CNN anchor dispels Fox News misinformation on COVID-19 and wearing masks
Brianna Keilar: “It's like they don't even bother looking at the facts before they go on TV. ... Misinformation is a virus unto itself and Fox News is the vector.”
Published
Citation From the September 17, 2020, edition of CNN's CNN Newsroom
BRIANNA KEILAR (ANCHOR): We have pointed out before how millions of Americans are relying on Fox News to get their coronavirus information, or misinformation, I should say, and that includes the president. The biggest names on that network have helped politicize this pandemic, making misleading or false claims about everything from masks to social distancing to treatments for the virus. And if you only watched Fox News, you might think that hydroxychloroquine is to coronavirus is what Tylenol is to a headache; or that gathering in large crowds without masks indoors is safe; or that Democrats want schools and businesses to be closed forever. And why would you think that?
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RAMIN OSKOUI (FOX NEWS GUEST): We have decades of medical science, randomized, controlled studies that show for respiratory viruses, masks do nothing.
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KEILAR: That is just false, it's nonsense, and it's dangerous. It's like telling people, “Go ahead and smoke, it's actually healthy for you." Researchers at Brigham Young University have compiled and read more than 115 scientific studies on the coronavirus, and there is consensus -- broad consensus -- that masks work. Here are some key points: Cloth masks can stop 90% or more of droplets carrying the virus from being dispersed. In countries where public masking was common practice before the pandemic, COVID-19 had an initial daily growth rate of 10% versus 18% in places where people did not regularly wear masks. Projections show that more than 400,000 Americans will die from the coronavirus by January 1, but if mask usage increased from 60% up to 95% up to near universal, we would save more than 120,000 of those lives. But Dr. “Don't wear a mask," oh, please go on.
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OSKOUI: This virus is dying away through natural herd immunity and a vaccine may actually be moot. But where the science is, believe me, we'll never be able to produce any reliable sources except the Journal of Irreproducible Results. It's absurd.
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KEILAR: First of all White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany falsely claimed that herd immunity was made up by the media and that the president wasn't considering it. Well, the president of course contradicted that at least twice this week. Herd immunity is the concept of allowing the coronavirus to run its course freely through much of the population, allowing a lot of people to build up resistance. But if the U.S. did that, 2 million-plus Americans would have to die, according to one doctor, in order to achieve that. For perspective, only a few percent of Americans are estimated to have contracted the virus at this point, even with the disturbing number of deaths that we have seen.
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ALEX BERENSON (FOX NEWS GUEST): Biden is talking about the University of Washington models, and those people have been wrong since March and they continue to be wrong to this day. If an asteroid hits the Earth in December, a million people might die. That's about as likely as what he is predicting right now.
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KEILAR: It's like they don't even bother looking at the facts before they go on TV. The models, they have been wrong but not in the way that guest claims. The prevailing model, which the White House has used and uses, underestimated the number of deaths and cases that we would happen to have when they put their projections out. Just take a look. In March, it projected 81,000 American deaths by July. Well the real number turned out to be more than 128,000. In May, they projected 137,000 American deaths by August. The real number, 155,000. In June, the projection: 180,000 by October. Well, it is still September and we have well surpassed that number. In July, the projection was 200,000 by November, and we're on the cusp of that right now, a month and a half early. These are lives that they are not being truthful about. These are families destroyed that they are lying about.
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BERENSON: The reason that this post-November prediction is being made is because it's unfalsifiable before the election, OK? Right now, cases are down, hospitalizations are down, deaths are down. So the people who have been trying to panic the country for six months have to point to something that they won't be able to falsify before the election.
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KEILAR: People are trying to panic the country? Because nearly 200,000 Americans dying in seven months is actually what, no big deal? Is that what he's saying? Case numbers and death numbers ebb and flow because this pandemic is coming in waves, but those numbers are still not low. Just because they're lower than they consistently were this summer -- 38,000 cases a day still. On Tuesday, the U.S. just saw the highest number of deaths in a month, and COVID is about to collide with the flu season; a “twindemic," as the New Jersey health commissioner put it. And then consider this: We have lost almost 200,000 people, right? And that's taken place in less than eight months. Well, we are expected to lose just as many in half the amount of time by the end of the year -- and that is based on models that have so far low-balled the number. When CDC director and Dr. Redfield testified under oath that masks “could be more powerful than a vaccine," he was actually giving a lifeline to the president's reelection chances by saying this.
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ROBERT REDFIELD (CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION DIRECTOR): These face masks are the most important, powerful public health tool we have. We have clear scientific evidence they work and they are our best defense. I might even go so far as to say this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.
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KEILAR: The president responded to that by demeaning Redfield and slapping him down, and Fox News ran with it. They enabled it. Misinformation is a virus unto itself and Fox News is the vector.