This is one of the most laughable ‘outrages’ I’ve seen in a while. It’s not a new story. It comes up a few times a year but the answer to the problem is always the same.
First, let me, as a member of the media, highlight why some stories get covered and others don’t. Newsflash, it almost never has anything to do with skin color.
People who just vanish and there’s no additional information or evidence available, tend to not get covered all that much. It’s horrible for the families of the victims but it’s a reality in the news business. There needs to be a ‘hook’ to use to suck the audience into the story.
Those ‘hooks’ could be an unusual set of events, surveillance video showing something that might be relevant to the case, a photograph, text, or cryptic phone call. Sometimes there might even be witnesses. It could also be a small piece of evidence in the case. The media, often at the request of the authorities, puts this info out there to the public so the public can view the evidence and maybe help with the case. If there’s no evidence, the coverage rarely moves beyond the initial few stories for headline news. People like to feel like they can help a case and then become invested in it emotionally.
Crimes that happen in areas that aren’t crime-ridden do tend to get covered more because they are atypical. Is this fair to the victim’s family in those other cases, no. It is a reality though. Most local news outlets that I’ve seen in my career do a great job of highlighting tragic cases involving children even in high crime areas. They don’t often make national news because they aren’t of national interest.
Gabbi Petito’s case had all of the ‘hooks’ that make a compelling news story and then some. She was likely the victim of domestic battery, she was an aspiring social media influencer with fans who followed her travels, her public social media posts provided more evidence in the case, and she was traveling the country when the crime happened which means there’s more need for authorities to get the story on national media to gather evidence. Most stories don’t have most of these components. The fact that Gabby was young, white, and attractive are all secondary factors in the news coverage but people like Joy Reid want you to think those are the primary reasons her story was so widely covered. I’ve covered countless cases like this and the looks or race of the victim are rarely the central dynamics in coverage. The facts and evidence of the case are almost always the driving force. I’ve covered stories with all sorts of races and conventional standards of beauty throughout my career. The only demographic that I’ve ever seen get cast aside and not really given meaningful attention are boys and men who disappear. There are exceptions to that rule but, generally speaking, we cover the missing girl or woman much more readily than for boys or men.
This has never stopped the news media from screaming foul every time a case gets the attention that Gabby’s did when the victim is a white woman.
The media's focus on the Gabby Petito case has been frustrating for some people — who point out that the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women doesn't get nearly the same media attention.https://t.co/CAEI82oXrL
“In the same area that Gabby Petito disappeared, 710 indigenous people— mostly girls—disappeared between the years of 2011 and 2020 but their stories didn’t lead news cycles …” https://t.co/HJ01B6CsRK
Eugene Scott is with the Washington Post. Eugene Scott didn’t know about those other missing people until Gabby went missing. He never bothered to look before so save us the sanctimony.
These hysterics are wonderfully ironic.
The news media is OVERWHELMINGLY liberal. Every survey of the media shows a vast majority are liberal. It’s been that way for decades. Some estimates have the media being around 85% Democrat/liberal. Analysis of the media’s political donations are well over 90% to Democrats. In some election cycles, the media donates to Democrats by as much as 96-97% over Republicans.
The media’s political ideology is only relevant because that same news media tells you constantly that the left is anti-racist and the right is racist.
So, the media says it’s racism that leads to missing white women getting more coverage than minority women but it’s the media who chooses what stories get covered and that media overwhelmingly identifies as being politically left?
If the news media thinks racism is what’s driving missing white women to get more coverage than non-white missing persons then the media should probably stop being so racist in their choice of what they cover, don’t you think?
It’s like the athlete gender pay gap nonsense. If women really cared about women athletes being paid as much as men, women would start watching women’s sports and supportthose athletes, but they don’t.
All the media has to do to change what stories get the most attention is to … change what stories get the most attention. They are the only ones to blame for this. No one else controls what stories get covered. Maybe stop constantly trying to demonize middle America and Trump for 5 minutes and focus on all of those non-white missing person cases you didn’t know about before lamenting the coverage of Gabby Petito. May she rest in peace and her family get justice.
Holcomb was so committed to getting his message across Wednesday that even when Indiana Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe McGinnis delivered a report that focused on roadways with no discussion of facial coverings, Holcomb responded with this line: “You did say masks are working. I just want to get that in there for the third time.”
Welcome new people.
The two articles and corresponding charts above already prove my point. Those results are duplicated globally.
Let me put a couple of things to bed right away since I already know how some of you will react.
I’m not anti-mask. I’m pro-science.
I wear my mask all the time to put people at ease, not because it’s effective.
COVID is real and no one is actually denying its existence beyond a few online. This is a childish red herring argument used when you are desperate.
My goal has always been to inform my audience of the actual clinical facts so they can protect themselves. There is no other motivation.
I started regular coverage of the virus in December 2019.
I started daily coverage on January 14, 2020. This is long before anyone in US media I’m aware of (for daily coverage), and far sooner than almost any politician considered COVID a threat.
I promoted the masks early on before we knew the virus was airborne while reminding everyone to only use their mask once.
I’ve been reminding everyone about the single-use of the mask from the very beginning. Reusing a contaminated mask defeats the purpose and can spread infection.
My opinions about masks or mask fines don’t come from my politics or my ideology. They come from peer-reviewed clinical research, not preliminary lab results with problematic methodology, which have never been considered scientifically valid in any scientific field. As well as real-world data.
Everything I said in this interview is backed up with scientific research and real-world data. None of it is baseless opinion. None of it is taken from unsubstantiated posts from social media, or some conspiracy website yapping about Bill Gates.
While many of you may be new here, I’ve already addressed the issues you’ll likely post … many, many times. I simply don’t have time to go over 12 months of work I’ve done on this in a single interview or post.
The reality … officials are in a tough spot. They don’t have any answers. They can’t stop the virus. It’s career suicide to say that out loud so they must come up with, what I call, ‘busy work’ to make it seem like they are trying. Often, as is the case with fines, this busy work pushes the blame on an innocent population in order to pass the buck and buy time.
The experts went from correctly telling you a mask was your last hail mary to prevent infection but wasn’t all that effective. Every other step is more important in prevention but the mask is the least effective tool in your tool chest. Now, they’ve all but abandoned those other steps in favor of indoctrinating people into the Cult of Mask with a form of religious dogma that masks are the most important and effective tool you have. Cases continue to spike and they keep neglecting to tell people to only use their mask once.
Consider this … everywhere mask mandates have been in effect, where COVID is an issue, has now been hit by a new spike in cases. This includes places with universal compliance like Japan. If masks worked the way the dogma currently dictates, the spike would be impossible.
Everywhere that installed mask mandate fines on businesses and/or individuals hasn’t reduced their number of cases. The policy is ineffective and causes unnecessary tension, strife, and hardship with zero tangible results. It’s just throwing matches on a powder keg.
We had lockdowns because the Imperial College released a study showing hundreds of millions might die. Oxford proved their study wrong and the IC retracted it, but lockdowns remained.
We have mask mandates because we thought the virus was spread through droplets alone and asymptomatic people were superspreaders. We now know it’s airborne and all of the research shows asymptomatic spread, while possible, is not a major source of infections.
I’ve included just a few links to get you started on your journey if you really want to dive in.
Prior to the pandemic, there was a mountain of research showing masks of all kinds don’t prevent aerosol viral spread. This research has now been completely abandoned and ignored in favor of preliminary lab results that are never considered scientifically acceptable to draw conclusions from. I can’t include all of the links to those studies but some are mixed in below.
Dr. Brosseau is a national expert on respiratory protection and infectious diseases and professor (retired), University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Sietsema is also an expert on respiratory protection and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“The evidence from…laboratory filtration studies suggests that such fabric masks may reduce the transmission of larger respiratory droplets. There is little evidence regarding the transmission of small aerosolized particulates of the size potentially exhaled by asymptomatic or presymptomatic individuals with COVID-19.”
We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility (Figure 2). However, as with hand hygiene, face masks might be able to reduce the transmission of other infections and therefore have value in an influenza pandemic when healthcare resources are stretched.
Tom Jefferson is a senior associate tutor and honorary research fellow, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford. Disclosure statement is here
Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Editor in Chief of BMJ EBM
In 2010, at the end of the last influenza pandemic, there were six published randomised controlled trials with 4,147 participants focusing on the benefits of different types of masks. 2 Two were done in healthcare workers and four in family or student clusters. The face mask trials for influenza-like illness (ILI) reported poor compliance, rarely reported harms and revealed the pressing need for future trials.
Despite the clear requirement to carry out further large, pragmatic trials a decade later, only six had been published: five in healthcare workers and one in pilgrims. 3 This recent crop of trials added 9,112 participants to the total randomised denominator of 13,259 and showed that masks alone have no significant effect in interrupting the spread of ILI or influenza in the general population, nor in healthcare workers.
A study conducted by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test lockdowns along with testing and isolation.
What were the results? The virus still spread, though 90% of those who tested positive were without symptoms. Incredibly, 2% of the CHARM recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine.”
The study actually suggests the quarantine may increase the spread of the virus.
Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon. Yet, the findings were inconclusive and cannot definitively exclude a 46% reduction to a 23% increase in infection of mask wearers in such a setting.
The use of masks only makes sense in confined places, where it is not possible to have certainty and guarantee necessary physical distancing or outdoors when physical distancing is not possible. I tried to look for scientific evidence on the use of open air mask and potential benefits of virus transmission, but I couldn’t find any.
Making the mask mandatory across Italy outdoors without any distinction between the higher and lower endemic circulation areas is wrong.
Conclusions: This study is the first RCT of cloth masks, and the results caution against the use of cloth masks. This is an important finding to inform occupational health and safety. Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection. Further research is needed to inform the widespread use of cloth masks globally. However, as a precautionary measure, cloth masks should not be recommended for HCWs (Health Care Workers), particularly in high-risk situations, and guidelines need to be updated.
Jacobs, J. L. et al. (2009) “Use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of the common cold among health care workers in Japan: A randomized controlled trial,” American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 37, Issue 5, 417 – 419. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19216002
N95-masked health-care workers (HCW) were significantly more likely to experience headaches. Face mask use in HCW was not demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.
“There were 17 eligible studies. … None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”
Smith, J.D. et al. (2016) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks in protecting health care workers from acute respiratory infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” CMAJ Mar 2016 https://www.cmaj.ca/content/188/8/567
“We identified six clinical studies … . In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, (b) influenza-like illness, or (c) reported work-place absenteeism.”
Contrary to popular opinion on social media, in our tribalist political arena, news media, or local officials … Americans actually wear masks and comply with mask mandates much higher than much of the world. Over 80% wear their mask now. The latest spike in the U.S. started September 14 when 77% of Americans were adhering to the mask mandates. That number is exactly the same as July 31 when U.S. COVID cases began to decline drastically and before the AP and Gov. Holcomb credited masks for the decline in cases.
In other words … the same percentage of Americans who wore masks during the big decline in COVID cases over the summer were also wearing masks at the beginning of the latest surge in cases. There was no change, no fluctuation at all in the number of Americans wearing masks during a decline and a surge in COVID cases. The number of people wearing masks had no effect on the number of cases of the virus.
I said the same thing three times, three different ways so everyone understands the actual data on mask-wearing. Sorry about being redundant.
I know you all just came here to listen to the interview with Mayor Roberson. You weren’t expecting all this to be thrown at you. However, it’s important that you know what I said during that interview is factually correct. While I can appreciate the Mayor is just taking the advice of his advisors, those advisors have no actual data backing up their policies. I do.
The mandates we are being given by public officials are unscientific and, dare I say, emotional.
Lockdowns didn’t work and the preponderance of research says they are ineffective and actually worse for people long-term.
Mask mandates simply don’t work.
Blaming innocent people for those two failed policies with fines simply because you’ve run out of ideas and are trying to hold on until the vaccine/herd immunity happens is not a legitimate way to govern. It’s tyrannical. While Mayor Roberson may not be seeking to be tyrannical, the end product is just that.
Elkhart County (Indiana) Sheriff Jeff Siegel won’t get his deputies involved in enforcing the recent COVID-19 mask fine ordinance.
Here’s his post on the issue:
On December 2, Elkhart followed St. Joseph County (Indiana) in passing an ordinance that would issue fines to businesses who fail to enforce the county mask ordinance. The fines apply to both customers and employees. The business can be fined for the actions of both parties.
Mask ordinances, particularly those with fines, have real constitutional issues. Many legal and constitutional experts have weighed in on this in recent months. Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill also believes there are constitutional issues.
Beyond the legal arguments, issuing fines for violating mask ordinances has proven completely ineffective everywhere in the United States. For example, New Mexico has had a state mandate to wear masks since May. Mandatory fines were announced on July 1, 2020. Since then, the daily cumulative number of COVID-19 cases in the state has gone from about 12,000 a day to 108,000 a day. The mandate and the fines haven’t worked at all.
Quite literally, all the fines do is piss people off and cause tension between citizens and government officials. It’s more ‘busy work’ for politicians to make it seem like they are trying everything they can to control the virus. In politics, if you can’t fix a problem, you blame someone else for making it impossible for you to fix it. That sums up our entire COVID response and strategy right now. In reality, there’s nothing they can do. There’s nothing any of us can do, except take solace in the fact that the overwhelming majority of us aren‘t at serious risk from the virus, and try to protect those who are as best we can.
Mask fines haven’t worked throughout the US because mask mandates haven’t worked in the US or anywhere else in the world for that matter. The same goes for Michiana. Not because people aren’t wearing their mask, but because masks don’t work against an airborne virus. I’ve proven this for months with peer-reviewed science on the issue going back to 2009.
People in Elkhart are wearing their masks. Very few don’t. The virus is still spreading. Just as it’s still spreading everywhere in the world where people wear their masks all the time without fail.
The government, however, has no answer on how to make things better. So they blame a fictional boogeyman … the non-mask wearer in order to avert public outcry directed at them. ‘If only those three people would wear a mask!’
The Sheriff doesn’t want his deputies in the middle of a political fight with cult-like dogma being hurled in every direction. I don’t blame him.
Beyond that, not allowing his department to become the Thinkpol of Oceania should settle citizen worries of police abuse, at least in the county.
St. Joseph County Council members penned an article inthe paper about why they support fining businesses for not enforcing maskmandates with customers and it’s completely clueless. Not only is it a horrendous abuse of power, but it’s also undeniably unscientific and not based in reality.
