Latest news with #DavidZweig
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
NPR reporter says she was censored by boss during Covid lockdowns
Advertisement An NPR reporter says she was censored by a boss at the public radio network after suggesting they report on anti-lockdown proposals during COVID. Meghna Chakrabarti, host of On Point, said earlier this week that she wanted to do a show on the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020 as the pandemic raged. The declaration dismissed most lockdown and social distancing measures as superfluous. But Chakrabarti says an unnamed boss shut the idea down. 'There was a point in time where I wanted to actually do a show on the Great Barrington Declaration,' the NPR longtimer revealed. 'I wanted to do a very just a rigorous analysis... [and] try to bring some evidence to scrutinize it [either] positively or negatively... 'There was one person in particular that was a colleague of mine, who just said, we cannot talk about it,' she said of the declaration. 'That even talking about it in a rigorous objective manner is spreading misinformation. 'I'll never forget that,' she continued - leading Zweig to remark: '[The] hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.' 'But this person is someone I deeply respect and admire, and their decisions are top notch, highly, highly intelligent,' Chakrabarti went on to explain. '[But] I wanna bring up this story,' she asserted. 'I wanna bring up this story specifically because fear.' Chakrabarti did not name her colleague, but discussed the incident during a chat with New York journalist David Zweig about the harmful effects of lockdowns five years on. Zweig, Chakrabarti's guest, has written extensively on the US' COVID-19 response for publications for like Atlantic, New York Magazine, and The New York Times . His coverage has been critical, framing the closures of public schools and other social distancing measures as 'one of the worst American policy failures in a century'. Chakrabarti said she was troubled by school closures during fall 2020, around the time three doctors created the Great Barrington Report, which was slammed by most in the liberal media. She then brought up how figures like Francis Collins - the then director of the National Institutes of Health - 'wanted to squash the declaration' perhaps prematurely, on the basis it was 'a bad idea.' Penned by Harvard's Martin Kulldorff, Oxford's Sunetra Gupta, and the NIH's Jay Bhattacharya it preached the notion of 'focused protection', and that those most at risk of dying should only undergo measures to be kept safe - no one else. Collins, 75, left his post in December 2021, and Anthony Fauci - a figure who also framed the well-cited open letter as 'nonsense and very dangerous' - resigned a year later. Both played integral roles in the US government's widely ridiculed pandemic response, which Chakrabarti said created 'political pressures' in NPR's newsroom. She added how the anecdote proved Americans, at the time, could not have 'certain conversations', as fears permeated during the pandemic's early days. Many have since accused members of the media of perpetuating that fear - all at the behest of the federal government. World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus - who still holds his position - bashed the herd immunity concept proposed in the Great Barrington Declaration as 'scientifically and ethically problematic.' David Nabarro, a special envoy of the health agency, claimed lockdowns could only be avoided 'if governments [first] impose some reasonable restrictions like social distancing and universal masks and install test and trace strategies.' Such a response - the one the government ultimately went with - has since been questioned by a steady stream of scientists. Others have slammed the government's decision-making process at the time, saying it negatively affected healthy citizens who were at lesser risk of infection. 'Herd immunity against COVID-19 should be achieved by protecting people through vaccination,' the WHO continues to maintain on its website. '[N]ot by exposing them to the pathogen that causes the disease.'
New York Post
05-05-2025
- Health
- New York Post
Medicaid reform, now or never, GOP savings may cost NY $5B and other commentary
From the right: Medicaid Reform, Now or Never 'Republicans would be making a terrible blunder to let' Democrats' fear-mongering about Medicaid reform 'intimidate them from fixing the program,' warns The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Under the ObamaCare law's Medicaid expansion, the feds pay states more for eligible 'prime-age adults' than 'for pregnant women, the disabled and other low-income populations.' Huh! 'You won't find many voters who think the federal government should focus scarce health resources on working-age men over poor children and pregnant women. Yet that is what the perverse financing formula encourages.' Fact is, 'the GOP can make the strong and accurate argument that fixing this bias in federal payments is shoring up the program to better serve the vulnerable,' and 'Republicans may not get another opening for decades to fix the core problems in Medicaid.' Eye on NY: GOP Savings May Cost State $5B The stakes for New York 'are high' as Republicans eye Medicaid savings from targeting the 'so-called expansion population,' notes the Empire Center's Bill Hammond. These are under-65, non-disabled adults 'with income up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.' ObamaCare made them Medicaid-eligible, with the feds funding 90% of the costs, instead of the 50% it pays for most Medicaid recipients in New York. Republicans may make the feds' share 50% for these people as well, which could cost New York state 6% of its funding, or $5.3 billion, based on 2023 numbers. Amazingly, such changes 'would be unlikely to reduce' federal Medicaid spending for New York 'in absolute terms.' They'd merely 'slow growth compared to current trends.' Ed desk: The School-Closures Obscenity Teachers and administrators simply 'didn't care about having kids in school' during COVID, David Zweig recalls at New York magazine; 'a series of falsehoods' related to risk birthed the 'fantastical list of demands' from teachers unions and others around reopening. Recall too that the American Academy of Pediatrics was 'very strongly in favor of getting kids into schools, but as soon as Trump came out in favor of reopening, they completely reversed their position.' 'Childhood is achingly brief.' The pandemic saw little kids miss a year or more of 'running around in a playground with friends' as they were forced to wither away 'in the gray light of their Chromebooks.' The idea that this 'wasn't a tremendous harm is absurd.' Space beat: The Trouble With Hubble 'Without question, the Hubble Space Telescope is a marvel of technology,' gushes Mark Whittington at The Hill. The last mission to the 35-year-old instrument was in 2009; it 'has been operating ever since then without a servicing mission.' Now 'not only is Hubble's orbit starting to decay,' but just 'two of its six gyroscopes are functioning.' Yes, 'the Hubble was designed to be serviced by a space shuttle orbiter.' But the option of 'using a SpaceX Crewed Dragon' to 'boost the telescope's orbit,' after which 'spacewalking astronauts would perform repairs and enhancements,' risks 'the astronauts breaking the space telescope.' Bigger-budget ideas: a SpaceX Starship could simply 'lift huge space telescopes with many times the Hubble's capabilities' into orbit. Libertarian: Ax Regs That Limit US Workers 'At the core of Trump's economic vision is sincere worry about the decline in prime-age male labor-force participation,' observes Reason's Veronique de Rugy. That decline 'has real social consequences' as 'economic insecurity among non-college-educated men fuels declining marriage rates, weaker communities, and more public health crises.' Yet the issue is 'more complicated than Trump's 'China stole our jobs' narrative,' and is 'rooted in problems that tariffs and industrial policy won't fix.' A 'thicket' of government regulations has erected 'huge hurdles to interstate mobility, effectively locking people into stagnant local economies.' 'We must remove the obstacles and perverse incentives that make living with economic stagnation too rational a choice for too many people.' The key to 'restoring work force participation' would be 'tearing down barriers' erected by the government. — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Epoch Times
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
The Barbarity of the School Closures
Commentary Another book on COVID? Yes, but the author David Zweig has written one for the ages, a definitive account of the school closures from March 2020 through the following year and extending in many places. It's called ' This policy affected everyone without exception. We are going to live with its devastating consequences for the remainder of our lives. It's already here among the under-30 population, in the form of ill-health, illiteracy, innumeracy, digital addiction, substance abuse, emotional immaturity, psychmed attachments that ruin lives, astonishing intellectual superficiality, deep and dark cynicism, and philosophical nihilism. Does it seem like we should know something about how this happened? Why did this happen? You might think so but the subject is not really part of public debate. The legacy media ignores it. It's also hard to discuss with friends, family, and neighbors because most people supported it at the time. This is why this book—I seriously doubt a better one will come along—is so crucial. The research is in depth. It is brilliantly written. It examines every facet of the policy, from its origins, its fake science, its implementation, and why it continued on as long as it did. Every page has a shocker. As much as I knew, and as much as I opposed what was unfolding from the start, this one really rattled me. The cruelty. The disregard of evidence. The sheer barbarity of it all. Related Stories 4/25/2025 4/24/2025 I've long followed Zweig's work as a journalist. His craft begins with intense curiosity and a special focus on features of the social and economic world others overlook. We long shared an interest in structural issues of work life. He has already written a great book on what he calls the 'invisibles,' workers who make everything in society function but seek neither fame nor fortune. I met him in person for the first time during the height of lockdown, in October 2020 because he was one of only a few journalists who answered a call I put out to meet three famed epidemiologists to speak about the policies that had gripped the world. The subject was the lockdowns, closures, and crazy rules about distancing to separate every person from every other. He asked excellent questions at that event (he was brave to defy the conventions by even showing up!). The result of that experience became the The story is important to underscore the point. Zweig is not just a laptop journalist. At a time when so many others were hunkered down, hiding from the invisible enemy, he dared to get out, investigate, and learn. It's hard to recreate those strange times from just five years ago, but these were days in which people were practically bathing in sanitizer and looked upon their fellow man as disease vectors. Not Zweig. His passion for the truth motivated him to dig deeper than most others. He said at the time that he was thinking about writing a book about the unfolding disaster. There are so many features of the pandemic response that merit discussion. Oddly, comparatively little attention has been paid to the school closures and the imposed regime of online learning. Industry loved it but families and taxpayers not so much. I would rather you pick up the book than trust my summary. Still, one has to summarize. He observes that not just one factor caused the prolonged wreckage. It was a combination: bad science, bad information, awful media messaging, political hysteria, labor union power, a disregard for the well-being of kids, no exit plan, and general bureaucratic scoliosis that prevented adaptation to new evidence. The power of the book is the narrative evidence. There are so many shocking facts, such as how scientific forecasters living on government money were consistently outdone and outsmarted by private-sector programmers and management consultants. He further scrubs off the veneer of a vast amount of claims from academic journals and presumptions of the expert class. You cannot finish this book with a shred of respect for what's called Public Health. It is not only misnamed; it is antonymously named. What effect has this had on the culture of education? It has fed a dark loathing that is just under the surface. The public schools in this country are backed by a kind of social contract. We pay taxes, mostly property taxes. Those with kids in school think of these as a fee for service, a forced tuition for the use of the schools. Everyone else is told that good schools are essential for great communities, so it is in their interest to pay also. Vast amounts of community life revolve around them. In mid-March 2020, the unthinkable happened. Local officials all over the country suddenly shut them down. The excuse: an 'abundance of caution.' The kids were never in danger themselves but they were suddenly regarded as disease vectors. If we were going to stop the spread, we had to keep the kids away from each other. It's in the interest of those who were actually vulnerable. Thus were the interests of the kids sacrificed for the interest of the aged and infirm. In theory. In reality, there was never a shred of evidence that school closures stopped any transmission and lowered any death rates. European schools opened quickly. Most schools in the world did too. Very early on, all these governments and their health departments were reporting no deleterious consequences from the decision. The data was all there: opening schools did nothing to increase the dangers of the disease to the public. In the United States, it was different. The international research was not reported by mainstream media. It was wholly ignored. The closures went on and on, even as fatalities plunged and the virus mutated again and again to less virulent strains. An ethos had grabbed hold in which those who pushed for opening were seen as Trump-aligned; even the closures had begun during the last year of his first term. As a means of social and political signaling, all elite circles rallied around keeping the kids spinning in despair at home, staring at laptops, and pretending to learn with online assignments. They were given fake grades while being forcibly prevented from in-person activities and socializing. Homeschooling went from a legally suspicious practice to one that became mandatory overnight, much to the astonishment of people who had pushed for this for decades. But the impact on home life was devastating. Moms and dads left work and became tutors while also trying to keep their kids up on schoolwork and otherwise keep them entertained. It was all impossible, so of course parents acquiesced to allowing more screen time that they had previously discouraged. The online classes required the use of video sites that had been previously restricted. The result was intellectual and moral corruption, and the full waste of one or maybe two years of precious time in the lives of millions. Even after having read Zweig's definitive account, I'm still left with a sense of astonishment that this ever happened, and retain some sense of puzzlement about it all. The public schools in this country, as shabby as many of them have been for a long time, have been the pride and crowned jewel of Progressivism for longer than a century. One might have supposed that the people who are progressively aligned would defend them no matter what, and certainly not permit them to be closed for a year and longer. I knew at the time that disaster would result. More than that, I knew that change would come to the entire sector. Here we are today and the Department of Education is eviscerated, homeschooling is ubiquitous, private schooling has never been more popular, and states are considering completely eliminating the funding source of public schooling, namely property taxes. There it is: the blowback. Still no refunds on taxes and tuition and precious few apologies but at least we see some change of direction. The damage simply cannot be undone. Look around today at young people and you know it. There is vast amounts of work that the remaining adults in the room must do to reverse the calamitous edicts of the expert class that wrecked life and education for an entire generation of kids. Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Fox News
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
David Zweig: Closing Schools During Covid Was The Most Catastrophic Consequence Of The Interventions
David Zweig, investigative journalist and author, joined Brian Kilmeade to discuss his new book 'An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions' Zweig spoke about the failures of public policy during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially its impact on children after school closures and how elected officials, the medical establishment working with government and the teachers unions failed their students. Zweig explained how closing schools during the pandemic was the most catastrophic consequence of the interventions and it's impact is still affecting kids to this day. Zweig pointed out that during the early days of the pandemic, the EU opened schools and with millions of students back, there was no negative consequences on the community. Zweig stressed it was not just on kids, but also no increased transmission to teachers and everyone else in the community after schools opened. Zweig took the media to task for not reporting on no negative consequences on the millions of children returning to school in the EU. The failures according to Zweig all comes back to journalists not fulfilling their most basic duty of asking questions and being skeptical of those in power. Click here to order 'An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions' Watch here:
The Hill
22-04-2025
- General
- The Hill
Covid Policy Failures Were ‘Worst' In A Century: David Zweig
Author, David Zweig talks about his new book "An Abundance of Caution" where he claims that schools didn't need to close during covid based on the evidences. #DavidZweig #CovidPandemic #Book
