Semantics... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/03/donald-trump...
> you could argue it's not as bad as some flus.
A flu kills at most 50 000 people per year in US. Remind me which flu killed 1+ million in 2 years and cost US 16 trillion bucks?
You could argue that, but you'd be dead wrong. Herman Cain kind of wrong.
Yes, you could argue that, if by "some flus" you mean the Spanish Flu of 1918. But if you are not a demagogue and not trying to twist words and try to compare Covid in 2020 to the flu in 2020, you'd be totally and BRUTALLY wrong.
Let's look at the numbers and do some rudimentary math:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124915/flu-deaths-numbe...
6,300 people died of the flu in the US in 2020-2021
Now, let's visit how many people died of Covid in 2020 in the US.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1382334/number-covid-dea...
380,000 people died of Covid in 2020-2021
Now let's divide 380,000/6,300. We get the number 60. That's 60 times more deaths. One could then argue, but with data, that Covid was actually 60 TIMES worse than the flu in 2020.
Now you might say that 6300 deaths in the US during that time were unusually low for flu and go for the average annual number of flu deaths in the US which is about 25,000. Then we do the math and we divide 380,000/25,000, and we get 15.2. That tells you that in 2020 Covid was "only" 15.2 times worse than the flu. You've heard about the 10x programmer, it's apparently significant enough to mention something is 10x more than something else, so what about 15.2x times?
But yeah, generally you are right, it was not as bad as some flus. It didn't kill as many people as the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918, which is, I am sure, what many people thought of when their favorite demagogue fed them the narrative that it's "not as bad as the some flus".
> I don't think "covid doesn't exist" was ever a widespread position
Enough right-wingers pushed this BS that there are numerous articles fact-checking their unfounded claims.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupi...
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-the-virus-t...
Enough right-wing figures also pushed the narrative that the vaccine didn't work (they were up to 17x times wrong, especially in the beginning of the pandemic):
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-compare-co...
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/red-blue-america-glaring-divid...
So you could argue a lot of things, but the numbers'd always prove you wrong.
But when left put politics above true science then science gets discredited for everybody. And thanks to FOIA everybody knows that this happened with COVID in 2020/21 and far right has this fact to support their "science bad" and various conspiracy talking points for many years.
If we know anything about American fiction, it's that:
- The person walking with their back on the scene is the hero
- The hero is totally justified in whatever they are doing, no need to question their motives, morale or veracity
- An explosion or sunglasses (or both) is imminent
If this wasn't tragic, it'd be actually some (low) quality entertainment.
I remember when lab leak was officially considered a conspiracy theory, and everyone who mentioned or even referenced it should be canceled and shunned.
Also the 2023 "so friggin likely" messages. There has been various stuff dragged out into public by the court actions, leaks and subpoenas that are the hallmark of open science.
