4 ms·

There's no need to imagine other dimensions, Sweden and numerous US states which did not lock down allow us to make at least a ballpark guess as to how differen

There's no need to imagine other dimensions, Sweden and numerous US states which did not lock down allow us to make at least a ballpark guess as to how different the outcome would have been in terms of deaths from Covid. North Dakota vs South Dakota is a particularly apples-for-apples comparison. Even adjusting for the greater population density of some of the lockdown states & countries, it's not a massive difference.

tcmart14 5y ago
South Dakota has a higher death rate per capita than north dakota. Both are in the top 3 for covid cases for per capita. I would say bad example. Where as California was an extreme compared to either state and per capita death rate is 161/100,000 and South Dakota is 229/100,000. That is a roughly 42% difference between South Dakota and California?
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  I mean, New York was also an extreme compared to South Dakota, and more comparable in terms of latitude, and it had a 20% higher per-capita death rate. But I don't think either it or CA make for a very good comparison as opposed to ND, whose per-capita Covid death rate was about 10% lower than SD's. This is the upper bound on lives saved by the lockdown policy, from which you have to start subtracting out deaths from the knock-on effects of lockdowns (isolation, delayed medical screenings and treatments, economic impacts, etc).
  - tcmart14 5y ago
    Which is why I pointed out that the problem is to complex to perceive what the world without the measure looked like with accuracy. To add on to your list, lives lost that would have been prevented if a hospital was not ran over and medical care stretched to thin and rationed. We can both run endless what ifs to show that we have absolutely no clue what a world that managed covid differently would have looked like. Even taking foreign countries into account, countries have different cultures. I've never been to Japan but my dad who has done business there said a person masking up when they had the common cold was considered a general courtesy pre-pandemic. Some countries also manage health differently. Many European countries, like Cuba, put a lot more towards preventative care than we do in America. Economic impact of a sufficient amount of workers being sick at facilities to stop production or slow production. Endless things we could name to tweak what a different reality looked like.
    - Karsteski 5y ago
      > Many European countries, like Cuba Cuba is in the Caribbean...

tcmart14 5y ago

South Dakota has a higher death rate per capita than north dakota. Both are in the top 3 for covid cases for per capita. I would say bad example. Where as California was an extreme compared to either state and per capita death rate is 161/100,000 and South Dakota is 229/100,000. That is a roughly 42% difference between South Dakota and California?

AndrewBissell 5y ago
I mean, New York was also an extreme compared to South Dakota, and more comparable in terms of latitude, and it had a 20% higher per-capita death rate. But I don't think either it or CA make for a very good comparison as opposed to ND, whose per-capita Covid death rate was about 10% lower than SD's. This is the upper bound on lives saved by the lockdown policy, from which you have to start subtracting out deaths from the knock-on effects of lockdowns (isolation, delayed medical screenings and treatments, economic impacts, etc).
- tcmart14 5y ago
  Which is why I pointed out that the problem is to complex to perceive what the world without the measure looked like with accuracy. To add on to your list, lives lost that would have been prevented if a hospital was not ran over and medical care stretched to thin and rationed. We can both run endless what ifs to show that we have absolutely no clue what a world that managed covid differently would have looked like. Even taking foreign countries into account, countries have different cultures. I've never been to Japan but my dad who has done business there said a person masking up when they had the common cold was considered a general courtesy pre-pandemic. Some countries also manage health differently. Many European countries, like Cuba, put a lot more towards preventative care than we do in America. Economic impact of a sufficient amount of workers being sick at facilities to stop production or slow production. Endless things we could name to tweak what a different reality looked like.
  - Karsteski 5y ago
    > Many European countries, like Cuba Cuba is in the Caribbean...