It was the best of media coverage. It was the worst of media coverage.
Introduction
What's happened in this Age of Covid, from a propaganda standpoint, scares the hell out of me. I feel like the Crypt-Keeper has taken me by the hand. Every single day, he introduces some new evidence, some taint of propaganda, that may only hint at the horror I don't see. Because I certainly catch only a small number of the propaganda piranha in my perceptual net, God only knows what I'd notice if I had better mindsight.
Tonight's crypt-ic episode takes a brief look at two new, very different studies. One indicates a problem with vaccines, while undoubtedly understating the problem. The other heralds a failure for Ivermectin, the drug being used as a cheap and allegedly effective means of defusing Covid. Can you guess which study has seen the light of mainstream media day and which has been relegated to en-crypt-ed shadows, out of public view?
Myocarditis Study
The first study is from The Journal of the American Medical Association and was published January 25, 2022. The title is "Myocarditis Cases Reported After mRNA-based COVID-19 Vaccination in the US From December 2020 to August 2021," and the authors are Matthew Oster, David Shay, John Su, et al.
The study indicates that myocarditis rates after the second mRNA vaccine shot are roughly a hundred-fold greater than what would be expected. The danger is much worse for young men and male adolescents than for other demographics. Had the data from young men been featured exclusively, the study's ominousness would have been amplified. Worse still, because the study relied on data from the United States' VAERS system, which is a passive self-reporting arrangement, the reality is probably much worse than what the data indicated.
I'll review the VAERS questionnaires another time. For now, I want to very narrowly focus on CNN's coverage.
One would think that a study uncovering a hundred-fold (at least) second shot myocarditis effect would be a featured lead for many news cycles. Instead, CNN didn't cover it. Go to CNN or the sub-heading "Health" at CNN and search "Myocarditis Effect of Vaccines" and various alternatives. Nothing about the January 25 paper. Zilch. And it was not featured on nightly newscasts, either.
One would also think this would have been a perfect opportunity for CNN to trot out Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Leana Wen to discuss the study and all of the nuances. But not a peep. The questions I have are whether Dr. Gupta and Dr. Wen WANTED to discuss the study. I trusted these two implicitly early in the pandemic. Now, not so much.
How could this study not have been newsworthy? How can major news organizations simply ignore it? The first study I've seen that uses firm if understated data to establish vaccine risks, and it goes largely unreported.
The Malaysian Ivermectin Study
The second paper was published February 18 by JAMA and is titled, "Efficacy of Ivermectin Treatment on Disease Progression Among Adults with Mild to Moderate COVID-19 and Comorbidities." The authors are Steven Chee Loon Lim, Chee Peng, and Kim Heng Tay, et al.
The study found no differences in disease progression between placebo groups and groups receiving five-day Ivermectin treatment. I don't have much to say about Ivermectin one way or another, but in the conclusion, I'll mention some things this study buried or failed to mention. For now, I want to focus on the fact that this paper provides a "pro-vaccine" narrative, which (given CNN's curious stance on what data to feature or not feature) is also a "pro-CNN" narrative.
If you go to the same CNN "Health" subcategory and search "Ivermectin Failed," or something similar, you will indeed find not only a CNN story by Brenda Goodman (published February 18), but also related video clips. Thus, the anti-Ivermectin study gets feature status as opposed to the myocarditis study, which is completely ignored.
Auxiliary Observations
I just want to mention a few interesting tangents here.
1) Joe Rogan was lambasted when he mentioned on a January podcast that he thought vaccine-caused myocarditis in young males exceeded Covid-caused myocarditis. Australian guest Josh Szeps corrected him, which left Rogan to seek live fact-checking, which supported Szeps. I was a little surprised that Rogan didn't "know" this stuff, since I did.
Well, I don't presume to understand exactly how the January 25 JAMA myocarditis paper colors the numbers for myocarditis/vaccination correlation. Certainly, however, the paper suggests that those numbers need to be revisited. Rogan may turn out to have been correct, especially since the JAMA paper almost certainly underestimates case numbers due to reliance on VAERS. Szeps (and I) may very well have been wrong.
The mainstream media and social media responses to Rogan being "corrected" were somewhat shocking. I'll tackle them down the road.
2) I don't know much about Ivermectin one way or another, but I do know that the protocols for use of Ivermectin in the Malaysian study are not the recommended protocols suggested by most Ivermectin advocates. In that sense, despite the double-blind gold standard, this particular study is a bit of a non-sequitur.
3) The Malaysian study was relatively small (by my subjective standards), with about 500 people split into Ivermectin and placebo groups. While the study did indeed find that "progression to severe disease" was not halted by Ivermectin, the fact is that three people died after taking the Ivermectin as opposed to 10 dying in the placebo group. Depending on what statistical criteria are used, that may or may not be considered a significant disparity in results. My key observation here is that this was buried in the paper. One line in the body of the paper mentions this, and then it appears in the supplementary section. It's a very interesting choice of location.
Conclusion
What the Malaysian authors did was, in newspaper parlance, "bury the lead." At least that's how most civilians would interpret it. Personally, I think the authors needed to mention and address the death figures, even if it undercut the theme of the paper and meant the paper didn't publish. It's the one statistic that carries enormous public weight, and in this case the authors knew their paper would likely have a high public profile, so they needed to address it.
I'm not going to give the authors too much grief, however. The problem, for me, lies in mainstream media coverage of this study. Go ahead and google this Ivermectin paper. General media coverage does not mention the deaths disparity. The investigators burying what many would consider the lead results in media burying what many would consider the lead. Whether innocent or purposeful, it's a bad look.
Talking about CNN specifically, the network's disparate reaction to these two papers reeks of political decisions based on their commitment to certain narratives and their attempts to influence American attitudes and behaviors. In short, CNN appears to be engaged in its own brand of Fox-esque anti-journalism.
"...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...." Charles Dickens
Bob Dietz
February 28, 2022
