I had an argument with a NDP-supporting friend about the lockdown. He said it was callous for me to do a cost-benefit analysis on life. I pointed out that a lot of suicides and opioid overdose deaths were caused by lockdowns. He said that suicide and opioid overdose deaths are not as high as COVID. I'm pretty fucking sure that suicide is up there. Suicide is #2 for young people pre-COVID. And that was actually the argument he made to me, "suicide and opioid overdoses were a problem pre-COVID."

But then why are we mobilizing so much of our resources and restricting our civil liberties to deal with COVID and not mobilizing against suicide and opioid addiction? Where was this concern for suicide and opioids? So many people every year die due to poverty (and poverty got worse after lockdowns). And society has said time and time again that we can't afford to house all those homeless people. Meanwhile life expectancy for a homeless person is like 49. Life expectancy for autistic adults is like 52,53. People who have mental illness, cognitive disabilities, etc. have suffered for so long. And we can't afford to send all those opiate addicts to rehab. But somehow we have the money for COVID, which killed only 0.0723% of Americans (and that is a very liberal accounting of COVID deaths. It's a died with COVID stat).

Honestly if I was Jagmeet Singh, I would be rubbing my hands over the COVID thing. Because if Justin Trudeau can justify a $400+ billion deficit on COVID, something that literally killed only 0.0273% of Canadians max (died with COVID remember) Jagmeet Singh could totally justify running up a deficit for UBI and subsidized housing and make the case that far more Canadians die of poverty than COVID.

If the Liberal government is going to justify running up huge deficits to save 0.0273% of Canadians, they can't argue against universal basic NEETBux and subsidized NEETPads for all at this point. A ton of lives would be saved after all if you gave every unemployed person a Yang Cheque and subsidized housing capped at 30% of their Yang Cheque. And make it conditional on taking the vaccine. And they can take your Yang Cheque away via a Black Mirror-esque social credit system if you post unPC views online. I mean if you're going to say "you can't put money above lives bigot!" that's the next logical step right? Since poverty kills way more people than COVID.