4 ms·

> COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant, but our population is now much fatter, sicker, and older this decade. This is just untrue. Look at the excess

> COVID is basically a once-a-decade flu variant, but our population is now much fatter, sicker, and older this decade. This is just untrue. Look at the excess mortality rates across various countries: https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938 https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... Without the lockdown (which kept hospitals from overflowing) we would have been looking at similar death rates to those in Ecuador/Bolivia/Peru where 69%/72%/97% more people died than usual last year (vs 19% in the US and 16% in Sweden.) Only 15-20% of people in the US have been infected, and almost half a million excess deaths so far. With the lockdown, weekly excess deaths have been double a bad influenza year in the Netherlands, https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/2/20-2999_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/2/20-2999_article The infection fatality rate for Covid-19 has been estimated at 10x that of seasonal flu. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-fatality-ratio-is-about-one-point-15-percent https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201030/covid-19-infection-...

ArkanExplorer 6y ago
2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018. In line with the comment above - sicker and older population and weaker flu season. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/Tabellen/sonderauswertung-sterbefaelle.html?nn=23768 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoel... Please find us the total deaths for 2020 vs 2019 and 2018, for Brazil and other non-lockdown countries. The FT article cherry-picks the data, comparing inconsistent parts of the year. There's basically just too much noise when looking at weekly deaths.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018. because we locked down the country, twice. (now for a third time in 2021). It's nonsensical to compare flu deaths (which we don't mitigate) to covid deaths, when we shut down social life for a good chunk of the year. The only people who are still in some sort of political or ideological mindset are people who make these comparisons.
- laurencerowe 6y ago
  I have family in Germany and they had a far earlier and stricter lockdowns and far better testing and tracing early on than the UK or US, resulting in far fewer infections. (At least until December or so when things started to look a lot more similar.) With a strict lockdown the effects are of course look not so bad since far fewer people get infected. How is the FT article cherry-picking? The numbers I referred to are in the section titled, "Death rates have climbed far above historical averages in many countries that have faced Covid-19 outbreaks". They show the total excess deaths since 100 confirmed cases for each country, approximately a year of data for each. These figures are simply the number of deaths from all causes recorded in each country. From the FT data you can see that Brazil had 23% excess mortality over approximately a year of data. It didn't see the huge early spikes seen in Peru where seroprevalence studies estimate about 40% of people were infected in Lima: https://andina.pe/ingles/noticia-peru-nearly-4-million-people-may-already-have-had-covid19-in-lima-metropolitan-area-827959.aspx https://andina.pe/ingles/noticia-peru-nearly-4-million-peopl... I can't find directly comparable figures for Brazil, but in July in Rio de Janeiro (vs December, though Peru's big outbreak from those graphs was early on) it was around 4% rather than 40%.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago

2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018. In line with the comment above - sicker and older population and weaker flu season. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/Tabellen/sonderauswertung-sterbefaelle.html?nn=23768 https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoel... Please find us the total deaths for 2020 vs 2019 and 2018, for Brazil and other non-lockdown countries. The FT article cherry-picks the data, comparing inconsistent parts of the year. There's basically just too much noise when looking at weekly deaths.

Barrin92 6y ago
>2020 deaths in Germany were 985,145, only 4.85% higher than 2019, and only 3.2% higher than 2018. because we locked down the country, twice. (now for a third time in 2021). It's nonsensical to compare flu deaths (which we don't mitigate) to covid deaths, when we shut down social life for a good chunk of the year. The only people who are still in some sort of political or ideological mindset are people who make these comparisons.
laurencerowe 6y ago
I have family in Germany and they had a far earlier and stricter lockdowns and far better testing and tracing early on than the UK or US, resulting in far fewer infections. (At least until December or so when things started to look a lot more similar.) With a strict lockdown the effects are of course look not so bad since far fewer people get infected. How is the FT article cherry-picking? The numbers I referred to are in the section titled, "Death rates have climbed far above historical averages in many countries that have faced Covid-19 outbreaks". They show the total excess deaths since 100 confirmed cases for each country, approximately a year of data for each. These figures are simply the number of deaths from all causes recorded in each country. From the FT data you can see that Brazil had 23% excess mortality over approximately a year of data. It didn't see the huge early spikes seen in Peru where seroprevalence studies estimate about 40% of people were infected in Lima: https://andina.pe/ingles/noticia-peru-nearly-4-million-people-may-already-have-had-covid19-in-lima-metropolitan-area-827959.aspx https://andina.pe/ingles/noticia-peru-nearly-4-million-peopl... I can't find directly comparable figures for Brazil, but in July in Rio de Janeiro (vs December, though Peru's big outbreak from those graphs was early on) it was around 4% rather than 40%.