[mattnewton]

US deaths in 2020 jumped about 15% from 2019. Even if you think the pandemic response was a failure that somehow made it worse, you can’t also think that the crisis didn’t justify a strong reaction. That’s an enormous increase in mortality for a single year.

[nickysielicki]

I have no idea why you've been downvoted, you made a really strong point. The only thing I can really say in response is that there's gotta be some sort of middle ground between the reaction we had and under-reacting.

[mattnewton]

I feel like that’s assuming that our reaction was over done. If anything, that we still had 500 thousand dead Americans seem to suggest we should have reacted harder, faster, and possibly differently.