This archive report was first published on 20 July 2020.
On Twitter, Alex Berenson's relentless and unempathetic approach to discussing COVID-19 has raised eyebrows. In July 2020, when a marijuana policy figure he'd clashed with died, Berenson tweeted a Latin phrase about not speaking ill of the dead, rather than offering condolences. When he learned that Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie had lost his grandfather to the virus, Berenson continued arguing, writing that he too had dead grandparents and 'the world didn't stop for them either.'
This coldness about death is at the heart of Berenson's policy view: that the US should accept the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans from the virus, and that the social and economic damage of the lockdowns is wasted. In his booklet, he projects a worst-case scenario of an extra 600,000 American deaths, a number roughly in sync with other projections.
According to Berenson, the coronavirus will have 'little if any impact' on the overall number of Americans who die, describing it as a mere 3% bump. This math is at the heart of any serious argument about the trade-offs between the disease and the lockdowns, even if you accept the global public health consensus that lockdowns are effective.
However, even public figures who oppose lockdowns rarely say that out loud. President Trump isn't shrugging off deaths, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom Berenson cheered when he resisted locking down, doesn't wave off daily death tolls that have sometimes climbed past 100.
The pain caused by the lockdowns is real, too. And that means that Berenson, and others like him, will keep finding an audience.
