A error in reasoning about the pandemic that I see a lot lately.

Perfect, that makes a lot more sense. insignificant cause fits much better. Thank you! 

Not winning either way is called a double bind. Its not a fallacy, but is a kind of manipulation tactic that emotional manipulators and control freaks uses on their victims. 

Yeah its strange, its like they fooled themselves into pretending like all the hardships caused by a pandemic are caused by the government and if they can just get the government to stop action on the pandemic or vote whoever out then they can get the hardships to stop. I think its why they "like to play down" the virus and even say its a "hoax" or is just a mild cold in order to justify this anti gov position on it. Their fear of gov is far greater than the fear of covid-19. So I think they tend to ignore the pandemic aspect of it which would actually be the real cause. Gov is suppose to act in situations like this, but they don't want the gov to act on anything other then maybe keeping immigrants out and arresting protesters and criminals. Its like they can only be fearful of a humanoid anthropogenic threat only. Invisible viruses, invisible climate change does not resonate with them. Maybe its too abstract? Maybe they have an ideology where only evil can be within men? I dont know......  

Very strange warlike egocentric fear and paranoia based ideology thats taking over. 

They hate the government, therefore they will find any excuse to blame the government, it is very much a Double Bind, if the government does something the costs are their fault while if they did not do anything the deaths would be their fault; the government cannot win with these people, which is the entire point.

The underlying issue however is 'acceptable losses'.  To a government there is a number of people whose deaths are in fact acceptable in order that some general positive good is carried out or a negative avoided.  The real question is how many people it is acceptable to sacrifice to Covid in order to avoid economic costs and restrictions on freedom.

By reducing mortality, the vaccine has quite nicely thrown a spanner in the works there. 

[To GoblinCookie]

I always found it ironic how people can be chanting anti government rhetoric while waving, honoring, praising, and worshiping the governments flag. 

If you asked them to list how life would be with no government, vs with government they would quickly see how government does more good than bad for their lives. With no government life would be anarchy, wild west, and basically like living as little hunter gatherer tribes in the wild. 

Living like little hunter gatherer tribes but with assault rifles and RPGs.  

A lot of it comes down to ingratitude really.  People take-for-granted the background things they have, stuff like roads, social welfare, sewage systems, public order and so on.  They also feel they have a *right* to those things, so even if they acknowledge they got them from the government, they don't feel anything them because they were only being given what was 'their due'. 

When you feel you have a right to all sorts of things, you do not feel indebted to those who provide them to you.  Thus when there is a cost demanded from you, you are angry and feel the government is indebted *to you*.  Human rights are really part of the problem here, the more rights a person is told by society they are owed, the harder it becomes to elicit gratitude by providing those rights. 

You don't feel grateful for not being murdered because you feel you have a right to life.  I cannot make you feel grateful for only providing you what you consider your due.