A ltierature review by economists is possibly the least-valuable class of paper you could cite short of actual blog posts. This specific paper throws out anyth

A ltierature review by economists is possibly the least-valuable class of paper you could cite short of actual blog posts. This specific paper throws out anything that even mentions any effect but mortality, any paper that compares real-world results to predictive models, and includes papers from various dumping grounds an non-peer-reviewed outlets. Any paper which attempts to introduce rigor is dismissed. Some of the papers cited are actual blog posts. This paper itself is self-published by one of the authors. The second figure disagrees with its own source (it cites six specific weeks early in the outbreak, during which time the stringency index did not change, but the x axis is a range of unsourced claims). It cites the GRADE handbook to support its hyperfocus on mortality rates (to the exclusion of literally all other considerations) but fails to note that the GRADE handbook is a health care guide and healthcare institutions were in the process of being overrun during the period they investigate, basically making the now-classic "but it only has an x% death rate" misdirection we're accustomed to hearing from Facebook propagandists. In short, this document is almost but not entirely worthless. It is worthless as a public policy resource, but it is highly valuable if you want to make noise about how the Danes should have followed Sweden's example in 2020. It's just as well they don't seem to have bothered minting a DOI for this, because web forum comments are the only places it's going to be cited. It's sloppy work, basically cherry-picking datasets, and then using them to affirm the consequent. I'm embarassed for the authors.