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A former New York Times reporter and prominent critic of the response to the coronavirus pandemic believes that the media has "played a real and destructive role in worsening this crisis," and that some of its coverage has been driven by a personal dislike of President Trump.
"I don't think I'm saying anything that isn't obvious," said Alex Berenson in the new Fox Nation series "Fox Nation 101: COVID Contrarian." "They view Trump as having failed them and possibly costing them their lives. And the anger was off the charts and the groupthink and the hysteria went off the charts."
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Much of Berenson's recent work has focused on the inaccuracy of models that predicted the number coronavirus infections, deaths and hospitalizations, and were relied upon by public health decision-makers.
In the first episode of "Fox Nation 101: COVID Contrarian," Berenson detailed how he came to realize that those analyses were deeply flawed.
"I think the models that we've used to forecast our response and plan for it have made huge errors," he said in the Fox Nation series. "I think that those errors have driven a response that is economically and societally destructive."
Berenson argued in the second episode of the new Fox Nation series that the media has sensationalized tragedy and overlooked evidence that runs counter to prevailing narratives about the lethality of the virus.
"[The media] didn't talk about who was really dying and who's really at risk here when it focused on what I call these 'outlier cases', these handful of cases where people under 30 or even under 40 with no out underlying conditions got sick and died."
Berenson claimed that more individuals over 100 years of age have died from the coronavirus worldwide than people under 30 years of age. Additionally, he said that publically available data has shown that more people over 90 years old have died from the virus than those under 50 years of age.
In a recent article on FoxNews.com, Berenson detailed the impact of the prolonged lockdowns across much of the country by telling the stories of some Americans now experiencing troubling mental health issues.
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Berenson said one of the most glaring examples of the media's failure was the lack of reporting on the inaccuracy of models that predicted the overwhelming of the U.S. health care system.
"This is one of the most astonishing things about this – that in the middle of what is supposedly the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu – hospitals are empty... the media didn't cover that at all," he said.
"I'm talking about the places that are supposed to be the very best, the places that we really count on, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, instead, they've written just story after story about how terrible this is and how it is destroying the world. And, you know, the evidence for that is just not there."
Berenson was careful to observe that hospitals in New York City and in surrounding areas did struggle to keep up with the influx of coronavirus patients, yet he stressed that health care systems around the country did not have similar experiences.
Personally, Berenson said that he has experienced a backlash from the journalism community.
"A lot of people in the media, a lot of my former colleagues at The New York Times, other places in the New York media world, they've been very angry at me," he told Fox Nation. "I'd gladly speak to CNN or MSNBC or write an op-ed for The Washington Post or The New York Times, but these places are not having me right now."
"I believe that I'm going where the facts and the data are leading me. And if I'm wrong, you know, God help me... because the anger at me will be just off the charts. But fortunately, so far, it doesn't seem like I've been wrong."
Berenson previously covered the pharmaceutical industry for The New York Times from 1999 to 2010 and recently wrote a book called, “Tell Your Children The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence,” which challenged narratives that downplayed the potential health concerns posed by marijuana.
To watch all of the series "Fox Nation 101: COVID Contrarian," go to Fox Nation.
For more information on the coronavirus pandemic, watch "America Vs Virus" with Dr. Mehmet Oz, "Pandemics and Epidemics 101," with Dr. Nicole Saphier, a full-time practicing physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and "Fox Nation 101: Making Vaccines," with Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
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