On a related note to my disassembly of some malicious propaganda, conservative Rich Lowry actually talks a bit of sense. I’ve read him very little, as every time I do I’m appalled, but this time his dart hits the target:
A growing chorus on the right is slamming the shutdowns as an overreaction and agitating to end them. A good example of the genre is an op-ed co-authored by former Education Secretary William Bennett and talk-radio host Seth Leibsohn. It is titled, tendentiously and not very accurately, “Coronavirus Lessons: Fact and Reason vs. Paranoia and Fear.”
They cite an estimate that the current outbreak will kill 68,000 Americans. Then, they note that about 60,000 people died of the flu in 2017-18. For this, they thunder, we’ve imposed huge economic and social costs on the country?
This is obviously a deeply flawed way of looking at it.
If we are going to have 60,000 deaths with people not leaving their homes for more than a month, the number of deaths obviously would have been higher — much higher — if everyone had gone about business as usual. We didn’t lock down the country to try to prevent 60,000 deaths; we locked down the country to limit deaths to 60,000 (or whatever the ultimate toll is). [National Review]
Precisely. I might note that similar reasoning applies to folks who complain that our military always prepares to fight the last war and not the next war. Well, yes, in fact they prepare for the last war so well that they don’t have to fight it again, now don’t they? Complainers don’t realize that they’ve just defined success, not failure.
Sometimes success is hard to recognize.
There’s one related point, and Vox makes it:
President Donald Trump just dramatically redefined success on the country’s response to the coronavirus.
Barely a month ago, Trump claimed the coronavirus would go away on its own. Then he said it paled in comparison to the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak, which killed about 12,500 Americans. Now he’s saying that the estimates showing Covid-19 could kill 100,000 Americans — roughly equivalent to two Vietnam Wars or 38 September 11 attacks — actually reflect how effective he’s been.
During a news conference on Sunday, Trump said that a final US coronavirus death toll somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 people would indicate that his administration has “done a very good job.”
And if it’s only 60,000 deaths? Then he’s bigly outstanding?
This’ll be a slight twist on the old The results justifies the means – it’ll be Ignore what I did, just look at my results and by the way I get to define what’s good.
I hope honest third-party assessors will be able to honestly message about this nonsense.
