Earlier this month, former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson published a short e-book titled Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns, intended to be the first part of an extensive effort to build on and further the narrative of coronavirus pandemic skeptics. The book was delisted by Amazon shortly after release, leading to considerable backlash and allegations of censorship. Many people, most notably Elon Musk, sided with Berenson and consequently, Amazon relisted the book. The controversy stemming from its delisting elevated it into one of the most popular books on Amazon.

In this work, Berenson argues that the media is blowing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic out of proportion. In reviewing his work, it is important to remember that Berenson is no science expert — he studied economics and history in college — and that he has constructed his narrative through a careful cherry-picking of facts and figures that seemingly undermine the mainstream view of the pandemic.

He opens his argument by focusing on a famous report from Imperial College London. This report was one of the earliest attempts at estimating the human cost of the epidemic, and it later turned out that the number of expected deaths was significantly overestimated. Focusing on this one report, he argues that the pandemic as a whole is greatly exaggerated around the world. He also attempts to discredit academia in general by focusing on the case of one of the main authors of the report, Professor Neil Ferguson. Professor Ferguson helped frame the precautionary guidelines in the UK, but was later found to have broken those guidelines himself. Berenson makes his point by analyzing details of Professor Ferguson’s personal life, which are not at all relevant to the argument at hand. It soon becomes clear that Berenson is advocating moral judgment, notwithstanding the fact that a scientist’s personal life has no significance to his scientific argument.

Berenson has made a lengthy comment on how he was personally targeted online after he began to publicize his narrative to a wider audience. He lamented that his personal life was being dragged into the discussion in much the same way he had brought up Prof Ferguson’s personal life. The irony of this protest was lost on him.

He asserts that the coronavirus pandemic has largely ended, and the expectation of a second wave is merely an unfounded assumption. This claim is blatantly false: one needs only look at the recent outbreak in Seoul and the new outbreak in China last month to disprove his claim. Clearly, Berenson cites global examples only when they can be twisted to fit his narrative. 

Throughout his work, Berenson repeats the claim that people in the US are being overly cautious. However, China (with a population of nearly 1.4 billion) had less than 5,000 deaths, while the US (with a population of 330 million) has already experienced over 100,000 deaths. Likewise, the US has nearly seven times the population of South Korea, yet they currently have over 350 times more deaths. Contrary to the claim, it is obvious that people in the US are not being cautious enough. 

Berenson also declares that the coronavirus fatality rate overestimates the human loss, because old people are nearing their deaths anyway. To justify his opinion, he argues that a child’s death is a greater loss than an elderly person’s death. There are at least two issues with this view. One, he significantly underestimates the virus, because even when it does not lead to death, it is known to leave permanent effects, especially on children. Two, one should realize that all human lives are valuable and should not be compared.

Although almost nothing Berenson says is an outright lie, his way of presentation and context removal completely masks the truth and presents a false narrative. Only those with a firm grasp of the ground realities will be able to notice the trap, and a large number of people will almost certainly fall for it. The question, then, is: should content distribution be regulated so that such work is prevented from affecting the global efforts to end this pandemic, or should it instead be allowed distribution but simultaneously answered through a factual narrative? Today this question has gained central importance, and how this issue is dealt with will significantly shape major events, such as the presidential elections in the US later this year.