Thanks so much for posting. You make some great points that we all need to hear and consider. Like you, I don’t understand why we have to destroy the economy to keep people from getting the flu. Yes, I know it has a higher fatality rate than past flus, but I wonder if a world wide depression is worth the cost of avoiding those deaths.

As far as I know, no one has compared the loss of life of COVID19 to that of the opioid epidemic or annual occupational fatalities. Both target men far out of proportion to women. Is misandry blinding us from asking this question?

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting these things are more deadly than COVID19, only that no one seems to be comparing the COVID19 fatality rate to other deadly events. That means we have no context in which to think about the danger of the epidemic.

We experience tremendous numbers of deaths annually from car accidents, gang violence, drug overdoses, suicide, cancer, cardiac events and obesity related aliments. Where does COVID19 rank?

Nobody is even asking the question.

What I find concerning is that we don’t address that question, instead running willy-nilly to the most extreme measures. How necessary are they? Is their cost justified, not just in dollars, but in the decades long damage to the standard of living, the threat to civil liberties and the future of liberal democracy?