CNN Editor Claims US Would Need 5.8M COVID Deaths To Reach Herd Immunity, Gets Fact-Checked Hard
The left and the establishment media claim to love science.
Unfortunately, they only care about the science when it advances their preferred narrative, as evidenced by a recent tweet from CNN breaking news editor Kyle Feldscher about herd immunity and the coronavirus.
On Tuesday, Feldscher tweeted that a whopping 5.8 million Americans would need to die for the United States to reach herd immunity against the coronavirus, according to Fox News.
Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson was among those who slammed Feldscher for peddling misinformation and alarmism, and Feldscher eventually deleted his tweet and issued an apology.
“There are approximately 328.2 million people in the US,” Feldscher’s original tweet read. “To get to the low end of herd immunity, about 60% of the population must catch Covid. That’s about 196,920,000 cases. The current US death rate is about 2.96%.
“So that’s 5,836,679 deaths necessary for herd immunity.”
Some of those numbers presented by Feldscher are certainly alarming. They are also completely devoid of fact.
Berenson took Feldscher to task, fact-checking him into oblivion.
“Fact check: you can’t be this dumb,” Berenson began.
[firefly_poll]
“Even if the herd immunity estimate of 60% is right (it’s wrong), this CNN [journalist] doesn’t know the difference between reported cases and actual infections, which are 10x as high. so his estimate is off by a factor of at least 10x (likely much more),” he continued.
“That’s assuming the current reported death number is right (it’s not, it’s high, inflated by six months of lockdown and six weeks of iatrogenic deaths, we just don’t know how many). But that’s just icing on the CNN cake.”
Berenson concluded: “But hey, we’re only six months into nonstop media coverage of the ro, how can a blue-check be expected to understand the difference between [case fatality ratio] and [infection fatality ratio].”
Fact check: you can’t be this dumb.
Even if the herd immunity estimate of 60% is right (it’s wrong), this CNN doesn’t know the difference between reported cases and actual infections, which are 10x as high. So his estimate is off by a factor of at least 10x (likely much more)… https://t.co/dFrDlOTGfo
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) September 16, 2020
But hey, we’re only six months into nonstop media coverage of the ro, how can a blue-check be expected to understand the difference between CFR and IFR?
— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) September 16, 2020
As Berenson pointed out, Feldscher completely failed to differentiate between the case fatality ratio — the proportion of deaths among confirmed coronavirus cases — and the infection fatality ratio — the proportion of deaths among all coronavirus cases, confirmed or not.
Feldscher cited a U.S. coronavirus death rate of 2.96 percent, but this figure was actually the case fatality ratio.
If Feldscher was paying attention to the science, he would know that a large number of coronavirus cases are asymptomatic, which means a lot of people who have the virus are not getting tested because they don’t feel sick. As Berenson said, the actual number of coronavirus cases is likely much higher than the confirmed number.
Therefore, the infection fatality ratio is actually significantly lower than the case fatality ratio of 2.96 percent that Feldscher cited.
Additionally, Feldscher claimed 60 percent of the population must get the coronavirus before we reach herd immunity. In reality, as Berenson pointed out, the percent of the population that must get the virus to reach herd immunity is likely much lower than 60 percent.
In fact, data shows that some regions of the U.S. may have already reached herd immunity.
This is absolutely irresponsible journalism from a blue checkmark Twitter account.
Feldscher ultimately deleted his tweet and issued an apology, but not before many people had liked and retweeted his misinformation.
I’m really sorry and will do better going forward.
— Kyle Feldscher (@Kyle_Feldscher) September 16, 2020
The left and the establishment media claim to love science, but continually twist the science — or get it flat-out wrong — in order to forward their own narrative.
In the case of the coronavirus, it’s become clear that the left is willing to hide the facts in order to maintain control over the American public and pin more deaths on President Donald Trump in the lead-up to November’s election.
It’s good that Feldscher apologized, but anyone playing politics with people’s lives and livelihoods should be ashamed of themselves.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
