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Leana Wen is no COVID skeptic: But she does have some skepticism about the data

Chris Graham
covid-19
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It’s odd seeing reporters and talking heads still talking about “pandemic” when it seems that life has been back to whatever normal was before March 2020 for a while now.

Even odder to see the rumblings from the “shut things down forever” corner of the interwebs about how we might need to soon get back to mask mandates because COVID, three years in, just hasn’t gone away yet.

And then, another oddity: Leana Wen, the public health professor at George Washington who you’ve seen on CNN and read in the Washington Post advocating for stringent COVID-related health measures, is now saying that, gulp, maybe we’ve been overcounting COVID deaths and hospitalizations.

She even asked, in a Jan. 13 Post editorial, a question that would’ve gotten her canceled not long ago:

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States is experiencing around 400 COVID deaths every day. At that rate, there would be nearly 150,000 deaths a year. But are these Americans dying from COVID or with COVID?”

Yikes.

Bigger yikes: according to what she reported in her column, based on talking with infectious-disease physicians at hospitals across the country, the proportion of those hospitalized because of COVID could be as low as 10 percent of the total number reported.

This isn’t Alex Berenson pulling fake data out of his ass.

It’s Leana Wen, who this time last year was advocating on Twitter that everyone “should be wearing at least a 3-ply surgical mask when indoors & around others of unknown vaccination status.”

Wen acknowledged in her column that she could face criticism from people who think she’s trying to minimize COVID.

Her goal, she wrote, is “to help people better gauge the risks of traveling, indoor dining and activities they have yet to resume.”

“Most importantly, knowing who exactly is dying from COVID can help us identify who is truly vulnerable. These are the patients we need to protect through better vaccines and treatments,” Wen wrote.

Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019, and Team of Destiny: Inside Virginia Basketball’s Run to the 2019 National Championship, and The Worst Wrestling Pay-Per-View Ever, published in 2018. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, or subscribe to his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].