5 ms·

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Sweden, 2020 deaths only 6.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Sweden, 2020 deaths only 6.2% higher than 2018, and following a weak 2019 flu season. These are entirely acceptable death figures within the context of aging European societies. COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant: like Swine Flu in 2009, which came and went without lockdown: https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-deaths-1851.jpg https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-... So COVID is dangerous enough to lock down entire societies, but not dangerous enough to justify continued vaccination when 1 in 166,666 have blood clotting? This is probably the background rate. It seems like Europe and its bureaucrats just can't let go of lockdown. Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success.

mynameisvlad 6y ago
> Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success. Did you somehow forget that this is the second year of Covid? We've already gone through the whole "natural seasonality" cycle and the disease is very much still here.
- leereeves 6y ago
  Take a look at this COVID daily trends graph from the CDC: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends... From an average of about 50k cases reported daily in April through October to about 200k cases reported daily in November, December, and January, then back down to 60k by March. And there's a similar winter increase in the worldwide cases (some of which is from the US cases, but not all): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-cases https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... It's impossible to be sure after just one year, but that hill in the winter certainly suggests a seasonal illness to me.
  - Tarsul 6y ago
    yes, a certain seasonality is very probable. But with the variants we have right now (e.g. B1.1.7 from Kent), summer won't be enough to stem the tide. I'm saying this from a central european perspective (with not enough vaccinations either to help).
  - addicted 6y ago
    Winter also corresponds with holiday seasons. Further, South American countries were some of the worst hit during the Nov - Feb timeline. South Africa was badly hit around this time. And all these are Southern Hemisphere countries that were experiencing summer around then. Now, there’s clear evidence that warmer weather makes things easier, since the virus has lower survivability outside a host in the heat, so all things equal, the spread would be lower in warmer weather, but it’s not so much lower that it can be considered seasonal, like the flu.
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  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    It's not a surprise that an airborne virus spreads more during the time of year when people are spending more time indoors with their windows closed. Same reason it was rampant in the US subtropical south during last summer, when it was uncomfortably hot and people stayed inside where there's AC.
    - Izkata 6y ago
      This is what seasonality means. It doesn't mean "it'll be eliminated next season". They're referring more to, success can be claimed for lockdowns/etc whether or not they had an effect, simply by waiting until the natural seasonality causes a drop in cases.
eecc 6y ago
If you're on meds, don't skip doses. If not, please go find a specialist and get some help.
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  We already place a human value on life in healthcare, via QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) This is typically about $50,000/year in places like the UK. If you run this same calculation against what we have done for COVID, the figure comes to tens of millions of dollars per life year. The same sums spent on lockdown and lockdown compensation could have been invested in general healthcare, or tackling air pollution (which kills 800,000 Europeans a year). COVID lockdowns should not be immune from the cost-benefit calculations that all other Government programmes are subject to. Its also totally reasonable to ask why we tolerate influenza, which is a leading cause of deaths and fills hospitals each season, but not COVID.
  - siilats 6y ago
    Actually the actions work out at about $50k per qaly in US. We spent $5tn to save 1m lives Who each had about 20 years left to live. That would be $250k per qaly but hopefully not all of the $5tn was wasted/spend on additional health care costs, lot of it was to build roads and bail out mafia run multi employer pension systems in US which would have happened anyway
  - disabled 6y ago
    > We already place a human value on life in healthcare, via QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) That calculation is profoundly flawed and is based on linearity: some of the most expensive treatments are extortionate, relative to the true and actual cost to produce, against the QALY/DALY calculation. Instead, if a pharmaceutical company or a medical device company charges an extortionate amount of money for a product, the patents should be seized and governments should be allowed to produce them themselves. In a lot of cases, government funding does 80-90%+ of the research and work that allows the medical product to be marketed. In the case of coronavirus, some governments, such as the United States, had the capability, at least theoretically to at least try and pursue the elimination strategy. That is, if the United States did not have a neoliberal government in place at the time and the citizens of the United States actually trusted its public officials. A lot of smaller countries have fared well during the pandemic. It is clear that the elimination strategy has been quite successful from an economic standpoint, for the countries that have pursued it. > The same sums spent on lockdown and lockdown compensation could have been invested in general healthcare, or tackling air pollution (which kills 800,000 Europeans a year). As for this matter, health insurance (private/public/national) should absolutely cover PAPRs (powered air purifying respirators) for people who are immunocompromised, have lung issues, have severe heart issues, or are at high risk from dying from illnesses like influenza. There are now half-mask (non-helmet and/or not full facemask) PAPRs that are more discreet and wearable, that are much more pragmatic than typical masks: https://industrial.optrel.com/en/product-selector-1/swiss-air https://industrial.optrel.com/en/product-selector-1/swiss-ai... It is crucial that we first and foremost protect our most vulnerable, out of the principle of solidarity. Obviously some of those deaths are directly from global warming. We have not done enough with respect to global warming, and people will die. But, this is unacceptable and we knew that it was coming. We have to do more, and putting a dollar amount on the lives of the most vulnerable is a distraction that keeps us from doing better as a society. We all pay a price by doing this.
TheRealSteel 6y ago
Did you seriously forget that we're a year until Covid and it didn't disappear last summer?
m4rtink 6y ago
Do you want to know how bad you can get at excess mortality - what about 53 percent ? https://brnodaily.com/2020/12/16/news/excess-mortality-rate-in-the-czech-republic-peaked-at-53-in-october/ https://brnodaily.com/2020/12/16/news/excess-mortality-rate-... And that's old numbers, since then the situation only got worse: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/15/czech-republic-whats-behind-worlds-worst-covid-infection-rate https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/15/czech-republic-what... https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/28/europe/czech-republic-coronavirus-disaster-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/28/europe/czech-republic-cor...
- zzleeper 6y ago
  53% is nothing. Peru peaked at 260% excess mortality in February (2nd wave) and 230% in July (1st wave). My Facebook was (and is) a depressive mess of sad announcements. Source: https://opencovid-peru.com/reportes/sinadef/ https://opencovid-peru.com/reportes/sinadef/ (1100 deaths per day, compared to 300 average for 2019)
ptaipale 6y ago
"Only" 6 5 higher mortality is huge excess mortality. (In reality, in Sweden mortality is about 4.5 % higher than the average of 2015-2019, but that is still very significant; and of course, covid is not just that one either dies or is fine; there is the substantial but currently not very well known number of people with long-term health impact from the infection)

mynameisvlad 6y ago

> Or alternatively, they wish to push the vaccines and end of lockdown into Spring/Summer, where natural seasonality will take care of COVID and give the appearance that lockdown and vaccines were a success. Did you somehow forget that this is the second year of Covid? We've already gone through the whole "natural seasonality" cycle and the disease is very much still here.

leereeves 6y ago
Take a look at this COVID daily trends graph from the CDC: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrendscases https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailytrends... From an average of about 50k cases reported daily in April through October to about 200k cases reported daily in November, December, and January, then back down to 60k by March. And there's a similar winter increase in the worldwide cases (some of which is from the US cases, but not all): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#daily-cases https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/worldwide-graphs/#... It's impossible to be sure after just one year, but that hill in the winter certainly suggests a seasonal illness to me.
- Tarsul 6y ago
  yes, a certain seasonality is very probable. But with the variants we have right now (e.g. B1.1.7 from Kent), summer won't be enough to stem the tide. I'm saying this from a central european perspective (with not enough vaccinations either to help).
- addicted 6y ago
  Winter also corresponds with holiday seasons. Further, South American countries were some of the worst hit during the Nov - Feb timeline. South Africa was badly hit around this time. And all these are Southern Hemisphere countries that were experiencing summer around then. Now, there’s clear evidence that warmer weather makes things easier, since the virus has lower survivability outside a host in the heat, so all things equal, the spread would be lower in warmer weather, but it’s not so much lower that it can be considered seasonal, like the flu.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  It's not a surprise that an airborne virus spreads more during the time of year when people are spending more time indoors with their windows closed. Same reason it was rampant in the US subtropical south during last summer, when it was uncomfortably hot and people stayed inside where there's AC.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    This is what seasonality means. It doesn't mean "it'll be eliminated next season". They're referring more to, success can be claimed for lockdowns/etc whether or not they had an effect, simply by waiting until the natural seasonality causes a drop in cases.

eecc 6y ago

If you're on meds, don't skip doses. If not, please go find a specialist and get some help.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago
We already place a human value on life in healthcare, via QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) This is typically about $50,000/year in places like the UK. If you run this same calculation against what we have done for COVID, the figure comes to tens of millions of dollars per life year. The same sums spent on lockdown and lockdown compensation could have been invested in general healthcare, or tackling air pollution (which kills 800,000 Europeans a year). COVID lockdowns should not be immune from the cost-benefit calculations that all other Government programmes are subject to. Its also totally reasonable to ask why we tolerate influenza, which is a leading cause of deaths and fills hospitals each season, but not COVID.
- siilats 6y ago
  Actually the actions work out at about $50k per qaly in US. We spent $5tn to save 1m lives Who each had about 20 years left to live. That would be $250k per qaly but hopefully not all of the $5tn was wasted/spend on additional health care costs, lot of it was to build roads and bail out mafia run multi employer pension systems in US which would have happened anyway
- disabled 6y ago
  > We already place a human value on life in healthcare, via QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) That calculation is profoundly flawed and is based on linearity: some of the most expensive treatments are extortionate, relative to the true and actual cost to produce, against the QALY/DALY calculation. Instead, if a pharmaceutical company or a medical device company charges an extortionate amount of money for a product, the patents should be seized and governments should be allowed to produce them themselves. In a lot of cases, government funding does 80-90%+ of the research and work that allows the medical product to be marketed. In the case of coronavirus, some governments, such as the United States, had the capability, at least theoretically to at least try and pursue the elimination strategy. That is, if the United States did not have a neoliberal government in place at the time and the citizens of the United States actually trusted its public officials. A lot of smaller countries have fared well during the pandemic. It is clear that the elimination strategy has been quite successful from an economic standpoint, for the countries that have pursued it. > The same sums spent on lockdown and lockdown compensation could have been invested in general healthcare, or tackling air pollution (which kills 800,000 Europeans a year). As for this matter, health insurance (private/public/national) should absolutely cover PAPRs (powered air purifying respirators) for people who are immunocompromised, have lung issues, have severe heart issues, or are at high risk from dying from illnesses like influenza. There are now half-mask (non-helmet and/or not full facemask) PAPRs that are more discreet and wearable, that are much more pragmatic than typical masks: https://industrial.optrel.com/en/product-selector-1/swiss-air https://industrial.optrel.com/en/product-selector-1/swiss-ai... It is crucial that we first and foremost protect our most vulnerable, out of the principle of solidarity. Obviously some of those deaths are directly from global warming. We have not done enough with respect to global warming, and people will die. But, this is unacceptable and we knew that it was coming. We have to do more, and putting a dollar amount on the lives of the most vulnerable is a distraction that keeps us from doing better as a society. We all pay a price by doing this.

TheRealSteel 6y ago

Did you seriously forget that we're a year until Covid and it didn't disappear last summer?

m4rtink 6y ago

Do you want to know how bad you can get at excess mortality - what about 53 percent ? https://brnodaily.com/2020/12/16/news/excess-mortality-rate-in-the-czech-republic-peaked-at-53-in-october/ https://brnodaily.com/2020/12/16/news/excess-mortality-rate-... And that's old numbers, since then the situation only got worse: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/15/czech-republic-whats-behind-worlds-worst-covid-infection-rate https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/15/czech-republic-what... https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/28/europe/czech-republic-coronavirus-disaster-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/28/europe/czech-republic-cor...

zzleeper 6y ago
53% is nothing. Peru peaked at 260% excess mortality in February (2nd wave) and 230% in July (1st wave). My Facebook was (and is) a depressive mess of sad announcements. Source: https://opencovid-peru.com/reportes/sinadef/ https://opencovid-peru.com/reportes/sinadef/ (1100 deaths per day, compared to 300 average for 2019)

ptaipale 6y ago

"Only" 6 5 higher mortality is huge excess mortality. (In reality, in Sweden mortality is about 4.5 % higher than the average of 2015-2019, but that is still very significant; and of course, covid is not just that one either dies or is fine; there is the substantial but currently not very well known number of people with long-term health impact from the infection)