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That's because we've put our countries into lockdown. If we hadn't then do you think the deaths would have been far higher? (I think the answer to that is 'yes'

That's because we've put our countries into lockdown. If we hadn't then do you think the deaths would have been far higher? (I think the answer to that is 'yes'). Unfortunately we can't stay in lock down forever...

matthewmacleod 6y ago
Also "10-20% increased risk of death this year" is fucking massive
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  It still approaches zero. edit-to-add: I recall during our new parent class the lecture where they were discouraging the use of pain drugs during birth because it increased the chance of a bad outcome by 2x or 4X. (I can't remember the actual value the nurse said.) When I asked what is the actual chance of a bad outcome and what is 2x of that. She didn't know and didn't like me pointing out in front of the class that 2x was probably still pretty close to zero.
  - dwaltrip 6y ago
    An X% increase in all-cause mortality is far more significant than an X% increase of one specific medical risk. You are comparing apples to oranges.
    - pnw_hazor 6y ago
      I am not trying to compare the two metrics. Getting instantly down voted for my initial comment reminded me of how that nurse acted 25 years ago.
thu2111 6y ago
No, it isn't and no they wouldn't. Sweden, Belarus and now Switzerland are proving that if you don't do lockdowns you get ... nothing. Same kind of epidemic as everywhere else. Nothing out of the ordinary and a year that's comparable to any flu year. Look at the data for parts of Switzerland that didn't lock down for the second wave (which is most of it, including where I live). It goes into remission anyway, without overflowing hospitals or mass deaths. Remember that the only reason you believe deaths would be far higher without lockdowns is epidemiologists predicted that. But they have a long track record of making predictions that are always wrong. This time they were wrong again, just like all the other times. There was never any experience based justification for lockdowns or even restrictions of any form: only models, which have turned out to be buggy and unrealistic.
- kolinko 6y ago
  Sweden had +30% death rate in April compared to an average year, and it was the most deadly month in >decade if I'm not mistaken. It's definitely not comparable to any flu year, although definitely not crazy bad (unlike other countries). In case of Poland, with ~5-10% infected population, the last month was the most deadly since the last decade (and possibly - since the WW2): https://infogram.com/liczba-zgonow-w-dobie-epidemii-1hnp27w9pmmy4gq https://infogram.com/liczba-zgonow-w-dobie-epidemii-1hnp27w9...
  - thu2111 6y ago
    This kind of month-to-month comparison is misleading because flu waves (which is what COVID is comparable to) are usually happening a bit earlier than April. So just comparing April-to-April, and then putting it in percentage terms, and then not comparing to other waves of excess mortality that are normal, obscures what's really going on. Your image seems to show that, prior peaks are of course clustered around January. But look at total mortality so far in Sweden for 2020. Nothing special, on track to be a normal year. They had a very mild 2019 so it'll probably be higher than that, but nothing special in context. Same for Switzerland. It's definitely not comparable to any flu year I suspect you're using the word "comparable" differently to me. Biologically, sure it is. It hits the older a bit harder and the young not at all, so in some ways it's actually better than flu. However with flu since ~2000 there have been vaccines, and for COVID there isn't, so that makes it a bit worse. But if you widen your historical context and look at years before the flu vaccines arrived, then it's entirely comparable to flu years in the sense that mortality numbers are ending up very similar or even the same. Look at the long term data for Sweden to put things in perspective: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... Or for the UK http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/ http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/ The world has seen far worse within living memory. W.R.T. Poland, you didn't have a COVID first wave at all, and your second is correlated with the rest of Europe so you're going to be "doubling up" compared to some other places. But your epidemic peaked on November 11th, which means death will also soon peak, and therefore your results will look hardly different to other countries, none of which have experienced the huge waves of death that were supposedly going to engulf any country that didn't lock down. That's what matters: not whether COVID is 10% or 30% worse than a typical post-vaccine flu wave, or whether it's the same as a pre-vaccine flu wave. Those are all minor details. What matters is that the world is being put through crazy totalitarian restrictions and evil based on predictions that it'd be 10,000x worse than flu. And those predictions are all totally, completely, unambiguously wrong.

matthewmacleod 6y ago

Also "10-20% increased risk of death this year" is fucking massive

pnw_hazor 6y ago
It still approaches zero. edit-to-add: I recall during our new parent class the lecture where they were discouraging the use of pain drugs during birth because it increased the chance of a bad outcome by 2x or 4X. (I can't remember the actual value the nurse said.) When I asked what is the actual chance of a bad outcome and what is 2x of that. She didn't know and didn't like me pointing out in front of the class that 2x was probably still pretty close to zero.
- dwaltrip 6y ago
  An X% increase in all-cause mortality is far more significant than an X% increase of one specific medical risk. You are comparing apples to oranges.
  - pnw_hazor 6y ago
    I am not trying to compare the two metrics. Getting instantly down voted for my initial comment reminded me of how that nurse acted 25 years ago.

thu2111 6y ago

No, it isn't and no they wouldn't. Sweden, Belarus and now Switzerland are proving that if you don't do lockdowns you get ... nothing. Same kind of epidemic as everywhere else. Nothing out of the ordinary and a year that's comparable to any flu year. Look at the data for parts of Switzerland that didn't lock down for the second wave (which is most of it, including where I live). It goes into remission anyway, without overflowing hospitals or mass deaths. Remember that the only reason you believe deaths would be far higher without lockdowns is epidemiologists predicted that. But they have a long track record of making predictions that are always wrong. This time they were wrong again, just like all the other times. There was never any experience based justification for lockdowns or even restrictions of any form: only models, which have turned out to be buggy and unrealistic.

kolinko 6y ago
Sweden had +30% death rate in April compared to an average year, and it was the most deadly month in >decade if I'm not mistaken. It's definitely not comparable to any flu year, although definitely not crazy bad (unlike other countries). In case of Poland, with ~5-10% infected population, the last month was the most deadly since the last decade (and possibly - since the WW2): https://infogram.com/liczba-zgonow-w-dobie-epidemii-1hnp27w9pmmy4gq https://infogram.com/liczba-zgonow-w-dobie-epidemii-1hnp27w9...
- thu2111 6y ago
  This kind of month-to-month comparison is misleading because flu waves (which is what COVID is comparable to) are usually happening a bit earlier than April. So just comparing April-to-April, and then putting it in percentage terms, and then not comparing to other waves of excess mortality that are normal, obscures what's really going on. Your image seems to show that, prior peaks are of course clustered around January. But look at total mortality so far in Sweden for 2020. Nothing special, on track to be a normal year. They had a very mild 2019 so it'll probably be higher than that, but nothing special in context. Same for Switzerland. It's definitely not comparable to any flu year I suspect you're using the word "comparable" differently to me. Biologically, sure it is. It hits the older a bit harder and the young not at all, so in some ways it's actually better than flu. However with flu since ~2000 there have been vaccines, and for COVID there isn't, so that makes it a bit worse. But if you widen your historical context and look at years before the flu vaccines arrived, then it's entirely comparable to flu years in the sense that mortality numbers are ending up very similar or even the same. Look at the long term data for Sweden to put things in perspective: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... Or for the UK http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/ http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/ The world has seen far worse within living memory. W.R.T. Poland, you didn't have a COVID first wave at all, and your second is correlated with the rest of Europe so you're going to be "doubling up" compared to some other places. But your epidemic peaked on November 11th, which means death will also soon peak, and therefore your results will look hardly different to other countries, none of which have experienced the huge waves of death that were supposedly going to engulf any country that didn't lock down. That's what matters: not whether COVID is 10% or 30% worse than a typical post-vaccine flu wave, or whether it's the same as a pre-vaccine flu wave. Those are all minor details. What matters is that the world is being put through crazy totalitarian restrictions and evil based on predictions that it'd be 10,000x worse than flu. And those predictions are all totally, completely, unambiguously wrong.