Joe Scarborough Calls on Biden’s White House Officials to Say ‘It’s Next to Impossible’ To Contract Covid Outside
Joe Scarborough expressed frustration and concern with Covid-19 mitigation guidelines following a New York Times report that criticized the CDC for misleading numbers on outdoor Covid-19 transmission risk.
In a rather stunning version of the Morning Newsletter, David Leonhardt said that the CDC’s guidelines that the risk of getting the potentially deadly Covid-19 contagion as “less than 10%” is technically correct but remarkably misleading, as the number—according to epidemiologists he cites—is closer to 1 percent, or even 0.1 percent.
Scarborough appeared to call an audible and came out of a break to read the news that he had received on his “Internet machine” lauding Leonhardt and calling this report a “doozy.” Scarborough cites Leonhardt’s calling the CDC benchmark “a huge exaggeration” and that, “in truth, the transmission that occurs outdoors seems to be below 1% and may be below 0.1%.”
“David writes, ‘multiple epidemiologists told me. And then he said, saying less than 10% of covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers per year. The actual worldwide number is 150. It’s both true and deceiving,'” Scarborough read from the NY Times Colum.
The Morning Joe host’s takeaway? “We want people to be guided by science as we were saying during the Trump era, and it is so important we don’t overreact in the other direction now that we seem to be moving through Covid,” he said.
“It’s what Scott Gottlieb said to Shep Smith, it’s what we keep hearing from people, is that sometimes being overly conservative actually if you’re not following science, like not sending our kids back to school in a timely manner, you’re actually undermining your credibility, and in this case, the CDC undermines its credibility when it oversells a statistic,” Scarborough added.
“If I’m outside and there are a group of people around, and somebody has a mask on, even though I’ve had the vaccine, both shots, I put the mask on, to be respectful of that other person,” he conceded, adding “But we need people to get on — CDC officials, we need Biden White House officials to get on and say what the epidemiologists said to David Leonhardt, which is come on, it’s next to impossible to catch this outside.”
Nearly 600,000 Americans have succumbed to Covid-19 since the pandemic started in the Spring of 2020. Various reports reliably suggest that the number of actual Covid-related deaths could be well over 1 million. So the cautious approach in mitigation of the spread of this pathogen is certainly understandable, but it may be time for a course correction as more data is considered.
Watch above via MSNBC.
