Ex-NYT reporter publishes new anti-lockdown book, calls out ‘90% of media’ on parroting same lines on Covid responses

Alex Berenson’s latest chapter in a series of books about Covid-19, the first of which was briefly censored by Amazon, questions both the media’s coverage of the pandemic and the effectiveness of lockdowns.

“I think it's really important, at a time when 90 percent of media... is saying the same thing, with very little pushback or smart questioning, to get different perspectives,” Berenson told Fox News about the self-published ‘Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 2: Update and Examination of Lockdowns as a Strategy.’

“Even if you disagree with me completely, it’s always good to know what other people are thinking,” he added.

The first part in the reporter’s series of Covid-19 books was censored by Amazon for allegedly spreading misinformation about the pandemic. The e-commerce company refused to publish the work, which questioned the hysteria around coronavirus, but ultimately folded after many blasted the company, including SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who accused the company of being a “monopoly.”

The main theme of Berenson’s second book is questioning whether lockdown measures taken by various states in the US are a good strategy in battling the spread of a virus.

“Lockdowns really came out of nowhere. When you look at the history of lockdowns, they were rejected over and over again as a tool when we were considering what to do about flu epidemics, including flu epidemics that would have been much worse than what the coronavirus epidemic is,” Berenson says, adding that the acceptance of these measures is “completely unprecedented.”

“Even during World War II, yes the US government took over large industries and quasi-nationalized production of essential commodities and stuff, there weren’t efforts to control people’s actions,” he said. “This really is unprecedented.”

The author, who has been dismissed by his ex-employer the New York Times as a Covid-19 “contrarian,” says he can’t “imagine” lockdowns continuing for much longer, or for there to be any national shutdowns as some Democrats have suggested, because it has become clear how “destructive” the measures really are to the economy, mental health, and children kept out of school.

Hospitalizations and death rates from the virus in states with strict lockdown mandates, like New York, compared to ones with more laidback measures, like Texas and Florida, also show that mass quarantine procedures do not make much of a difference.

“The death counts will still continue to rise, but they accomplished that without a major lockdown,” he said. 

“If you're going to be someone in favor of lockdowns, you really have to grapple with that and explain to me ... why it is that lockdowns work so well if places that didn't lock down seem to have had a better outcome than people who locked down hard,” he added in a separate Fox interview. 

Berenson has further highlighted through social media the successes in states like Florida that have not been given attention by the mainstream media, which have, meanwhile, thrown softball interviews to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose decision to force nursing homes to accept positive Covid-19 cases could have added 6,000 deaths to the state’s massive total, according to many experts.

While Berenson’s second coronavirus book was published by Amazon without being censored, the company did delay making a paperback copy available, citing “technical” issues. As of Wednesday, Berenson says the issue has been solved, though the reporter was understandably suspicious, considering his ordeal with his opinions being silenced by the company – which accounts for 50 percent of the print book business and 75 percent of ebook sales – the first time around.

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