The Agenda with Steve Paikin is too left wing
It has become a source of deliberate misinformation
Steve Paikin is one of the best organized and most popular hosts on television and his program on TVO “The Agenda” is extremely popular. Paikin routinely gets a panel of top notch experts on various subjects to discuss and debate important topics. I have watched The Agenda regularly and learned a great deal from the program.
I have also watched too many episodes where the experts chosen and the slant of their inputs comprised Liberal talking points rather than reasoned conclusions based on science. A recent episode entitled “Did Sweden’s COVID gamble pay off” came across as an attack on the Swedish approach to COVID as flawed based on the higher death rate Swedes have suffered (in terms of deaths per million population) compared to carefully selected reference countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Japan.
Canada, United States, Canada and Japan are so far geographically from Sweden and have materially differing climates and population demographics as to be irrelevant for comparison, but they are useful to the extent that United States demonstrates the worst outcome based on deaths per million and Japan the best result with both countries relying on somewhat draconian lockdowns and mandates to limit the spread of the disease. What Paikin ignores is that to suffer death from COVID you must first become infected with COVID and the death rate is a poor metric since death once infected reflects the health care system’s effectiveness post infection rather than just the public health policy aimed at reducing the number of infections.
A more telling comparison is the simplest - how many persons per million of population were infected whether they died or recovered? Sweden’s so-called “laissez faire” approach is vilified as if the number of people infected was materially higher than comparable countries but the reverse is in fact the case. The following chart compares the infection rate in Sweden not only to those listed in the chart shown The Agenda proximate to Sweden but also to other European countries.
Swedens’ “laissey-faire” approach not only imposed fewer restrictions on the freedom of Swedish citizens but also resulted in a lower infection rate than its neighbours including those touted by the talking heads on The Agenda which included Stefan Baral, Lena Einhorn (who wrote a book critical of Sweden’s approach), Simon Chakrabarti and Susy Hota. Only Chakrabarti and Baral made any comments that were consistent with reality although their comments were tempered with deference to the views of their co-panelists.
Why is Steve Paikin promoting disinformation? That is the question viewers should be asking.