptitude led to the avoidable deaths of so many of our fellow citizens. That is the national conversation that ought to be occurring. That is the Covid war worth fighting.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

The Never-Ending Story of George Santos

I know I’ve said this before, but I continue to be amazed by how many opportunities GOP fabulist George Santos affords investigative reporters. The stories keep on coming. This week, my colleagues Noah Lanard and Dan Friedman and I had yet another Santos scoop. We reported that he had raised money for a New York state political action committee that declared its mission was to register voters in the Empire State. But Santos diverted tens of thousands of dollars of the PAC’s war chest to a small nonprofit in Washington, DC, that was starting a GOP-allied website covering gay rights. A key figure in launching this project was Richard Grenell, a combative Trumper who served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and then his acting director of national intelligence. By the way, Grenell was a key endorser for Santos during his recent congressional run and helped raise money for him. A top donor for Santos told us that at Santos’ urging he had given $175,000 to this PAC for a voter registration program and that he was misled. As we note, this PAC “is one of the many elements of the bizarre Santos saga that has raised significant questions about his personal ethics and his handling of big amounts of money.”

How did we get this story? As with so many of the Santos exposés, all we had to do was pore over campaign finance filings, pick one of many expenditures that looked unusual (why is a New York state PAC sending tens of thousands of dollars to a nonprofit in DC?), and make a few phone calls. I’m proud of the Santos stories we’ve broken. But I also must acknowledge that he makes this work pretty easy. You can read the article here.

Zooming Soon

The response to my recent request for comments regarding a possible Zoom get-together for premium subscribers to Our Land was quite positive. Many of you expressed great enthusiasm for such a shindig. Some readers suggested picking a topic ahead of time or focusing on a particular article that folks could read beforehand. Others just called for a free-for-all. Maybe with cocktails. (Bring your own!) So sometime in the coming weeks, we will whip something up. If you want to join in, please consider signing up as a premium subscriber. It’s the best way to support this newsletter, and your subscription also helps bolster Mother Jones. More to come.

Dumbass Comment of the Week

Some weeks—most weeks—it appears that this feature could be billed The Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz Show. I know we have to make room for others. But they try really, really hard each week to outdo the other bozos.

A few days ago, Greene said this about the war in Ukraine: "I'm completely against the war in Ukraine...You know who's driving it? It's America. America needs to stop pushing the war in Ukraine."

Remember when right-wingers used to complain that liberals blamed America first? This is a far more egregious example of being reflexively oppositional. Has Greene not heard of this guy named Vladimir Putin who is firing missiles at civilians in Ukraine. That certainly is driving the conflict.

Gaetz demonstrated his boob-ness by citing Chinese state propaganda at a congressional hearing.

And he didn’t realize he was citing Chinese state propaganda. (Click on the above tweet to see Gaetz get owned on this point.)

As for Boebert, at a different congressional hearing, she declared, “The Covid virus was released from a lab in China.” As noted above, she was misrepresenting an iffy conclusion and making it seem this was a purposeful deed. That made it easy for Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) to skewer her…and Donald Trump:

With so many congressional hearings underway these days, the stupid really piles up. When Attorney General Merrick Garland showed up for a Senate hearing, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee competed with each other for those valuable Fox News soundbite slots—and made fools of themselves. Here are two examples—starring Sens. John Kennedy of Louisiana and Ted Cruz of Texas—of Republicans throwing conspiratorial Fox-bait at Garland and subsequently being schooled by the AG.

Mike Pence, the former guy’s former Number Two, demonstrated his total lack of self-awareness. In a speech at the University of Texas at Austin’s Clements Center for National Security, the veep whom Trumpers kind of wanted to hang, declared, “While some in my party have taken a somewhat different view, let me be clear: There can be no room in the leadership of the Republican Party for apologists for Putin. There can only be room for champions of freedom.” For four years, Pence was the handmaid to Putin’s most useful idiot. Trump repeatedly denied or downplayed Putin’s attack on the 2016 election. And Pence did not complain about that. In fact, while it’s clear that Trump won the White House with covert Kremlin assistance, we often forget that Pence attained the vice presidency the same way, as the beneficiary of Putin’s covert assault on American democracy. He is hardly now in a position to sound the alarm.

If you thought that conspiracy theory wingnut Alex Jones might throttle back after being hit with a nearly $1 billion penalty for spreading virulent disinformation about the Sandy Hook gun massacre, you’d be way wrong. This batcrap blowhard refuses to stand down. He recently confided a deep, dark secret to his audience:

Before you’re offered a national TV show, before you’re offered a major record deal, they get you in a room, and they say, “Listen we want you to reject Jesus Christ and pledge yourself to Lucifer.” It was an off-the-record meeting with me when it happened. It happened twice. Mark Dice [a right-wing YouTuber and conspiracy theorist] tells the story because it wasn’t an off-the-record meeting. It was with the largest reality TV show production company out there. And it happened to Mark Dice. When he told me about it, I believed him because it happened to me. It’s happened to [shock jock] Erich Muller, Mancow Muller. It’s happened to a bunch of other people I know. And you’re sitting there in a meeting in a high-rise office building, around an office table, and you’re like, “Are you kidding?” “No, we’re very serious, and we need you to reject Christ, and pledge yourself to Lucifer.” And I told viewers that story 20 years ago, and they go, “That’s insane.” No, that really happened.

I’m going to go out on the limb here and say this appears to be a crass attempt to exploit antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling the media. In the meantime, I’m going to double-check my MSNBC contract to see if I missed the Satan clause.

The judges rarely get a chance to hand out the prize for a remark that could be used in a war crimes tribunal at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. But this was a week to do it. Amid the intensifying conflict in Israel and the occupied territories, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said what was in his heart: “The Palestinian village of Hawara should be wiped out of the earth. The Israeli government needs to do it and not private citizens.” This remark came after hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the northern occupied West Bank town of Hawara, shortly after a Palestinian allegedly killed two Israelis in the same area.

This expression of hate sparked a strong rebuke from the Biden administration, with State Department spokesperson Ned Price calling it “irresponsible, repugnant, and disgusting.” For proposing a crime against humanity, Smotrich, this member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet and leader of the far-right Religious Zionist Party who has referred to himself as a “fascist homophobe,” takes first place.

The Mailbag

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is much in the news these days. He’s pushing a new book and political pundits are drooling at the prospect of his entry into the GOP 2024 presidential race. Trump vs. DeSantis, pass the popcorn! And there was much reader response to my report on DeSantis’ “war on freedom” in Florida.

Linda Billings wrote in from the frontlines:

If it looks bad to you from the outside, it's even worse if you're here in Florida, as I am (Sarasota). Florida teachers are threatened with felony charges if they are found to have books in their classrooms that have not been approved by "qualified media specialists" (whatever they are). Teachers are covering their bookshelves with sheets, so their students can't see the books. For 20 years, a Sarasota-based nonprofit, Embracing Our Differences, organizes an annual art show along the Sarasota bayfront to celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion. This year—I believe for the first time—the exhibit was vandalized. Someone destroyed a work of art based on Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. My church, the Unitarian universalist Church of Sarasota, was the sponsor of that particular work of art…

State College of Florida canceled its plan to host the Embracing Our Differences exhibit on its campus after it moves from Sarasota, because some of the works of art might be considered offensive. Not to mention DeSantiss aim to turn New College into a "Christian liberal arts" school (whatever "Christian liberal arts" means). I and all of my friends and neighbors here are disgusted, angry, and afraid.

Mechelle Schneider emailed:

Today’s edition of Our Land left me feeling anxious. As an educator, I taught AP classes in my local district and studied gifted education at UConn. It has always been a struggle to maintain gifted programs in our schools, much like the arts. But it is in the gifted classes where we find the best critical and creative thinkers. It was in AP classes where we read the very books that DeSantis would ban. I believe it is just another attack on “elitism.” Keeping the people ignorant makes them easier to control. 

Along with the push to restrict what teachers can teach, I am seeing a push for more “parental controls” in schools from Republicans at the local level to the national level. I taught for 34 years. Never did I see parents who wanted a more rigorous curriculum. When an ad hoc parent group becomes involved, they usually want restriction of controversial books, banning or challenging the books in the school library, or restriction of sex education. If we cannot or do not stop this movement, I fear we will fall to authoritarianism. God save us!

Duke Williams had a cheekier reaction:

I think you need to focus more on the Florida law which went too far. Even the MAGA base rebelled. This may offer a clue as to how to attack the Florida "logic"? I am, of course, talking about the proposed law making it illegal to let your dog hang its head out your car window. Did the Republicans think this was a liberal thing? And what about letting your dog ride in the bed of your pickup truck? In the farm country I grew up in, that was where everyone carried their dogs unless it was too cold or raining too hard. Finally, what about a convertible in Florida? Would that be the same as hanging out the window?... Schools and all that learning stuff is important—sure —but these are God given freedoms!

I checked and Duke is right about the dog law.

How did a train wreck and toxic chemical spill in Ohio become the latest front in the right’s crusade to depict Democrats and liberals as the enemies of white people? I explained that recently, and readers had thoughts on the matter.

Mary Bristow shared this observation:

One little train wreck in one little town that didn't even kill anybody, and all of a sudden it's a race war on white people. Sure, let's just ignore the decades of ramming interstate highways through vibrant Black communities and utterly destroying them (see for example, Nashville, Tennessee among many others), and, as you noted, the terrible health effects on poor and mostly Black people living near chemical and power plants. And let's not even think about the water in Flint, Michigan.

Edward Hackett emailed:

Why is there no Fox News for the left? Do we not have anyone photogenic enough to counter Tucker Carlson, point for point? People don't read, and most don't think for themselves, so columns like yours are read by people like me who understand that we are in a war to preserve our democracy. We need to reach the people who watch TV and are motivated by sound bites. If you doubt me, please ask yourself, "What has happened to all the newspapers?" 

Far-right demagogues deftly play the racist trope that dark-skinned people are replacing white people. I can't prove this, but I believe some people directing these statements follow the same playbook as Father Coughlin's. He blamed the Jews and others; today's propagandists use the same format with different players.

We will never change the minds of people who believe the world is flat or that climate change is a hoax, but not all who call themselves conservatives are members of the MAGA cult. We need speakers who can fight lies with emotional responses. This is not a debate about logical ideas; it is a debate about emotion. Look at the discord over wearing a mask, the lies about vaccines, and the questions about the number of people killed by the virus. These issues were used as weapons against public health officials, the CDC, and Democrats. Never let facts stand in the way of a good sound bite.

MoxieCam™

“Look, the flowers are coming up already.”

“I know, Moxie. They’re pretty. But this might be due to climate change, which can cause much chaos.”

“Is that bad for dogs?”

“I suppose that depends on where they live.”

“I worry about the Iditarod.”

Read Recent Issues of Our Land

February 28, 2023: Ron DeSantis’ war on freedom; Racist of the Week update; Your Honor’s double jeopardy; Richard Thompson keeps getting better; and more.

February 25, 2023: The GOP plays the race card with a train wreck; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Scott Adams); an Our Land focus group—do you wanna zoom; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 22, 2023: The corruption of Fox News—worse than you thought; the GOP’s very long war on Social Security; The Banshees of Inisherin is no laughing matter; and more.

February 18, 2022: Trump vs. DeSantis, Round 1: who’s a groomer?; a Chinese balloon and Chinese history; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Nikki Haley); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 14, 2023: The Trump-Russia denialists still can’t handle the truth; American Psychosis: an update; Joe Henry’s stunning new album; and more.

February 11, 2023: Joe Biden’s Americans First agenda; an arrested FBI agent and a mysterious Albania lobbying campaign; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ben Shapiro); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

February 7, 2023: Justice for Warren Zevon; remembering the Myanmar coup; the great love story in HBO’s The Last of Us; and more.

February 4, 2023: How we got the Santos story and what comes next; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Rob Portman); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

January 31, 2023: The bull of John Durham; George Santos: it never stops; nominating Navalny; Judith Owen’s brassy Come On & Get It; and more.

January 28, 2023: Remembering Victor Navasky, the unflappable ringmaster of the Nation; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Julie Kelly); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.