Read on Twitter
I often think about an accidental truth hidden in this tweet by Dan Hannan, who's suddenly topical because he's received a life peerage.
The truth is that, no, Coronavirus hasn't (yet) killed those of us who read it when it was initally written and are still reading it now. We can afford to assume the tweet's dismissive tone towards those the virus killed.
That strikes me as a big moral problem because there's another group of people - including, possibly, some who nodded along with Hannan at the time whom it has killed. Yet, of course, we don't hear from them.
Their rights suffered the most terrible violation but, apart from the advocacy of surviving loved ones, they've dropped out of the conversation. The debate has a terrible survivor bias.
I think the absence of the dead from the debate can make us cavalier - it can't be that bad because it hasn't killed me.
I hope in the year to come we'll try to correct our thinking on this point a little.
So thank you Dan Hannan for an accidentally thought-provoking tweet.
End.
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