The price of the Covid-19 corona virus keeps getting higher. It can be measured in lives lost – at this writing 276,911 deaths worldwide and 78,639 in the U.S. Or it can be measured in economic impact – 14.7% unemployment in the U.S. and 20.5 million jobs lost in the month of April. But soon it will also be measured in the rising number of cases of measles and other childhood diseases.

Parents are delaying vaccinations of their children. The immunization rate for all recommended childhood vaccines declined about 40% in the U.S. from late February through mid-April, according to Physician’s Computer Co., a provider of electronic health record systems. The data are based on vaccines administered by more than 1,000 pediatricians in 40 states who use PCC’s record system.

Sarah Krouse, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says mothers fear contracting the Covid-19 virus, either by themselves or their babies, if they go to their pediatricians for vaccinations. Despite reassurances from the pediatricians, many refuse to comply with the normal schedule of vaccinations. This leaves these children vulnerable to highly contagious diseases such as measles, rotavirus, whooping cough and polio as social-distancing orders lift.

Pediatricians are taking extreme measures to reassure their parents and encourage regular visits but many parents continue to be skeptical. Pediatric Healthcare Associates, which treats 35,000 patients, requires all children to be vaccinated. They screen patients over the phone and draw shots while patients wait in their cars. Staff then escort the patient and one caretaker – who must wear a mask – to an exam room to administer the vaccines.

Delaying vaccinations will have serious repercussions. There is a risk of death of 0.2% or two in every 1000 cases of measles in the U.S. The risk is much higher in other countries. The mortality rate of whooping cough is 0.5% or five in one thousand for infants under the age of six months. Polio is much higher with a mortality rate of 2-5 percent in children.

The price of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to get higher. Let’s hope fearful parents won’t let it get worse by delaying vaccinations of their children.

George Floyd’s death is a brutal tragedy and four Minneapolis policemen need to be held accountable for their actions. All four have now been charged in the death of Floyd and a jury of their peers will determine their fate. Anyone who has seen the video of this tragedy knows this is an inexcusable example of bad policing.

It is understandable and altogether fitting that many would protest this situation as unacceptable in our country. Peaceful protests are protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution and no patriotic American should object to those who choose to exercise this right. But violence and looting are never justified in a civil society, especially when those who suffer most are innocent members of the same minority community.

The leaders behind these violent protests would have us believe that police single out blacks for more brutality than whites and more blacks than whites are being killed by police. They use this narrative to justify their violence and to promote defunding and even eliminating police departments in major metropolitan cities such as Minneapolis and New York. This is a false narrative not supported by the facts. Unfortunately, according to WSJ columnist William A. Galston, recent surveys report nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe that police officers generally treat whites better than blacks and are more likely to use excessive force if the suspect is black.

Jason L. Riley, a courageous black journalist for The Wall Street Journal, gives us the inconvenient truth that refutes this false narrative. He reports that in 2016, black Harvard economist Roland Fryer and coauthor Tanaya Devi published their study of police bias in shootings and found results that surprised even them. They found no evidence of police bias and, in fact, found whites were more likely than blacks to suffer violence at the hands of the police.

Their research was confirmed by others at The University of Maryland and Michigan State University in 2019 who concluded: “We didn’t find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime.”

Tragically, they also found that when police were investigated for violent incidents that had gone viral, police activity declined and violent crime spiked, especially in minority neighborhoods. This happened in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown was shot by a police officer. It happened in Chicago after police gunned down Laquan McDonald. It happened in Baltimore after Freddie Gray died in police custody.

Mr. Fryer stressed that it isn’t the investigations themselves that are the problem so much as the circumstances under which they are launched. Investigations that weren’t prompted by well-publicized events resulted in little change in police behavior and violent crime. “But when I look at cities in which the investigation was preceded by a viral event,” he said, “homicide goes up considerably. Total crime goes up considerably.” What happens, he said, is that police effectively pull back. “They don’t stop doing their jobs, but they become less proactive and curb their interactions with civilians.”

Peter Kirsanow is a black attorney and member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He writes in National Review, “The narrative is false. In fact, it’s not just false, it’s upside down. And it’s been false for quite some time. There are racist cops in a nation of 330 million. But 2020 America isn’t 1965 Selma.”

He goes on to say, “Some media recently ran the story that blacks are twice as likely as whites to be shot by cops. On its face, that’s true. But the statement doesn’t consider the comparable encounters with police, especially in high-risk situations, that are likely to prompt exchanges of gunfire or other forms of violence. Consider the following, from the 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey, Census data, FBI Uniform Crime Reports, and other sources:(Unless otherwise noted, most of the data is from 2018.)

• In 2016, 466 whites were killed by police; 233 blacks were killed by police.
• Whites are 76.5 percent of the U.S. population (including Hispanics); blacks are 13.4 percent of the U.S. population.
• Whites commit 59 percent of violent crimes (defined as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault); blacks commit 37.5 percent of violent crimes.
• One out of 8,511 blacks is arrested for murder; one in 58,582 whites is arrested for murder.
• Blacks are approximately 6.8 times more likely than whites to be arrested for murder.
• One out of 2,800,438 blacks is arrested for killing a cop; one of 7,674,278 whites is arrested for killing a cop.
• Blacks are 2.74 times more likely than whites to be arrested for killing a cop.
• In 2016, 66 cops were killed in the line of duty; 32 whites and 15 blacks were identified as the killers.
• More than twice as many blacks (533) murdered whites in 2016 than whites (243) murdered blacks.
• Black males are 6 percent of the U.S. population. Black males are responsible for 42 percent of cop killings in the last decade.
• In 2015, a cop was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was likely to be killed by a cop.
• In 2016, 222 black males were killed by police. 16 were unarmed. 445 white males were killed by police. 20 were unarmed.

The real tragedy is that every time a black person dies in police custody, other blacks will surely die as a consequence of those who are spreading the false narrative. Kirsanow puts it this way, “Riots are inevitable the next time a black person dies in police custody. People will be killed; property and livelihoods will be destroyed. The false narrative ensures that.”

Kirsanow says contrary to the tweets and posts of some celebrities, blacks aren’t being hunted by whites. He quotes Heather MacDonald who writes, “Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimizations, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks.”

I am thankful for these courageous and politically incorrect black leaders who are willing to stand up for the truth and be counted.Tragically, it is the black community that is suffering the most from those who spread these lies. It’s time to stop the false narrative that is dividing our country.

Journalism credibility has taken a deep dive in the era of the Trump administration as liberal journalists lower their standards when covering a president they can’t tolerate. The New York Times has even admitted they have changed the rules when it comes to news concerning President Trump.

Now it seems this attitude even applies to medical research. The British medical journal The Lancet recently published a study suggesting the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCL), which Trump has promoted and used, is dangerous. But now TheLancet is backpedaling as it becomes clear the research data for this study has been discredited.

Hydroxychloroquine has been in common use worldwide for over sixty years and has been safely used to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus. When early studies in China showed no COVID-19 cases in patients who concurrently were taking HCL for lupus, doctors hypothesized it provided prophylactic protection. When other studies in France showed promising results, the FDA approved it for emergency use for COVID-19.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board say Democrats and the media assailed Trump for promoting “voodoo medicine” since randomized clinical trials have not confirmed HCL’s benefits. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer attacked the Department of Veterans Affairs for launching clinical trials after a small study found 27.8% of veterans receiving the drug died compared to 11.2% who didn’t. But patients given HCL displayed much worse clinical vital signs including lower blood oxygen levels. VA Secretary Robert Wilkie has explained that “we used this in the last hours of a veteran’s life in the hopes it could prolong this life.”

Adding fuel to this political fire was the initial report of TheLancet, published May 22, that showed a 30% increase in mortality based on 96,032 COVID-19 patient records that the data company Surgisphere claimed to have collected from 671 hospitals on six continents. As a result, the World Health Organization halted its global HCL clinical trial and many countries banned the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.

But The Lancet study quickly came under fire when scientists around the world reviewed the data. They spotted glaring errors such as obesity and smoking rates in the study were the same across six continents. In a letter to TheLancet’s editors last week, 120 scientists criticized the study’s sloppiness and aggregation of patients who were different in many respects including HCL dosages and the severity of illness. The study also had not undergone an ethics review and The Lancet had broken its pledge to share all data and code on COVID-19 studies. Surgisphere is now under investigation concerning the sources of their data.

The Lancet recently published an “Expression of Concern” about the study and said it would undergo “an independent data audit.” If there is any doubt their work may be politically biased, one only has to read an editorial published by the Lancet editors last month urging Americans to vote out President Trump.

This is not the first time The Lancet has been at the center of controversial studies. In 1998, a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, published an article in The Lancet. Wakefield did intestinal biopsies on 12 children with intestinal symptoms and developmental disorders, 10 of whom were autistic, and found intestinal inflammation. The parents of 8 of the autistic children believed their symptoms began after receiving the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The published paper clearly said, “We did not find an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virologic studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue.”

However, despite this disclaimer in the paper, Wakefield held a press conference to say the MMR vaccine probably caused autism and he recommended stopping MMR vaccinations. Instead, he recommended giving the vaccinations separately at intervals of a year or more.

Wakefield’s analysis was thoroughly discredited later and he was found to have done questionable research on other subjects as well. The Lancet retracted his original paper. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, described the original paper as “fatally flawed” and apologized for publishing it. Ten of the original 12 co-authors published a retraction stating:

“We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between the vaccine and autism, as the data were insufficient. However, the possibility of a link was raised, and consequent events have had major implications for public health. In view of this, we consider now is the appropriate time that we should together formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings in the paper, according to precedent.”

The damage from this poorly vetted research continues today as many still believe autism is associated with vaccinations. The Lancet bears responsibility for this publishing malpractice. Now they have done it again, apparently due to their political bias. There is no place in medicine and medical research for political bias. Scientific research should be above the political world if we are ever to have faith in the accuracy of its conclusions. The Lancet has failed us again.