Thread by @AlexandraErin

Constantly amazed and appalled by the narrative on the right that covid shutdowns are "because of" x number deaths.

"We shut down for 180,000 deaths and most of those people had co-morbidities!"

"We shut down for 180,000 deaths but more people die from ____."

We didn't shut down because of the deaths that have happened and are happening; where would the logic be in that?

It's not a national moment of economic silence to mourn them, and we're definitely not trying to get those people back somehow.

We shut down to prevent more deaths

However many people die each year from car crashes... that's the number *with* normal driving. It doesn't go up *more* each week that we have people driving. The risk of driving is relatively steady. It doesn't stack up upon itself as we drive.

If we had ten times as many infections, we'd have... at minimum... ten times as many deaths. Very possibly more because of hospitals being overwhelmed, but assuming all other things remain equal, that would be one million, eight hundred thousand people dead... "with covid".

See, because Republicans live in a fairytale world powered by magic, they say the magic words "with covid" which is a powerful spell that protects them from caring if a few hundred thousand or million people die and that they or someone they care about may be next.

"If the virus had been allowed to spread ten times as fast, almost two million people in this country would be dead from covid already."

"WITH COVID, you mean. Almost two million people dead WITH COVID."

See the difference? Of course not. There isn't one. Dead is dead.

We never actually had a proper, nationwide, coast-to-coast shutdown with proper government support and if we had we'd be in better shape right now economically, health-wise, in every measure.

But the shutdowns we had reduced the spread and saved lives.

But any time the right talks about the shutdowns, they talk about them in terms of how many people died, and amazingly they're not arguing that the high death toll proves the shutdowns were pointless, they argue that the death toll is *so low* it makes the shutdowns pointless.

"We shut down and only 180,000 people died? That's hardly anyone at all. That's not nearly enough people to justify shutting down. Why aren't we shutting down for everything else that kills 1,000 people a day?"

If they were arguing that it's an unacceptably high death toll that proves the shutdowns were a failure, they'd have a point... not quite the point they think they have, but there would at least be some truth to the underlying premises.

But their premise is that the shutdowns were a response to deaths, not a preventative measure, and because of that they have to argue that the unnecessary and preventable deaths of almost two hundred thousand and counting is negligible. Diddly squat. Not worth considering.

And I don't know if this is more a case of them glomming onto whatever perspective supports their argument, or a more a case of not being able to understand a measure that is genuinely preventative and not performative and/or a power grab, or what.

(NB: I'm not asking.)