Neocon: Lessons of the Mask Mandates
“The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies” on mask mandates found they made zero difference, thunders The New York Times’ Bret Stephens; “skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as ‘misinformers’ for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable” costs. Yet the Centers for Disease Control persists in pushing masks, thereby “undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution.” Some still argue that masks “seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something.” Yet “ ‘do something’ is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy.”
Libertarian: Facebook’s Fake ‘Fact-Check’
“Facebook says my recent column about face masks is ‘missing context’ and ‘could mislead people,’ based on an assessment by ‘independent fact checkers,’ ” gripes Reason’s Jacob Sullum, in another miscue by “social media platforms that strive to police COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ at the government’s behest, regardless of what the evidence actually shows.” In fact, “it was the CDC that misled people by insisting that the case was closed on masks and mask mandates while citing impressive but empirically shaky estimates of their effectiveness.” And the fact-check outfit, Health Feedback, “not only fails to show that [Sullum’s] assessment is wrong; it reinforces the point that the CDC distorted the science to support a predetermined conclusion.”
Culture critic: Saving Kids From Social Media
Social media have given America “a severe public health crisis,” warns Clare Morell at The American Conservative. Teens are “literally” dying. Content is “dangerous to children,” exposing them to drug-related and sexual material. “Predators” lurk all over. Yet it’s not realistic to expect parents to stand over “children’s shoulders 24/7” or retreat to “home schooling in a home without internet access.” And our laws, like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the Communications Decency Act, have giant loopholes and aren’t “up to the task” of shielding kids. “Congress needs to step up and find solutions” that “truly protect” them.
From the right: Haley Dodges on Trump
In seeking the GOP ’24 nomination, observes The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley, Nikki Haley should know that “any Republican who wants to challenge Joe Biden first needs to take down [Donald] Trump.” Yet she’s so far “running on little more than biography and bromides, which almost certainly won’t cut it with Republican primary voters.” She knows “perfectly well that there are pragmatic reasons why Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee.” Without “the courage to state those reasons aloud in public,” why run at all? This “may be a missed opportunity,” as a “sure way to keep the press and the donors interested in your candidacy is to poke the beast.” Fact is, “someone will have to mount a frontal attack at some point.”
Conservative: Team Biden’s Ohio Nightmare
The Ohio train derailment “is the rare disaster that is getting more media attention in its third week than it received in its first week,” notes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. Plainly, “because the derailment occurred” outside Youngstown, “it did not immediately become big national news, despite some thoroughly apocalyptic-looking images,” because “the mainstream media does not pay as much attention to the rest of the country” as to “big cities.” Oops: “If the media acts like something is a big deal, then the [federal] government will almost always act like it is a big deal, and vice versa.” So came the “narrative that an administration that constantly boasts of its empathy and care for ordinary Americans was withholding help when it was needed most.” Plus, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg kept silent for 10 days, before suddenly “announcing a slew of new rules.” At the least, the delayed reaction created “an all-too-easy target for Biden’s critics.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board