The zero-risk western society

The Spanish flu of 1918 killed 20 million people, the Modern Plague of 1894–1903 killed 10 million, the Asian flu of 1957–58 killed 2 million — the list goes on. The HIV/AIDS epidemic that began in 1960 continues to the present day, with the greatest infection rates recorded in the 1980s; thus far it is estimated to have killed 39 million people, while about 37 million people are living with HIV thanks to therapeutic drugs, but it’s worth nothing that treatment for HIV/AIDS was not available until 1987. And yet none of these public-health emergencies generated anything approximating the current government response to COVID-19. As of this writing, the total number of COVID-related deaths worldwide stands at 2.8 million, with 132.5 million cases reported and about 106 million infected people having fully recovered. This puts the current average case-fatality ratio at 2.1 percent of those infected (unevenly distributed across different countries and age groups), and when measured against the world population the 2.8 million COVID-related deaths represent 0.03 percent of the total. I mention these numbers not to make light of the tragic impact of each individual loss of life but to take a broader view of the scope of the pandemic versus the impact that the measures to combat it have had across our societies, especially the massive loss of GDP, destruction of small businesses, the unraveling of our educational system with the impact falling predominantly on the young, social pathologies, including surging alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence. Again, as with any public policy decision, the course of action must be measured against the opportunity cost and the likelihood of success — and the now regnant “culture of lockdowns” points decisively to excessive opportunity cost versus apparently only a marginal impact when it comes to reducing the infection rate, as the decline in the rate of infection last spring and summer could just as well rest on seasonal factors and the virus’s having not yet mutated as it could on lockdowns, social distancing, and masks.