First conspiracy theory: Trump really doesn't have covid, he's lying, this is a sympathy play.
Second revised conspiracy theory: Trump is actually dying of covid, they're covering it up.
Third revised conspiracy theory: See First Conspiracy Theory. It's a classic for a reason.
As someone noted earlier today, a surprisingly swath of the President's inveterate enemies are channeling Pat Buchanan's attitude towards people unlucky enough to contract AIDS in the 1980s: the wages of sin is COVID. But as Paula Poundstone said, "I imagine the wages of sin is death, but by the time you take out the taxes, it's just more of a tired feeling, really."
If we weren't in the grips of rampant black-and-white thinking, we might remember that COVID is a sporadically cruel and dangerous disease that can kill quickly and rather unexpectedly in all age groups, though particularly in the elderly and infirm, while at the same time in the vast majority of cases it is not terribly serious. Even among patients of the President's age, it spares 95% or more of sufferers from the ultimate penalty.
Every man dies. Not every man ever really lives. Or so someone said in a movie.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Trump is an example of a man really living, and accomplishing a number of things useful for our republic, and that upsets the Left and its NLMSM no end.
That, by itself, is sufficient reason to reelect him. He's Gallagher's mallet on a watermelon.
Eric Hines
Influenza is similar to SARS-2 in that for most people, it's a pain but nothing terrible. For a small percentage of the population, it is lethal. Unlike SARS-2, last year's Influenza B was very, very bad for kids. All the pediatric influenza mortality was B. Thus far, every reported and documented SARS-2 pediatric fatality had multiple preexisting conditions (including being immune suppressed post transplant).
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
From the nation's newspaper of record: "'His defiance is going to get people killed. Dying like he’s supposed to would be the most patriotic thing he could do,' complained CNN correspondent Adam Pelot. 'If he lives, how will the people be able to trust science?'" https://babylonbee.com/news/media-criticizes-trump-for-downplaying-virus-threat-by-not-dying
ReplyDeleteSide note: My younger brother was friends with Paula Poundstone at Lincoln Sudbury HS. Closer to her sister Peggy, though.
ReplyDeleteLast I heard, she was still very funny.
An international survey done a few weeks ago showed a lot of people to have absolutely bizarre ideas of how many people Covid-19 has killed. IIRC, the average guess in the US was that more than 10% of the population had already died from the disease, and the guesses from major European countries were equally weird.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't help when "died with COVID in the bloodstream" is counted the same as "died from COVID."
ReplyDeleteThe homicide victim in NYC (7 gunshot wounds to the torso, tsted positive postmortem, listed as COVID death) and the motorcycle accident in Florida (wrecked bike, died of head injuries, tested positive postmortem so counted as COVID death) are just two of the more egregious examples of why the mortality rate percentages are so off-kilter.
LittleRed1
David says: ...a lot of people to have absolutely bizarre ideas of how many people Covid-19 has killed.
ReplyDeleteYou could have punctuated that remark with a period after the word "ideas" and been every bit as accurate.
The American ideal of our lives has been to ensure that every ignorant, deluded, moronic, senile, apathetic, insane, resident be encouraged -- or "assisted" -- to vote. It's not clear to me that the "wisdom of crowds" applies when the crowd is so comprised.
LittleRed: playing games with the statistics didn't help, but either way, 10% of the American public didn't die from any cause this year. That would be 35MM people. I think we'd have noticed, even with a very low level of integrity and expertise in the press.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure most people have no idea that H1N1 in '08-09 killed *thirteen times* the number of children Covid has. 1,282 to 92.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly I was in Iraq that period, but I don’t even remember hearing about it at the time.
ReplyDeleteInteresting note, H1N1 was also confirmed to be the strain of flu that caused the 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu). Which, by the way, is something left out of reports about COVID-19's "deadliness" (remember when they were saying it could be as deadly as "the Spanish Flu"?), it's almost like they neglected to mention that we've lived with the "Spanish Flu" frequently outbreaking ever since 1918.
ReplyDeleteGosh, I wonder why they would do that, AND THEN claim that we can come out of lock down when COVID-19 is eliminated... You don't suppose the objective is to keep us economically crippled forever, do you?
Not forever, just till Nov. 4.
ReplyDeleteYes, forever, since the Biden-Harris-Sanders economic policies will keep us crippled, their elimination of the filibuster will hamstring the Senate, and their affirmative destruction of the Supreme Court will finish the task.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
Well, and the amnesty-with-citizenship for every alien present or soon to come, which they hope will make them impossible to defeat by election; and the addition of DC and Puerto Rico to the states, to give them more Senators.
ReplyDeleteThe Progressive-Democrats might find themselves surprised by Puerto Rico.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines