David Brooks cannot help himself. When faced with the starkest contrast of life versus death, his programmed brain defaults to “both sides.” Witness today (sorry, won’t link):
Rush Limbaugh and others on the right thinks the lockdown is a Democratic plot to get President Trump. When the governors of Georgia and Florida opened up a bit, many commentators on the left treated them as if they were serial killers -— as if what they were doing was an obvious atrocity. In truth, the people of Georgia and Florida are not worse off than before, and there’s evidence they’re actually better off, at least so far.
Clearly, he does not read Daily Kos, or he would know from Alan Austin’s excellent diary, Florida Deaths mount daily with thousands dying needlessly:
If Florida had taken the same precautions as Australia and those other developed countries, it is reasonable to expect infection and death rates would be comparable. That is, deaths below 5.6 per million. Simple algebra yields the result that 6.6 per cent were arguably inevitable, but 93.4 per cent were preventable.
That means 1,752 of those who have died would still be with us had the USA and Florida taken the same preventative measures as Australia and other comparable places. And 934 of the next 1,000 who are doomed to depart will do so needlessly.
So no, they’re not “better off.” The malignant, idiot governors who “opened up” GA and FL are serial killers, just like the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I’d say 1,752 needless deaths makes them mass killers, much more prolific than FL man Ted Bundy.
Of course, Brooks couches this in pablum about how “common folk” are behaving oh so civilly, compared with those mean people on twitter. He knows this not from visits to Applebee’s salad bars (which he never could visit anyway), but from Zoom, somehow.
Just another Brooks column — maybe worse than usual, because he combines false both-siderism with false facts, slathered together in phony pop sociology conclusions.
How does the media system hold him in such esteem — giving him an honored place on every Sunday Show, on PBS and all over the place; Enabling him to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars spouting platitudes, half-truths and lies?