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Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter and prominent critic of the public policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic, said he believes that the U.S. will look back on the coronavirus “lockdown” strategy “as a colossal mistake.”
“The virus appears to be less dangerous than we thought it was a month ago,” said Berenson in the new Fox Nation series “Fox Nation 101: COVID Contrarian.” “The economic devastation and the societal devastation of the lockdowns appear to be greater than even the worst projections were a month ago.”
Berenson is calling on U.S. policymakers to reverse aspects of the lockdown strategy, as he argues that it has become more clear that the response to COVID-19 is potentially more damaging than the virus itself.
“What I think is that people took a very, very aggressive action a month ago without necessarily thinking through what the economic or societal consequences were going to be,” said Bereson in an interview recorded in April.
“Now more and more evidence is coming out that we responded too harshly, that maybe we should have taken smaller steps and seen what happened before we went to the place we went. And it seems to me very, very hard, both for politicians and for the public health establishment, to acknowledge this and to walk us back in a reasonable way.”
The former New York Times reporter, who covered the pharmaceutical industry for the paper from 1999 to 2010, attracted widespread attention by questioning the catastrophic predictions of coronavirus deaths made by a U.K. academic.
Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College in London, led an academic team at the university that produced an influential model forecasting the spread of COVID-19.
The study predicted up to 250,000 coronavirus deaths in the U.K. and about 1 million deaths in the U.S. In a worst-case scenario, the study claimed those figures could more than double in both countries.
“I’ve been watching this like a hawk and I’ve been watching the models, both the Imperial College and now more recently, the major U.S. model, which is the University of Washington model, fail on a daily basis, fail to predict what is happening now, what is going to happen in months or years or even in a week,” said Berenson in the Fox Nation special.
“I think most scientists agree it is more dangerous than the flu, but it doesn’t seem to be 10 or 20 or 30 times as dangerous as the flu. It’s on the spectrum of the flu. That’s what the data is now suggesting.”
Berenson though repeatedly cautioned that public health policy and individuals are justified and should continue to take measures to protect those that have been shown to be most vulnerable to the virus, including the elderly and those with underlying health issues.
“There will be plenty of time to sort out the blame for the mistakes that were made and try to make sure we do a better job next time,” said Berenson in the second episode of the Fox Nation series.
“Right now, every day that goes by, the economy gets a little bit worse. Every day that goes by, there are more people who can’t pay their bills, every day that goes by kids are being stuck at home sometimes with abusive parents.”
“Every day that goes by our society frays a little bit more,” he continued, “Let’s worry about fixing this now and then we can try to sort out what went wrong in the coming weeks and months.”
To watch all of the series “Fox Nation 101: COVID Contrarian,” and hear why Berenson believes that coronavirus lockdowns may even have exacerbated the severity of the crisis in the short-term, go to Fox Nation and sign up today.
For more information on the coronavirus pandemic, watch “America Vs Virus” with Dr. Mehmet Oz, “Pandemics and Epidemics 101,” with Dr. Nicole Saphier, a full-time practicing physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and “Fox Nation 101: Making Vaccines,” with Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
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Fox News’ Lucia I. Suarez Sang contributed to this report.
