While closing out his Wednesday night newscast for NBC’s “Nightly News,” Lester Holt took a moment to reflect on the fact that the country has crossed a “soul-crushing milestone” by surpassing one million deaths from COVID-19.
It was a moment for gravitas and a degree of magnanimity, given that these deaths can be attributed in no small measure to the actions of the Chinese Communist Party and the inadequacies of the federal government and its response to the pandemic. Instead, as Fox News reported, Holt chose to blame “free will” for the resultant death toll, essentially shifting the onus for the casualties onto the victims themselves.
“Today’s soul-crushing milestone,” Holt explained in his monologue, “comes just as we begin to peek out from behind our masks, lower our guard, willing the pandemic to be over.” As he spoke, a montage of caskets and people at airports and in airplanes played on the screen.
“But the slowly rising tally of the dead won’t let it be, and forces us to confront some tough questions—like how many of those one million deaths might have been prevented. We counted on the tools, the vaccines, the masks, the distancing—but we forgot about the unpredictability of free will, mistrust in science, and simple human behavior,” Holt continued, as images of anti-vaccine and anti-mandate protests were shown.
Holt continued: “It was hard enough to process 750,000 deaths, 500,000, a quarter-million before that—each milepost leaving us as unsure as the next as to what such a moment called for. Maybe because the pandemic changed our rituals of death and grief. Tearful goodbyes between families and dying loved ones, not at bed sides, but via iPad. Funerals delayed or bypassed altogether. At the moments we most needed the comfort of others, we were forced to be apart. How could it not have changed us?”
Interestingly, there was no reflection by Holt on why such measures were enacted, and whether they were necessary to contain the pandemic. Nor was there any acknowledgment that the majority of COVID deaths have occurred on Biden’s watch.
Introspection of this kind has been widely lacking in the media, and despite Holt’s brief and obligatory COVID retrospective, occasioned by the one-million-death milestone, most mainstream outlets seem to have little interest in exploring the COVID response—in “re-litigating the past,” as they like to say. Holt’s monologue seemed to imply that if only the public had obeyed, with unquestioning and childlike trust, the diktats of “experts” like Fauci, there would not be one million COVID deaths.
“One million dead sounds like an ending to a horrible story, not a chapter, but that’s what it is,” Holt continued. “A number that shakes our consciousness, demands our attention, forces us to pause and consider who and what we have lost.”
“You’ve got to believe there are better days ahead,” Holt concluded his remarks.
The exercise of free will, of course, is one of the hallmarks of a democratic society—but a plurality of media outlets, including Holt’s NBC, demonized and “othered” those who protested or even merely questioned the advisability of unceasing lockdowns, to say nothing of draconian mask and vaccine mandates, during the pandemic.
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13 thoughts on “Lester Holt cites ‘free will,’ ‘mistrust in science’ for partial blame on 1 million COVID deaths mark”
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Considering the fact that people are dying BECAUSE of the vaccines(fact check it), likely very few. The science doesn’t support their narrative so you ignore the science. Yes, I am a scientist and a 38 year democrat getting out of my lifelong party affiliation because they have strayed so far from sanity.
Does that include those murdered by the gene-bending bio-weapon we call a “vaccine?”
That’s so nice. Now Lester Holt is not only a duplicitous prevaricator, he’s now morphed into a gifted philosopher.
Who cares what Lester’s take is.
The question must be asked: Does that figure include the vastly-inflated number who died “with” the Wuhan flu, rather than “from” the Wuhan flu?
Those China virus deaths would have occurred anyway; the only thing that worked was the Trump vaccine! We are Americans and as much as Holt would like to set up a Demtatorship in this country he doesn’t realize that Americans are willing to all die to defend our rights (not Democrats of course, just Americans).
1,000,000? Sez who? Show us. All of them, Name, rank, ID number, home, family members. There is NO WAY to accurately count the REAL number of covid deaths because EVERYBODY who was taken to ANY medical facility for care was tested, and anybody who tested positive who eventually died was counted as a covid death. That includes the kid in Fla who’s head was traumatically separated from the rest of his body in a motorcycle accident.
Nurses have complained that even patients who tested negative for Covid were being listed as Covid deaths. This is what happens when the government pays hospitals $$ for each Covid patient on a ventilator and $$$ for each Covid death.
When did Holt ever have the slightest amount of credibility or even a suspected relationship with real journalism?
BTW, what’s the reason you keep Tommy’s Garage on this site?
Last i heard Tommy’s Garage had 900,000 viewers. Considering the changes in the site the difficulty in exchanging ideas and research on the subject at hand between posters and poster’s replays through lack of notifications in our mailboxes on replies has greatly diminished the quality of site Tommy’s is it’s survival. Without it it’s dead like so many other sites that have snubbed it’s posters.
The constant popping up full screen is probably one way they are padding their views.
Lester Dolt is so useless he NEVER bothered to do due diligence on that BS one million number. But then what do you expect from that quota queen?
Lester who?
I think his last name is pronounced “Numnutz.”