Maskachusetts is the 3rd most restricted state in the U.S. (WalletHub ranking). Florida is ranked #11 for freedom. Yet the latest map from covidexitstrategy.org, which our state officials use to decide cleanliness/godliness for travel order purposes, shows that no-mask-order Florida has 427 new cases of COVID-19 per million residents while fully-masked-since-May Massachusetts has 704 new cases per million (slightly lower positivity rate, but that could simply be due to the fact that universities here are constantly testing the rich white locked-in students and thus pumping up the denominator).
If the God of Shutdown is a just god, and the people of Florida have been flouting the church dogma of shutdown+masks, aren’t we forced to conclude that the God of Shutdown has a special love for Floridians?
Related:
- On the third hand, “No Excess Deaths In Massachusetts Over the Past Six Months” (from our state’s boards of health): This means that for any one currently living in Massachusetts that the probability of dying from any cause has been equal to or lower than during the previous seven years. Does this sound like a strange statistic given all that you have heard about the increased death rates due to COVID-19 during the past six months? Given this fact, why are so many individuals more afraid of dying from COVID-19 than any other cause? The answer is that numbers reported without proper adjustments, missing critical denominators or taken out of context altogether lend themselves to false interpretation. [This page has some stats and you can adjust to see different states; Florida has roughly the number of expected deaths from all causes currently.]
- Optimum COVID-19 American lifestyle: Florida in winter; Maine in summer?
There are good and bad drivers out there. Some of those bad drivers lead to accidents and death. Some are caught in their act and are fined. Now, if we send out traffic officers or driving Ed instructors, to test out drivers they will see that almost everyone is a “bad” driver. And the more they test, the more “bad” drivers they will record. And thus we have an epidemic of “bad” drivers but yet total accidents and death from driving has not changed much.
“coronafear” is just like good / bad drivers but worse. We have been played into it to fear it and give up whatever freedom we have left, but looks like we are reaching that breaking point [1].
Let me remind you that Infection != Death
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/01/california-coronavirus-protests-huntington-beach-sacramento
George, your hypothetical analogy is plausible but there’s no need to stay hypothetical. Here are two actuals.
The Seattle windshield pitting epidemic: ‘an example of a mass delusion… more and more reports of pitting were called in. Motorists began stopping police cars to report damage. Car lots and parking garages reported particularly severe attacks … Finally … the Seattle police crime laboratory stated that the pitting reports consisted of “5 per cent hoodlum-ism, and 95 per cent public hysteria.” By April 17, the pitting suddenly stopped.’
But the medical profession, with their years of rigorous scientific training, must be immune(!) from such mistakes? Unfortunately no: “For months, nearly everyone involved thought the medical center had had a huge whooping cough outbreak … 142 people … were told they appeared to have the disease; and thousands were given antibiotics and a vaccine for protection. … Then, about eight months later …
Not a single case of whooping cough was confirmed.”
Coronadelusion looks to have a vital difference, apart from its enormous scale (and accompanying damage): it appears to be unfalsifiable, like a religion.
I don’t see how you get from the graph on that link to “no excess deaths during the pandemic”. The cited post simply says there were no excess deaths during the period in which the pandemic was under control, which seems pretty tautological. The actual graph for the whole period clearly shows the impact of the pandemic in spring, and that it is returning now.