Terry Applegate | On August 10, 2020

If you know the facts about the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, you aren’t very alarmed, you don’t take heroic measures such as always wearing your life-saving equipment (mask) and, you don’t lose a lot of sleep over the virus itself unless you are elderly or, in another high-risk group with a pre-existing condition.

You know that young people hardly ever die from it (only 26 under the age of sixteen out of a total of 103,339 as of June 27, 2020 according to the CDC) and that is why schools are closed.

You know that almost half of the deaths have occurred in nursing homes to the very elderly with extant medical problems and that over 80% of all the deaths have been people aged 65 or over (again according to the CDC) and that is why some states are still sending virus patients to nursing homes.

Why then are Americans terrified of the virus?

Why do they turn away with a look of horror if you aren’t wearing a mask and they encounter you turning an aisle?

Why are people wearing masks in their cars?

Why are people wearing a mask when they are out walking…alone?

Why are governors re-shutting down economies when deaths are way down?

Well, I finally found the answer to these and lots of other virus-policy questions.

It is found here.

This is a poll taken of 1,000 Americans taken July 10 -15, 2020 with a margin of error of +/- 3.3%.

Here is what they found:  Americans think that 20% of the country has had the virus and that 9% (half of those that get it, in their minds) HAVE DIED from it.

You read that right, your friends, your neighbors, your relatives think that almost 1/10 of the country have bit the dust from the virus!

Of course, total deaths have just recently pushed north of 150,000 or, about 1 in 2,000, nowhere close to 1 in 10!

No wonder everyone is living in terror, I would be too if I thought that 30 million (9% of our population) Americans had died from the virus in the last half year.

No wonder they applaud governors when they mandate mask-wearing and stay-at-home orders, after all, they are protecting us and otherwise we would die.

So, you see people are acting rationally, they just are reasoning from wildly incorrect data.

But, how can people believe that the actual death rate is 225 times the actual confirmed death rate (CDC again)?

How can the perception be that 45% of the people who have gotten the virus (20%/9%) die from it when the reality is maybe, on the high side, 0.64% (https://osf.io/wdbpe/) or, 70 times less than they have been led to believe?

So, I have answers to my questions raised earlier but, confound it, now I have a different set of questions.

How can a population of hundreds of millions of people be so completely misled, be so absolutely wrong?

Who could have deceived them so thoroughly, through what mechanisms?

Why aren’t our leaders and, the press, stepping up and setting the record straight, talking about the real numbers and demonstrating the truth?

Why instead are they acting and talking as if what the public fallaciously believes is true when they know it isn’t?

Are the American people really so dumb as to base their lives on figures that 225 times higher than reality?

Are they so lazy as to not find out what the truth is (it is readily accessible) on such an important matter?

Should the terrified Americans (you can tell who they, those that believe 1/10 of their friends and relations have gone to the great beyond) – they are wearing masks – be allowed to vote?

In other words, do we really think people who have demonstrated a complete lack of ability to discern the truth on the most important public policy issue of the day possess the mental acuity to make reasoned voting decisions?

If we do, then we should send them all a ballot in the mail.

Terry Applegate

Terry Applegate writes from Utah in the winter and Michigan in the summer. He is CEO of Applegate Insulation, serves on the board for Citizens for Traditional Values, Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers Association and the European Theological Seminary and is married to Val with three children and four grand-children.