And therein lies the problem: to politicize a perfectly testable statement and put intent into it.

that's exactly why you should rethink the concept of a 'dog whistle'.

1 ) painting an individual politically by extrapolating a single opinion across their entire persona is irresponsible and over-simple.

2 ) 'conservative' is over-generalized to the point of uselessness and ambiguity.

it's a concept (dog whistle) that is used strictly for generating rage and calling other individuals to arms so that the crowd picks up torches and pitchforks and follows your lede in attacking an individual's opinion with as little prompting or individual thought as possible.

the classification and announcement of a 'dog whistle' makes civil conversation near impossible afterwards, even if those who announce it are dead-wrong or working in poor faith against an individual.

>it's a concept (dog whistle) that is used strictly for generating rage and calling other individuals to arms so that the crowd picks up torches and pitchforks and follows your lede in attacking an individual's opinion with as little prompting or individual thought as possible.

It is not used strictly for that, indeed would be ineffective for that purpose were it not also a useful word. It means "warning, this seemingly innocent reference/argument/line of argument has historically been used by people with questionable motives, and warrants extra scrutiny".

In my experience the people who announce 'dog whistles' are rarely arguing in good faith.

That is not true at all. I'm fairly progressive and I found the analysis done there credible and welcome the information.

Isn't the dog whistle comparing COVID without vaccination/masking/distancing/etc to the flu, to downplay the severity of the pandemic and hence the need to take any action against it?

A comparison of COVID risk in vaccinated people showing that vaccination apparently reduces the risk to less than that of the average seasonal flu is the opposite of what the usually dog whistling people are trying to convey.

Not only that, but it is part of the concerted campaign by the right to downplay Covid. They would very much prefer the poors to suffer and die quietly - without stopping work of course.