2. What is your source for death rates not fluctuating with cases? In general, deaths have reliably tracked cases, with a delay of a few weeks (because it takes time to progress from diagnosis to death).
3. Shuttering the economy is not binary. With an intelligent approach, and general compliance with measures such as mask wearing, we ought to be able to control the virus without a complete shutdown. Unfortunately we keep making unintelligent tradeoffs and executing inconsistently.
There are a lot of claims like this which are very difficult to prove or disprove. Sweden was one of the few places that went very light on it's measures and never got overwhelmed and generally coped with the virus OK so far. (They admit they messed up with care homes, but that is the same as with many other countries who took far harsher measures).
What they did help show was that certain mixes of mitigation (vs suppression) measures could potentially keep R below 1 in certain places. But even there, because of a limited testing strategy, it was hard to confirm this for quite a while in Sweden. It would have been a lot more helpful if there'd been a lot more testing surveillance in Sweden, but alas.
3 - We are asking everyone to adhere to economic and social restrictions when the risks are not equal to everyone. People in certain age groups, and with health risks, are far more at risk than most people.
This site seems entirely untethered to reality? E.g. "2) Covid mortality vs. flu mortality" section appears to put IFR for covid of those at age 80 at 0.16%? Yet, we have entire countries that aren't far off from that number for population fatality rates, let alone infection fatality rate.
Wait.. I was just assuming this had to be an IFR comparison, because for something like this, anything else would be disingenuous. I should assume less. It looks like it is comparing annual mortality of flu with the current mortality of Covid-19.
1. We're still far from a year into notable spread of Covid-19. 2. Normal flu seasons don't have lockdowns, masks, bans on large events, etc. 3. In digging a bit more, this uses the 2017 flu season as a baseline, which was one of the worst.
This site is actually a great example of Covid-19 misinformation. It has a veneer of authority - Swiss Policy Research as a name sounds like it might be credible. And, it presents what, on first glance, appears to be claims grounded in science (and hey, nice graphs and all!).
But, one starts digging into the claims, and it starts to become clear the flaws.
jasonv: there are a lot of pseudoscientific resources out there with respect to Covid-19. This looks to be one of them. It's more essential than ever to vet what you're linking to these days.
Those are all numbers with all the prevention/protections put in place. You don't get to use them as an argument against "shutting down the economy".
> "of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age"
And the other 200k (your numbers are a little dated) apparently aren't worth worrying about?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/07/09/nearly-50-...
From an argument perspective, I’d suggest that if we want to allay encryption restrictions because we don’t buy “think of the children”, the same logic could be applied to the economy and the 50m already at economic risk. People are dying and suffering from poverty, starvation.. around the globe. Children aren’t have their childhoods.
And per https://swprs.org/facts-about-covid-19/ perhaps we’ve flattened the death curve and we need more targeted policies for those who are truly at risk.
> Does that sound like a pandemic?
It sounds like a region that has handled the pandemic well.
> In the US, death rates are pretty flat (not fluctuating much with cases)
Daily deaths are tracking case rates (given, one is best off looking at a combo of case rates, positivity and total testing). Of course, deaths lag a fair bit.
> of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age.
And, we're only around 10% total incidence rate in the US, based on more recent widespread antibody studies. 16K for under 54 is still a fairly large number given that we're only at ~10%. Add in 55-64 and we're at 42K deaths. Let's ramp up to an incidence rate of 50% - super basic napkin math and we'd be at over 200K deaths for the under 65 crowd - as in, entirely people of below retirement age. That's huge.
> Is it reasonable to shutter most of our economies for those numbers?
We haven't though. Not to downplay the economic impact, but most of the economy is still running.
> People are suffering economically and emotionally because of stress and isolation.
Yeah, this aspect sucks. A few comments:
* Let's imagine we lifted all restrictions. How much do you think that would improve the economy? There's at least some evidence that economies that have failed in mitigation, such that the virus runs pretty close to free, have had the sharpest GDP declines - https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy - granted, it is hard to separate out factors, as countries that have seen huge spread often also will, at least temporarily, lock down more. But, my general comment here is that the virus itself is a significant portion of the economic impact.
* The federal government should have done more to keep people afloat during this period. This sort of crisis is exactly when we should have committed to sustained support, e.g. UBI until the pandemic was over.
* Beyond that, re isolation, most places in the country allow for gatherings, for you to visit family and friends, for you to go out and about. Sure, big events and bars are still restricted in most places, but if one wants to socialize, they still can.
You do realize that, if you don't die first, you'll be old too one day?
I'm sorry things are tough.
I live in Contra Costa County (east bay, SF area), with a lot of retired people. 1.1 million residents. We’ve had 224 deaths with COVID so far. In the US, death rates are pretty flat (not fluctuating much with cases), and of the 198k deaths in the US, only 16K were younger than 54 years of age.
Does that sound like a pandemic? Is it reasonable to shutter most of our economies for those numbers? Can we not have different regulations for those with elevated risks?
Earnest questions.
People are suffering economically and emotionally because of stress and isolation.