I continue to appreciate the effort you put into keeping politics out of your newsletter, thereby reinforcing its very informative credibility.
Today, however, I believe you slipped a little, and I will try to be careful in my description of that slip.
Referencing a statement made by a government official made during a clearly contentious interview by a clearly biased interviewer making every effort to frame his questions in a way so as to generate a clickable sound bite is not a reliable way to source official government policies or positions.
This strikes me as the responsibility of the public official, and decidedly not my problem. He's a career public official and his discipline in making public statements should rise above anything you're describing here. Public statements by public officials are official policy. He can clarify whenever he wants; as of yet he has not.
I don't intend to start reporting public health policy on the basis of what I wish an official had said. He said what he said. That's what we have to go on, and the reality we live in. You may not *like* it, you may personally believe he meant to say something else, but this doesn't change the statement or make it any more reasonable.
To take a public statement by a public official at anything other than the face value of the words in it is immediately to insert my own political bias into the statement--which is really what you're urging me to do here. I won't be doing that. He said what he said, and we have to live with that.
I am sorry you feel that way. To be clear, I completely agree that a public official is completely responsible for his/her public statements, including in this case. Similarly, journalists have a responsibility to be accurate in their reporting. You note in your newsletter that Meadows, who is not a medical professional or a scientist, may misunderstand the use of the word "control" in this context. I believe it is reasonable to say that CNN has the same suspicion. As such, a more helpful analysis would be to determine what the official government policy actually is, rather than publishing scary headlines based on comments made in a heated interview. That is the responsibility of ethical journalists.
I also want to be clear that I am not in any way urging you to insert your own political bias into the statement - quite the contrary. I am asking you to apply the same rigor to your citing of such statements as you do to your citing of other statements made by the media, which you often find questionable, as they are often sensationalizing various "discoveries", "studies", etc. that have not been fully peer reviewed and/or otherwise rigorously confirmed. It is that rigor that you have consistently applied in the past that makes your newsletter so valuable and so above reproach.
Well, I appreciate the positivity. All that I can say is that Mr. Meadows has had ample opportunity to clarify what he meant. I don't love CNN's article on this topic, for what it's worth, but to offer my opinion on that would be needlessly political.
I went on the quote, but in truth the national policy agrees with the quote. There is currently no national disease control strategy and there never has been one. This was a policy decision that was made early on; the expectation was for disease control to be handled locally without federal support. The federal government has provided support for healthcare to some degree, on an emergency basis, but that does not constitute "control" but rather just treatment.
Mr. Meadows's comments do agree with the overall response footing at a federal level in the US, for better or worse. I believe you can come to your own conclusion about whether this has been an effective posture.
The reality is that public health is the intersection between politics and medicine. While I can maintain some distance from politics, I can't maintain a perfect separation because the choice of disease response has become not only political but partisan. Occasionally this means that medical realities will disagree with partisan sensibilities.
I would have liked to see a COVID-19 control posture from the federal government. One has not been forthcoming. It is unfortunately not possible to ignore that.
I believe, as you point out, that it becomes impossible to avoid politics completely on this issue. I also believe that this particular discussion has reached the point where it is a primarily political debate, and, as such, this is not the appropriate forum to continue the debate.
That being said, this particular discussion has highlighted for me another very important facet of your newsletter. It highlights the fact that people like you and me (and I like to believe that we are representative of the general population) can be on opposite sides of the political aisle and still have a polite and intelligent discussion on important issues. I believe it highlights the fact that, unlike what is being amplified on social media and the press, people on both sides of the aisle agree on most of the important things in life, and do, in fact, still believe in science. (Why our elected representatives do not exhibit behavior that supports this premise is another discussion).
So, thank you again for all your work on this newsletter.
Thank you for reading and for commenting, Robert! Though we may disagree in this instance I always value your comments--engaging with the people who read this project is very important to its continued success and usefulness to all.
I continue to appreciate the effort you put into keeping politics out of your newsletter, thereby reinforcing its very informative credibility.
Today, however, I believe you slipped a little, and I will try to be careful in my description of that slip.
Referencing a statement made by a government official made during a clearly contentious interview by a clearly biased interviewer making every effort to frame his questions in a way so as to generate a clickable sound bite is not a reliable way to source official government policies or positions.
This strikes me as the responsibility of the public official, and decidedly not my problem. He's a career public official and his discipline in making public statements should rise above anything you're describing here. Public statements by public officials are official policy. He can clarify whenever he wants; as of yet he has not.
I don't intend to start reporting public health policy on the basis of what I wish an official had said. He said what he said. That's what we have to go on, and the reality we live in. You may not *like* it, you may personally believe he meant to say something else, but this doesn't change the statement or make it any more reasonable.
To take a public statement by a public official at anything other than the face value of the words in it is immediately to insert my own political bias into the statement--which is really what you're urging me to do here. I won't be doing that. He said what he said, and we have to live with that.
I am sorry you feel that way. To be clear, I completely agree that a public official is completely responsible for his/her public statements, including in this case. Similarly, journalists have a responsibility to be accurate in their reporting. You note in your newsletter that Meadows, who is not a medical professional or a scientist, may misunderstand the use of the word "control" in this context. I believe it is reasonable to say that CNN has the same suspicion. As such, a more helpful analysis would be to determine what the official government policy actually is, rather than publishing scary headlines based on comments made in a heated interview. That is the responsibility of ethical journalists.
I also want to be clear that I am not in any way urging you to insert your own political bias into the statement - quite the contrary. I am asking you to apply the same rigor to your citing of such statements as you do to your citing of other statements made by the media, which you often find questionable, as they are often sensationalizing various "discoveries", "studies", etc. that have not been fully peer reviewed and/or otherwise rigorously confirmed. It is that rigor that you have consistently applied in the past that makes your newsletter so valuable and so above reproach.
Well, I appreciate the positivity. All that I can say is that Mr. Meadows has had ample opportunity to clarify what he meant. I don't love CNN's article on this topic, for what it's worth, but to offer my opinion on that would be needlessly political.
I went on the quote, but in truth the national policy agrees with the quote. There is currently no national disease control strategy and there never has been one. This was a policy decision that was made early on; the expectation was for disease control to be handled locally without federal support. The federal government has provided support for healthcare to some degree, on an emergency basis, but that does not constitute "control" but rather just treatment.
Mr. Meadows's comments do agree with the overall response footing at a federal level in the US, for better or worse. I believe you can come to your own conclusion about whether this has been an effective posture.
The reality is that public health is the intersection between politics and medicine. While I can maintain some distance from politics, I can't maintain a perfect separation because the choice of disease response has become not only political but partisan. Occasionally this means that medical realities will disagree with partisan sensibilities.
I would have liked to see a COVID-19 control posture from the federal government. One has not been forthcoming. It is unfortunately not possible to ignore that.
I believe, as you point out, that it becomes impossible to avoid politics completely on this issue. I also believe that this particular discussion has reached the point where it is a primarily political debate, and, as such, this is not the appropriate forum to continue the debate.
That being said, this particular discussion has highlighted for me another very important facet of your newsletter. It highlights the fact that people like you and me (and I like to believe that we are representative of the general population) can be on opposite sides of the political aisle and still have a polite and intelligent discussion on important issues. I believe it highlights the fact that, unlike what is being amplified on social media and the press, people on both sides of the aisle agree on most of the important things in life, and do, in fact, still believe in science. (Why our elected representatives do not exhibit behavior that supports this premise is another discussion).
So, thank you again for all your work on this newsletter.
Thank you for reading and for commenting, Robert! Though we may disagree in this instance I always value your comments--engaging with the people who read this project is very important to its continued success and usefulness to all.