Scott Alexander talks about a curiosity in our collective memory, that we continue to talk about school closings, masks, vaccines, economic consequences, but strangely absent are the 1.2 million deaths. He wonders why. I don't know either, but I think
...dead people can’t complain about their own deaths, so there are no sympathetic victims writing their sob stories for everyone to see
Is in line with what we see in human nature throughout history. The survivors measure the deaths that still affect them, such as my people being persecuted by your people, or land that was stolen and you killed the grannies, or the babies, or the fine young men and women.
But when it's the Spanish Flu or even the Black Death, they're just gone and can't complain, and the rest of us have no one to blame. Government actions destroyed the economy...except that without government doing a single thing not even a suggestion of "hey, it would be better if you didn't breathe on everyone if you are coughing" there still would have been enormous disruption, because some percentage of people who notice the deaths and stay home and keep their kids out of school because granny takes care of them after school and they don't want her to die.
Amazing we can do that, but we do. People die and life goes on, and we struggle to remember what le3sson we are suppose to have learned.
Update: Apparently ACX got pushback on the 1.2 million number. Here's his answer. The critique came mostly in the form of "They lied about other things, like the lab leak. Why are we believing this?" Short answer: we can confirm it via other means besides just taking their word for it.
2 comments:
It might be simpler than that: the side that was motivated by the deaths won. We did shut down the country; we did compel vaccines in many industries; we did all of those things to suppress fear or questions about the safety of the vaccines or the honesty of authorities in order to obtain mass compliance.
They may still feel some small resentment about not having it recognized that "we were right!", but it went about as closely to the way they advised as is possible in a democracy. It's only the one side that is still really angry.
I guess its a 'local' issue, but there are lots of people still livid about deaths resulting from the New York COVID-19 nursing home scandal.
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