Did a New York Times article inspire Trump's 'back to work' plan?
Source: The Guardian
Did a New York Times article inspire Trump's 'back to work' plan?
A New York Times piece by a diet specialist appears to have informed Trump’s idea to open up the country by Easter
Adam Gabbatt
@adamgabbatt
Fri 27 Mar 2020 10.15 GMT
Last modified on Fri 27 Mar 2020 11.02 GMT
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The idea of sending people back to work and restarting the economy had been floating around last weekend, propagated by two opinion pieces in particular. One was written on Medium. Another, published two days before the Hilton show, was an opinion piece by David Katz, a former director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, which was published by the New York Times. Given the reach of the New York Times this piece, headlined Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?, attracted huge attention.
In the piece, Katz argues that those over 60 and those who are immunologically compromised should be “preferentially protect[ed]”, with focused testing.
“This focus on a much smaller portion of the population would allow most of society to return to life as usual and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy from collapsing,” Katz wrote, adding that then children could return to school and adults return to their jobs.
In time, people would develop immunity to the coronavirus, and in the meantime, damage to the economy would be minimized, Katz opined.
But as many pointed out, Katz is not an epidemiologist. Instead, he specializes in nutrition advice, and has published a number of dietary books, including The Way to Eat, Cut Your Cholesterol and Stealth Health.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/27/trump-coronavirus-back-to-work-column
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A link to the offending NYT op-ed is in the article. I won't post it here.
= new reply since forum marked as read
