Wednesday, County Supervisor Jim Desmond published an op-ed in the Union-Tribune that was kind of shocking.
“The last year has brought a striking reminder that life is precious. Over 3,700 San Diegans died from this horrific virus,” he wrote.
The commentary ran May 12 exactly a year after he said, on May 12, 2020, that, though county officials had counted 190 deaths from the virus, only a few of them were really from the virus.
“We’ve unfortunately had six pure, solely coronavirus deaths — six out of 3.3 million people,” Desmond said on his podcast. It was probably his most notorious of a series of statements he made as he became the primary critic of the county and state’s response to the virus.
Mega podcast host Joe Rogan and others in conservative media seized on the comments about “pure” deaths as yet more evidence that health officials everywhere were out of control. Desmond himself repeatedly bemoaned county staff and their “hysteria.” He had an argument with an epidemiologist where he took the position that increased infections of the coronavirus were good. We commissioned a reporter to catalogue how he had become the county’s leading pandemic skeptic.
His new op-ed steers clear of how many of the 3,700 deaths from this “horrific virus” were “pure” deaths.” It likewise doesn’t acknowledge the 3,510 deaths that occurred in between his two…
