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Although from early March, the Washington Post report to which I here respond is featured today in a banner ad at the Post:
Editor, Washington Post
Editor:
In “More deaths from Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in 2020, report says [2]” (March 2), Tara Bahrampour reports that Marc Cochran blames his wife’s death from Alzheimer’s on “the pandemic.” This statement is misleading, as Mr. Cochran’s own quoted remarks reveal: “I can’t tell you that she wouldn’t have, but I could see a definite demarcation point from the time we shut down to the time she had to go into memory care. One of the things that made her happy was seeing people, smiling at them, laughing with them, hugging them, and when she couldn’t do that . . . she would become agitated.”
Mr. Cochran explicitly blames his wife’s death, not on the pandemic, but on the Covid shut down. The latter is not the same as the former.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030