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In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

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Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#11

Post by peepeepoopoo18 »

CobaltFire wrote: post #2

AIER seems to be a Conservative/Libertarian think tank that's anti-climate science, among other stances, including anti-lockdown (what this article is about). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_for_Economi...

HN seems to be a Leftist discussion forum that's anti-economic science, among other stances, including anti-biology.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#13

Post by mcpackieh »

jdlshore wrote: post #9
CWuestefeld wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the fact that somebody opposes something mean that, prima facie, that position must be wrong?

No, but given limited time, it makes sense to evaluate whether a source is ( edit: heavily) biased or a crackpot before spending attention on them.

There's no such thing as unbiased. The pertinent question is whether they're telling truths or lies.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#14

Post by kelnos »

jklinger410 wrote: post #5

> The American Institute for Economic Research educates people on the value of personal freedom, free enterprise, property rights, limited government, and sound money Saved some of you a click hopefully

Big surprise that an organization like this would adopt an anti-lockdown stance.

Not saying they're ultimately wrong, but it's good to know what their biases are in order to put things in context.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#17

Post by somewhat_drunk »

This article immediately claims that the Asian Flu in question was far deadlier than COVID. This is categorically false.

In fact, it's not even close. The article claims 116k US deaths attributable to the Asian flu. Meanwhile, there were 10x that number of excess US deaths during the COVID pandemic.

https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

As others have pointed out, the AIER is a conservative think-tank. I don't know where they're getting their casualty numbers from, but it's not from any reputable source.

This is clearly biased garbage.

Edit: COVID directly caused 1.1 million verified deaths in the USA. We were second in the world in COVID deaths as a percentage of the population.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#19

Post by Tagbert »

mcpackieh wrote: post #7

Besides the economic harm and potential developmental harm induced by closing schools for kids, I think lockdowns did incalculable social harm to society. It gave huge swaths of the population a grudge against the system, a chip on their shoulder that won't go away anytime soon. It burned up goodwill and trust for experts and politicians (who generally didn't have much to spare in the first place.) And coupling this…

There already was a chip on the shoulder of a large number of American and that has been fed and grown by certain media and social channels specifically to undermine trust in institutions and checks on power. The lockdown (that wasn't locked down) was just more fuel on that well-feed fire.

Re: In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, they rejected lockdowns (2021)

#20

Post by sn0wf1re »

guimplen wrote: post #10
jklinger410 wrote: post #5

> The American Institute for Economic Research educates people on the value of personal freedom, free enterprise, property rights, limited government, and sound money Saved some of you a click hopefully

Are any of those things bad by themself or in combination?

Personal freedom can be a bad idea in crisis situations. Selflessness and following procedure can be better for the collective. This is why crisis operators follow checklists rather than giving each individual absolute personal freedom.
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