COVID hysteria and the truly misinformed / Follow-up: Nazis XIVa

In Nazis XIVa, I noted:

(Similarly, I recently heard that some believed in around 600 thousand COVID deaths. No, not in the U.S.—in Sweden! No wonder that some are in a state of great fear of COVID… In Sweden, this would amount to around 6 % of the population (or around 20 million, if applied to the U.S.). The last real number that I saw was 18 thousand—or less than a 33rd of this overblown estimate.)

Today, I encountered a very interesting discussion of media failures during the COVID era—including a few more data points on the above:

In the summer of 2020, 1,000 citizens from several countries were polled on the pandemic. Below is the mean percentage that the sampling showed people thought the COVID-19 death tallies were after three months of the pandemic:

Country	Population Percent that died from COVID-19	That Absolute Population Number	Actual Number of COVID-19 deaths at the time
United States	9%	29,700,000	132,000
United Kingdom	7%	4,830,000	48,000
Sweden	6%	600,000	6,000
France	5%	3,300,000	33,000
Denmark	3%	174,000	580

(I note that the early time of the poll moves my original semi-current 18 thousand actual deaths down to a mere 6 thousand at the time, increasing the level of exaggeration from roughly 33 to roughly 100. I also note that the article laments how this poll was ignored in the news—which explains why I only heard of the 600 thousand as late as I did.)

Again: No wonder that some are in a state of great fear of COVID.

And, as similar claims seem to hold in other areas: No wonder that the Left manages to be elected, that nuclear power is feared, that pseudo-scientific nonsense about “White Supremacy” and “Patriarchy” is believed, etc., etc., etc.

We truly do need restrictions on the vote to those who (a) have a brain, (b) use it, (c) keep themselves informed.

I also note that this is further confirmation that it is the COVID pushers, not the sceptics, who are the poorly informed (cf. e.g. [1]), and that the overall article supports my claim (cf. [2]) that it is the “I have a bachelor in gender studies and read the paper!” crowd that is the problem—not those who question the papers and actually inform themselves independently.

(As to “Nazis XIVb”, there might be a while before I get around to it. Generally, I am both a little fed up with the topic and have overstrained my fingers with this-and-that, so the reduced rate of publication in the Nazi series is likely to remain reduced.)

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