this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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One again, less than 2% death rate. We didn't take it seriously, we overblew it and caused mass panic for no good reason
COVID-19 had the 5th worst death toll of any pandemic in human history, and is in the top 10 of global population lost. And that was with modern medicine and (with some Republican political exceptions) reasonably aggressive global response.
COVID-19 was bad, worse than most people seem to remember. I've got a pandemic-trained MCE expert in my family. Everyone saw it coming when they saw the numbers, and it happened worse than expected. Hospitals overflowing capacity from just critical cases. Tent hospitals being built. They fucking activated the mass-grave contracts to store the bodies. For the first time in nearly a century. Bet you didn't know that. OEMS doesn't publish actions like that because they don't want to cause further panic. It comes through a private email to paramedics (and, fwiw I thought this part silly, sent under a pseudonym that only people in the field would recognize)
For the record (not that I think you actually care about facts, but I'm putting this up there for neutral observers), the deadliness of a pandemic is not primarily driven by its death rate. Only an ignorant person would look to that first. A virus with a 0.1% death rate could end humankind. Many viruses with high death rates have less of an impact. Potentially more important factors are the spread rate (influenced by the incubation rate and contagiousness window), and immunity rates (both inherent immunity and acquired immunity). That COVID-19 was a COVID family of illness (cold family, no known cures, treatments, or immunization paths) made it worse.
Just look at Florida's and Texas' response compared to New York and California. Those "Republican exceptions" had better results from not locking down. And yeah, there's an argument to made for population density especially in places like NYC, but let's also not forget that in NYC, the governor was sticking covid patients in elderly homes and upping the death rate. If the masks and vaxxes make you city rats feel safe then more power to you, but there was KO reason that stuff needed to be part of a global response
Texas had the 3rd highest mortality rate, and Florida the 18th. Expected death rates should be relative to population density. Florida is 13th and Texas is 13th. Both states are dramatically over-represented per capita in US COVID deaths. Your numbers defend my side.
NY has the 7th highest population density and is past the middle of the pack in terms of deaths. California has the 11th highest population density and was middle of the pack.
The highest death states (other than the one you tried to use for your argument) were Oklahoma and Alabama. Both fairly low in population density. Care to read off the other high-death-toll states? West Virginia, Mississippi, Wyoming, Tennessee, Nevada, Arizona...
In fact, I'll take a step further. In swing states (like Florida), the death rate of Republicans was comfortably higher than of Democrats. It led to conspiracy theories that we were secretly creating and spreading the disease, not the fact that they had literal fucking parties to spread it on purpose.
The reason we needed it for a global response is that if you didn't do it, it spread to everyone and killed them. Vaccination and prevention only works when universally embraced and/or mandated. Both parties were in full agreement about that until the moment Trump started telling people to drink lysol and bleach instead (and there was a huge uptick in that!). Did you drink lysol at his suggestion?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103688/coronavirus-covid19-deaths-us-by-state/#:~:text=There%20have%20been%20101%2C159%20deaths,number%20of%20COVID-19%20cases.
Some of what you said was partially correct, but most of it was not.
This is just part of the narrative that gets pushed around the pandemic, I doubt its actually true. Even if it is, what your comparing here is those extremely stupid few who did take it too far, as another user has mentioned, throwing "spread covid" parties and things like that, which have no real bearing in terms of how the virus normally spreads. Things like that wouldn't even be an issue if the pandemic hadn't been politicized in the first place.
As far as Trump telling people to drink bleach, that was actually a misunderstanding between Trump and some doctor he was talking to. I believe it was Dr. McCullough that told that story on the rogan podcast. More the product of Trump's inability to communicate effectively. And for your claim that people took that advice, I again doubt how true that is, but even so you'd be talking about a small minority of republicans who were stupid enough to try it who are not representative of conservatives as a whole. In case you were unaware, there are extremely stupid people all over the political compass