Tucker Carlson opened his show this Tuesday with yet another dangerous rant, accusing CNN and MSNBC of fearmongering and peddling panic over the coronavirus pandemic, and lying about whether or not lockdowns help stop the spread of the deadly disease.
Carlson did his best to downplay the images we saw over the holiday weekend of Americans packed on beaches and in swimming pools and bars at Lake of the Ozarks, telling his viewers that getting outside is good for you:
It's essential. All of us needed it. Nature is medicine. Happy, balanced people understand that intuitively. You can't just sit on a couch all day barking at other people on social media. Your soul will rot if you do that.
What Carlson chose to ignore, of course, is that it wasn't just people crowded and refusing to follow social distancing guidelines outdoors. They were also packed into the nightclubs like sardines with no masks on. Here's a video taken inside one of the bars in Lake of the Ozarks that Tucker Carlson didn't bother to show his audience.
After continuing to attack CNN and MSNBC for their reporting on the dangers of violating the lockdowns and social distancing measures, and going after Nicolle Wallace and Ali Velshi for reporting on churches that have defied lockdown orders and for criticizing Trump for pandering to evangelicals by insisting churches be reopened immediately, Carlson proceeded to peddle the dangerous lie that quarantines and stay-at-home orders do nothing to slow the spread of the virus:
And by contrast, there's an awful lot of science and data that going outside is vital to your health and has been for a hundred years. We've known that. Exercising outdoors, getting vitamin D from the sun, this makes you healthier and less vulnerable to coronavirus. The virus also spreads far less easily outdoors than it does indoors.
Again, this is not speculation; it is fact. The largest study of this subject ever done took a look at 318 separate coronavirus infection clusters, places where the virus spread outward to other people. What did it find? It found that at 317 out of 318 clusters -- that's 99.7 percent -- the infection spread indoors, not outdoors. Indoors. And indoors is where Dr. Science and Data on MSNBC claims you must remain.
So no, CNN and MSNBC are not bringing you science and data. They're peddling panic and reckless moral judgment, and it's having an awful effect on this country.
Tucker's claim that the virus spreads inside and not outside is a pernicious lie. The CDC social distancing guidelines call for masks and a 6-foot distance between people outdoors because of the danger the virus poses.
Cherry picking data from states across the country that may, or may not even be accurately reporting the number of infections, that have different population densities, some of whom are doing a very good job of testing, and some who are not, and ignoring what we've learned from looking at how countries around the world have done in response to the virus is extremely reckless and irresponsible, but apparently Fox is determined to help kill off as many of their viewers as humanly possible before we finally get this pandemic under control.
