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Saturday, April 11, 2020

Tucker: In this coronavirus crisis, nothing is more important than staying connected to reality

In the past few days, the truth has seemed like a swiftly moving target. Some of the big numbers have been changing almost day by day; others appear to contradict each other. In many other cases, information just isn't complete yet and won't be for a while.

It's all happening very, very fast. But at this point, a couple of trends are coming into focus. First of them, an awful lot of people are getting sick from this illness. Tens of thousands of new infections every day; some of them are dying. It's horrifying to watch.

We feared that a massive wave of desperate people struggling to breathe would overwhelm our hospitals and break our health care system. That was the primary concern. But so far, it hasn't happened.

Instead, something completely unexpected appears to be taking place. Across the country, health care workers are being let go or furloughed. Elective procedures have been canceled. That means there aren't patients for them to care for. Hospitals are running short on cash.

In Oklahoma City, an entire hospital has been closed, except for its emergency room. Almost everywhere except the New York metro area, Detroit and New Orleans, hospitals, many of them are sitting half-empty or empty.

In a crisis, nothing is more important than staying connected to reality. Facts change very fast, and it's easy to miss them, and instead get trapped in a storyline that you created weeks or months before. That's especially a temptation in the news business, but it's how terrible decisions get made.

The people making those decisions don't look up long enough to notice that their assumptions were wrong. Something like that may be happening now.

More here
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-in-this-coronavirus-crisis-nothing-is-more-important-than-staying-connected-to-reality

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