Amazon refuses to sell book on Covid-19 and lockdowns

The site I posted indicates that there are almost 20 tests in the US for every new case, while there was only one test for every three cases in Brazil. Probably the latter ratio is not very representative without averaging over a longer period of time. However, it seems clear from the total test counts that Brazil has had more than an order of magnitude fewer tests per capita than in the US, and I am reasonably certain that the numbers indicate they are overwhelmed and the reported cases are the ones that they cannot attribute to anything else, so probably undercounted.

Here's something to think about - total cases for the world were up about 2% yesterday. US cases were up a little over 20K. If US cases were increasing at the average rate of the whole world, it would have been closer to 40K. Similar story in Europe, but more so; there more than half of the new cases are in Russia. So considering Western Europe, the epidemic has been greatly reduced and is growing elsewhere.

What's happening very quickly is that Asia and South America are now having a disproportionate amount of the new cases, even with China, Japan and S. Korea reporting almost none. And the spread is happening in countries where the testing capacity is relatively low.

If the lockdowns had had no effect, I can't see how to explain the dramatic shift over the last month in where the new cases are.

The general reaction of authorities to the epidemic seems to me very similar to an immune reaction. You have a strong initial reaction to an infection, and then it moderates. Earlier is better, but either too much or too little can kill you. Once it is slowed, you can go back to a relatively normal metabolism.

I honestly can't see the censorship happening here; I can only see the book has been rejected for self-publishing on KDP and an author with a clear political agenda is using this thing, negligible per-se, to push it even further.

For example, on his twitter feed he writes in response to another user with the nickname "Libraries Aren't Neutral": "Do you think non-leftist patrons have a place on your library?".

This is to me the hallmark of a person in bad faith that is using a minor nuisance (just use another publisher!) to push ideas to a group of persons that will stop to first impressions and shout censorship.

The remark on "libraries not neutral = libraries leftist" is also terrible:

- even if a leftist librarian decides not to sell your book, you have all right-wing librarians that will sell you, so why the fuss?

- it creates the strange association "left = lockdown : right = freedom"; this ignores lots of things, like how Sweden, a social democracy often the target of attacks from this political side, had pretty good results with no lockdown; or how in many countries, after initial disagreements, both political parts convened on the necessity of the lockdown because the situation granted it, but they were also quick to raise it when possible.

The one thing I have no respect for is the fact that these persons screaming censorship ignore that serious debate around lockdown measures is effectively happening, far from their cospirationist pamphlets; it's a measure with an heavy toll on economics and physical an emotional well-being of the population, and everyone would hate to enforce it again; however, at least here in Italy, we have the feeling things would have gotten terribly dire were it not for the 2 months of lock-down; we had now 30 days of reopenings, with only a few cautions like using masks in closed spaces, and the situation seems mostly in control.

Of course it's only a feeling: at the moment nobody I know of has proof that the lockdown was the only way to stop contagion; but I can't avoid being extremely skeptical of the raising movement of people absolutely certain that lockdown is a no-go in every circumstance, because I have absolutely no idea how they got the data and the insight to come to this conclusion so quickly when many are still counting bodies.