Read on Twitter
Hi @ostrachan. With respect, I'd like to push back on a few things you say here. https://twitter.com/ostrachan/status/1328413157325410304
It is not true that "99 percent of people" recover from COVID. I think you mean 99 percent *survive*, but even that's iffy, since the case fatality rate changes over time in different circumstances.
But counting the mere fact of survival is a poor measure of this disease's impact. Some number of people struggle with long term illness after passing the critical stage. This can be a debilitating, even disabling illness for some people.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/risk-comms-updates/update-36-long-term-symptoms.pdf?sfvrsn=5d3789a6_2#:~:text=%E2%80%A2%20Most%20people%20with%20COVID,have%20lasting%20health%20effects.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/risk-comms-updates/update-36-long-term-symptoms.pdf?sfvrsn=5d3789a6_2#:~:text=%E2%80%A2%20Most%20people%20with%20COVID,have%20lasting%20health%20effects.
Additionally, the impact of this disease is not evenly spread among the population, as I'm sure you know because this has been widely reported for months. The case fatality rate approaches *30 percent* in the oldest age cohorts. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7518649/
So to dismiss COVID because "99 percent recover" is factually incorrect, insensitive to its impact on the elderly, and, I have to say, pastorally unkind to those who have struggled with this disease (as some members of my extended family have) or lost loved ones to it.
I also want to push back on your characterization of public health mandates as "socialism." Public health regulation is one of the oldest functions of government. It predates socialism by centuries, if not millennia. Just because govt gives an order doesn't make it "socialist."
Some of the restrictions have been unfair and discriminatory; they have rightly been adjudicated through the courts, like for our friends at CHBC.
The fact that the courts function and are vindicating our rights hardly suggests we are being "ruled" or "muzzled."
The fact that the courts function and are vindicating our rights hardly suggests we are being "ruled" or "muzzled."
It also suggests this is still a free country. We are less free, yes--but that is because we live with a disease for which there is, as yet, no cure and not yet a vaccine. That does limit our freedom, but that is a natural limitation, not a tyrannical one.
This is a frustrating situation and we are all tired of it. But it is entirely possible that it has been so drawn out because our governments and our fellow citizens have been, on the whole, too timid, not too overbearing, in fighting this disease.
