Of course you could say that math is horrible and inhumane, and any equation involving dollars and human lives will feel that way. But the point is that health care spending is already rationed by something like that standard, and every dollar of GDP that disappears is a dollar that's unavailable to spend in other ways (including medical treatments that are cost-effective by that standard).
To be clear, I think Sweden erred by not mandating masks, which seem cost-effective to me by that standard. Their response otherwise seems reasonable to me, not obviously better than stricter approaches but not obviously worse.
Average age of the covid-19 dead in Sweden is 82, average life expectancy is 83. The majority of the deaths also occurred at elder care homes where the expected survival time is less than two years. And, just like everywhere else, the covid-19 dead are much more likely to belong to certain risk groups associated with earlier deaths as well.
10 QALY lost per death sounds way, way too high to me.
> To be clear, I think Sweden erred by not mandating masks, which seem cost-effective to me by that standard.
The reasoning behind this, which is the same in the rest of the Nordics and the Netherlands, is that a general mask mandate is counter-productive. No-one is arguing that medical grade face masks properly handled, worn, and disposed of help prevent the spread. The problem, and this should be obvious if you live in a place where masks are mandated, is that people don't have proper masks and don't wear them properly. So masks can create a sense of false security, and make people slack off on their distancing, which means a mask mandate can result in a net negative result.
Right or wrong, I don't know, and I don't know if we'll ever know, but that's at least the reasoning behind it. And it definitely sounds plausible to me.
I'm in Hawaii which has had a mask mandate for months now, and the way regular people are actually handling their masks in the real world is very, very far from the way trained medical professionals handle their masks.
That's life expectancy at BIRTH. It would seem to me that the relevant statistic in the case of an 80 year old dying is the average life expectancy they had at 80, which is considerably more than 3 years.
The biggest disingeniousness of the people talking about the covid-19 specific death toll is that the assumption is that if not for covid-19, everyone would have lived forever and ever, and that's simply not true. Looking at the demographics of the dead, for many, covid-19 is what happened to push them over. If not for covid-19, something else would have done it in a similar timeframe, especially since the flu seasons of 2018/19 and 2019/20 were so mild.
Yes, there are people who died significantly before their time, but they're a small minority of the dead. So 10 QALY lost per dead is way too much. 1 QALY lost per dead is too little, I agree. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
As to masks, I also agree correct use is a problem. Here (SF Bay Area) the East Asian population seems to use them competently and consistently, but everyone else is hit or miss. I would have liked to see more public education, rather than just the unexplained mandate; but the probability that masks primarily explain East Asia's success in containing the virus seems high enough, and the cost seems low enough, that they seem like a favorable bet to me. I do also think it's quite possible that other factors (e.g., different degrees of pre-existing T cell immunity from other coronaviruses) will turn out to explain that big difference though.
https://mobile.twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1290916583137...
This is the medical literature version of the xkcd green M&M comic:
Both countries have it under control now. But it's clear Finland's shutdown saved lives.
The shutdown will be looked back on in 10 years as one of the worst mistakes the world has ever made.
For myself, I definitely sense that we (collectively, or nation by nation) could have followed various pathways (and to some extent, we did). The "right" answer was (and is) not known, and we had a choice between erring on the side of caution over the damage caused by the disease versus that caused by economic disruption.
For now, I'm still in favor of erring in the direction of caution over the disease impact, but will concede that history may judge things quite differently.
That’s just a piece of the all cause mortality due to the COVID response.
And then after accepting all that direct cost, then you can start evaluating the economic damage on top (which to some extent is unavoidable regardless of lockdown policy).
I'd love to believe that you're right (and 3 months ago, I felt the same way). But I just don't.
Sweden didn’t make this bet. Finland, Norway, and New Zealand did.
Sustained lockdown and lack of travel will be very costly if it has to be maintained for two years; and the fatigue from maintaining it will undo all of the supposed success.
This is not decidable at this point in time, and likely not within the next 5 years.
As did Peru. Despite following WHO globalist advice to the letter.
Why is your cherry pick right and mine wrong?
so yes, temporarily Sweden stats may look worse because people who would die this or next year died in short time window in these few months, but those people will be missing in stats down the road
it's already happening in UK, for 6 consecutive weeks they have lower than 5yr average death toll and excess deaths are shrinking because oft his
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1290568780251308032
so while you may pat yourself on shoulders how good you done without spike in the end you both reach pretty much same result spike or not
Hope those 5000+ unnecessary deaths were worth 3.3%.
"Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway."
Wow.