5 ms·

No - it wasn't, head over to EuroMomo and you'll find out that it was over[0]. Not only that, compare the excess mortality with your neighbors and the "Sweden d

No - it wasn't, head over to EuroMomo and you'll find out that it was over[0]. Not only that, compare the excess mortality with your neighbors and the "Sweden did fine without lockdowns" sounds hollow. That would explain the restrictions. Consider that the excess mortality is just a small indicator that things didn't go well - if you plug in the equation a reduction of deaths due to other causes you figure out pretty quickly that things were pretty bad. [0] https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

mikem170 6y ago
The grandparent's original point still stands, this is not the disaster that the headlines portray. The U.S stands at 1 in 750 people dead from covid, mostly elderly with comorbidities, a rate similar to many other countries. That is 0.13% of the population. That's not 1 in 10, or even 1 in 100. It's not the young and healthy, either. A pretty small number. And if you are old and frail something is going to get you soon, anyways. Per-capita just as many, perhaps several times more, people died of the 1968 Hong Kong flu. New viruses happen, part of nature, people die, that's how it goes, This isn't nearly as bad as a lot of similar situations in the past.
- petre 6y ago
  Just take a look at Reuters' stats page. It's easy now as we have just passed 100m infections with 2m deaths. That amounts to 2 dead out of every 100, globally. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/ https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m... Death rate is 0.16% in the US though.
  - mikem170 6y ago
    I was relating the number who died in the U.S. versus the total population, calculated from published deaths per million per country [0] The link you provided says that 2.2 million people globally reportedly have died of covid. Out of world's population of 7.8 billion that amounts to 1 out of 3545 people who have died, or 0.028%. I wonder if a lot of people have misconceptions about their odds of dying from covid, given the alarmist news coverege. Especially the young and healthy, who are more at risk of dying of other things like suicide for example. Some would say that the reaction and mitigations to covid have been more impactful than the disease itself. [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
    - petre 6y ago
      One can't die of a disease without contacting it first, can they?
  - thu2111 6y ago
    Those death figures are not deaths from COVID. They are deaths of any cause within 28 days of a positive test, and thus over-count, especially when the elderly who are (to put it coldly) "scheduled" to die get a positive test and then die "on time". It makes the COVID death stats useless because what's actually interesting is not how many people die in vague proximity to a positive result on a trigger-happy test, but rather how many people could have been meaningfully saved. Life years lost, in other words.
MrRiddle 6y ago
> if you plug in the equation a reduction of deaths due to other causes you figure out pretty quickly that things were pretty bad. This is pure speculation.
jeofken 6y ago
Thank you - I appreciate a correction with sources. I had based my understanding on a report by the Swedish government central statistics bureau, that stated no excess deaths in 2020 on average, but an increase in Q1-Q2 and decrease in Q3-Q4. (Can dig up a link if anyone is interested). It is also clear from your link that deaths was unaffected by government forcing lockdowns. Lockdowns certainly do have an effect on freedom and economics though - creating a huge dependence on hand outs for millions, and a lost year of youth for a generation. In your link it’s clear there was two minor bumps - “Low excess”. Still, it was good to retain relative freedom throughout the year. My friends in DK and NO live in fear - a friends mother doesn’t leave the apartment for a year, friends lost each other, thousands of lovers never met, weddings not happening, and massive unemployment (doesn’t affect HN tech workers who can humblebrag about getting take out food).
- thu2111 6y ago
  There is some deep analysis of Swedish mortality for 2020 here: https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/final-report-on-swedish-mortality-2020-anno-covid/ https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01... The summary is that when controlling for population growth there was a very small amount of excess death, that made 2020 comparable to 2012 or 2013 (depending on if you also control for age structure). NB: due to an unusually non-deadly 2019, which will naturally increase 2020 mortality even without COVID, Swedish stats must be used carefully if the goal is to answer the question "how deadly was COVID in a country that had very few mitigations". Regardless even if you don't control for that additional factor, it's clear that the outcome was very far away from the 'expert' predictions of 100,000+ deaths from COVID alone, on top of all the normal deaths, which would have more than doubled the usual death rate.

mikem170 6y ago

The grandparent's original point still stands, this is not the disaster that the headlines portray. The U.S stands at 1 in 750 people dead from covid, mostly elderly with comorbidities, a rate similar to many other countries. That is 0.13% of the population. That's not 1 in 10, or even 1 in 100. It's not the young and healthy, either. A pretty small number. And if you are old and frail something is going to get you soon, anyways. Per-capita just as many, perhaps several times more, people died of the 1968 Hong Kong flu. New viruses happen, part of nature, people die, that's how it goes, This isn't nearly as bad as a lot of similar situations in the past.

petre 6y ago
Just take a look at Reuters' stats page. It's easy now as we have just passed 100m infections with 2m deaths. That amounts to 2 dead out of every 100, globally. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/ https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m... Death rate is 0.16% in the US though.
- mikem170 6y ago
  I was relating the number who died in the U.S. versus the total population, calculated from published deaths per million per country [0] The link you provided says that 2.2 million people globally reportedly have died of covid. Out of world's population of 7.8 billion that amounts to 1 out of 3545 people who have died, or 0.028%. I wonder if a lot of people have misconceptions about their odds of dying from covid, given the alarmist news coverege. Especially the young and healthy, who are more at risk of dying of other things like suicide for example. Some would say that the reaction and mitigations to covid have been more impactful than the disease itself. [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
  - petre 6y ago
    One can't die of a disease without contacting it first, can they?
- thu2111 6y ago
  Those death figures are not deaths from COVID. They are deaths of any cause within 28 days of a positive test, and thus over-count, especially when the elderly who are (to put it coldly) "scheduled" to die get a positive test and then die "on time". It makes the COVID death stats useless because what's actually interesting is not how many people die in vague proximity to a positive result on a trigger-happy test, but rather how many people could have been meaningfully saved. Life years lost, in other words.

MrRiddle 6y ago

> if you plug in the equation a reduction of deaths due to other causes you figure out pretty quickly that things were pretty bad. This is pure speculation.

jeofken 6y ago

Thank you - I appreciate a correction with sources. I had based my understanding on a report by the Swedish government central statistics bureau, that stated no excess deaths in 2020 on average, but an increase in Q1-Q2 and decrease in Q3-Q4. (Can dig up a link if anyone is interested). It is also clear from your link that deaths was unaffected by government forcing lockdowns. Lockdowns certainly do have an effect on freedom and economics though - creating a huge dependence on hand outs for millions, and a lost year of youth for a generation. In your link it’s clear there was two minor bumps - “Low excess”. Still, it was good to retain relative freedom throughout the year. My friends in DK and NO live in fear - a friends mother doesn’t leave the apartment for a year, friends lost each other, thousands of lovers never met, weddings not happening, and massive unemployment (doesn’t affect HN tech workers who can humblebrag about getting take out food).

thu2111 6y ago
There is some deep analysis of Swedish mortality for 2020 here: https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/final-report-on-swedish-mortality-2020-anno-covid/ https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01... The summary is that when controlling for population growth there was a very small amount of excess death, that made 2020 comparable to 2012 or 2013 (depending on if you also control for age structure). NB: due to an unusually non-deadly 2019, which will naturally increase 2020 mortality even without COVID, Swedish stats must be used carefully if the goal is to answer the question "how deadly was COVID in a country that had very few mitigations". Regardless even if you don't control for that additional factor, it's clear that the outcome was very far away from the 'expert' predictions of 100,000+ deaths from COVID alone, on top of all the normal deaths, which would have more than doubled the usual death rate.