How many COVID casualties will Americans accept in order to reopen society? Poll results

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is raging and may be a world-historical event. It has certainly become the center of media and policy attention in many nations. I’ve posted about it and have been researching it constantly.

For this post I’d like to shift focus to another major crisis, one now in its third year. It seems almost cruel to do so, given how deeply many of us are invested in the Ukrainian crisis. And it might seem callous to say “what about that other terrible thing?” Yet I have an obligation to analysis and forecasting. Plus I want to honor hundreds of people responding to a charge I set out a few weeks ago.

To explain: the pandemic continues. As of this morning the world just passed 6 million people dead by COVID-19. Remember that’s a total of official numbers, based on published governmental counts, and therefore likely an undercount by a significant amount. Think 7 or 8 million dead, maybe more — and remember what Daniel Defoe and others have observed about how inured people become to death during a pandemic.

American deaths now stand at 955,135, according to the CDC. That’s certainly an undercount, in part because American stats lag over weekends (which is inexcusable). I’m working on the assumption of 1 million+ US dead as of…