Democide is death by government and was the number one cause of death worldwide in the 20th Century. Political scientist R. J. Rummel revived and redefined the term democide as:
The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
...
Political mass murder grows increasingly common as political power becomes unconstrained. At the other end of the scale, where power is diffuse, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity.
The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom. Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth. Power kills, absolute Power kills absolutely.
Democide - Medium
This was absolutely mainstream in the academic literature in the second half of the C20th. It is the case that totalitarian regimes engage in culling to maintain their power so it's not something that is unthinkable or uncommon. The C20th was littered with incidents of it.
It's important that routines and structures to avoid such occurrences are maintained to stop their recurrence. It's too early to say that the COVID affair is a deliberate policy or the product of an opportunistic embezzlement of an atrophying polity. We should be careful of the mediocre when elevated beyond their gift, they play dirty. Transparency, investigation and accountability cannot be permitted to be hamstrung or obfuscated.
Rummel's entry in Wikipedia is below. He was firmly in the liberal democratic camp. For example, Rummel popularised democratic peace theory - that democracies seldom if ever go to war with each other - something that everyone is bound to have heard of. He was no minor or fringe academic.
Rudolph Joseph Rummel (October 21, 1932 – March 2, 2014)
[1] was an American
political scientist and professor at the
Indiana University,
Yale University, and
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He spent his career studying data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination. Contrasting
genocide, Rummel coined the term
democide for murder by government, such as the
genocide of indigenous peoples and
colonialism,
Nazi Germany, the
Stalinist purges,
Mao Zedong's
Cultural Revolution, and other
authoritarian,
totalitarian, or undemocratic regimes, coming to the conclusion that
democratic regimes result in the least democides.
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Rummel
Here's an old about piece on him from the University of Hawaii that's still on it's site.
RUDOLPH J. RUMMEL, b, 1932, BA and MA from the University of Hawaii (1959, 1961); Ph.D. in Political Science (Northwestern University, 1963); Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Omicron Delta Kappa. Taught at Indiana University (1963), Yale (1964-66), University of Hawaii (1966-1995); now Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Hawaii. Received numerous grants from NSF, ARPA, and the United States Peace Research Institute. Frequently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (see
here). Received the Susan Strange Award of the International Studies Association for having intellectually most challenged the field in 1999; the Lifetime Achievement Award 2003 from the Conflict Processes Section, American Political Science Association; and the 2007 The International Association of Genocide Scholars' Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to the Field of Genocide and Democide Studies and Prevention.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/PERSONAL.HTM
