How to sell a story in one easy lesson.

Come up with a headline about “prevalent myths” as if to say the reigning position in favor of draconian measures is being debunked. Not so. The myths here are citizens’. This is the medical establishment justifying political activity.

At the governor’s invitation to come out with her expert explanation! The story makes no mention of that. You have to play the video. So it’s the governor asking her to defend his position. This is a pitch for what? Locking down? It looks like it.

The bona fide medical experts delivers her case persuasively, yes. But she admits enough about bad communication of matters still under discussion, not to mention debate, so as to say not to worry. But it says to worry! She’s eager to make her point, coming to the rescue with what? A final statement on the matter? Hardly.

New data comes in every day as science continues to learn, Landon said, which can lead to disagreements, but disagreements are a normal part of the scientific process.

“We change our guidance because we learn something new,” she explained. “Changing advice should make you feel good about our making progress. Disagreement is a normal part of every process, and there is no right way to handle a new pandemic. But we’re all in the same boat and we should try to row in the same direction as much as possible.”

We should? If there’s no right way, how’s that going to happen? She’s a cheerleader, saying go-team after sowing seeds of suspicion. Guidance has been changed because the guides learned something new. Is that supposed to make us happy? What will they learn next?

The written account begins with a pat on her back.

CHICAGO (WLS) — University of Chicago Medicine Executive Medical Director for Infection Prevention and Control Dr. Emily Landon took time to bust some of the most prevalent myths about COVID-19 and the pandemic . . .

As to masks:

Landon fully admitted some of the guidance on masks may have been confusing to the public because doctors and scientists simply did not know in March how important they would be for curbing transmission.

Now they know. She makes her argument for masks, then walks off the reservation and comparative safety of her medical expertise, going political.

She also emphasized the importance of mask mandates, pointing to a study in Kansas that showed that counties that had mask mandates had both overall lower rates of COVID-19 and lower rates of mortality than counties that did not have mask mandates.

Non-medical people butt out? She would like everyone to wear a mask. But to look to government to enforce mask-wearing, that’s not in her roundhouse. If she were part of a publicity effort for wearing masks, she would be doing a public service. To buttress a mandate? That’s another thing.

This is backing up governors and mayors all over the landscape. The woman is hardly to be dismissed for her advice. But she’s apparently being used for political purposes — invited by an office-holder, one among many who, faced with a medical problem, know only one way to contain it — exert political power.

And it doesn’t help when a newspaper, one of many who do so, see themselves as mere backup to those office-holders. (Boldface and italics are added.)

It’s what spokespeople do.

So much for the naysayers in re: the wall.

SAN DIEGO — Top U.S. border officials expect cartels to build more tunnels from Mexico to the United States and increasingly rely on drones for surveillance operations as the 400 miles of new border wall make it harder to smuggle people and drugs into the country.

He promised he would do it, and indeed he did.

One of several excellent Covid links from Cafe Hayek:

Members of the Editorial Board of Wall Street Journal continue to write sanely, sensibly, and far more informatively than most other media about Covid-19. A slice:

This is why the epidemiologists who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, which has been signed by tens of thousands of doctors and scientists, advise a focus on protecting the elderly. They also warn that government lockdowns lead to worsening heart-disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and more mental illness.

Nearly a third of the so-called excess deaths in the U.S. this year have been attributed to causes other than Covid, including cardiovascular disease and uncontrolled diabetes. Covid has accounted for less than 10% of deaths among those over 65 this year, and a much smaller share among younger people.

We don’t have to go through the bad lockdown strategy.

Economist-blogger Matt Yglesias made the accusation. Don Boudreaux replies:

The economy is people – people producing, trading, cooperating, and consuming. Yet your wording conveys the impression that lockdown opponents wish to sacrifice lives to a non-sentient entity that is separate from people. In fact, however, to worry about the condition of the economy is to worry about the ability of people – actual flesh-and-blood-and-bone human beings – to continue to meet their basic needs, including putting food on their tables, roofs over their heads, winter coats on their backs, and knowledge into their children’s minds.

To worry about the economy is also to understand that people are not provided for simply by being handed government checks. And it is further to realize that economic output – output of real goods and services – is not miraculously maintained by “stimulus” funds if workers are locked out of their places of employment.

Government pumping of funds is at issue here, but it’s also a commentary on the wisdom or lack of it in locking an economy down, as if opposing it were to value commerce over human beings.

Electric Campaigner.