When the airline mask mandate was lifted by a Federal judge in April, most people cheered, but there were a loud segment of hysterics and memes that predicted doom. These are just two examples. After a very busy summer travel season we can now take a look back.
▪️After the mandate was lifted, cases rose slightly, and anecdotally you probably heard of many get Covid. But nowhere near prior spikes when the mask mandates were in place, nor was this summer any worse than the summer of ‘21.
▪️Looking at hospitalizations and deaths (posted in comments) is even more striking. These were much lower than the prior year, and didn’t see major spikes like in prior waves.
▪️Oswalt’s headline was misleading even at the time, as it referred to two UK airlines but was posted in the wake of the US ban ending. The CBS article ignored that restrictions had only been lifted within the UK and masks were still required on most of these airlines’ flights.
▪️It also ignored several other airlines who lifted (or stopped enforcing) mandates at that time which didn’t have staffing issues. And, ignored the massive cancelations last winter when mandates were still in place. In short, it was a laughable attempt at correlation/causation.
▪️In fact, after the UK mandate ended, cases plummeted and stayed relatively low all summer.
▪️The reality is that after a summer with planes and airports packed, with the vast majority of passengers and crew unmasked, there weren’t any serious health or staffing issues due to Covid. The hysterics and doom memes were wrong once again.
It’s funny to see the left use the same conspiratorial rhetoric as the right did a year ago regarding the jobs numbers being downwardly revised. So many on the right, who knew nothing of how the jobs numbers are calculated or why they revise them, were convinced the downward revisions were a conspiracy to help Biden win.
If people want to have a debate about the birth death model or the survey methods, ok, but that’s not what’s happening here. Most people are under the delusion that the BLS report is the govt reporting every job created and lost, and are thus easily swayed it’s rigged when it suits their political ends.
This is almost laughingly misleading, as it leaves out everything before the letter.
▪️After being repeatedly lampooned by the Smothers Brothers over Vietnam, Johnson finally had enough. One night at 3 am he called the head of CBS William Paley, demanding that he “get those bastards off my back.”
▪️Paley then asked the heads of CBS entertainment to get them to back off of LBJ. However, instead of backing off the Smothers Brothers doubled down, booking a folk musician performing “Waist Deep,” an anti-war song about a soldier being stuck in the mud while “the big fool says to push on,” clearly a dig at LBJ.
▪️At the last minute, CBS cut the song from the pre-taped show to the outrage of the Smothers. They continued to push the boundaries off and on for the rest of his presidency, with CBS sometimes cutting segments that they thought went too far. Basically, it was a soft form of censorship.
▪️It wasn’t until Johnson made his surprise announcement not to run in 1968 ...
