Jen Psaki just schooled Peter Doocy
Peter Doocy is at it again. His first day back after suffering a bout of the omicron variant of Covid-19 finds Doocy exploiting the growing wedge between Republicans and Democrats over this issue. “I’m triple vaxxed, still got Covid,” he said to Press Secretary Jen Psaki, “you’re triple vaxxed, still got Covid. Why is the President still referring to this as a pandemic of the unvaccinated?”
“I think, Peter, “Psaki replied,” there’s a significant difference … between that and being unvaccinated. You are 17 times more likely to go to the hospital if you’re unvaccinated [and] 20 times more likely to die.”
The game Doocy is playing here is an old one. If you blink you might miss it. But Doocy is playing politics with people’s lives by exploiting their ignorance over the difference between anecdotal and statistical evidence. He’s also playing a shell game with the difference between contracting a mild case of Covid-19 and dying.
Doocy is hoping, with good reason, that most Fox News viewers won’t notice this. Most of them won’t, of course. Instead, they’ll get mad and say something like, “Yeah, why the hell is the government making us get vaccinated when it’s obviously not working? Doocy and Psaki are triple vaxxed and they still got Covid!” Some will go to Walmart and start abusing people for wearing face masks. Some of them will even get violent. Some of them will even die because of it. And on and on. And Fox News will have done its job for the day.
Of course, Doocy leaves out the fact that the vast majority of people on ventilators and people dying from Covid are unvaccinated. He knows this perfectly well, but his game masters have long since indoctrinated him in how the game is played.
Naturally Fox News could use other ways to drive a wedge between Republicans and Democrats. They can do it without causing their viewers, their viewers’ parents and children and friends to die. But the omicron variant is the hot topic of the day, and human life means nothing to them, especially since there exists no specific link between what they say on television and the deaths of their viewers. So they can continue to spread deadly dangerous lies through Doocy without having to fear getting sued by anybody.
These are the kinds of lies being spread by the likes of Tucker Carlson and others at Fox News. They pronounce their fake outrages with a kind of indignant and starched rectitude, but they couldn’t care less if their viewers die or not. They get to pretend to be angry, they improve their ratings and they make money. You and your family can die and go straight to hell. What’s not to like about it?
This, brothers and sisters, is what corporate greed looks like in its most corrosive form. This is what human beings exploiting other human beings for money looks like. It’s the most despicable side of human evil. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.