Van’s Note: Van Bryan here, Jeff Brown’s longtime managing editor. Welcome back to Jeff’s 2021 prediction series. Here, we’re profiling the biggest stories of 2020 and looking forward to what’s in store for the new year. Last time, Jeff revealed the investment implications of COVID-19 (catch up right here). Today, we’re continuing that conversation. Read on for the lessons the world must learn from this pandemic, and see why Jeff believes his coverage of the virus will be vindicated.
Van Bryan: Jeff, I’d like to talk to you about your coverage of COVID-19, the research you’ve shared with readers, and discuss some of the responses we got from that editorial. Jeff Brown: Absolutely. Van: In the pages of The Bleeding Edge, you’ve been openly critical of some of the public policies in response to the pandemic. You’ve also been a big critic of how the mainstream press has been covering this story. Is that fair to say? Jeff: It is. And I would say upfront that I never claimed this was some sort of fake virus. It’s a very real virus. And yes, there have been deaths as a result. But the way this has been covered in the media – and the public policies that governments have pursued because of that coverage – are not helping the situation at all. They’re making it worse. Let’s start with the media. The thing we need to remember is that the media gets paid from advertising. They have an incentive to keep viewers tuning in. Never once through the entire year did I see a mainstream news channel show a chart of new cases alongside a chart showing the increase in testing. It never once showed a complete picture of the situation. Instead, they became fixated on the newest case numbers without ever considering any of the nuances. Then, it became common to use these case numbers to predict that millions of people would die. Remember, The New York Times ran a story earlier this year with the claim that 2.2 million people would die in the U.S. We know that is just patently wrong. But what was the consequence? People panicked. They became depressed. They stopped going to hospitals to get treatment they needed because they were scared of contracting the virus. And suicide rates – even for young people – are also on the rise. And then consider what else is happening to school-aged children. We already know that young children are more vulnerable to a bad influenza than they are to this virus. But because of all this panic, schools were closed across the country. I recently shared some research that was published by The Journal of the American Medical Association. It estimated that 5.53 million years of life will be lost due to shutting down schools. There is a direct correlation between human life expectancy and education. Less education means fewer years lived. That’s just one example. There are more. What few people see is that there is a direct, understandable, and calculable loss of life because of these policy measures. | Recommended Link | | Jeff Clark has done the impossible He's found a way to take a seemingly boring stock… and use it to potentially generate thousands – or even tens of thousands of dollars – EVERY MONTH… Without doing anything crazy or complicated. Check out the details right here – including the name and ticker of this stock. | | | -- | Van: So what would you say to a reader who wrote in upset about your views on this? We’ve had a few angry emails the past few months. Jeff: The first thing I would say is that whether a reader agrees with me or not, I’m always happy to receive feedback. Good or bad, I’ll always read it. But I would also tell that reader that I’m not a journalist. I’m an analyst. I’m a researcher. And I have been researching this topic the way I would anything else. I’m reading academic journals. I’m reviewing the data myself. I’ll give you one example. Earlier this year, I shared research that showed that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests – a common tool used for COVID-19 diagnosis – would report an alarmingly high level of false positives. The Most Profitable Prediction of Jeff Brown’s Three-Decade Technology Career When the cycle threshold setting is set above 40, it can result in 60 to 90% of all new cases being false positives. Surprisingly, The New York Times even picked up this story. It gets worse. The inventor of these PCR machines stated that these machines were not designed to determine if a patient was infectious or not. Clearly, we should not be using data from these machines to shape public policy. But that’s exactly what’s happening. Now, when I pointed this out, I got some emails saying I was being one-sided or that I had a political bias. That’s not the case at all. Just because I share research that doesn’t conform to the mainstream narrative does not mean it’s politically biased. I’m staying rational and providing the type of analysis I’d want if the roles were reversed. Van: What would be a more rational public policy response from your view? Jeff: What few realize is that the United States and Europe had very clear guidelines on what to do in case of a pandemic. Countries spent hundreds of millions of dollars putting together a “playbook” in case this exact scenario happened. Broadly, the playbook was that young people should stay in school. Businesses should remain open. People should keep going to work. Meanwhile, you isolate the at-risk segments of society. I’m talking about the elderly or those with preexisting conditions. A $49 investment could lead to you making up to 172x on your money And if anybody is infectious or has symptoms, they should self-quarantine. Masks should only be worn by health care professionals or those believed to be symptomatic. That was the crystal-clear plan to handle situations like this. But what did the world do? We threw the playbook out the window. We embarked on these draconian responses that have resulted in multitrillion dollars of economic damage and so many unnecessary lost lives. Van: That sounds like the model Sweden has followed. Do you think that course of action will ultimately be vindicated? Jeff: That’s right. At a high level, this is the approach that Sweden has taken. And what are the results? Sweden has fewer COVID-19 deaths per million people than both the U.S. and the U.K., two countries that had total lockdowns. And Sweden was able to do this without locking down its economy, without denying citizens their livelihoods, and without taking children out of schools. And yes, I think this approach will be vindicated. It won’t happen right away. But in a year or year and a half, COVID-19 will be a bad memory. And we’ll look back on what Sweden did as a real victory. And by the way, I also think what I published during this time will be vindicated. When all the chaos subsides, I think even the skeptical readers will see that I was just trying to stay rational while the rest of the world panicked. Van: I’ll give you the last word on this. Anything you’d like to add about COVID-19 before we close the book on the topic in 2020? Jeff: To me, one of the worst things that happened this year was the loss of reason. We didn’t make policy decisions based on logic. Policy was set out of fear and panic. It’s resulted in all the disastrous consequences that we’ve been talking about. We’re going to have to learn from how the world reacted this year. We’re going to have to do better the next time this happens. Because it will happen again. Pandemics have been a part of history for thousands of years. And for any subscribers who didn’t like what I published, I’d say this… People don’t read my work because they want me to parrot whatever the mainstream press is saying. As we’ve seen, they’re often wrong. Our subscribers read the work because they want objective, unbiased analysis. That’s what I would want if I were in their position. And that’s what I’ve provided in 2020. It’s what I’ll continue to provide in 2021. Van: Thanks as always for your insights Jeff. Jeff: Of course. Happy to do it.
Van’s Note: That concludes our discussion with Jeff on COVID-19 in 2020. But be sure you check your inbox tomorrow for the next edition of The Bleeding Edge. Jeff and I will sit down to discuss the presidential election and what a Biden administration could mean for the high-technology market. We’ll see you then.
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