Which Is Worse, COVID or Nuclear War?
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Which Is Worse, COVID or Nuclear War?
By Kevin Barrett, for American Free Press
My mother is in remarkably good shape for an 83-year-old. The last time I saw her in real life, as opposed to Zoom or Skype, was in February 2020. We skied together near her home in Montana and were probably the best over-60-son-and-over-80-mom on the mountain. I am still amazed that she skis faster and better in her 80s than she did in her 20s.
So my mom is not a wimp. Nor is she obese, out of shape, or racked with co-morbidities. But she consumes a steady diet of mainstream and pseudo-left media, from which she has imbibed an inordinate fear of COVID-19.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t deny that COVID-19 is real—and dangerous. The question is, how dangerous?
The New York Times tells us: “Before Omicron, a typical vaccinated 75-year-old who contracted Covid had a roughly similar risk of death — around 1 in 200 — as a typical 75-year-old who contracted the flu....Omicron has changed the calculation. Because it is milder than earlier versions of the virus, Covid now appears to present less threat to most vaccinated elderly people than the annual flu does.”
How much less? Let’s ask the CDC: “Omicron infections are associated with a 91% reduction in risk of death compared to the Delta variant.”
A 90% reduction in a 1 in 200 mortality rate equals 1 in 2000. That isn’t just less of a threat than the flu. It’s a massively lesser threat, a whole order-of-magnitude reduction in lethality. If the CDC is right, you would have to catch COVID ten times, and somehow avoid gaining any immunity whatsoever, to equal your chances of dying from one case of ordinary flu.
So let’s assume you’re a rational person. Ask yourself: How much time did I spend worrying about catching the flu during the pre-COVID era? Then take the answer and divide it by ten. That’s how much you should worry about catching COVID.
I don’t remember my mom ever worrying much about the flu. Yet despite the fact that COVID presents about one-tenth of the threat the flu used to, she is still acting as though the black plague were on the loose, and avoiding most face-to-face human contact. That avoidance of human contact, science and common sense both suggest, is extremely unhealthy. So even if the New York Times and CDC statistics cited above turn out to be slightly over-optimistic, the cost-benefit analysis of COVID restrictions still looks terrible. Obviously we should basically stop worrying about COVID and get on with our lives, as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and other nations are doing.
Mainstream media propagandists recognize that COVID fear-mongering is becoming obsolete. So now they want us to fear Russia instead.
But it isn’t Russia that rational Americans should fear. It’s nuclear war.