Great article by Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity:
“…what is striking is that those under the age of 25 are at significantly lower risk of death from COVID-19 than of the flu. Under our assumptions, for example, school-aged children between 5 and 14 have a 1 in 200,000 chance of dying of influenza, but a 1 in 2.5 million chance of dying of COVID-19.“
For toddlers, the relative risk is even more pronounced. We estimate that Americans between ages 1–4 are 20 times more likely to die of influenza than of COVID-19.“
Of course, this won’t satisfy the hypochondriac fundamentalists, for whom this brave new world of pandemic authoritarianism has become a part of their identity. They don’t want to go back to the way things were before; they’ve found meaning and purpose in this crusade against a non-existent threat. And they will never take the time to understand just how many lives will be destroyed during this holy war.
In this sense, the COVID crusaders mirror the War-on-Terror fanatics of the early 2000’s, who were convinced that they were witnessing an apocalyptic, End Times war between Christians and Muslims. Southern Baptist evangelicals preached it from their tents and many conservatives ate it up. Just as COVID apocalypticism is being consumed like a drug by the establishment Left.
Both events, COVID and the War on Terror, have had the same effect on the public mind, triggering our primitive brains, while shutting down the more fragile reasoning centers, and dosing us with emotional heroin. For too many people, it’s impossible to resist.
Is COVID the Al Quada of viruses? Well, what virus will take its place when the majority of the public begin to realize it isn’t a threat? Is there any way off this psychotic merry-go-round?
