From the Washington Post:
Why Americans are numb to the staggering coronavirus death toll
A number of reasons are given for why Americans are just kinda shrugging at the ~300,000 deaths from the Commie Cough. One reason: it’s just too big, the human brain refuses to try to conceive of such vastness and simply shuts down trying. Another is that many people have bought into conspiracy theories. Another is that people are isolated from the actual deaths, the infected dying alone, sealed away from friends and family.
But there are two obvious reasons that didn’t seem to get mentioned:
1: We’ve all heard about overcounting… someone dying of cancer dies with the CCP virus in their system so it gets notched up to the Commie Cough. How often does that happen? Is it statistically insignificant? Or is it a sizable fraction? We just don’t know.
2: And perhaps most importantly, look at how the pandemic was sold to us in the beginning:
Now, assuming the vaccine works well enough, the pandemic should start tapering off in a couple months I’d think. We’re currently sitting at about 318,000 *official* deaths, losing about 2,600 more per day. Two more months of that, assuming that the death rate somehow stays constant (which would be damned peculiar) will lead to a total of about 473,000 deaths. Substantially less than the 1.2 million, especially if a large fraction of those deaths weren’t really killed by Pinko Pox but were already sick folk just sorta pushed over the edge.
3: The lockdowns indicate that the Government Takes This Seriously. That riots were allowed to proceed and that liquor stores were considered essential businesses, indicates that the Government Does Not Take This Seriously.
When were were oversold into a panic from the beginning, and then the data is not only well below the original fearmongering but is not widely trusted, and the government sending massively mixed signals… well, it only makes sense that lots of people kinda stop worrying about things too much.
