Which Is Worse, COVID or Nuclear War?

Author’s note: The video above, just posted to YouTube, has racked up over 50,000 views on Rumble in less than a week. Help it go viral there, and on YouTube, and contribute to saving the world! For the details on how this video can help save the world, check out this sneak preview of my new AFP article. -KB

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.

Russia has no aggressive designs on the US. The same cannot be said, unfortunately, of the US vis-a-vis Russia. NATO, which is a euphemism for the US occupation of Europe, has been pushing first-strike weapons systems closer and closer to Moscow. The end game is to reduce Russia to Third World status and loot its raw materials, especially oil and gas.

NATO’s slow-motion war on Russia carries terrible risks. Even before the current uptick in hostilities in Ukraine, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Doomsday Clock had reached 100 seconds to midnight, representing the worst risk of global thermonuclear war this planet has ever faced. And what is that risk? Experts tell us it is has averaged about one percent per year since 1950, a figure that includes oscillations between .3% and 3% per year. So it is currently over 3% per year. That suggests there is more than a one in 33 chance that the planet will be a smoking, radioactive, apocalyptic ruin by the end of 2022.

So which is worse, COVID or nuclear war? As we have seen, a vaccinated 75-year-old faces about a 1 in 2000 mortality risk from catching COVID. Compare that to this year’s 1 in 33 chance of a civilization-ending nuclear war that would end or destroy the lives of virtually everyone on Earth and leave the living envying the dead.

There isn’t much we can do about COVID. Masks don’t work, distancing doesn’t work, lockdowns cause more pain than they alleviate, and vaccines do less and less as time marches on, especially in the Omicron era. As Fauci says, everybody has a date with Omicron—most likely several dates. The vast majority, perhaps 1,999 in 2000, will survive.

We can, however, stop nuclear war...if we choose to. We must start by overthrowing the leaders who are frog-marching us into wars of aggression—the same leaders who unleashed COVID in their botched bio-attack on China and Iran.