So the first thing I do when ‘discussing’ something with a conservative is check the facts. Their facts are always wrong. They never accept that – just find something else to come back to me with.
So let’s make a start.
HIV/Aids
You said that in 2005, 36 million people had died of Aids or had caught HIV. You are wrong. Actually, people have been treated for HIV and Aids since 1980. Since 1990, 75.7 million have become infected world-wide. . If we average that figure out by 20 years, it means 3.7 million have become infected with HIV per year. By 2019, 690,000 people had died of Aids during the past 20 years. That works out at 34,500. This is globally.
https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet
Now compare that with Covid-19.
99,267,456 people have been infected in one year globally. Of that number, 2,128,100 have died.
So let’s do some comparisons. About 3.7 million people per year get infected with HIV and about 34,500 die of Aids every year. That is negligible compared to the nearly 100 million that have been infected with Covid-19 in a year and the more than 2 million who have died from it.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?
Flu Pandemic 1968 = 1 million. You are right here. 1 million died. However, that is still less than half of the number that have died from Covid-19. Also, most people recover from Flu – they don’t remain cripples for the rest of their lives because they have Long Covid.
Asian Flu
You say 2 million people died between 1956 and 1958. Actually, it was 1.1 million, and that was over a two-year period. Double that number has died within half that period with Covid-19.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html
I’m accustomed to research, sweetie. Done lots of it in my life. In fact, I do it all the time. I check every single fact six times over, and that’s why I know you’re talking nonsense.
Let me explain something to you. If we don’t have lockdown, and if we don’t wear masks, and if we don’t social distance, with an R-1 exponential spread, it takes exactly 32 days for everybody in the world to be infected.
If you’re saying lockdown has failed dramatically, I disagree. China did it the right way. Their economy is now back on track. The USA has NOT had a fucking lockdown. They’ve had a pretend-lockdown. In South Africa, I was in a ‘lockdown.’ For 7 weeks, we were not allowed to leave our homes except to shop for food and get medical assistance. If we walked out of our house and we had the virus, we were immediately charged with attempted murder. That is called a lockdown. Of course, business got its knickers in a knot and put pressure on the government, and now we’re back to square one.
Oh, yippee!
ROTFLMAO.
With respect, America is already a failed and destroyed society. 25% of your population have chronic (life-long) mental illness. Another 25% have episodic mental illness.
https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm#
This was published in 2011 – long before Covid by the Harvard Business Review on America being a failed state.
https://hbr.org/2011/12/is-america-a-failing-statehttps://eand.co/the-battle-for-the-american-mind-18a77fa85f8f
Your society has been destroyed because it is driven by greed, ideas about non-existent gods, laws of attraction, the power of positive thinking, and other bullarkey. Also it’s persistent investment in wars and the military. It has taken on neoliberalism (as did the UK), and the end result are dog-eat-dog societies. My point is that America was already broken long before Covid.
Suicides, Homicides, Addition
The USA has had increasing suicide rates since about 1999. This has nothing to do with Covid-19. It’s just a dog-eat-dog society that drives people mad with despair and stress. Suicides are up between 10% and 13%. Understandable. So, you have to decide whether you want more people to die by Covid-19 or more people to die by suicide. To put that into real figures, there are about 44,000 suicides per year in the USA. If one adds 10%, that brings it to 48,000 in 2020. Compare that to the 410,00 deaths from Covid.
I have always found that when one looks at the detail, it looks very different to the broad picture you and others paint.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States#https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-pandemic-effect-suicide-heightens.html
So you think that Vitamin D fights Covid? Um. It’s summer in South Africa. The last few days (and others), it’s been 42 degrees (nearly 108 degrees F). We are not stuck in our homes or office. Apart from the fact that alcohol stores are closed, we can walk around freely – provided we are wearing masks and social distance. We get lots of sun. Covid-19 has spiked so much in the last few months that we’ve gone back into a Level # lockdown. About 1/3 of South Africans refuse to wear a mask.
Sorry, living in the sun does NOT prevent or cure Covid-19.
Increased weight gain? In the USA? Really, so the people are going from morbidly obese to a bit more morbidly obese. Why weren’t you concerned about the obesity before.
42% of Americans are obese. That was before Covid. I’m willing to bet you weren’t concerned about it then.
https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
Yes, people are losing their jobs. That’s why neoliberalism and libertarianism doesn’t work. Because the function of government is to provide a framework to prevent death and destruction in times of emergencies. The East coped far better than the west.
Certainly Covid-19 has brought high stress, and I have no problem with people who want to work and gallivant doing so. They’re the one’s who are going to die. Be my guest. Go ahead.
Did you know that more conservatives are dying than liberals? Trump didn’t realize his voters were dying off.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/how-coronavirus-could-upend-2020-battlegrounds-204708https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-00977-7
Domestic Violence is rocketing.
Well, yes, shitty men with guns and immature minds do batter women. My sister was stuck with her boyfriend for six months under the lockdown and border closure. He couldn’t fly back to England. He has drunk alcohol every day of his life and smoked weed. He couldn’t get hold of that at all, so he went through withdrawal. And he never once hit or or had a fight with her. It’s the difference between civilized men and uncivilized people. Civilized people don’t’ get violent in difficult situations. It says something that in both the UK and the US people are so stressed that they cannot live together without taking their hatred, anger, and frustration out on others. That started long before Covid-19, by the way.
Seriously, you think schools are there to keep children away from their parents in order to prevent them from being abused. What sort of society do you live in? Where are your values? Teachers are perfectly correct – it is too dangerous to teach. Why the hell should they put their lives on the line? That’s not what they signed up for?
I’m not sure how many teachers and professors have died in the USA, but a lot have died in both South Africa and the UK. Do you honestly think that children missing a year of school in order to prevent further deaths is so terrible? What sort of humanity do you have that you think a year of school is that urgent? They can learn the following year. Your children’s well-being is being sacrificed by sending them to school in a very dangerous situation.
THERE HAS NOT BEEN A SINGLE DISEASE IN THE PAST 100 YEARS THAT HAS SPREAD AS QUICKLY AS COVID-19.
“But you know why you are doing this, you already said it.”
Not sure what you are getting at. I merely pointed out that, from a virological point of view, the only way the virus is going to disappear is to into a complete lockdown.
Yes, you are conservative. You think exactly like a conservative. You don’t get your facts straight.
I have been manipulated to be scared? Who is manipulating me? Oh, Lordie, you try telling that to anyone who has known me for the past 70 years. They will laugh at you. Please feel free to join my facebook page and make that comment.
I have given you logical reasons and evidence.
This is my final response. It took me a few hours to write, and I really don't care what you think.
