(Not a government publication)
- It's discouraging.
- What is?
- I don't want to go over it again.
- What is 'it'?
- This epidemic of stupidity. This stupid response to our epidemic. Do you realize that in the past weeks, after a three month period of deaths from all causes being higher than normal by (an averaged) 15%, 70,000 a week instead of 60,000, there actually have been fewer than normal people dying in our country?* Not number dying from the virus, but from all causes: the last I looked 55,000 a week and going down. Hysteria is being maintained by calling attention to the rise in virus cases and deaths resulting from the recent loosening of the lockdown, as those who'd only been exposed to a few people in the same house now are exposed to thousands. The ratio of virus deaths per population in the U.S. (1/2,500) is roughly that of Sweden (1/2,000)** which did not have a forced lockdown and is now nearing the end of their epidemic. Sweden identified and isolated cases of exposure, the U.S. hardly did anything (unless you count locking the healthy in with the sick). That means as the useless lockdown is lifted here we are nowhere near the end. In the absence of a vaccine, virus cases and deaths will continue until acquired and natural immunity and death leave too few susceptible to spread the epidemic.
- I know all that.
- Of course you do. You're the only one I talk to.
- It's not a very serious epidemic but our government is determined to get as many deaths as possible out of it. Do you believe it is a waste of time to try to talk to some kinds of people? Supporters of our president, for instance?
- I do. For most people ideas are like a virus exposed to which an inverted immunity develops: an immunity not from the viral ideas themselves but from all other ideas. I feel like an epidemic of bad thinking has left me as a pathogen everyone around me has developed immunity to.
Further Reading:
Illegal & Unscientific
The Epidemic: Accounting For Death
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* CDC: Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19. The lower than normal number of people dying from all causes is the result of the number of people dying from COVID-19 who would have died in the near future from other causes being more than the increase in deaths resulting from the partial lifting of the lockdown.
** The Epidemic In Sweden
