Observations and Speculations
This entry focuses once again on Apoorva Mandavilli's February 21 New York Times' piece. Her reporting provides many hints and signals regarding questions I've previously posed in the "Propaganda Files." This entry attempts to tease out some of the implications of Mandavilli's piece. I'll be speculating without a parachute here, but I do some of my best work without a parachute, a la Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne climbing out of prison in The Dark Knight Rises.
The Elephant in the Room is Demography
So why would the CDC be reticent to make public, as Mandavilli states in her first paragraph, hospitalizations "broken down by age, race, and vaccination status?" Now that I've baldly stated the question, the likely answers should be obvious. See, pointing out the obvious has its utility.
Why would the CDC withhold as much demographic hospitalization data as long as possible? Again, I have no parachute here, but my best guess is because the demographic disparities are, especially when it comes to race, income, and outcomes, horrific. An administration and an institution, in this case the CDC, are (I predict) going to be revealed as running a bit of a racist, class-based endeavor, with bad results heavily skewed to minorities and the poor. Every American should, of course, have suspected this, but suspicion is one thing and balls-in-your-face actual demographic data is another. Given that the current administration portrays itself as a champion of minorities and the "less wealthy," not much political good would come of the demography of hospitalizations and deaths being made public.
This seems such an obvious rationale, I feel like an idiot pointing it out. The questions I'd like to ask are if any major media sources have (1) put forward what I've just said as the likely rationale and (2) raised the simple question of CDC rationale at all. Has CNN or MSNBC asked why the CDC sat on the data? Has The New York Times done a follow-up?
Because if not, we are looking at propaganda of omission in service of previous propaganda of omission.
Why Now?
If the CDC has been sitting on slowly accumulating demographic data for more than a year, what prompted Mandavilli's piece on February 21?
To me, the anchor point of her article is Paragraph 15, with an anonymous CDC official explaining the likely reasons for withholding data. My suspicion is that this anonymous source may be the origin point for the piece. An organization employing scientists can keep a lid on data censorship only so long. Undoubtedly, a number of CDC scientists were fed up with the data charade and wanted the purposeful lack of public information "made public." Contacting a well-known science writer like Mandavilli would be one way to get the word out. Or, conversely, perhaps Mandavilli was watching the covered pot boil for a long time and managed to finally pry off the lid.
The Structure of the Piece
The first thing that stands out is that just two official CDC voices make it into the piece. They are Kristen Nordlund, a "spokesperson," and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the CDC's deputy director for public health science and surveillance, who blames the lack of transparency on outdated data systems.
I would pay good money to have read the actual verbatim back-and-forth between Nordlund and Jernigan and the author. Did they get a heads-up from Mandavilli that she was doing this piece and what she knew, or did she cold-call them with some questions to which she already knew the answers? That would have been fun to read.
In any event, what is missing from this piece are any CDC scientists providing their opinions and experiences, with the notable exception of the anonymous source. What's also missing are any questions from Mandavilli about what the demographic data shows that renders it radioactive. Did she ask Nordlund, Jernigan, or anyone else? We are left to ponder.
The Propaganda of Questions Not Asked
How can it be that the United States media, covering the pandemic for two full years, has not demanded the full demographic picture? Is such data considered beyond the abilities of the world's wealthiest and allegedly most technologically advanced country? Did every single American major media source fall asleep at the switch? Why was someone not publicly hammering at the CDC every single day to provide this data to the public? Does this preference to not provide or even discuss the data help explain the lack of a task force?
I have all kinds of follow-up questions and speculations. If The New York Times hadn't run this piece, would the scientists and "CDC official" have gone to alternative media? What would that have looked like? The CDC's blithe skipping of 18-to-49-year-olds data is shocking. The CDC needed to do that to make a case for boosters?
For two years, American media has given the CDC a pass on not providing moment-to-moment demographic pandemic data. As I've said in previous entries, it reeks of a kind of "style guide" regarding what gets asked and not asked.
Conclusion
I mentioned in "Strategies and Tactics (Part Two)" -- published a day before Mandavilli's piece -- that under Biden I had expected a weekly demographic tally of all things Covid, and I could not understand why the information wasn't publicly available. The only answer, I surmised, was that the lack of information was in support of narratives.
Sadly, I appear to have been correct.
Bob Dietz
February 25, 2022
