Originally Posted by Anson Harris

I think you're continually missing the point about any comparisons to the flu. Even now, the flu and covid are in roughly a dead heat (but it remains to be seen what covid does over the course of one year, including estimating what it did before we knew about it fully).

To me, the point is not to dismiss covid as a non-issue. Even with how deadly the flu is, we basically do nothing as a society to deal with it. Yes, we tell people to get flu shots, but that's largely driven by people's economic motivations (less absenteeism, etc.). Other than that, no one does any kind of "social distancing" or other strategies to prevent flu deaths. We utterly tolerate 50-80k deaths each season (in the US alone).

The purpose of the flu comparison is to calibrate a discussion on what sorts of actions are justified in order to prevent a certain number of deaths. This is where the real debate should be. It's subjective, and people will disagree.

To me, it's sheer lunacy to say that 50k deaths require basically no action at all, but 72k deaths by August 4 (current IMHE projection) requires shutting down the economy and trampling on the rights of every single person. Beyond that, it's a give-and-take. If the deaths were 150k, maybe we require some forms of social distancing.Personally, I feel like the deaths would have to be 500k or more to justify what's currently being done, AND the measures taken would need waaaaaay more proof that they are actually going to accomplish something before just blindly implementing them.

Lastly, call me crazy, but I also think the bill of rights and due process should be respected in any scenario. We require a supermajority two-thirds vote for the Senate to ratify a flippin' TREATY, yet somehow all this can happen without a single vote being cast. To me that's the biggest casualty of this virus.