111–119 of 119 posts
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> Actual Influenza is in fact quite dangerous. Agreed, but we don't destroy economies over it, we just get on with things and accept it for what it is.
Except influenza is nowhere near spreading as fast. If let unchecked, many millions of people would be dead - this has been avoided only by control measures, and we're not past it yet. If it's similar seasonality to Spanish flu, expect 4 waves. This is start of the second wave, likely biggest.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Actual Influenza is in fact quite dangerous. Agreed, but we don't destroy economies over it, we just get on with things and accept it for what it is.
Except influenza is nowhere near spreading as fast. If let unchecked, many millions of people would be dead - this has been avoided only by control measures, and we're not past it yet. If it's similar seasonality to Spanish flu, expect 4 waves. This is start of the second wave, likely biggest.
The rest of your comment is pure speculation. It now seems to be the given narrative that there will be a second wave despite coronaviruses having different characteristics from flu. I would argue that the current second waves in Europe are really the first wave continuing after lockdown restricting were lifted (plus a lot more testing). The number of deaths isn't rising much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except influenza is nowhere near spreading as fast. If let unchecked, many millions of people would be dead - this has been avoided only by control measures, and we're not past it yet. If it's similar seasonality to Spanish flu, expect 4 waves. This is start of the second wave, likely biggest.
> If let unchecked, many millions of people would be dead - this has been avoided only by control measures, and we're not past it yet. This is an unfalsifiable claim, considering that virtually every country has done something to inhibit spread. It's also meaningless, because nobody is saying that nothing should be done to inhibit spread. The question is, what should be done? How many people-years can we realisticall…
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> This was partly due to some very controversial and in my opinion unethical guidelines which mandated morphing instead of oxygen for certain groups of elderly (i.e. involuntary euthanasia) This is an extremely serious accusation. I live in Sweden and have not seen any reference to this practice mentioned in media.
Seriously? http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/kolumnister/a/dO3ddB/en-pa... http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/GGk664/de-nast-intill-av... http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/4q9V1g/kritiken-mot-aldr... https://www.dagensmedicin.se/artiklar/2020/06/15/palliativ-v... https://www.expressen.se/debatt/min-pappas-dod-i-covid-19-bl... https://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/a/Ln0r9Q/morfin-istallet-f... https://www.exakt24.se/la…
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You are cherry-picking countries based on geographic proximity, but that's not really a meaningful factor. Germany is right next to France, France had the stricter lockdown, yet Germany has no excess mortality . Meanwhile, Norway has almost twice the per-capita GDP of the other nordic countries. Finland has no large metropolitan area. Sweden has more people in elderly care. Lots of factors to consider, but geographic…
> France had the stricter lockdown You are begging the question. France might have stricter rules, but didn't enforce them. German police enforced (and enforces) the rules that they have in terms of contact tracing, quarantine/isolation, indoors mask rules, regional/local lockdowns etc far more rapidly and stringently than France, Spain, UK or US. (Not as well as East Asian countries, but in European comparison the s…
It then makes sense to compare Sweden against all other European countries instead of just those few neighboring countries.
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>It’s also contained because unleashing it would totally overwhelm almost any nation’s hospitals, cause a cascading death toll because no treatment could be given. This is clearly not true because it didn't overwhelm Sweden's hospitals, or Japan's, or South Dakota's, even though they didn't have lockdowns, just voluntary social distancing.
Not as clear as you make it sound: Swedes did change their behaviour/travel patterns in response to Covid-19, the Japanese instituted mask etiquette a century ago, and no one lives in South Dakota.
As for "nobody lives in South Dakota", well, tell the people who live there that.
And don't forget Belarus. The usual excuse for that is "you can't trust anything out of Belarus", although of course many people live there and no overflowing hospitals were reported by any foreigners there either.
There's a very clear and visible pattern here, which is a really deep desire to believe that epidemiology as a field knows what it's doing, that the models work, that lockdowns weren't useless. But the data is as clear as day. No correlation between lockdowns and health outcomes. No lockdowns yet no ICU exhaustion in Sweden despite Sweden having one of the lowest ICU capacities in Europe - the exact opposite of what we were told to expect. Mask mandates have no visible impact on the spread of 'infection' (PCR positives, not quite the same thing).
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Except influenza is nowhere near spreading as fast. If let unchecked, many millions of people would be dead - this has been avoided only by control measures, and we're not past it yet. If it's similar seasonality to Spanish flu, expect 4 waves. This is start of the second wave, likely biggest.
Sweden coped fine with minimal intervention from the government. The rest of your comment is pure speculation. It now seems to be the given narrative that there will be a second wave despite coronaviruses having different characteristics from flu. I would argue that the current second waves in Europe are really the first wave continuing after lockdown restricting were lifted (plus a lot more testing). The number of d…
Did it, though? https://web.archive.org/web/20201008174215if_/https://www.ec...
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Influenza is contained because there is some form of herd immunity already. Remember COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus, which is why it's spread so much so fast, no one is immune at first. But to suggest that the covid death numbers will be this high year after year after year is unlikely in my opinion, as is shown by the fact that many places with big first waves (north italy, sweden, london) don't have a second wave…
London was under lockdown until June, everyone is already acting like it will be locked down again in the next week or so, and has had strict mask and hygiene and social distancing rules for six months, had a government direction for everyone "who can" work from home to do so for ~4.5 of the last six months (it was briefly rescinded then reinstated), crash built hospitals in convention centres to try to handle overlo…
This is pretty damming to anyone who claims "its just the flu": “More than three times as many deaths were recorded between January and August this year where COVID-19 was the underlying cause compared to influenza and pneumonia." “The mortality rate for COVID-19 is also significantly higher than influenza and pneumonia rates for both 2020 and the five-year average." “Since 1959, which is when ONS monthly death recor…
The number of deaths from flu, pneumonia, and Covid are about 50% higher than the year 2000 (Jan-Aug) and about 25% higher than the year 1983. Do those numbers justify draconian shutdowns and bankrupting half of humanity? I'm not so sure. In the early days, we believed that Covid was 10-20 times deadlier than the flu, and that's what was used to justify the draconian measures. Note also these numbers are for the UK,…