Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis [pdf]

Re:Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis [pdf] by umanwizard on Thursday October 22, 2020 @02:12PM (#24861251)

I downvoted you because the idea that 1% of the total population will die without lockdowns is directly contradicted by all available evidence.

Various countries had various levels of lockdown, and none had anywhere remotely close to that fraction of their population die.

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Re:Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis [pdf] by disgruntledphd2 on Thursday October 22, 2020 @04:11PM (#24862778)

Exactly. However, if you look at the Economist excess deaths tracker, one could estimate a likely death toll with less stringent restrictions: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

Taking Brazil, they had about 62 excess deaths per 100k (who knew Brazil was so dangerous in general?). I'm rounding down because I can't be bothered getting a calculator, so using 50.

Taking this level of excess deaths and applying it to the US, we get 600k excess deaths (so 3x the reported total). Using the excess death numbers for the UK, 90 odd, and again lazily rounding, we'd get 1.2 mn excess deaths this year.

I think the OP's point was actually pretty reasonable, and will look much more accurate in a few years when we have better excess deaths data and (hopefully) this pandemic is over.

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