The Charlotte Observer ran a story on Friday that blared “Covid hospitalizations are at a three-year high.” The Charlotte Observer published a story on Friday that stated: “Covid Hospitalizations in Charlotte Are at a 3-Year High.” Residents of Mecklenburg County where Charlotte is located must, the paper said, “stay up-to-date with their Covid-19 vaccinations and get tested when they experience symptoms.” Charlotte, according to at least one pandemic measure, is experiencing worse coronavirus results than it has for a very long time. The ignorance and complacency among the public, as usual, are the main culprits.

But not really. This story was complete nonsense. The pandemic exposed the institutional decay, and not to mention the terrible combination of sensationalism in the media, as well as laziness. The failures are going to continue to mount, and threaten to overwhelm common sense again in the next crisis unless Americans demand an honest, credible, and thorough reckoning with all the major players, both public and private.

The Observer, relying on the New York TimesCovid Tracker, noted that there were “an average of 124 Covid-19 daily hospitalizations” during the week ending Dec. 30. This overlooked the fact that the Timesmetric captured average daily hospitalizations for every 100,000 people–meaning that the story was incorrect on its face. The Times daily admissions data is based on the hospitals’ self reporting to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and includes both “suspected cases” and tested cases.

Compare the results of the Covid Act Now Monitoring System. This system uses data from HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and aggregates them with a population weighted average. Act Now, using this more precise measure reports that the county had 133 admissions during the week ending December 30, which is 9.7 admissions for every 100,000 people. This puts Mecklenburg in a low-risk category.

CDC’s County Check system also rates Mecklenburg as having a low hospitalization rate and gives it a “green” rating for admissions. The agency shows that there were 97 hospitalizations in total for the week ending Jan. 6. This is 7.1 admissions to every 100,000 people, which is a 30% decrease from the previous weeks. According to the CDC , Mecklenburg County has a low overall risk of Covid (not just hospitalizations).

We’ll count the Observer‘s failures. The paper did not accurately characterize the Timesdata that it relayed. The paper did not provide enough context regarding the limitations of these data. It did not inform readers what other tracking systems say about their city or county. Evan Moore the reporter didn’t bother to look up the CDC data or try to reconcile his breathless doomsday predictions with the county rating of the agency.

Evan Moore, in an older age of journalism, would have been disciplined and possibly even fired for his lapses. The worst he could have gotten was a ” Ratio ” on X, formerly Twitter.

Now multiply the Evan Moore problem by an entire national establishment–nay, an international establishment–making mistakes of the kind over the course of a world-historic event like the pandemic: inviting us, initially, to go party in Chinatown, to prove that we aren’t racists afraid of a Chinese-incepted virus; then urging us not to mask lest health workers come up short; then telling us to actually mask up, even out of doors, and to muzzle our 2-year-olds, too; then forcing our children to stay home, even though we knew that kids transmit the virus at a lower rate and are at minuscule risk from it; then censoring stories about the potential laboratory origins of the virus before concluding that the lab theory has merit; then telling us that getting vaxxed would render masking unnecessary; and then telling us that, actually, the jab doesn’t stop transmission, and we need to keep masking and get boosted every few months; then making access to groceries and other public services conditional on being vaxxed and boosted; then dropping all that because…reasons.

Let’s not forget the incompetent and poor Evan Moore from the Charlotte Observer. Has anyone of the key decision makers – the people in charge of the big newsrooms, of the censorious platforms of social media, of the duplicitous public health apparatus – paid a price for an overall pattern of failure that was more than just a few whoopsies here and then? It’s not.

No one has been held accountable or punished for the major catastrophes which have marked my adult life, since 9/11. From the Iraq War to financial crisis. The same is true for the architects of Covid’s catastrophe. We shouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happens again.