THE PANDEMIC: WHERE WE STAND NOW

From Powerline

Worldwide, the COVID-19 fatalities add up to just under 20% of an average flu season. In the U.S., COVID-19 fatalities to date are 26% of the number that we suffered just two flu seasons ago. I am not sure why these numbers are not more widely known. They seem relevant to me.

Crudely speaking, if we assume that the U.S. is around 50% of the way through the COVID-19 epidemic, we might expect something like 33,000 fatalities, equal to an average seasonal flu year. An inevitable second round of infections after our governments finally let people go back to work, and out in public, may raise that number, but no one I know of has tried to guess to what extent. Still, any way you look at it, it is hard to see how COVID-19 deaths will exceed the flu fatalities we experienced two years ago. And that was barely a news story.

I believe Rush Limbaugh said something lie this: the hysterical projections of doom and death are never wrong. If their predictions are right they say I told you so. If they are wrong and catastrophe doesn't arise they will claim credit for the efforts taken to mitigate the death toll.

They haven’t been right from the get-go. But the doomsayers are never wrong because whatever ends up happening, they can claim credit for it because of their mistakes. “Well, yeah, of course we overshot, but because we overshot we scared the hell out of people, people social distanced, people stayed home. Of course our work is responsible for this.” ....