As much fun as this has been, when you keep making points that support my issue with your original post and start engaging in ad hominem attacks the discussion has run its course.
The funny thing, which you can believe or not, is that I do not disagree with you about the broader point you make. I agree that in many ways the virus has been overhyped and politicized (by both sides) and as a result we have not been able to have an appropriate data driven discussion, which has resulted in far more economic and societal pain and displacement than was necessary. Had we all agreed to certain annoying but relatively unobtrusive short term behavioral modifications like Europe, we could have been substantially back to normal and had a far less acute economic pullback than we have experienced. Not my opinion, look at the Q2 GDP numbers for industrialized Western Europe, with the exclusion of the UK that had many of the same issues as the US, the GDP declined at about 1/3 to 1/2 of the rate that it did in the US, and for the EU as a whole (which is approximately the same size for economic purposes as the US) at 1/3 the rate it did in the US. By treating a relatively minor short-term inconvenience like it is the modern day Coercive Acts, a subset of the population is acting against its own economic interest by prolonging the virus and exacerbating the unsustainable economic stimulus Congress and the Fed are engaged in to keep the economic contraction from being more acute. This is not rocket science. Wash your hands, wear a mask when and where appropriate and be thoughtful about your interactions with others, and engage in critical thinking and do not accept as gospel the talking points being spewed by individuals who have as their primary goal lining their own pockets not your best interests. Conflict sells.
Lastly, I leave you with this. While I agree that in many ways this situation has been mishandled, overhyped, etc., there is one statistic that you cannot run away from. Google "excess death" and look at the numbers for the last five months versus the historical average. It is clear that during that period there are hundreds of thousands of death in excess of what the historical average would suggest. I fully concede that some of that is due to people not going to the doctor or hospital because of fears over the virus resulting in death from not receiving necessary treatment in a timely manner, but there is still a statistically significant deviation since March. Unless you are willing to suspend all attachment to reality and claim that the keepers of death certificates going back decades have been conspiring to materially under count deaths for decades so that they can make some future president look bad, you cannot hide from this statistic. This is a serious virus, but it is one that completely manageable with simple common sense steps. Wearing a mask does not violate your constitutional rights. Spare me that uninformed nonsense. Even a cursory review of the foundational texts that influenced the founding fathers would quickly disabuse one of such view. The drafters of the constitution and the bill of rights were all firm believers in that the purpose of government is to do what the individual cannot reasonably do for him/herself, such as enforce property rights, provide for the common defense, etc. That is why the powers of the federal government are expressly enumerated to prevent overreach, and further expressly limited by the bill of rights to reinforce this fact. This is the type of collective action problem they would have understood required government intervention, because individually you cannot stop a global pandemic but collectively you can.
