Here is the letter The Washington Post:
Editor:
If you’re looking for a reason why so many people trust legacy media today, check out yesterday’s report by Dan Diamond, “As the virus continues to resurface, Covid is still the leading cause of death.He said.
Here, obviously, is surprising and alarmingly important news.
But when you click on a link to the Peterson-KFF health system monitoring site Mr. Almaz used the report to explain that Covid was the leading cause of death, and the data confirmed that it stopped on October 31.St2022. That’s six months ago – a long stretch in the Covid-19 era.
Even more disturbingly, the same health system tracking page shows this tidbit:
So far, Covid-19 is the No. 3 cause of death in the US in 2022 (as of September). However, almost half of all Covid-19 deaths in 2022 occurred in January and February.
So not only is the data used by Mr. Diamond, which reports that Covid is the leading cause of death in April 2023, but ends in October 2022, the site it relies on for this data has a disproportionately high number in 2018. 2022 covid deaths occurred in January and February – evidence of reduced covid lethality in 2022. This trend continues till 2023.
In short, Mr. Diamond’s own source does not support the claim that Covid is the leading cause of death, nor does it support the idea that Americans today are foolish to stop cowering in fear of the virus.
best regard
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
And
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
