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Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher. Overall there's no evidence that lockdowns actual

Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher. Overall there's no evidence that lockdowns actually reduced mortality: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.4737 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.4737 . >Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries and all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths following the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) policies. We do not find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier had lower excess deaths. We do not observe differences in excess deaths before and after the implementation of SIP policies, even when accounting for pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.

dudinax 3y ago
Compared to it's neighbors, sweden had a huge excess death rate in 2020.
Garvi 3y ago
I know you're spreading misinformation to cover the fact you were breaking all kinds of quarantine procedures because a coward called you a coward one time. Now you're faced with an overwhelming mountain of evidence that your behaviour lead to many deaths and the cowardice resurfaced. You're now a conspiracy theorist and limit yourself to circles that share your mistake. You must be spending a lot of time on Facebook and Reddit. I could cite the most objective sources and statistics, but if you haven't figured it out by now, you don't want to. You're on the level of flat-earthers. The only difference being there's way more of you than of those idiots. And if you think the number of people believing in something somehow gives it credibility, then you should start preparing yourself to meet Allah in the afterlife.
ethbr1 3y ago
South Dakota, the state that ranks 46 (out of 50) in terms of population density?
TheBigSalad 3y ago
What we call "lock down" was hardly anything. And usually in reaction to surging cases. So the data probably couldn't show it working, even if it did. And it probably didn't.
- Garvi 3y ago
  You believe quarantines have no effect on the spread of contagions? With data on zero-covid countries (Australia, New Zealand, China, S Korea, Vietnam,...) so readily available for comparison... I would actually fire you if you worked for me as an engineer. And for the fact that you were obviously not following quarantine procedures, for which you're now overcompensating by spreading medical disinformation. It's not hard spotting the people that caused all the deaths during covid. It's pretty easy actually.
sampo 3y ago
> Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher. In 2020 it clearly was higher. Denmark, Finland and Norway avoided the spring 2020 death wave, whereas in Sweden mortality was 20% to 50% (well, 48%) higher during the weeks of April and May 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~DNK https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~NOR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
stringsandchars 3y ago
> Some places never locked down, like Sweden After the first two devastating waves during the Spring and Autumn of 2020, Sweden in fact 'locked-down' in some ways more restrictively than our nordic neighbors - all of which made timely interventions that meant their restrictions on meeting en-masse in public were for shorter periods and less intrusive on people's everyday lives. The narrative that it was a 'free-for-all' in Sweden has been fostered retrospectively by neo-liberal groups that placed economics above human lives. In their eagerness to be 'proved right' after the fact, most Swedes now embrace this historical revisionism. The statistics that show that Swedish "excess deaths" were low or even lower than other countries were cooked-up by a journalist from a right-wing newspaper in Sweden (SvD), who noticed that if one discounts the downward trend in excess death for the last 25 years in Sweden, together with dispensing with demographic weighting, and then averaging the 3 years from 2019 onwards (which includes the period after vaccination), then miraculously you can squeeze the numbers you want from the raw figures.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  > the first two devastating waves during the Spring and Autumn of 2020 Sweden had negative excess mortality from Jan 2020 to Spring 2021, so fewer people died than expected in this period. These COVID waves just weren't devastating in any way, and yielded virtually no deaths "of" and not "with" COVID. It's strange that you are so convinced that Sweden's data doesn't disprove the effectiveness of lockdowns... > neo-liberal groups that placed economics above human lives Ah, I see.
  - sampo 3y ago
    > Sweden had negative excess mortality from Jan 2020 to Spring 2021 According to this, Sweden had quite bad excess mortality in 2020 in April and May, and some in June. And then again from mid-November 2020 to mid-January 2021. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... There are many different ways different sources have tried to estimate cumulative excess mortality. Depending on the calculation methods, different sources have ended up with quite different results. What is your source, and what method did they use?
chimprich 3y ago
> Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher Many factors: different demographics, population density, culture, what does "locked down" mean in different countries / areas, what does "significantly higher" mean... One important point though is this probably confuses correlation and causation. Areas that were hit harder tended to lock down harder. > Overall there's no evidence that lockdowns actually reduced mortality People post this occasionally, and I'm going to keep calling bullshit. What happens is someone posts a fringe paper that supports their view whilst conveniently ignoring the large body of established scientific orthodoxy that supports the obvious conclusion: that restricting human interaction slows down transmission of a respiratory disease that transmits through human interaction.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  I agree that the mechanism for lockdowns helping is sound (less interaction -> less infection) but I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). I must admit this belief mostly comes from the claim Sweden did better, and the fact that where I live had almost no lockdowns and did better than the rest of my country. Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition?
  - chimprich 3y ago
    > I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). Lockdowns were absolutely harmful - I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise. They were effective in stopping health systems collapsing, which is why pretty much everywhere implemented them when it looked like their health systems were about to be overwhelmed. (cf Italy in early 2020). That would have been catastrophic compared to the harms of lockdown. In terms of suicides specifically, the evidence is not clear. I've seen studies that indicate suicide rates did not increase or actually fell during the pandemic, e.g. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00303-0 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... . There were also fewer deaths from road traffic accidents etc. However, there were lots of other harmful effects such as secondary effects from the economic impact. > Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition? There have been a number of studies concluding that lockdowns were effective. I doubt digging them up will convince any of the sceptics in this thread. But since you ask... how about this Royal Society report? https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-p...
lawn 3y ago
In Sweden it was notably higher initially. What made a difference in Sweden was that vaccination rates were really high and they were administrated quickly. Had the anti-vaccine ideas spread more Sweden would be much, much worse off.
andyjohnson0 3y ago
Parent comment was referring to vaccines not lockdowns.

dudinax 3y ago

Compared to it's neighbors, sweden had a huge excess death rate in 2020.

Garvi 3y ago

I know you're spreading misinformation to cover the fact you were breaking all kinds of quarantine procedures because a coward called you a coward one time. Now you're faced with an overwhelming mountain of evidence that your behaviour lead to many deaths and the cowardice resurfaced. You're now a conspiracy theorist and limit yourself to circles that share your mistake. You must be spending a lot of time on Facebook and Reddit. I could cite the most objective sources and statistics, but if you haven't figured it out by now, you don't want to. You're on the level of flat-earthers. The only difference being there's way more of you than of those idiots. And if you think the number of people believing in something somehow gives it credibility, then you should start preparing yourself to meet Allah in the afterlife.

ethbr1 3y ago

South Dakota, the state that ranks 46 (out of 50) in terms of population density?

TheBigSalad 3y ago

What we call "lock down" was hardly anything. And usually in reaction to surging cases. So the data probably couldn't show it working, even if it did. And it probably didn't.

Garvi 3y ago
You believe quarantines have no effect on the spread of contagions? With data on zero-covid countries (Australia, New Zealand, China, S Korea, Vietnam,...) so readily available for comparison... I would actually fire you if you worked for me as an engineer. And for the fact that you were obviously not following quarantine procedures, for which you're now overcompensating by spreading medical disinformation. It's not hard spotting the people that caused all the deaths during covid. It's pretty easy actually.

sampo 3y ago

> Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher. In 2020 it clearly was higher. Denmark, Finland and Norway avoided the spring 2020 death wave, whereas in Sweden mortality was 20% to 50% (well, 48%) higher during the weeks of April and May 2020. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~DNK https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~NOR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...

stringsandchars 3y ago

> Some places never locked down, like Sweden After the first two devastating waves during the Spring and Autumn of 2020, Sweden in fact 'locked-down' in some ways more restrictively than our nordic neighbors - all of which made timely interventions that meant their restrictions on meeting en-masse in public were for shorter periods and less intrusive on people's everyday lives. The narrative that it was a 'free-for-all' in Sweden has been fostered retrospectively by neo-liberal groups that placed economics above human lives. In their eagerness to be 'proved right' after the fact, most Swedes now embrace this historical revisionism. The statistics that show that Swedish "excess deaths" were low or even lower than other countries were cooked-up by a journalist from a right-wing newspaper in Sweden (SvD), who noticed that if one discounts the downward trend in excess death for the last 25 years in Sweden, together with dispensing with demographic weighting, and then averaging the 3 years from 2019 onwards (which includes the period after vaccination), then miraculously you can squeeze the numbers you want from the raw figures.

nvm0n2 3y ago
> the first two devastating waves during the Spring and Autumn of 2020 Sweden had negative excess mortality from Jan 2020 to Spring 2021, so fewer people died than expected in this period. These COVID waves just weren't devastating in any way, and yielded virtually no deaths "of" and not "with" COVID. It's strange that you are so convinced that Sweden's data doesn't disprove the effectiveness of lockdowns... > neo-liberal groups that placed economics above human lives Ah, I see.
- sampo 3y ago
  > Sweden had negative excess mortality from Jan 2020 to Spring 2021 According to this, Sweden had quite bad excess mortality in 2020 in April and May, and some in June. And then again from mid-November 2020 to mid-January 2021. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?country=~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... There are many different ways different sources have tried to estimate cumulative excess mortality. Depending on the calculation methods, different sources have ended up with quite different results. What is your source, and what method did they use?

chimprich 3y ago

> Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher Many factors: different demographics, population density, culture, what does "locked down" mean in different countries / areas, what does "significantly higher" mean... One important point though is this probably confuses correlation and causation. Areas that were hit harder tended to lock down harder. > Overall there's no evidence that lockdowns actually reduced mortality People post this occasionally, and I'm going to keep calling bullshit. What happens is someone posts a fringe paper that supports their view whilst conveniently ignoring the large body of established scientific orthodoxy that supports the obvious conclusion: that restricting human interaction slows down transmission of a respiratory disease that transmits through human interaction.

brutusborn 3y ago
I agree that the mechanism for lockdowns helping is sound (less interaction -> less infection) but I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). I must admit this belief mostly comes from the claim Sweden did better, and the fact that where I live had almost no lockdowns and did better than the rest of my country. Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition?
- chimprich 3y ago
  > I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). Lockdowns were absolutely harmful - I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise. They were effective in stopping health systems collapsing, which is why pretty much everywhere implemented them when it looked like their health systems were about to be overwhelmed. (cf Italy in early 2020). That would have been catastrophic compared to the harms of lockdown. In terms of suicides specifically, the evidence is not clear. I've seen studies that indicate suicide rates did not increase or actually fell during the pandemic, e.g. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00303-0 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... . There were also fewer deaths from road traffic accidents etc. However, there were lots of other harmful effects such as secondary effects from the economic impact. > Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition? There have been a number of studies concluding that lockdowns were effective. I doubt digging them up will convince any of the sceptics in this thread. But since you ask... how about this Royal Society report? https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-p...

lawn 3y ago

In Sweden it was notably higher initially. What made a difference in Sweden was that vaccination rates were really high and they were administrated quickly. Had the anti-vaccine ideas spread more Sweden would be much, much worse off.

andyjohnson0 3y ago

Parent comment was referring to vaccines not lockdowns.