Spot The Difference: Two Governors Reopened Their States, Only One Was Accused of ‘Human Sacrifice’

freebeacon ^ | MAY 14, 2020 | Andrew Stiles

[daniel1212]

So reads the headline of an April 29 article published in the Atlantic, which accuses Kemp of turning Georgia residents into "unwilling canaries in an invisible coal mine, sent to find out just how many individuals need to lose their job or their life for a state to work through a plague."

If not the headline. t he quote does appear in https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/

Georgia’s brash reopening puts much of the state’s working class in an impossible bind: risk death at work, or risk ruining yourself financially at home. In the grips of a pandemic, the approach is a morbid experiment in just how far states can push their people. Georgians are now the largely unwilling canaries in an invisible coal mine, sent to find out just how many individuals need to lose their job or their life for a state to work through a plague.

And is yet quoted in another (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/what-freedom-means-trump/611083)

South Carolina did not take the lead this time in subjugating the community for the freedom of the individual. “Georgians are now the largely unwilling canaries in an invisible coal mine, sent to find out just how many individuals need to lose their job or their life for a state to work through a plague,” The Atlantic’s Amanda Mull explained.

Yet the Asian flu pandemic of 1957-1958 resulted in a estimated 116,000 deaths in America (followed by the Hong Kong flu with about est. 100,000 American deaths in 1968–69), when at about 173,000,000, the population size in 57-58 was close to half of what it is now (330,541,000, rounded figures). Meaning that not only was the infection death rate much higher than for COVID-19, but there would have to be about 200,000 COVID-19 est. deaths to be comparable to the Asian flu. Yet that would simply make it basically equal as concerns the numbers of deaths in proportion to population size, but to justify the "CovidCaptivity," one would have to argue that the Asian flu should have necessitated a response like that to COVID-19. The Soviets would have favored that for sure.

The question then is, where was the COVID-19 comparative response in 57-58 in proportion to its threat? Yes, the 116,000 deaths in America to the Asian flu was for the whole year, yet even if we reach about 200,000 deaths (we pray not) for COVID-19 then that type of equality would still mean that the extremely restrictive all-ages long-term response to COVID-19 simply has no precedent in American history, except to a degree with the far more deadly (550,000 to 675,000 Americans, or 0.66% of the population) 1918 flu.

And yet we read ,