The implication that we even slowed the trajectory isn't well established. It's likely, but not proven. Let's not get ahead of ourselves by pretending there's evidence millions would have died when there's not even a strong correlation between mandates (as defined by the Oxford stringency index database) and reduced death.

and nowhere that I'm aware of came close to running out of ventilators. New York, one of the hardest hit places in the world may have used a third of their available ventilators. They used around 1/2 of the ventilators they reported available to them in 2015 so it wasn't even close to being the limiting factor in healthcare.

> If we let everyone get it in Q2 2020, millions would have died when we ran out of ventilators.

How do you explain countries like Belarus, Serbia and Sweden, or parts of the US like South Dakota, where no or very lax measures were taken but what you describe didn’t happen?

In fact, is there any evidence that this happened anywhere, or is it all just conjecture based on modeling?

Last I checked Sweden had 110k cases and 5.5k dead. That's an almost exactly 5% fatality rate. Compare that to neighbouring Denmark with 40k cases and 700 dead gives you a 1.75% fatality rate.

Seems to me that there is good basic evidence right there for Sweden's approach being much more deadly.

We can argue back and forth about the relative value of freedom vs lives or whether Denmark will ultimately have as many dead etc. But right now, it seems that controlling numbers saves lives...

https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+covid+deaths&rlz=1C1G...

Comparing the case fatality rates makes no sense unless you have the same ability to get a test in both countries. If one country were to test everyone, including asymptomatic people, then their CFR would be lower than a country with more limited testing, simply because the denominator would include those large number of minimally symptomatic or asymptomatic patients that would be missed in the other country.

Also, the CFR is likely intrinsic to the virus, modified slightly by patient population and type of medical care available (both of the latter are probably very similar between the two countries). So any differences in CFR between the two countries mostly reflects the testing issue.

If you do want to compare the two countries, then compare the per capita death rate from covid (assuming everyone who dies in both countries actually gets a covid test - that might not be the case for old people who die at home, where even in developed countries, their primary doctor will just issue a death certificate saying “old age” or “heart attack” in the absence of any information to the contrary. )

Wow, that is just classic lying with statistics.

1. You cannot just rely on how many sick people happen to be tested. Every single serology study implies a IFR of well under one percent. I am willing to bet that it will end up between 0.1 and 0.6 % for any developed country.

2. You cherrypick your data if you compare Sweden with Denmark or Germany and not with France or the UK.

My hypothesis is that countries that protect the elderly, and especially nursing homes, well have much fewer deaths. In every country this is were the deaths are concentrated.

Probably too early to tell about South Dakota, to be honest. Let's see what things look like in a few months.

Not supporting the OP's assertions, but vaccines have some timid / less potent form of the virus.

Imagine throwing your phone at the wall and it shatters into 1000 pieces. Now try calling someone with one of these pieces.

A certain amount of 'reactogenicity' is expected with most vaccines. ie: "expected" adverse reactions.

Thanks, I guess people do get mild flu after the flu vaccine so it would make sense for it to be the same.