WSJ Writer Lies, Denying Patient Deaths From ICUs Overrun With COVID

By Heather — September 12, 2021

The Wall Street Journal's Allysia Finley made the ridiculous claim that there's "no practical public health reason" for Biden to be mandating vaccines on this Saturday's The Journal Editorial Report on Fox. After President Biden announced his new sweeping vaccine mandate and testing requirements this Thursday, the right wing has been going ballistic, screaming about their "freedom" to infect everyone being taken away.

The yappers on Fox are none too happy, despite the fact that their company has had a similar policy in place for some time now. Prior to Finley's nonsense, host Paul Gigot asked one of the other guests, Jason Riley, what he thought about the mandate and if it was necessary, and Riley began by whining about Biden's "tone" and then completely ignored the fact that these Republican governors across the country are interfering in the decisions by private businesses who are trying to protect their employees and customers as well:

GIGOT: So Jason, what do you make of the mandate plan? Was it necessary?

RILEY: Well, I was a little bothered by the president's hectoring tone there in his decision to sort of set one American against another on this issue. I think many large employers were already doing this, Paul, and I prefer to see that they make that decision on their own.

In terms of federal employees, I think it's appropriate for the federal government to decide how to go about vaccinations for the people it employs. You know, you don't have to work for the federal government if you don't like what they decide, but I think the private sector should be left to its own devices by and large.

Riley also failed to mention that Fox is one of those companies. Riley then noted, correctly, that the mandates are actually politically popular, but said the "downside" is that it could make the labor shortage worse.

RILEY: The calculation of the president, though, is probably that this is going to be politically popular for him. If you look at the polling, people do want their coworkers vaccinated. That is a majority of Americans feel that way. There is a down side, however. We have a labor shortage in this country, Paul, and to the extent that these vaccine mandates keep people out of the workforce, it's only going to exacerbate that worker shortage.

I'd like to know how many people are staying away because of the fact that we don't have a mandate, and due to the virus still overflowing our ICUs across the country. Which brings us to the next question asked by Gigot.

GIGOT: Yeah. Alicia, you look at this, the vaccines very closely, and you've followed COVID closely. Was this necessary as a matter of public health? In other words, was the emergency so extreme that the president within two months basically changed from saying we don't need these and declaring victory on the virus to now saying well, we're going to override personal freedom to be able to dictate this?

Ignoring the fact that we've had vaccine mandates in place from the time of the founding of the country. The Wall Street Journal flack responded by just straight up lying that no one's been denied critical care due to our emergency rooms being full of COVID patients:

FINLEY: Well, the president cites the surge in the delta which, you know, this summer, there have been rising cases and rising hospitalizations, and some hospitals have been overwhelmed. We've seen that in Texas, Florida, and some other states in the south.

But, you know, there is no indication as he said that as people were having heart attacks or pancreatitis or some other... strokes aren't able to get care. In fact they've been surging healthcare workers, the federal government has been helping surge federal healthcare workers to these hospitals, right.

The really immediate danger from the delta seems to be -- or at least looks to be subsiding. We don't know if that's actually going to be the case. You know, during the winter, it could flare up.

But for the most part, 75 percent of Americans or who are eligible have already decided voluntarily to get vaccinated. The delta may retreat, you know, just as it exhausts, you know, the potential targets.

There's really no reason for -- or there's no real practical public health reason at this point to mandate that all American get vaccinated, or all American workers get vaccinated.

Here are just a few of the incidents of this very thing happening across the country that we've covered here at C&L.

Idaho hospitals on the verge of collapse from COVID cases as covered by Rachel Maddow.

Mississippi putting COVID patients in a field hospital in a parking garage because they don't have any more ICU space.

Louisiana with patients lined up in the hallways because of a lack of beds, and the chief medical officer at one of their hospitals saying non-covid patients are being severely impacted.

Dallas county with 0 ICU beds for children: "Your child will wait for another child to die."

Nurses quitting in droves from burnout.

U.S. Army veteran Daniel Wilkinson died from a treatable illness, despite living just three houses down from an emergency room.

A Kansas man dies from a treatable illness while waiting three days for an ICU bed.

But Fox is going to tell us that none of this is happening. We've tried carrots with the vaccine hesitant and these anti-vaxxers. It's well past time for the stick.