Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find. A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person. However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost. Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.
Note: this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll. As of the beginning of April 20 the death toll is 40,565 . May the Perpetual Light shine upon them.
May the souls of the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace.
Of course, I am a heartless mercenary because I think that destroying 50 or 100 million Americans’ lives isn’t a solution.
Linked on Instapundit. See ‘Behind the Black,’ Robert Zimmerman.
“…the overall U.S. death rate this winter season is at a multi-year low, no worse than 2014, 2016, and 2019, and far better than 2015, 2017, and 2018 (when we were hit with one of the worst flu seasons in years).” […] “It appears normal deaths are being attributed to COVID-19 if the patient is COVID-19+, even if another underlying chronic cause is responsible.” [..] ” Younger people were hardly bothered by it. Instead, it killed the old and sick. Since those people can’t die twice, it is manifestly obvious that we should have expected the overall numbers to not go up much.”
Maybe stats are moving in the right direction not due to the economy-killing lockdowns but due to fewer remnant very-old, very-sick people.
I realized the other day that the official death count almost certainly contains numbers caused by the very lockdown itself. There are certainly people who died from the usual pneumonia, heart attacks, stroke, etc. who are being counted due to the presumptive counting, especially in NYC. And at least some of those people died because of lack of routine medical care, or due to problems with health caused by having no money, or due to not being cared for by relatives.
So not only are we not keeping track of how many people are dying due to the lockdown, but the very deaths that the lockdown causes are going to be used as some of the justification for why the lockdown was necessary.
source