The thing is that the death rates would be manifold higher if not for those measures. In the global study on the effects of covid we are all in the treatment condition.

That said, I agree that many of those resources would be better spent on eradicating hunger and slavery, as well as the poverty diseases.

Haven't seen convincing evidence the death rates would be higher without the measures employed, much the opposite (35 studies so far): https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-co...

It is heartening to see many here agreeing we could do better.

Do the studies offer explanations as to why red states have higher infection rates than blue states despite being less densly populated?

With just a few examples in blue states where the virus took hold early on in dense urban areas in blue states, i can't think of any explanation except that red states were much less vigilant with lockdowns.

Testing is a bit of a mess. There aren't any standards and it's highly subjective and interpretative. Some facilities/tests don't even report the CT of the PCR, rendering the result essentially meaningless (which in many cases then also affects death figures, along with the "died with / died of" debacle).

Cherry-picking of course makes this worse - introducing arbitrary and potentially contaminating boundaries such as governmental policy (red vs blue). Did red states generally employ higher CT's? Do we even have that data? No, sometimes its discretionary or not even recorded. We do know Trump was heavily encouraging more testing, as this painted a better (and, to his credit, ever more accurate) picture of mortality rate, so even just that may plausibly explain such a result.

Conversely, at least regarding all of the testing data as mixed establishes a better starting point for analysis less subject to such foibles.

Why is it racism, though?

It isn't inherently racism (though there is racism involved). It's more a NIMBY type effect, but in reverse, I think – “it doesn't affect me, so I don't have to think about it” type thing.

> a NIMBY type effect, but in reverse

We call that selfishness :-)

And we can't force people to help others, no matter how much we dislike the attitude.

> And we can't force people to help others, no matter how much we dislike the attitude.

We can, and we do all the time, via taxation. You're forced to pay taxes to fund the people who empty the bins in the park you never even go to.

It's a good thing.

Yeah, but taxation stops at the national border level.

Ignoring smaller numbers in eastern Europe and central Asia, the people dying from poverty and preventable diseases tend to be African, south east Asian or south American.

Yeah, but nobody's killing them on purpose (I hope!).

It's just that those regions are warm and humid, and this creates great living conditions for mosquitoes.

To make things worse, many countries in these regions are poor, so they can't afford treatment or prevention (pesticides to kill mosquitoes, draining swamps, etc.).

Rich countries in the same regions most likely don't have big problems with malaria (or if malaria is still a problem, it's probably a minor problem).

It's just "bad" geography (from this point of view) and poverty.

Florida is warm and humid

If you see someone drowning and refuse to throw them the life ring because you might damage your newly painted nails, you're not technically killing them on purpose, but you're still killing them through your inaction

I applaud your globalist approach, but nobody's really applying it. When push comes to shove, we're barely able to stand in solidarity at a national level.

It's called egocentrism.