The NYT’s polarizing pandemic pundit

THE NIGHTLY READS ‘THE MORNING’ — With 5 million readers, David Leonhardt, the author of The New York Times “The Morning” newsletter, is arguably the most influential of the Covid influencers.

He has positioned himself as the pundit who punches holes in public health orthodoxy, who shuns the “bad news bias” of journalism, who offers soothing rationality — grounded in his years of Pulitzer-winning reporting on economics — in the face of what he calls “Covid alarmism.”

Over the last few months, a long-simmering critical conversation among public health experts about Leonhardt’s take and his outsize influence has become more audible. And we don’t just mean on Twitter.

Notable doctors and scientists have written to the Times, individually or in groups, to poke holes in Leonhardt’s coverage of the pandemic. They say that he cherry-picks sources and data, giving too much weight to people who may have medical expertise but not on infectious disease; that he argues strenuously for open schools but downplays the Covid risks for kids as well as their role in spreading the virus; that he held out Britain’s vaccination strategy as a model (right before the U.K. itself reversed course); that he underestimates how many Americans — not all over age 65 — are at elevated risk or live with people at elevated risk. He tends, they say, to look at the virus’ impact on individuals, not the pandemic’s impact on society.

“To argue that we should just get on with life because boosted individuals (like himself) face relatively low personal risk of death from the virus misses so much,” Cecilia Tomori, director of global health and community health at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing tweeted about Leonhardt’s journalism this week. “The entire framing is wrong. Infectious diseases are inherently about social interaction.”

One letter to the Times from a group of prominent pandemic experts, obtained by Nightly (though with the full list of signatures withheld), called his reporting “irresponsible and dangerous.”

“It’s head-exploding,” one exhausted emergency physician told Nightly. “Bonkers.”

The “bad news” about Covid, these experts say, isn’t a bias. It’s reality. The pandemic, more than two years old, is now killing more than 2,000 people in the U.S. a day — 2,466 Wednesday, according to his own paper. That’s the high end of the deaths during the Delta surge.

As recently as three weeks ago, on Jan. 5, Leonhardt predicted the increase in deaths “is unlikely to be anywhere near as large” as the Delta wave was.

Leonhardt, in a phone conversation with Nightly, said he tries to talk to experts across many disciplines and spotlight the pandemic responses that have “big costs.” Among them:

  • An educational gap that persisted before the pandemic is worsening, with Black and Latino kids bearing the brunt.
  • A mental health crisis is sweeping the nation, particularly among kids. Suicide attempts are up. Drug overdoses are up. Blood pressure is up. Violent crime is up.

“If the goal — as it should be — is to protect people’s health and well-being, we need to look at it holistically,” he said.

He’s right that those concerns are part of public health, too. Yet his perspective and emphasis, his critics say, are too often misplaced.

“Some of his columns have been totally right — even lovely,” said a physician at a prestigious academic medical center. “But the majority downplay risk, downplay prevention. … There are political pressures and societal ramifications among this privileged group that reads him.”

That privileged group includes President Joe Biden, according to one individual who has worked with the White House on pandemic response — and who thinks Leonhardt is saying some things that need to be said to those Americans who are excessively cautious even after vaccination.

But many critics think his newsletter is too sanguine about the dangers of Covid. The critics are “emergency physicians, infectious disease specialists — across specialties and across the country,” said Anand Swaminathan, an emergency physician and medical educator in New Jersey, one of the few people willing to go on the record about an enormously influential journalist.

“It’s not a little [discussion],” Swaminathan said. “And it’s not a small cadre of people in New York.”

Other public health experts Nightly interviewed — some of whom are sources for New York Times health journalists or have media gigs of their own — didn’t want to be quoted, or said they were too busy taking care of patients, ciao. One well-known research scientist, who is part of this critical conversation but who admires Leonhardt overall, wouldn’t even praise him on the record.

The critics fault Leonhardt for drawing too sharp a line between the “at risk” 65 and up population and the “low risk” 65 and under group. Millions of people under 65 have conditions from diabetes to lupus that increase vulnerability to Covid.

“There is no stark dichotomy of who is vulnerable and who is not,” said Seth Trueger, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern who has taken care of Covid patients.

The critics also say that for all his focus on inequality, he overlooks that for poor people, if they don’t have great insurance and paid sick leave, even mild to moderate disease can be an economic calamity.

At the start of this year, in a newsletter that he titled “Pundit Accountability,” Leonhardt acknowledged publicly that he’s gotten stuff wrong. Breakthrough infections. Delta. The duration of immunity. The quality of data. The need for boosters.

Now, he says, he is foreseeing better times ahead (again). Indicators do tell us the Omicron surge is subsiding, though as his paper reported today, the path to greater normalcy may be blessedly clear or it may be “long and bumpy, pockmarked with outbreaks.”

Over the last two years, Leonhardt told Nightly, the experts have been both too pessimistic (that back-to-school surge didn’t materialize in September) and too optimistic (who ever thought we’d be going into year three?) in the face of this mercurial, mutating virus. So, he acknowledged, it’s probably a good idea to be “very humble about what the future would bring.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author on Twitter at @JoanneKenen.

What'd I Miss?

— Government watchdog says HHS at ‘high risk’ of bungling public health crises: The Health and Human Services Department has failed to fix long-standing problems in its pandemic response, putting its ability to respond to future emergencies in jeopardy, the Government Accountability Office said in a report. The watchdog agency included HHS on its “High Risk List” of federal departments and programs susceptible to mismanagement and abuse without significant changes, such as drug and medical product oversight. Three dozen agencies and federal programs are currently on the list.

— IRS backlog delayed emergency relief for businesses: Emergency tax refunds meant to help businesses weather pandemic woes were significantly delayed because their applications got ensnared in the IRS paperwork backlog, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. The holdup required the IRS to shell out tens of millions of dollars in interest on top of the refunds.

— Austin orders more focus on limiting civilian casualties: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered his staff to quickly develop an “action plan” for improving how the Pentagon limits and responds to civilian casualties caused by American airstrikes. He called protection of civilians vital to U.S. military success and a “moral imperative.” Austin said in a memo to senior civilian and military officials that he wants the plan to reach his office within 90 days. He said it should outline steps the Pentagon will take, and the resources it will require, to implement recommendations from previous studies of the problem.

— Trump plan favored giving vaccines to Israel, Taiwan over poorer countries: In planning for global vaccine distribution, the Trump administration created a secret list prioritizing friends like Israel and Taiwan over low- and moderate-income countries, according to interviews with five current and former officials who described the document to POLITICO. The list shows that U.S. officials initially planned to apportion the life-saving shots based on political preferences rather than serving the neediest first, which global health advocates have advocated for over the past two years.

— Fannie Mae urges new flood disclosures for homebuyers: Mortgage giant Fannie Mae is urging FEMA to set federal standards for how home sellers disclose flood risks to potential buyers. The recommendation Fannie Mae made to FEMA would shine a light on potential damages homeowners would face from climate change, which has contributed to rising sea levels, stronger storm surges and heavier rainfalls that increase flooding. The government-controlled Fannie Mae buys mortgages from lenders and sells them as securities to investors. FEMA operates the National Flood Insurance Program.

AROUND THE WORLD

‘LITTLE GROUND FOR OPTIMISM’ — Written responses from the United States and NATO addressing Russia’s security demands have left “little ground for optimism,” the Kremlin said today, suggesting the West’s latest diplomatic effort was unlikely to deescalate tensions along Ukraine’s border, Quint Forgey writes.

“We can’t say that they took our concerns into account or showed any readiness to take our concerns into consideration,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to the Russian government-owned news agency TASS.

Still, Peskov said that “there always are prospects for continuing a dialogue” about the ongoing security situation because “it’s in the interests of both us and the Americans,” according to additional remarks reported by the Associated Press.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said that although the U.S. written response could result in “the start of a serious talk on secondary issues,” the document “contains no positive response on the main issue.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has received the written response, Lavrov added, and Russian officials will now present their proposals to him.

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill: A landmark Senate bill to bolster Biden’s hand in the standoff with Russia is taking shape, with members of both parties finessing language to overcome the threat of a Republican filibuster. Andrew Desiderio and Alex Ward have the details.

Nightly Number

Parting Words

ON THE POSSIBLE BALTIC FRONT LINES — Russia’s renewed saber-rattling toward Ukraine and its troop movements through Belarus have sent a chill through its Baltic neighbors, Charlie Duxbury writes.

On the edge of Daugavpils, a Latvian town close to the Russian and Belarusian borders, Major Aivars Dringis tours the army training camp he oversees, making sure the roads are clear after recent snows.

It is quiet for now, but starting on Feb. 1, the latest batch of recruits to join Latvia’s voluntary National Guard will be here on a three-week boot camp to learn the basics of warfare. Their home will be two long tents in a clearing.

“These guys will be totally green, so all this will be new to them,” Dringis said, scraping ice off the inside wall of one of the tents. Temperatures fell well below zero this week and snow flurries were common, but the tents have power and heaters. “We’ll get the heating on in good time — we don’t want to scare them off,” he quipped.

Similar upgrades are in the pipeline at various training areas in Latvia’s east and the National Guard is aiming to grow from around 8,300 members now to around 12,000. On Wednesday, Latvian President Egils Levits called on his fellow citizens to join up to “strengthen the common security of Latvia, Europe and NATO.”

But with 100,000 Russian troops now massing on Ukraine’s borders and more moving through Belarus, there is a growing nervousness across the Baltics that such planned upgrades won’t be enough. The deployments in Belarus are triggering particular concerns because they would be well-positioned to strike at Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, but it also adds to the foreboding in the Baltics.

Latvia, like its Baltic neighbors Lithuania and Estonia, is a member of the Western defense alliance NATO, and Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks called on stronger fellow members — particularly the U.K. and U.S. — to send more troops and equipment to his country to help it deter Russia.
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