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by wffurr 1943 days ago
500,000 dead in the US, largely due to failure to wear masks and observe distancing protocols, is a strange way to "beat" COVID.
3 comments

There is very little evidence that the death rate in the US is "largely due to failure to wear masks." Mask wearing in different countries is all over the map. The US is actually on the higher end in terms of mask wearing: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/08/face-off....

Meanwhile, countries like Denmark and Norway with very low rates of mask wearing have seen very low COVID death rates.

EDIT: More recent data from YouGov showing same pattern: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/international/articles-reports/2.... Mask-wearing rates in Denmark and Norway picked up in 2H 2020, but were still on the low side.

There are massive gaps between losing to COVID (which would’ve been 1-10% deaths depending on if they happened suddenly enough to overwhelm the healthcare system or not), versus what actually happened in any given nation (0.2% in Belgium to 0.00003% in Burundi, 0.155% in the USA), versus the best possible combination of decisions and actions in response to this virus (it being stopped in China before it ever spread outside Wuhan).

Same with climate change. Worst case is Venus, we’re heading for a few degrees Celsius change that persists for centuries, we could’ve prevented almost all of the problems we’re looking at now if we’d made the best choices even as late as the 60s and 70s.

and your point is? The fact that vaccines are here makes the COVID problem irrelevant a few years from now. That's called beating COVID.