https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1968-pandemic.htm...
> The estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States.
Uh, "equivalent pandemic". I don't think so.
[ EDIT: Oh, and also: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-woodstock-pande... ]
The use and abuse of raw data has been a hallmark of the last 2.5 years. Whatever number makes Covid sound worse is the number that gets published and spread. Anything suggesting it isn’t as bad as predicted is buried as a conspiracy or “not peer reviewed”.
World population has grown by a factor of 2.3 since 1968. That would suggest a "population adjusted" death count of 230,000 for the 1968 "equivalent pandemic", a number less than 1/4 of COVID-19's US numbers.
US population has grown by a factor of 1.65 since 1968.That would suggest a "population adjusted" death count of 165,000 for the 1968 "equivalent pandemic", a number less than 17% of COVID-19's US numbers
There is an alternate universe where they didn’t test everybody that breathed and don’t publish daily death counts. The only way you’d know there was a pandemic was an uptick in “wash your hands” signs in the restroom. Otherwise it would have been “just that thing going around”.
The last time we had an equivalent pandemic they held Woodstock. No shutdowns. No masks. No hysterical blowhards tweeting about the end of the world on twitter. People just got on with life.
Does this make me a selfish asshole? Perhaps. But I personally think the people screaming to mask up and shut it all down are the true selfish ones. The expect everybody to massively disrupt their lives in order to appease their fear and anxiety. Especially when those mitigations had no prior evidence they’d work and not even a whiff of a stated off-ramp or end goal.