COVID-19 In Five States, Revisited

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

September 27, 2020

I haven’t written much about the Wuhan virus lately, because once it became clear that COVID posed a modest threat at most, and my own life returned to normal, I lost interest. At this point, it seems that COVID is more a political than a medical or scientific phenomenon.

Several months ago, I wrote a series of posts about COVID in the five Upper Midwestern states. The comparisons seemed useful because the states are similar in many respects, but their responses to the Wuhan epidemic were very different. Now that more water has gone over the dam, it is a good time to revisit those comparisons.

These are the currently reported rates of “COVID deaths” for the Upper Midwestern states–again, bearing in mind that a “COVID death” is, in most if not all jurisdictions, the death of someone who probably had COVID, regardless of what actually killed him or her.

Minnesota: 0.00036
Wisconsin: 0.00022
Iowa: 0.00040
North Dakota: 0.00025
South Dakota: 0.00023

A few observations come immediately to mind. The first is that a disease with a fatality rate that begins with 0.000 is quite minor. It is remarkable that we have twisted our entire society and economy out of shape, devastating the lives of tens if not hundreds of millions, over this flu bug.

(Snip)