11 ms·

Expensive energy may have killed more Europeans than Covid-19 last winter

242 points by mfiguiere 4y ago

deanCommie 4y ago
https://archive.is/5VEZE https://archive.is/5VEZE
- neonate 4y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20230510215922/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensive-energy-may-have-killed-more-europeans-than-covid-19-last-winter http://web.archive.org/web/20230510215922/https://www.econom...
110889725 4y ago
Btw, the title means that: this past winter, more people died due to "expensive energy" than due to Covid-19. It's not the case that more people died last winter due to "expensive energy" than due to Covid-19 in total (see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105).
- jahnu 4y ago
  A very important detail! Deaths from covid are way way down mainly because of vaccines.
  - preciz 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - Hikikomori 4y ago
      >Let the downvotes come. Well deserved.
    - hanselot 4y ago
      I'm right here to eat downvotes with you. People seem to be very unaware of the sunken cost fallacy. The worst part is that people refuse to believe fact to levels which the best nazi propagandists would balk at.
    - mc32 4y ago
      The mask flip-flopping was unbelievable. In the beginning: masks are not effective, don't use them, stay six feet away. Then, some point later: you're careless and irresponsible of you do not wear masks as you will infect other people. Then, later, We're not sure about six feet, that was an old study regarding droplets and not aerosols. Oh, Covid transmits via droplets and aerosols, so masks are ineffective. Get the vaccine, two shots. No, no, wait, you'll need a booster... Wait, no, you need another one. Wait, wait, you'll need one every few months. Oh and wearing masks can have negative cognitive and health effects if you wear them for a prolonged amount of time. 1000+ days later, the 15 day flatten the curve emergency decree is over! Now, I'm all for vaccines but I want proven vaccines not half-arsed vaccines approved after a 6 month study on efficacy and adverse effects. Damn it, they should have had a dedicated team studying these exact things fomr the get-go but mr know it all Faucci was adamant he knew what he was talking about. They should have been forthright and been truthful with people instead of spoon-feeding them and gaslighting them. We're adults, we can understand we're figuring things out and it's an emergent pandemic --but boy, the propaganda.
      - snovv_crash 4y ago
        This is science. It changes its opinion as more information is gathered. This is a feature, not a bug. If you want universal answers that don't change, look to religion.
        mc32 4y ago
        Religion was what we witnessed in people when they in unison would follow any new directive without question --without evidence. Also, the establishment is loath to admit any mistakes, when there were many. Mr Faucci also lied to Congress. Remember how the establishment laughed at Sweden, but it turns out they were right, or at least less wrong about how to deal with this past pandemic?
        betacat 4y ago
        Sweden tried to go the "herd immunity" route, realize they were about to take it hard on the nose, and changed course to match their European neighbors who were doing better. What do you think happened?
    - snovv_crash 4y ago
      Having read the actual medical journal papers of the early clinical trials, the MRNA vaccines were wildly effective against the early strains. If you have actual medical data published in journals and peer reviewed, I'd be very happy to see it, and possibly even change my opinion if it's convincing.
      - stefantalpalaru 4y ago
        > If you have actual medical data published in journals and peer reviewed, I'd be very happy to see it, and possibly even change my opinion if it's convincing. https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795612c0f569b12 https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795...
        hanselot 4y ago
        How quiet they become in the face of data. Why are none of these studies being discussed? Obviously because it doesn't fit the narrative. I will say it again, if you are still refusing to accept what is happening, you are most likely in the Denial stage. https://web.archive.org/web/20230327020816/https://www.washington.edu/counseling/2020/06/08/the-stages-of-grief-accepting-the-unacceptable/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230327020816/https://www.washi... sprinkled with a side of https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy The worst part is, in my life I have never more wanted to be wrong, because the cost of being right is so high. The irony that I was involved in promoting awareness of this way back before anyone cared is not lost on me. Is it so hard to believe that a company with an incredibly large financial incentive to lie, did so? Is it so difficult to believe that these same companies use propaganda to shape discourse online? The same companies that are happy to promote the body positivity movement resulting in lifelong insulin dependency, yet somehow you refuse to believe that they would try to cash in on a global scale?
        snovv_crash 4y ago
        > How quiet they become in the face of data. Why are none of these studies being discussed? This level of discussion isn't constructive. (I was asleep, FYI, not everybody is in west coast US). The studies listed for the most part all came out after COVID was basically gone. Sure there is plenty that could have been done better in hindsight, but cherry picking a single study showing difficulties with lipids from 2010 "that they should have known about" when the alternative was authoritarian lockdowns is not a helpful position to take.
    - nayuki 4y ago
      > Why is HN so eager to cheer vaccines wherever it can? There was no guarantee that the world could develop and test an effective, safe vaccine in less than a year.
  - malcolmgreaves 4y ago
    mRNA vaccine creation is humanity's most impressive technology. We'd be absolutely screwed right now if we didn't have this tech. (Or, more accurately: a lot more people would be dead otherwise).
    - autokad 4y ago
      I don't really think so. Omicron is what did it. I think in Africa only 24% received at least one dose, and Africa is not a giant heaping pile of covid19 bodies. If I recall correctly (its possible I do not), the latest booster is for BA-5, which was effectively extinct by the time the booster came out. Why its extinct is important: the existing variants had immune escape over BA-5.
      - betacat 4y ago
        That's a continental average. Rates varied (June 2022) from nearly 72% in Rwanda to near zero in neighboring Burundi. You are unfortunately parroting a bad/malicious over-generalization.
        marcusverus 4y ago
        This is common sense and goes without saying. GP does not need to recite the litany about the fact that things are different in different parts of Africa. We're aware. > You are unfortunately parroting a bad/malicious over-generalization. Yawn.
      - koshergweilo 4y ago
        The age of the average African is significantly younger than the rest of the world. There's a lot of variables to account for, you'd need a proper study, not just a single data point, to determine if omicron is significantly less deadly than older COVID variants. As for GP's claim that vaccines saved a lot of lives, that's very well supported at this point https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations#:~:text=From%20December%202020%20through%20November,million%20more%20COVID%2D19%20infections https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-v....
  - wfme 4y ago
    For the initial variants, sure. But those have long since been replaced with much milder variants, closely resembling a mild cold for most. How are you able to attribute the reduction in deaths for this winter compared to the previous winter to vaccines? We had vaccines in the previous winter too.
- jupp0r 4y ago
  It's technically also not true that people were killed by "Expensive energy".
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Makes me wonder how many people have died because of terrible headlines...
    - drekipus 4y ago
      That reminds me of the time I saw a local newspaper with the front page headline "Fatal distraction kills driver" But with the irony of a red square covering 80% of the page, as a Foxtel ad. Lemme see if I can find it..
    - MrMan 4y ago
      [dead]
mavu 4y ago
Can't possibly be secondary effects of Covid-19, right? Because that would mean we would have to acknowledge long covid, and possible immune system damage of repeated infections. That won't do at all, people might want not to die for the ecconomy.
- goatlover 4y ago
  You can't separate the economy from the well being of people.
  - drekipus 4y ago
    Good point
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    When robots do all the work you can.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Even robots need energy. If the robots produce the stuff, the robots are "the economy", even if money isn't involved. And if the robots can't produce because of lack of energy, that still hurts people.
  - dmbche 4y ago
    On a short timescale, when talking to coked up rich guys, I think people are able to separate the two.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- neurobama 4y ago
  The evidence-based research on long COVID is limited and of mixed quality. From what I've seen, there are significant gaps in experimental methodology and a lot of studies based on extremely subjective surveys which don't effectively filter co-morbities. I would strongly caution you to examine the data before adopting a strong position on the issue and applying it to potentially unrelated phenomena.
dougmwne 4y ago
It certainly seems to have killed several businesses in my city.
mustacheemperor 4y ago
[flagged]
- anonporridge 4y ago
  They're ultimately victims of their own political leaders who increased dependency on Russian gas in order to irrationally kill nuclear fission energy. Anti-nuclear energy activists will likely go down in history as villains.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    Anti-nuclear energy activists will likely go down in history as villains. My personal pet conspiracy theory is that those 'activists' were largely sponsored by Russian interests to begin wtih. Cui bono?
    - anonporridge 4y ago
      More generally, supported by fossil fuel industry. They were and still are the useful idiots serving the interests of carbon emission industry, who exploited their amygdala because it's easier to be scared of acute nuclear risks than by diffuse GHG risks.
    - swarnie 4y ago
      You should take a look at the "Stop Oil" lot we have in the UK at the moment, if they aren't a big oil psyops ill eat my hat. Constantly doing the least logical and public endearing actions possible without fail.
    - pantalaimon 4y ago
      It was the Schröder Government that signed the initial Nuclear phase-out law. The same Schröder who would later join the board of GazProm and just paid the Russian Embassy a visit for WWII victory celebrations the other day.
  - QLazuli 4y ago
    I would get to the same answer via a slightly different path. Their corrupt leaders sold their country to Russia and they pulled it off by exploiting their constituents with anti-nuclear fear mongering.
pasttense01 4y ago
People should have been able to adapt to the need to use less heating energy. 1. Wear warmer clothing. 2. Very substantially cut down on the portion of the house you live in and consequently need to heat...
- candiodari 4y ago
  They did! They just lowered their body temperature by ~37 degrees and moved 2 meters underground. Some people do consider this a sub-optimal outcome.
- prawn 4y ago
  I don't disagree, but there are many elderly people with an irrational relationship with money in their later years. A friend talks about his 80+ year old neighbour with money in the bank and literally no family at all to leave an estate with. They fret over tiny financial decisions every day that would otherwise bring them comfort or purpose. I remember my grandfather in his 80-90s not using the air-conditioning during heatwaves to save money. The price of power wouldn't have been a serious factor in his mind, just that it cost anything at all. I assume decades of frugal behaviour makes for extreme conditioning that is hard to undo.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    I find it kinda funny, I know few pretty rich people and you can notice which one started from something small and worked for it with frugality. Like boss wanted us to do a bunch of tweaking to run servers a bit hotter to save some on AC (we have small closed datacenter with like 2 racks). Absolute tiny savings in company hiring 50+ developers alone but hey it's savings
- PraetorianGourd 4y ago
  People should have been and to adapt to the need to fight off COVID. 1. Wear a respirator. 2. Live a healthy lifestyle to avoid obesity and chronic health conditions so the body is better and to fight off infection. See? Being a twat is easy. Actually having a bit of compassion is the hard part.
renewiltord 4y ago
It appears very fortunate that India has increased oil exports to Europe. May have reduced this impact somewhat and saved lives.
- allensmorgan 4y ago
  Unfortunately, India as of today is the top launderer (reseller) of ru oil
julienb_sea 4y ago
The movement towards renewables and away from reliable, inexpensive fossil generation will continue this trend in years to come. Gas generation is increasingly economically unviable with so much competition from renewables, but it remains necessary in order to provide baseload capacity, fill gaps when renewables are underperforming, and handle significant energy demand (e.g. an extreme winter storm).
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  Not to mention the many fossil-fuel derived goods that will face diseconomies of scale
- anonporridge 4y ago
  The ultimate solution is to dramatically over build intermittent renewables so that the lowest trough of electricity production is enough to meet baseload needs. The problem (or opportunity) then is what you do with all the excess energy during the peaks. Ideally, you also have a large fleet of responsive consumers that can quickly spin up/down consumption and pay for the electricity and keep the oversupply of energy producers economically viable.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    The problem honestly is how grid is built. For example, currently your neighbour having solar might, in worst case, cause you to have to pay for energy in peak, if they bump voltage high enough your inverter turns off. You're also selling (if you don't have net metering) your produced power for pennies on dollar. If, for example, instead of pushing that energy all the way could store it closer, now grid doesn't need to "do something with it", there are less losses overall, and less waste. So if say a local muncipality or power company just built local battery storage facility and just "leased" capacity to its occupants: * people with solar could "bank" the peaks to use it during night * people without could enjoy lower energy prices overall * people could "just" buy battery and consume more of that peak (buying electricity for cheap from their neighbours), and maybe even contribute pack. * power company wouldn't need to push as much power and maybe even potentially do something clever like "preloading" batteries before peak usage so less of that is pushed from the big plants, or "borrow" some energy from the bank to push elsewhere where needed. But that's complex and requires capital investments, and there is no motivation from power company to make stuff more optimal for customers, just for the investors.
the_optimist 4y ago
How is it that this article omits a discussion of the Nordstream Pipeline?
- readonthegoapp 4y ago
  I'd guess the Economist likes being a going concern.
pornel 4y ago
It has been similarly speculated that shutdown of nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster has caused more deaths than the disaster itself, due to rise in energy costs: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japans-reactors-deadlier-than-the-fukushima-disaster https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japan...
malcolmgreaves 4y ago
This analysis is incredibly flawed. It's face-palm levels of statistical incompetence here. > High energy prices can cost lives. They discourage people from heating their homes properly, and living in cold conditions raises the risk of cardiac and respiratory problems. Cardiac and respiratory problems you say! Hmmm, I wonder if there's a virus circulating that turns lungs into swiss cheese....or if it causes massive cardiac stress and damage too. The author's presumption about how energy prices can lead to excess deaths hinges upon a mechanism that COVID-19 also affects. It's not correlation: it's causation. COVID-19 causes respiratory and cardiac problems. They did not even attempt to address this fact! So then, they say "well some of these death's weren't caused by COVID-19." Ok sure. But how many of those folks who died from "the cold" actually died of hypothermia? Out of the ones that died from cardiac or repository distress, how many had prior COVID-19 infections? Were they recovered? If they recovered, was it full or did they have lingering, permanent long-COVID symptoms? Because we know there's a causal relationship, it really isn't hard to make the next step of inference to understand that this disease will be a very strong cofounding variable in those non-COVID-19 attributed excess deaths. tl;dr This article is BS because it ignores the causal relationship that COVID-19 has on mechanism by which higher energy prices could plausibly lead to increased mortality.
- barbegal 4y ago
  They have at least attempted to compare these excess deaths with a model of Covid excess deaths (although models are always wrong to varying degrees) The most interesting thing to me is how younger ages who previously haven't been affected much by Covid seem to have suffered this past winter https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
  - dathinab 4y ago
    at least from people around me in Germany "younger people" seem to have been more affected by bad Covid cases then at any time before like in my extended family/friend cycle Covid cases where people needed multipel weeks to recover from where rare before this winter, but not rare this winter but due to changes in how Covid was handled in general I'm wouldn't be surprised if less then half the cases ended up in any Covid statistics through then concluding from your personal environment to all of Germany is query a far stretch
barbegal 4y ago
Whats striking from the statistics is how younger ages (under 45) have been affected this winter compared to during the Covid pandemic https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
andsoitis 4y ago
> Expensive energy may have killed more Europeans than covid-19 last winter What is the point of this comparison?
- vikingerik 4y ago
  To promote an agenda and misleadingly. It's trying to push cheaper energy (either by more negotiation with suppliers, or by way of reducing policies against it in regulations or taxes/tariffs), and it's trying to frame that need by comparing it to something that you might think is a huge killer (which Covid wasn't in the winter of 2022-23, anywhere.)
  - PraetorianGourd 4y ago
    No, the point is that we all collectively shit ourselves over COVID, absolutely turning society upside-down. But we shrug at so many other existential threats because they are already by accounted for (like traffic fatalities) or happens to “someone else” (like drug dependency). COVID was dangerous, and ignoring it completely wasn’t an option. But it is a reasonable rhetorical gambit to wonder why we responded to COVID so aggressively while ignoring other risks and threats.
jleyank 4y ago
Reading the comments of for this article, HN -> Reddit (or worse). This is political BS, nothing technical or entrepreneurial. Gresham's Law? Guess it's time to go elsewhere - have fun, try to stay civil with each other and (somehow) return to tech-related topics. I'll check in at some point in the future.
- green_man_lives 4y ago
  I keep seeing more and more articles from The Economist reaching the top page and they're never good.
- p1necone 4y ago
  The comments are talking about politics because the article is politically motivated horseshit, not the other way around. If you're lamenting the article making it to the front page though I hear you. HN has a weird boomer right wing uncle vibe when it comes to anything to do with the climate or renewable energy. Lots of people repeating the same tired easily debunkable soundbites and getting a disturbing number of upvotes.
dathinab 4y ago
as far as I can tell from the free accessible part: their analysis seem to only make sense if you assume that Covid magically went away and/or Covid death are reliably detected even if the person dies at home in a context where "ways through which covid can kill you" happen to also be what they base their analysis on... but at least personally I know of more cases of more serve Covid last winter then pretty much any time before, not very surprising given that Covid didn't disappear, still mutates but Germany had noticeable less steps to prevent Covid then before and this are all cases which didn't in anyway decrease their usage of heat (i.e. earned enough to be able to cope with increased heating bills) so idk. but from the parts which are not behind a paywall this looks like a very questionable analysis, which also happen to fit multiple political agendas very well, surely just coincidence but interesting anyway
betacat 4y ago
Did they die with expensive energy or from expensive energy?
green_man_lives 4y ago
I mostly find The Economist to be propaganda, for example they try to frame energy vs covid because they always want to disparage "green energy" and covid safety measures. That's their bias, I find it to be really grating but hey to each their own. What I would have liked to have seen in this article was a breakdown of the causes of death. It seems like the implication is that energy costs caused people to freeze to death, or at least keep the temperature low and... get more sick? I guess? Not sure. But since energy prices are tied to everything else, how much of these excess deaths were knock-on effects of high energy prices affecting the costs of goods and subsequently human behavior? I would be curious to see a breakdown of the effects because it's hard for me to believe that people are just freezing to death because they can't afford $100/month extra on their electricity bills. Maybe this is true, but I would like to see a breakdown of the causes of death for each person. One of the things that came to mind is the idea that let's say there's some percentage of people on the verge of suicide on any given day. Could an extra $100/mo on their utility bill, or the inflation from high energy prices, have enough of an effect that they kill themselves? I think this would be a more interesting analysis than "herp derp energy production is more important than covid safety", especially when the easy argument against the effect of energy costs on an individual is that expensive energy is only relevant when consumers pay for it directly. If the state subsidizes energy production then (assuming no blackouts) nobody is going to freeze to death (which they hinted at in their article, but didn't realize the end conclusion that a nationalized energy sector makes energy costs largely irrelevant to the individual). Personally I don't really care either way, but I think this post sucks and I don't see why it's so high up.
- robbiep 4y ago
  > because they always want to disparage "green energy" and covid safety measures. This is simply not a true reflection of the voice of the economist, which has been climate-real (in terms of aligned with the scientific evidence) for more than 25 years
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    a) even if I grant you your timeline, that's still decades of delay and denial b) they have still been championing people like Bjorn Lomborg within that timeframe. c) they appear to have become more US culture war aligned recently as their readership changed which is obviously a step backwards on climate (and COVID)
mistrial9 4y ago
talking point of petrochemical industry PR -- "war on cheap energy" is another
tuatoru 4y ago
Since this in the Economist, I'm surprised the author didn't go full Swiftean "Modest Proposal", and say that this is a good thing, because it frees up a lot of caregivers to do more productive things. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
guywithahat 4y ago
This was also predicted to happen and politicians ignored (or worse, actively silenced) the predictions. Even mildly cooler conditions in winter for old people can inspire tons of respiratory infections
Guthur 4y ago
All cause mortality seems to have near universally increase across many countries over the past 12 to 24 months. This can not yet be clearer attributed to something, or at least not publicly. But it is also clearer not covid. What is most strange is the out right refusal to acknowledge this phenomenon by our ruling elite. There have been examples in the UK where parliament has actively refused to even listen to those that talk about it.

242 points by mfiguiere 4y ago

deanCommie 4y ago

https://archive.is/5VEZE https://archive.is/5VEZE

neonate 4y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20230510215922/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/10/expensive-energy-may-have-killed-more-europeans-than-covid-19-last-winter http://web.archive.org/web/20230510215922/https://www.econom...

110889725 4y ago

Btw, the title means that: this past winter, more people died due to "expensive energy" than due to Covid-19. It's not the case that more people died last winter due to "expensive energy" than due to Covid-19 in total (see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105).

jahnu 4y ago
A very important detail! Deaths from covid are way way down mainly because of vaccines.
- preciz 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - Hikikomori 4y ago
    >Let the downvotes come. Well deserved.
  - hanselot 4y ago
    I'm right here to eat downvotes with you. People seem to be very unaware of the sunken cost fallacy. The worst part is that people refuse to believe fact to levels which the best nazi propagandists would balk at.
  - mc32 4y ago
    The mask flip-flopping was unbelievable. In the beginning: masks are not effective, don't use them, stay six feet away. Then, some point later: you're careless and irresponsible of you do not wear masks as you will infect other people. Then, later, We're not sure about six feet, that was an old study regarding droplets and not aerosols. Oh, Covid transmits via droplets and aerosols, so masks are ineffective. Get the vaccine, two shots. No, no, wait, you'll need a booster... Wait, no, you need another one. Wait, wait, you'll need one every few months. Oh and wearing masks can have negative cognitive and health effects if you wear them for a prolonged amount of time. 1000+ days later, the 15 day flatten the curve emergency decree is over! Now, I'm all for vaccines but I want proven vaccines not half-arsed vaccines approved after a 6 month study on efficacy and adverse effects. Damn it, they should have had a dedicated team studying these exact things fomr the get-go but mr know it all Faucci was adamant he knew what he was talking about. They should have been forthright and been truthful with people instead of spoon-feeding them and gaslighting them. We're adults, we can understand we're figuring things out and it's an emergent pandemic --but boy, the propaganda.
    - snovv_crash 4y ago
      This is science. It changes its opinion as more information is gathered. This is a feature, not a bug. If you want universal answers that don't change, look to religion.
      - mc32 4y ago
        Religion was what we witnessed in people when they in unison would follow any new directive without question --without evidence. Also, the establishment is loath to admit any mistakes, when there were many. Mr Faucci also lied to Congress. Remember how the establishment laughed at Sweden, but it turns out they were right, or at least less wrong about how to deal with this past pandemic?
        betacat 4y ago
        Sweden tried to go the "herd immunity" route, realize they were about to take it hard on the nose, and changed course to match their European neighbors who were doing better. What do you think happened?
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    Having read the actual medical journal papers of the early clinical trials, the MRNA vaccines were wildly effective against the early strains. If you have actual medical data published in journals and peer reviewed, I'd be very happy to see it, and possibly even change my opinion if it's convincing.
    - stefantalpalaru 4y ago
      > If you have actual medical data published in journals and peer reviewed, I'd be very happy to see it, and possibly even change my opinion if it's convincing. https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795612c0f569b12 https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795...
      - hanselot 4y ago
        How quiet they become in the face of data. Why are none of these studies being discussed? Obviously because it doesn't fit the narrative. I will say it again, if you are still refusing to accept what is happening, you are most likely in the Denial stage. https://web.archive.org/web/20230327020816/https://www.washington.edu/counseling/2020/06/08/the-stages-of-grief-accepting-the-unacceptable/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230327020816/https://www.washi... sprinkled with a side of https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy The worst part is, in my life I have never more wanted to be wrong, because the cost of being right is so high. The irony that I was involved in promoting awareness of this way back before anyone cared is not lost on me. Is it so hard to believe that a company with an incredibly large financial incentive to lie, did so? Is it so difficult to believe that these same companies use propaganda to shape discourse online? The same companies that are happy to promote the body positivity movement resulting in lifelong insulin dependency, yet somehow you refuse to believe that they would try to cash in on a global scale?
        snovv_crash 4y ago
        > How quiet they become in the face of data. Why are none of these studies being discussed? This level of discussion isn't constructive. (I was asleep, FYI, not everybody is in west coast US). The studies listed for the most part all came out after COVID was basically gone. Sure there is plenty that could have been done better in hindsight, but cherry picking a single study showing difficulties with lipids from 2010 "that they should have known about" when the alternative was authoritarian lockdowns is not a helpful position to take.
  - nayuki 4y ago
    > Why is HN so eager to cheer vaccines wherever it can? There was no guarantee that the world could develop and test an effective, safe vaccine in less than a year.
- malcolmgreaves 4y ago
  mRNA vaccine creation is humanity's most impressive technology. We'd be absolutely screwed right now if we didn't have this tech. (Or, more accurately: a lot more people would be dead otherwise).
  - autokad 4y ago
    I don't really think so. Omicron is what did it. I think in Africa only 24% received at least one dose, and Africa is not a giant heaping pile of covid19 bodies. If I recall correctly (its possible I do not), the latest booster is for BA-5, which was effectively extinct by the time the booster came out. Why its extinct is important: the existing variants had immune escape over BA-5.
    - betacat 4y ago
      That's a continental average. Rates varied (June 2022) from nearly 72% in Rwanda to near zero in neighboring Burundi. You are unfortunately parroting a bad/malicious over-generalization.
      - marcusverus 4y ago
        This is common sense and goes without saying. GP does not need to recite the litany about the fact that things are different in different parts of Africa. We're aware. > You are unfortunately parroting a bad/malicious over-generalization. Yawn.
    - koshergweilo 4y ago
      The age of the average African is significantly younger than the rest of the world. There's a lot of variables to account for, you'd need a proper study, not just a single data point, to determine if omicron is significantly less deadly than older COVID variants. As for GP's claim that vaccines saved a lot of lives, that's very well supported at this point https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-vaccines-prevented-millions-deaths-hospitalizations#:~:text=From%20December%202020%20through%20November,million%20more%20COVID%2D19%20infections https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2022/two-years-covid-v....
- wfme 4y ago
  For the initial variants, sure. But those have long since been replaced with much milder variants, closely resembling a mild cold for most. How are you able to attribute the reduction in deaths for this winter compared to the previous winter to vaccines? We had vaccines in the previous winter too.
jupp0r 4y ago
It's technically also not true that people were killed by "Expensive energy".
- usrusr 4y ago
  Makes me wonder how many people have died because of terrible headlines...
  - drekipus 4y ago
    That reminds me of the time I saw a local newspaper with the front page headline "Fatal distraction kills driver" But with the irony of a red square covering 80% of the page, as a Foxtel ad. Lemme see if I can find it..
  - MrMan 4y ago
    [dead]

mavu 4y ago

Can't possibly be secondary effects of Covid-19, right? Because that would mean we would have to acknowledge long covid, and possible immune system damage of repeated infections. That won't do at all, people might want not to die for the ecconomy.

goatlover 4y ago
You can't separate the economy from the well being of people.
- drekipus 4y ago
  Good point
- anonporridge 4y ago
  When robots do all the work you can.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Even robots need energy. If the robots produce the stuff, the robots are "the economy", even if money isn't involved. And if the robots can't produce because of lack of energy, that still hurts people.
- dmbche 4y ago
  On a short timescale, when talking to coked up rich guys, I think people are able to separate the two.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
neurobama 4y ago
The evidence-based research on long COVID is limited and of mixed quality. From what I've seen, there are significant gaps in experimental methodology and a lot of studies based on extremely subjective surveys which don't effectively filter co-morbities. I would strongly caution you to examine the data before adopting a strong position on the issue and applying it to potentially unrelated phenomena.

dougmwne 4y ago

It certainly seems to have killed several businesses in my city.

mustacheemperor 4y ago

[flagged]

anonporridge 4y ago
They're ultimately victims of their own political leaders who increased dependency on Russian gas in order to irrationally kill nuclear fission energy. Anti-nuclear energy activists will likely go down in history as villains.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Anti-nuclear energy activists will likely go down in history as villains. My personal pet conspiracy theory is that those 'activists' were largely sponsored by Russian interests to begin wtih. Cui bono?
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    More generally, supported by fossil fuel industry. They were and still are the useful idiots serving the interests of carbon emission industry, who exploited their amygdala because it's easier to be scared of acute nuclear risks than by diffuse GHG risks.
  - swarnie 4y ago
    You should take a look at the "Stop Oil" lot we have in the UK at the moment, if they aren't a big oil psyops ill eat my hat. Constantly doing the least logical and public endearing actions possible without fail.
  - pantalaimon 4y ago
    It was the Schröder Government that signed the initial Nuclear phase-out law. The same Schröder who would later join the board of GazProm and just paid the Russian Embassy a visit for WWII victory celebrations the other day.
- QLazuli 4y ago
  I would get to the same answer via a slightly different path. Their corrupt leaders sold their country to Russia and they pulled it off by exploiting their constituents with anti-nuclear fear mongering.

pasttense01 4y ago

People should have been able to adapt to the need to use less heating energy. 1. Wear warmer clothing. 2. Very substantially cut down on the portion of the house you live in and consequently need to heat...

candiodari 4y ago
They did! They just lowered their body temperature by ~37 degrees and moved 2 meters underground. Some people do consider this a sub-optimal outcome.
prawn 4y ago
I don't disagree, but there are many elderly people with an irrational relationship with money in their later years. A friend talks about his 80+ year old neighbour with money in the bank and literally no family at all to leave an estate with. They fret over tiny financial decisions every day that would otherwise bring them comfort or purpose. I remember my grandfather in his 80-90s not using the air-conditioning during heatwaves to save money. The price of power wouldn't have been a serious factor in his mind, just that it cost anything at all. I assume decades of frugal behaviour makes for extreme conditioning that is hard to undo.
- ilyt 4y ago
  I find it kinda funny, I know few pretty rich people and you can notice which one started from something small and worked for it with frugality. Like boss wanted us to do a bunch of tweaking to run servers a bit hotter to save some on AC (we have small closed datacenter with like 2 racks). Absolute tiny savings in company hiring 50+ developers alone but hey it's savings
PraetorianGourd 4y ago
People should have been and to adapt to the need to fight off COVID. 1. Wear a respirator. 2. Live a healthy lifestyle to avoid obesity and chronic health conditions so the body is better and to fight off infection. See? Being a twat is easy. Actually having a bit of compassion is the hard part.

renewiltord 4y ago

It appears very fortunate that India has increased oil exports to Europe. May have reduced this impact somewhat and saved lives.

allensmorgan 4y ago
Unfortunately, India as of today is the top launderer (reseller) of ru oil

julienb_sea 4y ago

The movement towards renewables and away from reliable, inexpensive fossil generation will continue this trend in years to come. Gas generation is increasingly economically unviable with so much competition from renewables, but it remains necessary in order to provide baseload capacity, fill gaps when renewables are underperforming, and handle significant energy demand (e.g. an extreme winter storm).

algoatecorn 4y ago
Not to mention the many fossil-fuel derived goods that will face diseconomies of scale
anonporridge 4y ago
The ultimate solution is to dramatically over build intermittent renewables so that the lowest trough of electricity production is enough to meet baseload needs. The problem (or opportunity) then is what you do with all the excess energy during the peaks. Ideally, you also have a large fleet of responsive consumers that can quickly spin up/down consumption and pay for the electricity and keep the oversupply of energy producers economically viable.
- ilyt 4y ago
  The problem honestly is how grid is built. For example, currently your neighbour having solar might, in worst case, cause you to have to pay for energy in peak, if they bump voltage high enough your inverter turns off. You're also selling (if you don't have net metering) your produced power for pennies on dollar. If, for example, instead of pushing that energy all the way could store it closer, now grid doesn't need to "do something with it", there are less losses overall, and less waste. So if say a local muncipality or power company just built local battery storage facility and just "leased" capacity to its occupants: * people with solar could "bank" the peaks to use it during night * people without could enjoy lower energy prices overall * people could "just" buy battery and consume more of that peak (buying electricity for cheap from their neighbours), and maybe even contribute pack. * power company wouldn't need to push as much power and maybe even potentially do something clever like "preloading" batteries before peak usage so less of that is pushed from the big plants, or "borrow" some energy from the bank to push elsewhere where needed. But that's complex and requires capital investments, and there is no motivation from power company to make stuff more optimal for customers, just for the investors.

the_optimist 4y ago

How is it that this article omits a discussion of the Nordstream Pipeline?

readonthegoapp 4y ago
I'd guess the Economist likes being a going concern.

pornel 4y ago

It has been similarly speculated that shutdown of nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster has caused more deaths than the disaster itself, due to rise in energy costs: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japans-reactors-deadlier-than-the-fukushima-disaster https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japan...

malcolmgreaves 4y ago

This analysis is incredibly flawed. It's face-palm levels of statistical incompetence here. > High energy prices can cost lives. They discourage people from heating their homes properly, and living in cold conditions raises the risk of cardiac and respiratory problems. Cardiac and respiratory problems you say! Hmmm, I wonder if there's a virus circulating that turns lungs into swiss cheese....or if it causes massive cardiac stress and damage too. The author's presumption about how energy prices can lead to excess deaths hinges upon a mechanism that COVID-19 also affects. It's not correlation: it's causation. COVID-19 causes respiratory and cardiac problems. They did not even attempt to address this fact! So then, they say "well some of these death's weren't caused by COVID-19." Ok sure. But how many of those folks who died from "the cold" actually died of hypothermia? Out of the ones that died from cardiac or repository distress, how many had prior COVID-19 infections? Were they recovered? If they recovered, was it full or did they have lingering, permanent long-COVID symptoms? Because we know there's a causal relationship, it really isn't hard to make the next step of inference to understand that this disease will be a very strong cofounding variable in those non-COVID-19 attributed excess deaths. tl;dr This article is BS because it ignores the causal relationship that COVID-19 has on mechanism by which higher energy prices could plausibly lead to increased mortality.

barbegal 4y ago
They have at least attempted to compare these excess deaths with a model of Covid excess deaths (although models are always wrong to varying degrees) The most interesting thing to me is how younger ages who previously haven't been affected much by Covid seem to have suffered this past winter https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
- dathinab 4y ago
  at least from people around me in Germany "younger people" seem to have been more affected by bad Covid cases then at any time before like in my extended family/friend cycle Covid cases where people needed multipel weeks to recover from where rare before this winter, but not rare this winter but due to changes in how Covid was handled in general I'm wouldn't be surprised if less then half the cases ended up in any Covid statistics through then concluding from your personal environment to all of Germany is query a far stretch

barbegal 4y ago

Whats striking from the statistics is how younger ages (under 45) have been affected this winter compared to during the Covid pandemic https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

andsoitis 4y ago

> Expensive energy may have killed more Europeans than covid-19 last winter What is the point of this comparison?

vikingerik 4y ago
To promote an agenda and misleadingly. It's trying to push cheaper energy (either by more negotiation with suppliers, or by way of reducing policies against it in regulations or taxes/tariffs), and it's trying to frame that need by comparing it to something that you might think is a huge killer (which Covid wasn't in the winter of 2022-23, anywhere.)
- PraetorianGourd 4y ago
  No, the point is that we all collectively shit ourselves over COVID, absolutely turning society upside-down. But we shrug at so many other existential threats because they are already by accounted for (like traffic fatalities) or happens to “someone else” (like drug dependency). COVID was dangerous, and ignoring it completely wasn’t an option. But it is a reasonable rhetorical gambit to wonder why we responded to COVID so aggressively while ignoring other risks and threats.

jleyank 4y ago

Reading the comments of for this article, HN -> Reddit (or worse). This is political BS, nothing technical or entrepreneurial. Gresham's Law? Guess it's time to go elsewhere - have fun, try to stay civil with each other and (somehow) return to tech-related topics. I'll check in at some point in the future.

green_man_lives 4y ago
I keep seeing more and more articles from The Economist reaching the top page and they're never good.
p1necone 4y ago
The comments are talking about politics because the article is politically motivated horseshit, not the other way around. If you're lamenting the article making it to the front page though I hear you. HN has a weird boomer right wing uncle vibe when it comes to anything to do with the climate or renewable energy. Lots of people repeating the same tired easily debunkable soundbites and getting a disturbing number of upvotes.

dathinab 4y ago

as far as I can tell from the free accessible part: their analysis seem to only make sense if you assume that Covid magically went away and/or Covid death are reliably detected even if the person dies at home in a context where "ways through which covid can kill you" happen to also be what they base their analysis on... but at least personally I know of more cases of more serve Covid last winter then pretty much any time before, not very surprising given that Covid didn't disappear, still mutates but Germany had noticeable less steps to prevent Covid then before and this are all cases which didn't in anyway decrease their usage of heat (i.e. earned enough to be able to cope with increased heating bills) so idk. but from the parts which are not behind a paywall this looks like a very questionable analysis, which also happen to fit multiple political agendas very well, surely just coincidence but interesting anyway

betacat 4y ago

Did they die with expensive energy or from expensive energy?

green_man_lives 4y ago

I mostly find The Economist to be propaganda, for example they try to frame energy vs covid because they always want to disparage "green energy" and covid safety measures. That's their bias, I find it to be really grating but hey to each their own. What I would have liked to have seen in this article was a breakdown of the causes of death. It seems like the implication is that energy costs caused people to freeze to death, or at least keep the temperature low and... get more sick? I guess? Not sure. But since energy prices are tied to everything else, how much of these excess deaths were knock-on effects of high energy prices affecting the costs of goods and subsequently human behavior? I would be curious to see a breakdown of the effects because it's hard for me to believe that people are just freezing to death because they can't afford $100/month extra on their electricity bills. Maybe this is true, but I would like to see a breakdown of the causes of death for each person. One of the things that came to mind is the idea that let's say there's some percentage of people on the verge of suicide on any given day. Could an extra $100/mo on their utility bill, or the inflation from high energy prices, have enough of an effect that they kill themselves? I think this would be a more interesting analysis than "herp derp energy production is more important than covid safety", especially when the easy argument against the effect of energy costs on an individual is that expensive energy is only relevant when consumers pay for it directly. If the state subsidizes energy production then (assuming no blackouts) nobody is going to freeze to death (which they hinted at in their article, but didn't realize the end conclusion that a nationalized energy sector makes energy costs largely irrelevant to the individual). Personally I don't really care either way, but I think this post sucks and I don't see why it's so high up.

robbiep 4y ago
> because they always want to disparage "green energy" and covid safety measures. This is simply not a true reflection of the voice of the economist, which has been climate-real (in terms of aligned with the scientific evidence) for more than 25 years
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  a) even if I grant you your timeline, that's still decades of delay and denial b) they have still been championing people like Bjorn Lomborg within that timeframe. c) they appear to have become more US culture war aligned recently as their readership changed which is obviously a step backwards on climate (and COVID)

mistrial9 4y ago

talking point of petrochemical industry PR -- "war on cheap energy" is another

tuatoru 4y ago

Since this in the Economist, I'm surprised the author didn't go full Swiftean "Modest Proposal", and say that this is a good thing, because it frees up a lot of caregivers to do more productive things. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

guywithahat 4y ago

This was also predicted to happen and politicians ignored (or worse, actively silenced) the predictions. Even mildly cooler conditions in winter for old people can inspire tons of respiratory infections

Guthur 4y ago

All cause mortality seems to have near universally increase across many countries over the past 12 to 24 months. This can not yet be clearer attributed to something, or at least not publicly. But it is also clearer not covid. What is most strange is the out right refusal to acknowledge this phenomenon by our ruling elite. There have been examples in the UK where parliament has actively refused to even listen to those that talk about it.