I just saw the statistic that 1 in 400 people in New York City have died of the coronavirus. Seems fake, but... around 20,000 deaths and around 8 million people, it checks out. 1 in 400.

And of course the truth deniers are immediately going "Oh but that's a death rate of 0.25%, way lower than all the scary numbers they threw around."

But that's not the death rate. 8 million people didn't have the virus.

In a city where way more people didn't get the virus and/or didn't get sick enough for anyone to know they had it, 1 in 400 people still died of the virus. That we know about, that we can tell.

It's so much worse than the Open-Up-And-Take-Our-Chances crowd wants to believe.

1 in 400 total (known) people dead, in a city where most people stayed healthy. But the "Life Is Full Of Risks" crowd all either think we should *all* get the virus and get over with, or we should count on most people never getting it.

I keep emphasizing the "known" aspect because it's widely acknowledged we're undercounting. Even when New York added probably diagnoses without a test to the counts, it's still an undercount.

They call it "fear porn", the people living on Viral Flat Earth, when we talk about this stuff. When reporters report the truth. When scientists tell us the facts. "Fear porn." "You're fearmongering." "This is promoting fear."

Yeah?

So what's all the talk about the economy?

Telling the truth about the dead is "fearmongering" but silencing the truth by demonizing the attempts to save the living as *tyranny* and *fear porn* is, what... patriotism? Heroism?

No one has an actual plan to "open up and save the economy" because 85-95% of the country is on board with the science or at least with self-preservation.

Sure, you can get enough Flat Earthers together to pack one restaurant at brunch, for all the good it will do them.

But that maybe 10% is not going to keep your city's economy afloat. It's not going to save a state. It's not even going to save that one restaurant, because their business model isn't the same dozens of people coming back day after day. They need more customers.

There is no solution to this that doesn't involve more waiting, which means we need -- NEED, this is NOT optional -- real economic relief, for businesses and for people. Stuff like the more progressive Democrats have been proposing. People dying for a haircut won't save anyone.

All of the damage -- the death toll of the virus, the economic devastation of the shutdowns, the death toll of the economic devastation, the economic devastation caused by deaths -- is worse than it needs to be and getting worse all the time because we aren't doing things right.

We've got a hodge-podge of cities and states that are all taking different levels of seriousness in their approach, none of them are getting the support they need, there's no national leadership on testing, there's no actual financial support for consumers, individuals.

The economy does not rot from the head down but from the feet down. "Atlas Shrugged" is garbage - the weight of the world is shouldered not by a giant astride it but by the *people*. We have a consumer economy. No consumers, no economy.

"And let all sleep while, to my shame, I see the imminent death of twenty thousand men that for a fantasy and trick of fame go to their graves like beds."

Twenty thousand dead. One in four hundred, in a city where most people were not touched by the virus.

If this is were a war, and I cannot emphasize enough that it is not, it'd mean our "leaders" are marching us to death to gain... nothing. Nothing is gained by the sacrifice of "warriors".

Not even Hamlet's little plot that is "not tomb enough and continent to hide the slain."

"My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth."