Another way to put it: How many Americans in 2018 were clamoring to spend massive amounts of GDP on reaching parity with countries like Peru, Costa Rica, Austri

Another way to put it: How many Americans in 2018 were clamoring to spend massive amounts of GDP on reaching parity with countries like Peru, Costa Rica, Austria, France, South Korea and Japan? Those countries have (respectively) around 1-6 additional years of life expectancy compared to the US[1]. Or, to put it another way: Life expectancy peaked in the US in 2014[2], while it kept rising in most peer countries. That certainly made the news, and something was being done about the root causes of that, but by and large it was being ignored politically. Again, none of this is an argument for or against any particular COVID measures. I'm just pointing out that it's a particularly egregious case of historical blinders & end-of-history thinking to think that human beings as a species can't get used to the relatively small (in a historical context) rise in risk the world has seen in the last couple of years. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... 2. https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peaked-in-2014/ https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-us-life-expectancy-peak...