I mean, there are all sorts of confounding factors, but in a rough sense we are now able to look at various populations (countries, states, or even friend/acquaintance cohorts) that leaned into one or the other of those positions, and compare how they fared.
- it is not possible to be aware of aware of the number of deaths avoided by government action, because counter-factual reality is not accessible; humans typically substitute a simulation in response, but often do not know that has occurred
- there is no requirement for documentation ("documented existence of disinformation networks") to be accurate
- in some cases, and for various reasons (choice of inadequate variable types in one's analysis/cognition, ie: "existence", cultural norms), it is not possible for documentation to be accurate and comprehensive, and this is one of those times
- in some cases it is not possible to apply this sort of level of rigor, this seems to almost always be one of those times (all people on all sides are engaged in deceit, intentionally or not), at least so far in humanity's evolution
- In most serious organizations, an event of this scale would prompt a post incident analysis, there seems to be little sign that anyone considers this event serious enough to justify such an analysis (COVID seems to have triggered one of the many paradoxes in the system in that it is super serious, but also not, simultaneously)
- this list is far from exhaustive
- humans will have very interesting (and typically predictable) reactions to the contents of this list, or others like it (the system is susceptible to a list based attack?)
When only 25% of the population has been exposed you expect 1/4 of the projected death toll. Then multiply by 2 and now you’re pushing an order of magnitude. But what we are seeing is a pretty steady .9% mortality rate for people who are exposed.
Meanwhile the fatality rate for this last flu season was 1/16th of COVID (which is another comparison they liked to make).
The problem with 1% is that almost everyone will know someone who died. But they took it like the odds of winning the lottery. Let’s just gamble that’s a small number!
The distribution of risk is almost entirely concentrated on people who have so few years left in their life compared to the rest of humanity whereas the burden of all the interventions falls squarely on the young, who DO propagate humanity into the future, and who are at essentially no major risk.
Representing covid as a .9% generalized risk is nothing short of willful (self?) deception.