John Balentine’s insightful COVID story actually made me think. Like him, I am upset that many media outlets dismissed the Johns Hopkins working paper that Johns Hopkins did not endorse, even though it was based on thousands of previous studies (“Here’s Something: COVID lockdown story points to media’s failings,” Feb. 11). Well, the number actually was only 34, but the paper’s authors, including Hopkins professor and Cato Institute fellow Steve Hanke, picked them from over 18,000 potential papers that probably didn’t lead to the proper conclusion. Anyway, 34 isn’t that far from thousands.
The authors used data from only the early months of the global pandemic because, well, we’ll not get into that later. They defined lockdown “as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention,” which would include a mask-wearing, or perhaps even a pants-wearing requirement, as a lockdown. Later in the paper they switched to the more restrictive and isolating dictionary definition. But, hey, everybody gets confused sometimes.
All three authors come from the world of economics and looked at only studies using the methods of economics, which we all know are the best, especially when analyzing epidemiological issues. Just look at how successful economists are at analyzing and consequently predicting economic events. If physicists were smart enough to ask economists for help, in short order we’d have the theory of everything. Maybe the reason the paper was not peer-reviewed is that authors Hanke, Jonas Herby and Lars Jonung have no peers.
The liberal media also suppressed a similarly rigorous study in which my two fine feline friends, both Cato Institute fellows, found that rubbing one’s naked body with catnip and lying in the sun prevents COVID. I tried this, and so far, no COVID. Where’s the news coverage? Like John, I hope the legacy media drops its bias and starts running important stories like these.
Ken Weston
Bath
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