Paul Campos links to an Economist study of excess deaths during Covid. Excess deaths are the spike away from the "normal" number of deaths in a given population in a given time period. If an elderly person dies of Covid at home, they might not show up as a Covid statistic, but their death was still caused by Covid. Similarly, if they had a heart attack but couldn't access health care, because ERs were overwhelmed...same difference.
The basic idea was that during Covid public health officials were either overwhelmed or forbidden from keeping accurate tallies of the dead. The US, despite efforts by people like Ron DeSantis to screw with the numbers, actually kept reasonably accurate tallies of the Covid dead. The official death toll was 1,170,000 (consider that number for a moment), when the the "excess death number" was 1,400,000.
You can look at the numbers in the Economist, but it's striking how some countries' numbers are just ridiculously skewed. It should come as no surprise that Russia and China lead the way with fake numbers, but India's inclusion is likely simply a lack of capacity in their public health department.
For everyone who said and still says "It's just the flu", please do me a favor and fuck off. There is no doubt that masking and distancing were incredibly traumatic, but so are a million and a half deaths. Oh, and Covid still kills about a 1,000 people a week in the US. That's a Vietnam War's worth of deaths every year.
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