akuperma,
you don;t need to speculate about “with/from” any more – there are solid numbers of actual deaths by country/state/county over several years that can help you count actual effect of covid. These might indeed conflate deaths from covid and deaths from anti-covid measures (isolation, vaccines, zoom call boredom, speeding on empty roads, work from home marital murders), but these can probably be separated by looking at ages and clear death causes (drugs, murders, car accidents). So, if you have a position to state, you could support them by numbers rather than “your numbers are suspects”
> who were dying of something to begin with
Of course, disregarding life at any age is not a Jewish position. If you want to count years of life, this is already reflected in death and longevity statistics
> federal handouts, which led to inflation (conveniently, after he left office, and for which the Democratic Congress was equally to blame)
Not equally. Trump’s handouts had an economic reason, whether he addressed it optimally or not; Dems just used the crisis to pursue their favorite policies. It is easy to criticize what happened, but you can also compare with what “might have happened”. Without handouts, who knows what economic displacements could have happened.
I just took world bank report on post-covid economy. I looked at GDP relative to 2019 for 12 countries including USA, China, Canada, Israel and large European countries.
In 2020, US was 6th out of 12, right in the middle – 97.2% with 6 countries with very similar results. China was best 102% (to the degree we can trust Chinese numbers). Worst were Canada 95% France 92%, Italy 91% Britain 89%, Spain 89%
In 2021 (relative to 2019), US is 4th (103% – recovered) after China – 1st 110%, Israel and Switzerland 106%.
Spain is 94, Brit 96, Germany, France 99 …
This concludes the time that Trump had influence on. So, it is between average (if you look only at 2020) and above average.
US is 5th in 2022 (106%) and back to 4th for 2023 and projected to 2024 and 2025, so Biden’s policies stayed the course – same slow growth as others (1% per year).
In 2024, the best for 4 years are China 120% and Israel 117%. Switzerland 110%, Sweden 106% like US.
Most European countries are at 100% – that is they are now at 2019 level!