The Covid Hoax Strawman argument:
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Only the tin-hat crowd ever claimed the Covid-19 wasn’t real.
Yes, Steve, Covid-19 is real. You got us.
Okay, back to adult world, which, inexplicably, you seem to have abandoned on this subject. The question with Covid was never “Is it real?” but was “How bad is it, and what is the cost/benefit of various measures to slow its spread?”
Covid appears to be on track to accelerating (not generally causing) the deaths of an additional ~320k Americans (funny how that term no longer means much to me), i.e. 0.1% of the population. That’s no joke, but it’s not the Black Death either.
But the question was always (and remains) how many people would have died (actually, had their death accelerated) if we had simply warned vulnerable groups to be careful and let the virus spread quickly among the healthy population vs how many people would have died (sorry, had their deaths accelerated) if we had massive shutdowns?
In addition, we would consider the negative externalities of a shutdown, such as businesses being destroyed, increased suicides, increased substance abuse, kids not learning because they’re not in school, increased domestic abuse, etc.
Then, we would weigh to the expected number of additional accelerated deaths (admittedly, a guess) vs all of those negative consequences (again, a guess). Because, you know, that’s what serious adults do. We make hard choices based on the facts available.
Instead, we had Harpies (and some internet pundits) throwing logic and facts out the window and demanding the world shut down for an admittedly very, very nasty flu-like virus because, well, because they didn’t like it.
Steve, wake up! Instead of showing a graph pretty much all of us have seen, why don’t you analyze the numbers. This post is marginally – and just marginally – above the Today Show ladies clutching their pearls about the rising case count. Jesus, it’s embarrassing.
You’re one of the best columnists of the past 30 years, a person who’s writings hopefully will be read by (White) generations to come. Don’t let it end this way.
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https://www.unz.com/isteve/excess-deaths-graphed/#comment-4333791
