CNN has taken the gloves off in its criticism of Fox News, and it is long overdue. In a morning segment yesterday, news anchor Brianna Keilar blasted Fox for “killing people” and “moral crimes” for it’s “anti-science BS” discouraging viewers from being vaccinated against the deadly Covid-19 virus. Keilar cited statistics from the National Institutes of Health that unvaxed people are 20 times more likely to die of Covid than those who are vaccinated, 17 times more likely to be hospitalized and 10 times more likely to be infected.

Despite pandemic fatigue, the death rate from the virus in the U.S. continues to rise, and everyone wants to believe that its latest and least deadly Omicron iteration will somehow be its last. But, realistically, who knows? The virus is clearly not behaving by our rules and its wishful thinking to believe we’re seeing the last or least verile version of it, as much as we all hope it is.

The number of deaths from this will surely top a million in the U.S. before this is brought under control, if that ever happens. Some think that, rather than complaining about the vaccine, they should be truly thankful for the veritable miracle of science that led to the rapid development of its life-saving power.

In this context, those who are actively opposing its usage in the face of daunting statistics about the death rate among those not vaccinated should, in our view, be more than simply roundly condemned, as CNN has now done. There ought to be laws against the witting spread of lies when it is so clear that lives are at stake. As much as, as a newspaper, we are staunch defenders of the right to freedom of speech, we are just as adamant in our insistence that it should not extend to wittingly lying when human lives are on the line.

Yes, Tucker Carlson and your ilk, if it were up to us, you’d be in jail for your criminal behavior in this regard. Carlson, as a Fox host, parades people on his show like Alex Berenson who claim that the Covid vaccine is “dangerous and ineffective” and insist that viewers must avoid getting it. It is worth noting that this is the same Carlson who is now overtly taking the side of Moscow against the U.S. in the developing crisis on the Russia-Ukraine border. Astonishing.

Is there a Moscow, or Chinese, angle to the anti-vax movement in the U.S.? It seems as if there almost has to be. It is remarkable that Donald Trump has been Moscow’s pet long before Moscow engaged in active measures to secure his questionable election in 2016 and his non-stop efforts to advance the Moscow cause during his regrettable years in the White House. For Moscow, it is the advance of its interests combined with the fomenting of chaos in the U.S. that does most to achieve its ends.