Originally Posted by
khalwat
These are all strawman arguments. Entropy did not state any of these things in his post, nor has anyone in this thread that I'd seen.
In any event, certainly, there are countries that are worse than the USA in terms of deaths per capita and even infections per capita. Many of them are much smaller countries, or third-world countries without the kind of wealth and infrastructure that we have.
But yes, there's no question that some wealthy, first-world countries are doing about as well as we are regarding the pandemic.
However, one would think the USA would be leading the pack, not just in terms of all nations, but in terms of first-world, rich nations. And we are not.
20th worst out of ~190 nations is not a position I'm proud to be in.
Are you saying we'd be better off regarding COVID if no one took any vaccines, and no one wore any masks?
Entropy asked why the US is the worst by a wide margin, and posted a Worldometers screen shot. I was explaining why that's not true.
There are several resason why the US is in the lower eschelon of COVID deaths per million:
1) Different COVID reporting techniques. Many third-world coutries do not keep good records of such deaths, nor do they put much effort into determining which deaths are associated with COVID. Additionally, many other countries don't report a COVID death as "someone who died who also tested positive for COVID", which we do. This leads to the US over-counting COVID deaths.
2) Highly social population with a longtime emphasis on individual rights, and a general distrust for authority. This is why lockdowns and mask mandates don't work here. Even those on the left who outwardly support them are often found to be violating them behind closed doors (including the governor of California!) In general, people in the US are simply unwilling on the whole to act in hive mind, or to blindly do what they're told. This, in turn, leads to difficulty in preventing the spread of viruses.
3) High level of politicization of COVID. There has been so much misinformation on both sides, that nobody knows what to trust or believe. This is why it's so hard to convince many on the right to take vaccines -- because the left has repeatedly lied or misled people about COVID. The vaccine DOES help slow the spread, but the left lost credibility after a year of contradictions, lies, and attempt to suppress dissenting opinoins, so now we have the Boy Who Cried Wolf effect.
In any case, while vaccine hesitancy has caused some additional COVID spread (and death) in the US, the lack of such hesitancy wouldn't have stopped COVID. Even very highly vaccinated countries are noticing that they simply cannot stop COVID, and that the previous herd immunity model is not happening as expected.
The masking needs to be abandned entirely. The burden-to-benefit ratio is simply not there. The benefit is negligible, if it exists at all. The burden, which manifests itself in many ways (including distrust of other much better preventative measures, such as vaccines) is simply too high for something with negligible benefit.
We should be going back to normal life, and focusing upon the big things which really can help. There shouldn't be a battle over something which may or may not prevent a tiny percentage of the infections.