Nicholas Kristof notes in his Sunday column how much of a toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken:
- More Americans have died from Covid-19 in nine months than in combat over four years in World War II. The virus death toll exceeds 292,000, compared with 291,557 American World War II battle deaths.
- We’re sometimes now losing more Americans from the virus in a single day than perished in the Pearl Harbor attacks or 9/11. But contrary to viral memes floating around the internet, the virus is not creating the “deadliest days” in American history: In October 1918, in a much smaller population, more than 6,000 Americans died of the Spanish flu on average each day for the entire month.
- If American states were treated as countries, the places with the highest per capita coronavirus death rates would be: Slovenia, South Dakota, North Dakota, Bulgaria, Iowa, Bosnia, Hungary, Croatia, Illinois, North Macedonia, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, San Marino.
These are trying times, Kristoff acknowledges, made worse, I’d add, by personal freedom supplanting personal responsibility as an organizing principle on the right:
Historically, national crises have always stressed the social fabric. The plague led to attacks on Jews and poor harvests set off witch trials. Today as well, too many politicians and ordinary Americans disdain science or any iota of personal responsibility, polarizing the country and misleading fellow citizens.
Kristof is being diplomatic. We know who he means. Misleaders like congressman-elect Bob Good of Virginia, for example: “This looks like a group of people that gets it, that this is a phony pandemic. It’s serious virus, but it’s a virus. It’s not a pandemic.”
As if his behavior would change one iota if he believed this is a pandemic.