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Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

maximumtruth.substack.com

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Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#81

Post by rkangel »

> My personal answer is: No. It would not be worth it to me. I’d take that loss in expected lifespan, in order to travel and live freely for a couple years.

My understanding was that actually for people in NZ they were better off than we were in the UK. Yes they had very strong border control so international travel is difficult/impossible, but once it was clear they had it under control the internal restrictions were fairly light. I remember seeing a photo of tens of thousands of people at a rugby game at the same time as fairly serious Covid restrictions in the UK.

I think he's asking the wrong question - if you ask me "am I willing to not leave my country for two years (but have little other restriction)" for 10-15 days of extra life, then yes that sounds fine. I like international travel but can live without it for a while.

I think half hearted Covid restrictions are the problem. The UK has to me the least forgivable Covid situation. We are an island with easily controllable borders (like Japan, NZ, Aus) but we never did. There is a lot of evidence of getting Covid under control and then being re-infected from abroad so it doesn't matter that we got it early - we could have kept it under much better control.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#82

Post by eldaisfish »

HideousKojima wrote: post #52
eldaisfish wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are making the classic mistake of judging past actions with future knowledge. Lockdowns work and they worked well given what what was known at the time. They are also good at reducing social contacts for transmissible disease and the best evidence of this was the almost total lack of a flu season in the northern hemisphere. While the social and economic cost is now known to be immense, public health officials hav…

>Lockdowns work and they worked well given what what was known at the time. Objection, arguing facts not in evidence. Edit: in response to the part you added after your original post: >While the social and economic cost is now known to be immense, public health officials have a duty of care to the most vulnerable in society. The social and economic costs were mostly predictable back before the lockdowns ever happened…

how do you square this with the fact that more and more people are calling in sick and many are continuing to die now that much of the western world has given up on pandemic restrictions?

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#83

Post by michael_j_ward »

pacerwpg wrote: post #77
michael_j_ward wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden was the well publicized "control group." It was not selected post-hoc, it was selected in 2020. The result was more death early and less death later, while suffering no learning loss or adverse effects on the children and little loss in quality of life. Here's an article from 2020 disparaging the high costs [0]. If you find any major news giving an update now that Finland and Norway have caught up in excess de…

Of note, the 'more death early and less death later' resulted in significantly more death overall. It wasn't a wash.

Yes- there is a life-year cost to bringing death forward.

But there has now been no excess mortality in Sweden compared to it's neighbors Finland and Norway (and all 3 blow the US and Europe out of the water.)

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-cumulative-...

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#84

Post by HideousKojima »

pacerwpg wrote: post #71
HideousKojima wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lockdowns work and they worked well given what what was known at the time. Objection, arguing facts not in evidence. Edit: in response to the part you added after your original post: >While the social and economic cost is now known to be immense, public health officials have a duty of care to the most vulnerable in society. The social and economic costs were mostly predictable back before the lockdowns ever happened…

Interestingly the economies of the world seem to be fairing worse now that lockdowns have lifted and there are labor shortages in every area. The effects of people dying and the unchecked spread of illness were ignored with calls of "you're killing the economy!".

Only if your premise that the labor shortages (and other economic issues) are caused by pandemic deaths is correct, mind you. The overwhelming majority of deaths (around 80%) from the pandemic in all countries was amongst retirement age individuals, most of whom are out of the workforce.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#85

Post by ZeroGravitas »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #54
blagie wrote: post #45

I fundamentally disagree with the methodology and conclusion of this article. The problem with a new disease is that we don't know the long-term impact. Polio led to post-polio syndrome. Tick diseases have impacts decades out. Rabies does nothing for 6 months, and then causes insanity and certain death. Syphilis led to insanity decades later. AIDS has minimal short-term impacts too; death is caused by follow-up disea…

I don’t understand. The blog is talking about death tallies which is an easily observed binary outcome. They weren’t trying to measure other outcomes. Are you thinking a COVID infection might kill you two years later? That seems unlikely. Might it cause other health impacts? That’s almost certainly true, see long COVID. But it’s simply not the analysis being done here. This is about figuring out the degree to which c…

I think they're referring to the stated conclusion, that this author thinks his work supports his own view that lockdown policies were too restrictive, and we should instead have more freedom/death.

Even with 20/20 hindsight, that seems like a bad take, and when the decisions were taken, we didn't have 20/20 hindsight, and we won't the next time either.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#86

Post by robertkoss »

HideousKojima wrote: post #78
robertkoss wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it yourself, we were lacking the data which in a fat tailed event like a pandemic means that you should be as careful as possible. It boggles my mind that people don't understand how to act under uncertainty.

The absolutely devastating economic and social effects were known, the possible effects of the disease both short and long-term were unknown. So we decided to go for the known devastating effects in case the disease was also devastating? That makes zero sense. And there were alternatives proposed to lockdowns like the Great Barrington Declaration that were not simply not considered, but were actively suppressed and s…

Great Barrington -> 4th of October. Are you even reading my comments? I am referring to the first lockdowns which took place in April 2020.

"So we decided to go for the known devastating effects in case the disease was also devastating?" Of course we do in case of a pandemic, since we are dealing with a completely different underlying distribution of effects.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#87

Post by pacerwpg »

eldaisfish wrote: post #82
HideousKojima wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lockdowns work and they worked well given what what was known at the time. Objection, arguing facts not in evidence. Edit: in response to the part you added after your original post: >While the social and economic cost is now known to be immense, public health officials have a duty of care to the most vulnerable in society. The social and economic costs were mostly predictable back before the lockdowns ever happened…

how do you square this with the fact that more and more people are calling in sick and many are continuing to die now that much of the western world has given up on pandemic restrictions?

We cannot continue to live under the tyranny of sometimes wearing a mask.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#88

Post by geiser »

hamaluik wrote: post #61

I can get onboard with most of this.. until the end. COVID deaths don’t just mean everyone losing 15 days of life. To me it meant multiple family members dying. It means my respiratory system has been absolutely wrecked, hopefully not forever but for at least several months now. It means my infant son is gasping for breath on my lap as I write this and there’s nothing we can do for him. Statistics in white towers are…

That's exactly what I thought. We have to learn to live in a community, and that means sacrificing personal liberty for the benefit of others.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#89

Post by pacerwpg »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #46
zdragnar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thought numbers were being artificially inflated was that they were counting people who died while having tested positive for covid being attributed to covid This objectively happened. Anyone who was COVID positive was being counted as a COVID death. It happened to my friend's dad- COVID was listed as the cause of death on his death certificate, v even though it was nothing to do with any illness at all, but rather…

Same. Family friend had a hunting accident and shot himself. Made it to the hospital, tested positive, died within a day or two from the gunshot. "Covid death."

I'm calling bullshit.

Re: Covid “Fudge Factor” – A map of Covid data corruption and approach that worked

#90

Post by Marazan »

rkangel wrote: post #81

> My personal answer is: No. It would not be worth it to me. I’d take that loss in expected lifespan, in order to travel and live freely for a couple years. My understanding was that actually for people in NZ they were better off than we were in the UK. Yes they had very strong border control so international travel is difficult/impossible, but once it was clear they had it under control the internal restrictions wer…

Yes the "no lockdown ever" crowd like to pretend NZ/Aus were prison camps where everyone was confined to their house 24 hours a day, whereas the reality was packed stadiums for international rugby.

The UKs shitty confused response in autumn 2020 was an absolute disaster both from a controlling Covid and Maximising Freedom approach.

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