4 ms·

According to the statistics from Sweden and Germany, 2020 deaths are tracking the same as prior years, and the death spike in Sweden from COVID is about the sam

According to the statistics from Sweden and Germany, 2020 deaths are tracking the same as prior years, and the death spike in Sweden from COVID is about the same as the 2009 Swine flu pandemic. So in regions with reasonably healthy people, its not clear that COVID is actually more deadly than the regular seasonal viruses we have been dealing with for the past few decades. https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...

fbelzile 6y ago
Right, but if deaths are the same even with extra precautions in place, don't you think it would be much worse without?
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Weird assumption. There is new evidence showing masks don't seem to really have that significant an impact on getting infections: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 ..may still prevent transmission based on the new CDC guidelines, but I don't think they based those on any actual studies. Honestly the rules are all dumb, random and arbitrary at this point. People keep yelling "science" when it's really just new superstition.
  - spurgu 6y ago
    Masks, social distancing, restrictions on public events, people working from home, the list goes on.
    - guscost 6y ago
      Balance with missed heart bypasses, cancer screenings, emergency stroke interventions, and increased stress, and interrupted vaccine programs, and alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, and that list goes on too.
      - djsumdog 6y ago
        Very true. I wrote this on the secondary effects a few months back (https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/) and I think people are totally missing all the secondary effects. When cancer detection rates go down, it doesn't mean cancers went down, it means people aren't coming in for their regular mammograms and colonoscopies. 5 months can mean the different between an early treatable cancer with a 5+ year survival rate and a stage 3 malignancy with the survival rate dropping by 1/3. Five years from now, we'll look back and be able to see the massive secondary deaths from cancer, heart disease/obesity (people stuck inside all day), depression/suicide and others. This will not be a time of honor.
        DanBC 6y ago
        They're not missing the secondary effects. There's constant attention on those effects. > Across the world, rates for attempted suicide are growing dangerously amid the continued lockdowns This is incorrect. Realtime monitoring data have not shown an increase yet in deaths by suicide. These are early figures, and we do need to guard against rises in future. But there has not been an increase. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352.full?ijkey=NDYZgh6xGYgX9az&keytype=ref https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352.full?ijkey=NDYZgh6... http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=51861 http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=51861
  - kissiel 6y ago
    I started reading this paper and found this important bits: > During the study period (3 April to 2 June 2020) This is the period where almost all of Europe saw a decline in daily-new-cases, mainly due to people starting to take this thing seriously. And still, the study has shown that masked worked: > The primary outcome occurred in 42 participants (1.8%) in the mask group and 53 (2.1%) in the control group.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    That study was done in Denmark, where national guidelines on social distancing appear to be more uniformly applied & followed than in the US. It may be the case that, properly social distanced, masks add little to protection. However, given lax or non-existing distancing measures in some places in the US masks could make a larger difference. Anecdotally it appears that states with less social distancing & mask usage, on average, are experiencing worse spikes at the moment. Of course the question is whether it's lack of masks and/or distancing that's the cause. Unfortunately, lack of social distancing & lack of mask wearing appear to be closely correlated in the US so it is difficult to disentangle. What we do know for sure is that masks can prevent a certain amount of exhalation droplets, and there are plenty of other studies that point to their efficacy [0]. Given reasonable evidence in one direction, less evidence in the other, but perhaps still a lack of consensus, it seems like taking a very simple step that could save lives is still the prudent & responsible step to take. [0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231v5 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231v... Other decisions on things like which businesses are able to stay open, which closed etc., do seem arbitrary at points. However, if lines have to be drawn somewhere, edge cases close to those lines may always seem inequitable. Personally my main criticism is that we don't have stronger guidelines that deal with more detailed scenarios at the Fed level, that states left to their own devices are often no more consistent, and municipalities are often left to try & figure it out themselves.
vdnkh 6y ago
> During the 15th week of the year, we saw the highest death rate in Sweden this millenium. A total number of 2505 people, 358 a day, passed away. Not since the first week of year 2000 that many people have died in Sweden. The 14th and 16th week of 2020 is third and fourth respectively on that same list. The month of April is the deadliest in Sweden since the 1990s with 10 458 deaths. You have to go back to December 1993, when 11,057 people died, to find a higher figure. At that time, the flu was unusually malignant. If you go past that month, you have to look back to 1918 and the Spanish flu to find a more deadly month.[0] Your interpretation of the data is not correct. [0]https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during-the-pandemic-compared-to-previous-years-mortality/ https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during...
- guscost 6y ago
  Year vs. Month, you are mostly talking past each other.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Given that the year is not yet finished, only one of those analyses makes any sense.

fbelzile 6y ago

Right, but if deaths are the same even with extra precautions in place, don't you think it would be much worse without?

djsumdog 6y ago
Weird assumption. There is new evidence showing masks don't seem to really have that significant an impact on getting infections: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 ..may still prevent transmission based on the new CDC guidelines, but I don't think they based those on any actual studies. Honestly the rules are all dumb, random and arbitrary at this point. People keep yelling "science" when it's really just new superstition.
- spurgu 6y ago
  Masks, social distancing, restrictions on public events, people working from home, the list goes on.
  - guscost 6y ago
    Balance with missed heart bypasses, cancer screenings, emergency stroke interventions, and increased stress, and interrupted vaccine programs, and alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, and that list goes on too.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      Very true. I wrote this on the secondary effects a few months back (https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/) and I think people are totally missing all the secondary effects. When cancer detection rates go down, it doesn't mean cancers went down, it means people aren't coming in for their regular mammograms and colonoscopies. 5 months can mean the different between an early treatable cancer with a 5+ year survival rate and a stage 3 malignancy with the survival rate dropping by 1/3. Five years from now, we'll look back and be able to see the massive secondary deaths from cancer, heart disease/obesity (people stuck inside all day), depression/suicide and others. This will not be a time of honor.
      - DanBC 6y ago
        They're not missing the secondary effects. There's constant attention on those effects. > Across the world, rates for attempted suicide are growing dangerously amid the continued lockdowns This is incorrect. Realtime monitoring data have not shown an increase yet in deaths by suicide. These are early figures, and we do need to guard against rises in future. But there has not been an increase. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352.full?ijkey=NDYZgh6xGYgX9az&keytype=ref https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4352.full?ijkey=NDYZgh6... http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=51861 http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=51861
- kissiel 6y ago
  I started reading this paper and found this important bits: > During the study period (3 April to 2 June 2020) This is the period where almost all of Europe saw a decline in daily-new-cases, mainly due to people starting to take this thing seriously. And still, the study has shown that masked worked: > The primary outcome occurred in 42 participants (1.8%) in the mask group and 53 (2.1%) in the control group.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  That study was done in Denmark, where national guidelines on social distancing appear to be more uniformly applied & followed than in the US. It may be the case that, properly social distanced, masks add little to protection. However, given lax or non-existing distancing measures in some places in the US masks could make a larger difference. Anecdotally it appears that states with less social distancing & mask usage, on average, are experiencing worse spikes at the moment. Of course the question is whether it's lack of masks and/or distancing that's the cause. Unfortunately, lack of social distancing & lack of mask wearing appear to be closely correlated in the US so it is difficult to disentangle. What we do know for sure is that masks can prevent a certain amount of exhalation droplets, and there are plenty of other studies that point to their efficacy [0]. Given reasonable evidence in one direction, less evidence in the other, but perhaps still a lack of consensus, it seems like taking a very simple step that could save lives is still the prudent & responsible step to take. [0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231v5 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109231v... Other decisions on things like which businesses are able to stay open, which closed etc., do seem arbitrary at points. However, if lines have to be drawn somewhere, edge cases close to those lines may always seem inequitable. Personally my main criticism is that we don't have stronger guidelines that deal with more detailed scenarios at the Fed level, that states left to their own devices are often no more consistent, and municipalities are often left to try & figure it out themselves.

vdnkh 6y ago

> During the 15th week of the year, we saw the highest death rate in Sweden this millenium. A total number of 2505 people, 358 a day, passed away. Not since the first week of year 2000 that many people have died in Sweden. The 14th and 16th week of 2020 is third and fourth respectively on that same list. The month of April is the deadliest in Sweden since the 1990s with 10 458 deaths. You have to go back to December 1993, when 11,057 people died, to find a higher figure. At that time, the flu was unusually malignant. If you go past that month, you have to look back to 1918 and the Spanish flu to find a more deadly month.[0] Your interpretation of the data is not correct. [0]https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during-the-pandemic-compared-to-previous-years-mortality/ https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during...

guscost 6y ago
Year vs. Month, you are mostly talking past each other.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Given that the year is not yet finished, only one of those analyses makes any sense.