Thread by @VABVOX

THREAD:
If 1 in 500 people have died of COVID, close friends and family members *of someone* *have* died of it. This is a shockingly off-key comment from Ross Douthat, who had COVID himself. Yet the quote in the piece is much worse than this as he says no one*he*knows died.
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https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1439341949857697794

This is a badly--even bizarrely--argued piece that contends that the number of dead is a Goldilocks number: just right. Not as many as some predicted, but enough to be a big number. Douthat--who is much smarter than this piece--says that mostly people in nursing homes died.
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And while Douthat says it's not good that so many people (he forgets about disabled people) died in nursing homes, but...well...shrug. Douthat seems not to know any POC. POC--young folks--have died disproportionately. And even though he had it,he also shrugs off #LongCovid.
3/🧵

The argument here--the entirety of the argument--is that only some old people died, so, shrug. It could have been worse. Yes--it COULD have been worse. But it is actually pretty ghastly. 680k people DID die. And children did die. And so have people in their 20s through 50s.
4/🧵

Douthat has a new book out in 6wks on his personal battle with chronic disabling illness. He is a religious man. He's often a generous man. Which makes this awful op-ed more so. Because he mentions none of the gutting reality of the COVID battle and fails its victims. Badly.
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