Dr. Leana Wen, a well-known medical commentator for the Washington Post and CNN, wants us to believe that society has overcounted Covid deaths and hospitalizations. She first made this claim in the Post (1/13/23), and again during an appearance on CNN (1/17/23).
In the Post, she suggested that the US Covid death toll might be “30% of what’s currently reported”—that is, about 120 a day rather than 400—though she immediately added, “that’s still unacceptably high.” She maintained that a downward revision of the Covid toll “could help people better gauge the risks of traveling, indoor dining and activities they have yet to resume.”
After a flurry of angry responses (Washington Post, 1/19/23) from readers, experts and other journalists—including MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan (MSNBC, 1/19/23)—Wen (1/19/23) followed up, saying she took critics’ comments to heart, but insisted that society must acknowledge “that data changed over time and that deaths due to the pandemic are not necessarily the same as deaths due to Covid,” as if these thing weren’t related.
How did Wen—a medical doctor, a professor of health policy at George Washington University and the former health commissioner of Baltimore—come to this conclusion? She asserted this bold position after speaking with two doctors.
One is Dr. Robin Dretler of Emory Decatur Hospital, who “sees patients with multiple concurrent infections.” “If these patients die,” Wen wrote, “Covid might get added to their death...
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