Today the Wall Street Journal published part of a letter to the Editor I wrote. The letter was in response to an editorial “Biden and Fauci Botched the Covid Response.”
Here is the link to my Wall Street Journal Letter:
The edit was reasonable and made my major point. Here is the complete letter:
Your Article “Biden and Fauci Botched the Covid Response” seems to the cherry pick facts and fails to mention that the state with the highest vaccination rate, Vermont, has 110 deaths per 100,000 population, while the state with the lowest vaccination rate, Mississippi, has 420 deaths per 100,000 population. In my state of Wisconsin, Dane County with a strong mask mandate, had 100 deaths per 100,000 when the rest of the state exceeded 200 deaths per 100,000. Your comparison of death rates “in the winter of 2020-2021” compares Florida to New York. In Florida Covid rates jumped in the summer when folks were indoors in air conditioning. Florida had time to prepare before the summer indoor air conditioning season and failed to do so.
The editorial writer seems to try to justify Texas’s and Florida’s response to covid by comparison with New York, which got hit early and has an extensive subway system which was a factor in spread. The editorial writer is trying to make the case that measures like mask mandates and high vaccination rates as pushed by Fauci and Biden, were of minimal importance. Texas and Florida had early warnings due to what was happening in New York, but failed to act in a timely manner. A more honest comparison would have been comparing winter in New York where folks are indoors to summer in Florida where folks are indoors for air conditioning. In states like Vermont and counties like Dane, in Wisconsin non-pharmaceutical intervention (like masking) and pharmaceutical interventions (like high vaccination rates) cut mortality rates in half. (I did send in a correction stating my Degree is DDS.)
Here is the link to the Wall Street Journal’s original editorial.
Stop Covid-19 First 