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Yes, you were throwing out possibilities but you bunched them altogether in a way that made them all sound like inevitable consequences of covid19, not making a serious distinction between the consequences of covid19 and the consequences of our responses to covid19. That was my view and I apologize if I read it wrong.
Ascribing a death to covid19 without a positive test: there is potential for errors here (I have pointed out the issues with PCR testing elsewhere), but I will accept the 300K for now. Moreover, one of the interesting things that we see in states where deaths are provided both by date of occurrence is that some deaths are classified as covid19 deaths 3-4 months after they occurred. No one has provided a good explanation for this, but it is just weird.
Masks are bad: Mask are definitely being oversold by their supporters. I don't call them bad so much as I think the mandates don't have good evidence supporting them either as source control or as protection - I am happy with recommendations to wear a mask if there are no other options and you are sick or need to protect yourself. I have shown that the CDC has gone out of its way to use bad evidence to justify the effectiveness of mask mandates in Kansas. They did similarly poor analysis in Arizona. And the fact that you still haven't responded to the silliness of Robert Redfield saying that masks would end the pandemic is telling. Masks have areas of use where they are likely helpful, but as a population wide measure for pandemic control, the effect of mandates in the data is much smaller than many of its advocates pretend they are and is possibly negative.
Restrictions are bad: Again, I never said this. The question again is what is the evidence that supports the restrictions. You may not have kids, but the question of whether schools should be closed has come up. There were mandates in California to close playgrounds - again, what is the evidence for that? I am personally okay with restrictions on the maximum size of large indoor gatherings/events during an ILI pandemic, for example. In those environments, transmission from one person to many people is possible in a short window of time and this can tax the medical system. My issue isn't with restrictions, my issue is with restrictions that are enforced by law that have a very poor evidence base supporting them. Telling people to close pubs by 10pm or stupid stuff like that. Or wearing masks while jogging to Timbuktu across the Sahara desert.
Only old people die: Again, not true. I said that the deaths don't affect life expectancy in most populations. Therefore, most of the people who are dying already had a high probability of dying (the impact of covid19 is felt most heavily in nursing homes). This doesn't mean only old people get affected by it or die from it, but that most people who die from it are close to the end of life in general. Here are the covid19 statistics
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
This doesn't mean their death is trivial, but it calls into question all kinds of things about public policy.
If people get sick it is because they eat too much sugar: I have pointed out that most of the comorbidities associated with a higher risk of death from covid19 are all tied to metabolic syndrome, which is a syndrome driven largely by the processed food diet in America that causes heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, cancer etc. The two primary drivers of this syndrome in the American diet are the excess consumption of seed oils (too much Omega 6/linoleic acid) and too much carbohydrates). I can see that it is a stretch to most people to argue that limiting the consumption of both would improve your health and reduce your risk for covid19, but I think the view that these foods are not helping our health will become more mainstream with time.
Fox and Newsmax: I don't watch either. I have watched bits and clips of various things on Youtube but watch more Time/CNN than Fox for coverage. and I didn't even know Newsmax existed until after the election. Have never watched it and have no interesting in doing so.
I respect your professional basis. What I don't get is why you think it is all that matters. Do you think your professional basis allows you to determine whether it is best for kids to go to school or not during the pandemic? Do you think intelligent laymen have no chance of reading and making sense of statistical studies (I have an engineering degree, which means I have done more mathematics than many people who have advanced science degrees)? I don't pretend to know every detail of what is required to run a large clinical trial (my wife does but that is besides the point) but if one remembers how all this mess with covid19 started - there were originally projections that the US would see death tolls as high as 2 million if it did nothing coming from the Imperial College models as adapted to the US. I got into this when I saw Michael Levitt's position that Covid19 was closer to a 1 month of excess death than 1 year of excess death. While most people say he was wrong on this or that detail, I have found his overall assessment of things closer to what is happening that many of the experts like Osterholm.
My main issue is that a lot was done that didn't try to take into account its impact on those people who couldn't advocate for themselves. Children, small business owners, students etc. Bad government was a part of it for sure. I suspect that in a year or two, we might find out something abojut covid19 that was never publicly disclosed that justifies all this. because right now, I am comfused when I look at the data and the measures we have taken. And I still don't understand why using the science that Disneyworld and Florida are open, but Disneyland and California are closed.
