Because it would give people a better intuitive sense of how bad COVID is in a larger civilizational/historical context.
Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of the public health measures that we take as a matter of course in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been almost unthinkable as recently as January of 2020.
If you look far enough back, to some point in the twentieth century, you'll find a time at which the baseline infectious disease risk in everyday life was higher than it has been in the COVID-era US. But people at that time went to crowded theaters, ate in restaurants, packed together in churches and schools, and so on. Restricting these things could have decreased their all-cause mortality, but they clearly found that option unacceptable.
Note that this isn't an issue of whether people "believe in science" or "believe in data". It's an issue of risk tolerance. People a few generations ago understood the Germ Theory of Disease perfectly well, and they knew that they could reduce the spread of infectious disease by implementing the kinds of measures we've implemented for COVID. And yet they didn't implement these measures, except in very minor and temporary ways. We've become far more risk-averse than they were. And the question of whether that's a good thing is not an empirical question.
I don't understand your argument. You're saying that because people didn't mind dying from infectous diseases at a time where scraping your hand could prove deadly, we shouldn't mind it today either?
It's not a question of what people "mind" or "don't mind", it's a question of what level of risk people will accept in order to live a normal life. Hiding away from people may reduce risk in a lot of ways, but most people find it unacceptable.
Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken about that.
> Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment.
Are you under the impression that you were experiencing pure liberty before COVID? Because it's pretty obvious to me that there was an acceptable level of restraints that society generally agreed to, and those levels changed due to the pandemic. It's a fun saying, but it's in no way, shape, or form realistic.
Are you suggesting that since we didn't have full liberty before the pandemic we should be ok with less liberty during the pandemic and into the future? Because by accepting these measures now I can guarantee they'll become the new norm just like the changes after 9/11.
> Because by accepting these measures now I can guarantee they'll become the new norm just like the changes after 9/11.
What measures are you referring to with this? Masks clearly aren't going to stay around, and there's a push to reopen everything and get life back to normal as soon as possible.
> Before COVID, I was under the impression that most Americans found "Give me liberty or give me death" an admirable sentiment. But it turns out that I was mistaken about that.
America is country with most strict safety standards in pretty much anything I ever heard of. Including kids playground structures.
50 years ago was 1970. I agree that just comparing last year's death rate directly to rates from the past 50 years would be a bad analysis, but I think this is some hyperbole too.
Over the past 12+ months, people have accepted enormous infringements on freedoms in their everyday lives. Many of the public health measures that we take as a matter of course in the "new normal" - lockdowns, social distancing, extended closing of churches, etc.- are things that would have been almost unthinkable as recently as January of 2020.
If you look far enough back, to some point in the twentieth century, you'll find a time at which the baseline infectious disease risk in everyday life was higher than it has been in the COVID-era US. But people at that time went to crowded theaters, ate in restaurants, packed together in churches and schools, and so on. Restricting these things could have decreased their all-cause mortality, but they clearly found that option unacceptable.
Note that this isn't an issue of whether people "believe in science" or "believe in data". It's an issue of risk tolerance. People a few generations ago understood the Germ Theory of Disease perfectly well, and they knew that they could reduce the spread of infectious disease by implementing the kinds of measures we've implemented for COVID. And yet they didn't implement these measures, except in very minor and temporary ways. We've become far more risk-averse than they were. And the question of whether that's a good thing is not an empirical question.