“Why didn’t we think of ‘social distancing’ Joseph?”
We noted this last week, a specific and nuanced lie about the phase-1 gateway. Last week Jake Tapper and Chuck Todd were pushing it; this week it is Chris Wallace.
When the original guidelines were rolled out by the White House COVID-19 task force, the administration was clear to say how the guidelines were created for the state governors to use in coordination with “state and local health officials.”
A key part of the White House guidelines was the “gateway to reopening”; which included a recommendation of a 14-day period where the virus tracking showed diminished spread. However, the guidelines were emphasized to be driven by “local and state health departments.” It does not take every county in the entire state to pass the gateway before the governor, any governor, can start their phase-1 reopening.
The White House guidelines to the state governors were intentionally structured around coordination with county health officials/county health departments. The reasoning was simple, a state with 40 counties may have passed the gateway hurdle in 38 of the 40 counties, but that does NOT mean the entire state has not passed the phase-one gateway.
“The guidance allows each state governor to modify their phased response by county depending on the Virus impact. Some counties may be in phase-one, while other counties may be in phase two or three. The state and local public health officials will be responsible for monitoring the virus impact on an ongoing basis.” (link)
Here’s a specific example. There are 67 counties in the state of Florida. Sixty-five of those counties may have already passed through the phase-one gateway; meaning they show declining infection rates for 14-days, and/or had little impact. Two counties like Dade, and Broward may not have yet passed the gateway guideline. It would be ridiculous for 65 (mostly rural) counties to sit and wait for one or two (mostly urban) counties to achieve the same level of virus containment before re-opening their local economy.
It would be ridiculous for a State Governor like Ron DeSantis to hold back sixty-five counties while waiting on the other one or two to catch up.
That is specifically why the White House guidance emphasized the local health departments coordinating with the state governors.
It does not take every county in the entire state to pass the gateway before the governor, any governor, can start giving guidelines for reopening. Nor is it accurate to say that “no state has passed the gateway for phase-one.” Factually, every state has some counties that are well beyond the phase-one guidelines.
Conversely, many counties within individual states may already be in phase-three; however, that doesn’t mean the entire state is in phase-3 based on the guidelines.
If you were to follow the false logic claimed by Chris Wallace, you could argue as soon as a state has a single county at phase-3 then the state has achieved the phase-3 gateway.
Watch how in the interview Wallace makes the false claim: “no state has passed the phase-one reopening guideline”… He is lying, and he knows it.
David Mamet had a famous saying that is often cited. Essentially he said: ‘in order for left-wing partisans and ideologues to continue advancing their agenda, they must pretend not to know things.’ CTH calls this “The Mamet Principle.” No where is that quote more clearly showcased than with these types of interviews.
Chris Wallace is a political operative. A placed ideologue within media advancing an agenda in an effort to do as much harm as possible. This is not an accident; and yes this harm is specific, purposeful and with intent.
The evolved Fabian-Socialists, the professional left which includes most mainstream media now, are dangerous in disposition due to the rabidity of their partisanship. If they were not, they wouldn’t be consistently lying. It really is that simple.
