As is its yearly custom, Politifact has released its "lie of the year". 2020's big whopper belongs not to a single lie or even a single person but to "Everyone who downplayed the covid virus this past year." As Politifact explains:
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/dec/16/lie-year-coronavirus-downplay-and-denial/
"The "award" goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality. ... [T]he coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 in the United States, a crisis exacerbated by the reckless spread of falsehoods. ...As the virus was spreading, so was the message to downplay it. "
That certainly is damning criticism. Every single person who has questioned coronavirus is personally responsible for each and every single death from the virus. Anyone who bought into Trump's lies on the virus bears the weight of 300,000 dead Americans who would be alive today...but for the continued obstinence of the deniers, who are as irresponsible as those who dispute the Holocaust occured. And, if the sheer numbers don't sway you, there are some very sad stories at the beginning of the article to remind you that you truly are a heartless (insert epithet here) for continuing to dispute the only possible narrative. As someone who has written almost a dozen articles disputing the official claims, that would put a very heavy weight on my shoulders.
Unfortunately, in accusing deniers, such as myself, of being puppets of a grand Trump led conspiracy to kill people (and here I thought I was a Trump critic), Politifact is not above fudging the facts itself to make its case. This makes me more than a little skeptical about taking the deaths of more than a quarter million people upon my shoulders and flaggelating myself for my heresy.
I have repeatedly disputed the coronavirus numbers, and I stand by those critiques. Yet, what has frustrated me personally for over 8 months now, is that such critiques have had zero impact on public policy, or on the adherents of the lockdown movement. No matter what argument is raised, the random, ineffectual policies continue unabated. Since politifact's entire premise is that we deniers have killed people by disputing the hard cold facts....there is one simple question they must answer: where have we actually succeeded in influencing policy? This is not a minor point. If I, or anyone on my side, is to be blamed, one must show that my opinion actually caused a death, let alone 300,000.
And this is where the Politifact article falls short. While conservatives and libertarians like myself cried that the virus was exaggerated, states instituted lockdown policies over our objection. People were sequestered in their homes for months while we ranted and raved. Public spaces were shut down, businesses were closed. Some states arrested people or ticketed them for being outside of their home for non-essential business. The lockdown forces won; we were ignored.
While Trump belittled the use of masks, mask mandates went into effect in 46 states. Every poll done shows that more than 80% of the public wears masks religiously. Though people like myself pointed out the lack of science behind the social distancing guidelines (a fact the CDC would admit four months later), they still remain in effect in virtually every store in the country, despite having no scientific basis for their existence. Despite cancer killing more Americans every year than covid has killed world wide, hospitals denied chemotherapy to cancer patients, as well as transplants, and other similar "elective" procedures. The list goes on.
Put bluntly, those of us who question covid have proven completely ineffectual in stopping a single restriction from the lockdown forces. Because of the relentless media barriage, we are ignored by everyone. So, if we didn't stop anything...how are we responsible for the 300,000 Americans who have died, almost all of whom perished after the "emergency" measures went into place? Since Politifact says that the lies we told must've "altered reality", meaning to change the way things work...these "lies" clearly fail to meet their own test.
Taking this into account, Politifact's claims that deniers are responsible for even a fraction of the 300,000 deaths is a far bigger lie than any of the claims they mention in their article. It is the last desperate gasp of the lockdown forces in trying to blame the failure of their policies on the ineffectual opposition they faced. It simply cannot be that their policies didn't work...they were sabotaged! Why explain the shortcomings of your approach, when you can simply blame an external enemy after all?
Of course, one could more thoroughly fact check Politifact's blatantly biased accusations. (Their claim that the author of a piece couldn't get her medicine is disproven by the article they link to, for example.) But when your central point is so ridiculously wrong, and deliberately deceptive, why should we quibble on minutae? Politifact should nominate itself for lie of the year, and spare itself the embarassment.
