New York Times Misleads On Florida's COVID Results To Appease Audience

The media’s COVID coverage has inarguably been an abomination.

Instead of providing healthy skepticism, an adversarial relationship to authority and demanding accountability and acknowledgement of mistakes, the media chose to be establishment cheerleaders. 

Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, Jerome Adams, local and national politicians; all received near universal support, acclaim and an unjustifiable sense of infallibility. Whatever they said, whatever they demanded, no matter how absurd, was presented as common sense, evidence-based protection. Despite the exact opposite often being true.

The desire to promote preferred narratives has extended to the post-pandemic period. And The New York Times in particular continues to deny reality in order to appease its audience.

READ: NEW YORK TIMES CLAIMS, IN 2023, THAT COVID VACCINES STOP TRANSMISSION

As greater numbers of Americans acknowledge that the masks, vaccine passports and other pandemic restrictions were a disaster of historic proportions, attempts to rewrite history have grown increasingly frantic and desperate. 

It’s no surprise that the latest example once again comes from The New York Times, which decided that cherry picking data and presenting misleading, unsupported conclusions would once again placate its readers while attempting to damage one of its arch COVID enemies: Ron DeSantis.

SARASOTA, FL - MAY 15: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks after signing three education bills on the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla. on Monday, May 15, 2023. (Photo by Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

New York Times Misleads On Florida’s COVID Results During Delta

The Times made its intentions clear with a tweet posted Saturday afternoon, attempting to label Ron DeSantis as an “anti-vaxxer” whose lack of “enthusiasm” for the shot cost Floridians their lives.

“Ron DeSantis was once a Covid vaccine advocate. But the Florida governor lost his enthusiasm for the shot before the Delta wave sent hospitalizations and deaths soaring. It’s a grim chapter he now leaves out of his rosy retelling of his pandemic response.”

The tweet was accompanied by a graphic meant to “prove” the case, comparing Florida’s death rate to the rest of the United States for most of 2021.

Except, of course, this tweet buries the lede.

The Times knew that few would actually read the article, instead focusing on the misleading graphic and unsupported accusation toward DeSantis.

Reading the article though, reveals that the main criticism levied on DeSantis, that his lack of “enthusiasm” for COVID vaccines led to poor outcomes, is completely inaccurate. According to the New York Times own presentation of the data, Florida's vaccination rate among the elderly in summer 2021 was exactly at the national average. 

And early on, DeSantis’ decision to ignore the CDC’s recommendations to prioritize teachers because of “equity” ensured that more seniors were vaccinated early compared to other states.

Vaccination rates for those under 65 were slightly below the national average, but given the extremely low risk for most younger Floridians, those numbers are almost entirely irrelevant to COVID deaths.

Even more frustratingly, the Times was forced to admit that the state’s cumulative age adjusted COVID mortality rate was “better than the national average.” Although its explanations for how that’s possible are noticeably lacking.

Overall, the state’s death rate during the pandemic, adjusted for age, ended up better than the national average. Some public health experts credit the state’s robust health system and strong performance in the pandemic’s first year or so.

More Misleading Data

The desire to credit vaccination for positive COVID outcomes extends to their presentation of COVID deaths and vaccination rate by state.

These disparities however, were seen throughout the pandemic, even before the vaccines received widespread uptake. 

Why? Because of money, underlying health and age. 

Younger, healthier, wealthier states performed better. Because residents were healthier, younger and wealthier. The Times can’t accept that viewpoint however, because it contradicts its desire to blame politics and credit the “experts” who demanded universal vaccination.

But there are other, more significant problems with their data presentation. 

For one, it ignores that states that share the New York Times’ political orientation have fared worse than Florida. California, for example, has a higher cumulative age adjusted COVID mortality rate. Despite its authoritarian COVID mandates, business closures, masks, lockdowns and school shutdowns.

The Times cherry picked a specific time period to try and hurt DeSantis and Florida, while ignoring the easily available conclusions on the failure of masks, lockdowns and COVID mandates. As well as ignoring that the Delta wave significantly impacted the Southern states because it coincided with the region’s period of peak respiratory virus transmission.

Every single state in the entire area had essentially its highest period of COVID mortality during the third quarter of 2021.

Similarly, states with exceptionally high vaccination rates also saw their highest COVID death rates of the pandemic during the Delta surge. 

Hawaii, for example, is wealthy, young and had high uptake, yet peaked in Q3 2021.

Where’s the criticism of one of the country’s most fanatically COVID extremist states for causing hospitalizations and deaths to surge by not promoting vaccinations strongly enough? 

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. Because Hawaii shares the New York Times’ political ideology.

It’s not just Hawaii either; Oregon and Washington also had record COVID death rates during the Delta period despite their political leanings, high vaccination rates and excessive COVID response. But that doesn’t align with the Times’ preferred narrative, and so it’s safely ignored. 

And there’s another problem. 

The correlation=causation issue.

Florida’s vaccination rates weren’t exceptionally low, especially among seniors. But even if they had been, associating low vaccination uptake with higher COVID deaths is a spurious, unsupported conclusion based on wishful thinking, not data or actual science.

The Times, for example, doesn’t make a similar conclusion with Japan, where COVID deaths surged well after vaccination uptake reached exceptional highs.

Based on the Times’ viewpoint, this mortality surge must be caused by higher vaccination rates, right? 

Not to mention the problems with ignoring excess mortality, where Florida’s performance once again outperformed other states.

Inexcusable COVID Misinformation

The writer of the article undoubtedly knows that the data doesn’t support the conclusions in the tweet.

But they also knew that it would get a tremendous amount of attention from the worst COVID extremists on Twitter. And sure enough, Medhi Hassan, Randi Weingarten and others rushed to promote the misleading conclusions while ignoring that the text of the article disproves its own argument.

Florida’s COVID performance wasn’t exceptionally bad, it was exceptionally good. Not just because of the totality of evidence shows it outperformed the U.S. average, but because it kept schools open, businesses open, had less masking and no vaccine passports. 

It preserved liberty and opportunity while following the actual experts who provided useful advice, not more authoritarianism disguised as “safety.”

The spurious, purposefully misleading conclusions though, show that far from admitting they were wrong, the media intends to spend the post-pandemic period continuing to promote its ideology. Regardless of what the facts actually are.