Maggie's Farm

"Sweden's fatality rate was worse than France, Germany, Netherlands, and much worse than other Nordic countries." Hum. First, no one should have much confidence in the covid mortality data. It has been corrupted by the left for political purposes. But let's go with John Hopkins. Their case mortality rate was higher. But that isn't the important data. The per 100,000 population was better than most of the countries you listed.

Which still misses the mark. The Swedes allowed their individual citizens to make their own decisions and those citizens assumed the lion's share of the risk for their decisions. While contrary to the model you prefer, that is exactly the correct outcome for an elected, representative government with respect for individual rights.

"two doses of the polio vaccine are 90% effective, though if universal, that's enough protection to virtually eliminate polio in the population." Great point. Polio was a disease that primarily impacted healthy children. Had a mortality rate (per case) much higher than covid and had long term disability rate that was probably 10+X higher than covid. There was. and still is not any cure or even effective treatment. While covid has a close to 0% mortality rate for young healthy people and a microscopic mortality rate for the median adult under 70. And which is easily treatable. The covid injectable therapeutic, even at 100% use rate with boosters may actually increase the infection rate and clearly does not prevent infection. It has non-trivial and still poorly understood risks. IOW, you're making your opponent's argument. For example: "Turns out that 1.2 million died in the USA—and that was with widespread vaccination after the first year of the pandemic." Ferguson's floor in his model was 166% of your dubious data. And you just admitted that the "vaccine" was ineffective.

"That is incorrect. Most people infected with polio don't experience any symptoms, most of the rest only experiencing mild flu-like symptoms." Exactly. the estimated mortality rates for polio are based on estimated infections, not diagnosed cases. Which has the impact of dramatically understating the mortality among diagnosed cases. Covid mortality rates are based on diagnosed cases rather than estimated cases, which has the impact of dramatically overstating the actual mortality rate.

"Infectious diseases have been long recognized as an exception to individual rights." To the extent that is true, it has never been constitutionally sound and rarely statutorily authorized. Further, the commonsense retort is to point out that one ought to make assessments about the severity of restrictions and mandates based upon the severity of the disease. Covid is likely less virulent and has a lower mortality rate than some strains of the flu. It never justified your preferred policies. Nor would such policies have been so aggressively advocated for or implemented had democrats not sought to maximize political harm to Trump and other republicans.

"Minimizing or exaggerating problems will not lead to reasonable reform." Stop minimizing it then. Maybe show a minimum level of outrage about something that ought to make everyone see red. This is obviously not a one off. It is clearly the product of the institutional culture, which would indicate that such behavior is likely widespread. If it was not indicative of the general culture, it would not have been put in writing. Nor would the leadership wait until confronted by outsiders about it to make a public acknowledgement. They would have forwarded the report to the DOJ for criminal prosecution, and they would have acknowledged that the responsible parties had been terminated. Partisan capture of the federal bureaucracy is widespread and pernicious as well as illegal and immoral. It is odd to me that you think that this example would be anything other than the tip of the iceberg as far of such behavior is concerned.

Daily Wire has obtained a FEMA memo explicitly instructing FEMA workers to not assist people in houses with Trump signs in the yard. Multiple FEMA employees have confirmed they were told to do so, and FEMA leadership has admitted the memo is legitimate. You're both ignorant and morally wrong. Quite the combination.

"FEMA has an important and generally positive role in disaster relief." No. It suffers from the same flaw as all government bureaucracy: it is and has long been completely unaccountable for its failures graft, waste, and corruption. A condition which will hopefully change soon.