But how are they to run a fear campaign if they can't manipulate the numbers, and how will the companies profiting from the scare be successful if they can't use shady tactics to achieve their desired goals?

They don't need to run a fear campaign, they already own you. Most companies are losing money, especially the ones generally calling the shots. Kind of hard to exploit the plebes when they keep getting sick and infecting all the other serfs.

Really pathetic how human brains prefer good narratives to simple ones. A novel coronavirus (from the world that brought you Ebola, H1N1, Zika) becoming super prevalent and disrupting volatile networks of interdependence <<< a global conspiracy to further control citizens that already live under a so-called "Patriot Act" surveillance state.

Dying isn't the only outcome, and you can't work while you're sick. This isn't some flu, it has long term implications for 10-30% of those infected and is extremely contagious. Many ICUs are at capacity or beyond it, and it wasn't long ago NYC and Milan were storing bodies in refrigerated containers. A small percentage of a big number is still a big number, if anything our response has been underwhelming.

How do you want to explain away the excess death numbers? We are undercounting COVID deaths in the US, especially in rural areas where vaccination rates are lower. Globally the same thing is true. Excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 are higher than tallied COVID fatalities and other explanations don't account for the magnitude of the difference.

What's disingenuous is saying everyone is too afraid of the virus when non-tech sectors still have to go in to work, all of the financial support for those impacted dried up, 20% of all inpatient beds registered with the HHS are in use specifically for COVID, etc.

A million or more Americans are dead of COVID and most of those were easily preventable. The only thing saving us from that number being much higher is an extremely high-tech medical system and passable infrastructure. If we had a death rate like Brazil with the case loads we're experiencing maybe more people would take it seriously and get a jab. Or not, at this point I expect nothing from US citizens. It's unbelievable to me that antivax sentiment has been allowed to fester in the "marketplace for free ideas" that we've forgotten how life was before robust public vaccination campaigns.

Ah yes, a Gallup poll is certainly reflective of actual medical reality. Especially when a non-zero number of people die from Covid while claiming it isn’t real.

Shut up with your conspiracy nonsense.

The 0.8% wasn't the result of the poll. That is the actual, factual number. The polling part was what democrats and republicans think is percentage of people who catch covid end up in the hospital for covid (both were way too high, 41% of democrats thought your chances were over 50%, while 22% of republicans thought there was an over 50% chance of going to the hospital).

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...

You should do more reading.

or perhaps I should improve my comprehension of just reading your original comment? sigh. Alas I can't update my comment to acknowledge that i'm a dumbass who can't fully read a plaintext comment? :-/

It was 1-5% chance of hospitalization for the unvaccinated, compared to less than 1% for the vaccinated. You should do more reading as well. Democrats were more likely to accurately guess the hospitalization rates for vaccinated individuals and Republicans were more likely to know the number for unvaccinated ones. Wonder why that is?

I'd love to update my comment to acknowledge my apparent inability to read, so head tilt to hitpointdrew for calling me out.