PLAGUE JOURNAL June 2021: How Well Did the NYT Predict the Results of Winter Lockdowns in Europe and the U.S. In November, 2020?
Europe was good because they were strict. The U.S. Midwest was bad. Michigan was good because they shut down. Weather forecasts, not politics, told us what would happen.
[Note: All Plague Journal entries were written as events unfolded. I have edited the drafts for clarity, but the tone and content are original, reflecting what we could see at the time.]
In early 2020, the Chinese Communist Party, a quack professor in England with a history of alarmism (Neil Ferguson), and a handful of ideological journalists created a set of rules for all of us. Businesses sent us emails telling us they were monitoring this dynamic situation closely and that our safety was their top priority. They ordered directional arrows for the floor and posters telling us to walk in circles and maintain six feet of safety. A month later, they ordered new signs after somebody decided that masks were the things that would save us. By then, we knew surfaces and outdoors were safe, but nobody wanted to remove the original messages for fear of getting attacked on social media, so they stuck with the initial bad plan, plus masks. (We can’t have too much safety, right?)
Fifteen months later, my local butcher and other businesses continue to offer two cups on the counter: one for clean pens and one for infected pens. Most restaurants still pretend menus and ketchup bottles are dangerous. A fancy Boulder coffee shop serves five-dollar cappuccino in paper cups. (No mugs? I asked, and the masked server said, Not now, with eyes that said, Please leave me alone; we’re being watched.) It’s June 2021, sunny and warm, and about a third of the people walking around my city are wearing masks—on sidewalks, scooters, bicycles, skateboards, and alone in cars. (I’ve yet to see a motorcyclist wearing a mask. Thank you, two-wheeled brothers and sisters.)
The lockdown-and-mask ideology set its roots deep, and the media have spent fifteen months telling us the same things without ever looking at outcomes. They continue to spread fear and misery, for clicks and politics, rather than provide simple information that could help people understand their risks and protect themselves.
Lockdown Dogma from the New York Times
On November 17th, 2020 the Times gave us another story about lockdowns and masks in an episode of the Daily podcast called, “Why Europe Is Flattening the Curve (and the U.S. Isn’t).” The story was about rising cases now that Europe was entering winter. A reporter named Matina Stevis-Gridneff tells us that Europeans love their governments: “The rapport has kept going and people have continued feeling connected with their government because it’s a two-way street. . . . They feel they are getting something back.”
The Times editors believe (or pretend to believe) that the U.S. would solve all of its problems if only we did what we are told. Host Michael Barbaro asks if the lockdowns are working—without asking why things were so out of control to begin with—and Stevis-Gridneff cites improving statistics in Belgium. She doesn’t mention that Belgium has the world’s worst cumulative fatality rate—1,425 per million at the time of their discussion—or that recent cases are startlingly high. She is optimistic for the Europeans. Why? Because of lockdowns, of course. She says:
Similarly, other countries that locked down around the same time as Belgium are doing better. The Czech Republic, once the worst infection rate in Europe, also shows similar promising signs. Finland, Ireland, similar trends. And there’s every reason to believe that bigger countries such as Germany and France are just behind us. They implemented their lockdowns a little later. They have their own conditions to contend with at home, but their rate of infection is already slowing down. And so, the feeling is, the measures are working, which means they are actually being applied as well.
Barbaro responds, “Right, which means that people are likely to keep following them because there’s an immediate reward for abiding by these rules.”
“Precisely. You can see that things are getting better.”
We cannot see that things are getting better anywhere except—possibly—Belgium. While some of the countries were experiencing a temporary decline after the initial autumn spreading, we could predict that most would see new highs in the winter and spring as they sat under cool, gray skies. Yet her faith in lockdowns is absolute. She says that Europeans have the promise of a relatively normal holiday season—“if we get this under control by mid-December.” It’s always about controlling, or handling, or beating the virus. Just do what we tell you to do.
It’s a breathtaking piece of journalism. After citing just one country with improving rates, she names five other countries that do not have improving rates, countries that are rapidly climbing the ranks of the world’s deadliest places for the virus. But she believes (or pretends to believe) that lockdowns will fix them in just a couple of weeks. A rational person would look at the data and conclude that perhaps lockdowns are making things worse, but the people at the Times don’t question the recipe.
How Have These Countries Done?
It’s been six months, now early June 2021 as I write this, and the lockdowns seem to have worked as they did in the ten months prior to the Times’ predictions, which is not at all.
Below are charts of new cases in the countries that Matina Stevis-Gridneff believed were on their way to success on November 17th, 2020. Worldometers charts show case counts, so the numbers don’t help us compare the countries to each other without correcting for population size, but the charts give a picture of where these countries were in their winter curve at the time of the NYT discussion. I’ve marked the date of the podcast with an arrow. Belgium had the world’s highest cumulative per capita fatality rates when the podcast aired, a position it has essentially held all along (sometimes tiny San Marino was #1 and Belgium was #2).
The U.S. Sucks (according to the Times)
On the same Daily episode, after host Michael Barbaro hears the good news in Europe, he talks to another reporter, who explains how badly the U.S. Midwest is doing in comparison. Six of the seven states with the highest cases are in the Midwest. The reporter gives no consideration to climate or weather (what we might have called “science” in another era). But we know that the Midwest has similar temperatures to much of Europe at this time of year, and we know that the Midwest will soon become colder and generally sunnier than Europe, which will cause cases to fall.
The reporter sees a bright spot in Ohio, where governor Mike DeWine requires people to remain seated at weddings (because the virus attacks only at a certain height, usually near doorways). Naturally, Barbaro and the reporter criticize Kristi Noem of South Dakota because she hasn’t embraced lockdowns. Barbaro has a Christmas wish: “It sounds like what you’re saying is that the scenario here that leads to the curve being flattened might be that things get so bad that people in the Midwest listen to their government officials not because they’re required to but because at a certain point it will just seem like there’s no other choice.” Barbaro and the rest of our media love the idea of people capitulating to political whims and peer pressure.
Barbaro asks which Midwestern state is most restrictive, and the reporter says it is Michigan. We hear some muffled audio of Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer (obviously speaking through a mask) talking about the need to “take action.” The reporter tells us she has recently closed high schools, colleges, bars, restaurants, casinos, movie theaters, and exercise classes. To this line of thought, paralysis is action.
Strictness, lockdowns, and masks are good. Michigan is good. Business, mobility, recreation, socializing, and bare faces are bad. South Dakota is bad. The Times seldom talks about New York or its surrounding states, which had the highest rates in the first wave and would have the highest rates again when temperatures cooled again in the fall and winter. These states are certainly strict; New York competed with California to see who could be toughest on small businesses and citizens. I live in Colorado, where Denver’s new high-rise condos are full of New Yorkers who fled. But the Times doesn’t talk about what’s going on in its own backyard, preferring to complain about red states. Governor Cuomo won an Emmy. New York must have crushed the virus.
While the Times can’t point to any positive effects of lockdowns on coronavirus rates, the economic effects are clear. By April 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, South Dakota had the lowest unemployment in the country at 2.8%—tying with Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Utah. Michigan ranked 24th, with a rate of 4.9%. New York ranked 48th, with a rate of 8.2%, similar to neighboring locked-down Connecticut (47th, at 8.1%) and New Jersey (44th, at 7.5%). Yet never a word about that from the Times, who pretend that lockdowns are acts of God rather than the acts of scared politicians responding to media pressure.
Weather & Coronavirus
We can look at coronavirus charts and temperatures to see the effect of weather on spreading. The temperature information is from Accuweather, which shows individual months. I chose January for most of them, the coldest month in most of the U.S., and the month following the Times discussion calling for new lockdowns. In the Midwest—especially the Upper Midwest—low temperatures fall below freezing in the winter, reducing the spread of coronavirus. In lower Michigan and the Mid-Atlantic region, the climate is more temperate, with lows generally in the 30s: classic spreader weather.
A brief review of the conditions that cause runaway spreading:
Temperature lows between 32 and 40 degrees. Cool (but not freezing) temperatures harden the lipid shell around the virus, creating a protective armor for delivery to its target. Because the shell remains fortified for 12-24 hours after the carrier breathes mid-30s air, spreading occurs within a day or so after lows fall into the 30s.
Gray skies increase spreading in several ways:
Overcast skies cause flat temperatures. A range from the 30s to the 50s is far more dangerous than a range from the teens to the 60s because it means more time in the refrigerator, less time in the freezer or oven. The virus hates freezers and ovens, sluggish in the cold and denatured in the heat.
Gray skies block the sun, weakening immune systems, creating vulnerable targets who are especially likely to get infected and become infectious to others.
Direct sunlight weakens the virus; cloudy skies allow it to remain potent, like a vampire.
Gray skies drive people indoors. Other conditions, such as extreme cold and extreme heat, also drive people indoors but do not create the full range of risk factors that make the indoors under gray skies so dangerous.
Dry environment. Indoor heating dries the air, especially in older buildings where heating systems often lack humidifiers. It is a paradox that although dry conditions facilitate spreading, dry climates do not—because spreading occurs indoors. Damp outdoor air becomes extremely dry when heated. Dry indoor air contributes to spreading in two ways:
Respiratory droplets are smaller and lighter in dry air, lingering in the air and traveling farther before falling to the ground. They are not aerosolized, meaning they do not remain in the air at full potency indefinitely. But they can hang in the air longer than larger droplets and accumulate over time if a carrier continually emits new droplets in a small, poorly ventilated area.
Dry nasal passages offer a sticky landing for the virions, making potential targets more likely to receive a significant viral dose than they would in humid air.