Maggie's Farm

You are making AVI's case for him. For whatever reason many have chosen to downplay this disease and it's effects. Things like "A new study shows the death rate is so bad" or "A lot of these deaths may not be covid-19" or my favorite "Most of these deaths were old people and they were gonna die anyway". This is all so transparent. This disease is relentless. It kills a cupule thousand every day and the total deaths double every 8-9 days. And we get reports that the hospitalization rate has dropped 2%, whoop, whoop! Also it seems every time the NY Governor claims the number of deaths decline in NY City they hit a new high.

There have been an entire flu years worth of deaths from covid-19 in just the last 20 days and you will still hear people say "this isn't as bad as the yearly flu". This virus has been more or less kept to a few cities that were infected before the shutdown/quarantine began and that is great news. But once we open up again it will spread inexorably to the rest of the country. No place may record the deaths that NY City suffered but they will all get their share. This virus and the death it caused will NOT be stopped by desperately searching for some statistic or way to define it that minimizes it's effects. Before this is done it could well kill 250,000 Americans.

The problem you describe does not support your conclusion. In our world there are a million people commenting on any particular issue. Companies have been sued because some 2nd level engineer wrote a memo and in court the lawyers make it appear that the company knew this or that when in fact it wasn't true. The thousand other memos which took an opposing view aren't even brought up. In politics, as with an human endeavor, different people differ. Some may be right some may be wrong often the person who is right is right for the wrong reasons and vice versa. But whenever someone wants to prop up their opinion OR to sue in court, they cherry pick what was said, who said it, when it was said, etc. but scrupulously and intentionally ignore and even cover up all those who differed.

Simply doing a data dredge for comments that agree with you is not proof, not science and not honest. It is the way of the world but it invites disagreement. IF you have a valid point use only valid data to make your point. Then you might well convince skeptics to see some value in what you say.

As for the virus, we are in the early days of this scourge. It will take 18 months before we know what is true. It is going to kill a lot of people and make these arguments that "it ain't so bad" seem incredibly stupid. It's going to change how we manage hospitals, conduct normal medical care, use nursing homes and cruise ships, and affect our lives in other ways we cannot know just yet. This virus is a game changer and it will change our lives forever in both subtle and important ways. Once the courts and public opinion is through with this people might go to jail (I'm thinking of the geniuses who forced nursing homes to take in people sick with covid-19). It is a mistake to make absolute decisions and pronouncements at this early date. Wait 18 months and this will all look different to everyone.