The comment I was referring to was this statement of yours:

> The policy reversal on masks last spring was not based on new science. It was in part a big rip-off (Newsom paid 4x and spent >$1B of the California taxpayers' money,

You talk about Fauci flopping his stance on masks, you talk about policy reversal on masks, you talk about Newsom's mask expenditures, you call Fauci a corrupt careerist in the comment I'm replying to and mostly in consecutive sentences.

No doubt my reading skills could be better, but perhaps you should stop and realize that while what you intend to say may be crystal clear in your head, you perhaps could have stated things more clearly.

> Please educate yourself better before coming at me with such gaffes. COVID-19 is the disease, SARS-CoV-2 is the virus,

Are you always this pedantic? And always so belittling?

The fact is Sweden lies in middle of the Eurozone pack. It had low excess mortality in recent years, which left many very old people likely to die of/with Covid if they were not protected. I'm not switching topics to defend Sweden's policy. My note was about pop. density.

If you want to go at it about Sweden vs. other countries in Scandinavia, we can take it to Twitter:

https://twitter.com/geenlid/status/1360771792105730049 (thread)

https://twitter.com/jhnhellstrom/status/1354051901751484419 (radial excess mortality plot)

But at the bottom of the Nordics: It is somewhat suggestive that none of Sweden's direct neighbours show significant excess mortality in 2020...

Finland is a hot mess on all health stats.

Norway has done better but also disavowed lockdowns.

Also, I wonder what you mean by Norway disavowing lockdowns? Because they did institute fairly strict measures on March 12, eventually going so far as forbidding people to travel to their cabins to avoid putting strain on rural infrastructure.

Was there some sort of public disavowal after the fact?

Not sure if there's something better, I just clicked through https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... via 'Change country'.

As the graphs can be misleading due to the different scaling of the y-axis depending on the country, I also pulled the data and did my own analysis, eg comparing 'Sweden' against 'all Nordics' and 'all Nordics but Sweden'.

For Denmark, Finland and Norway combined, there were fewer deaths at the beginning of the year compared to the previous 5-year average, and a bit more deaths in April and May - basically a wash, ie 'no worse than the flu'.

The situation in Sweden is different, with significant excess mortality.

In any case, Swedish doctors knew not to abuse ventilators, as did doctors in many other places. This point got lost in the usual assumptive attack on Sweden, but it's the only reason I mentioned that country. A friend in biotech talked to an ER doc in Stockholm who confirmed that they would never intubate + vent on a closed system, as NYC hospitals apparently did in an unethical attempt to control spread.

I am curious where did you git this from? In the spring 2020 COVID patients in New York City ICUs were intubated not to control spread of the virus (there were many more actively shedding virus patients on regular hospital floor) but to sustain patients' life when their oxygen saturation drops dangerously low. Some patients were so bad that they were put on ECMO. Putting people on a ventilator was not an issue in itself, it is keeping them on ventilator for weeks on time that was problematic.

The Cochrane Library 2010, Issue 1 - emphasis mine:

Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses

Although respiratory viruses usually only cause minor disease, they can cause epidemics. Approximately 10% to 15% of people worldwide contract influenza annually, with attack rates as high as 50% during major epidemics. Global pandemic viral infections have been devastating because of their wide spread. In 2003 the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic affected ~8000 people, killed 780, and caused an enormous social and economic crisis. In 2006 a new avian H5N1, and in 2009 a new H1N1 ’swine’ influenza pandemic threat, caused anxiety. Single measures (particularly the use of vaccines or antiviral drugs) may be insufficient to interruptthe spread. Therefore, we searched for evidence for the effectiveness of physical barriers (such as handwashing or wearing masks) in reducing the spread of respiratory viruses, including influenza viruses.

We found 60 studies including randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and observational studies with a mixed risk of bias.

Respiratory virus spread can be reduced by hygienic measures (such as handwashing), especially around younger children. Frequent handwashing can also reduce transmission from children to other household members. Implementing barriers to transmission, such as isolation, and hygienic measures (wearing masks, gloves and gowns) can be effective in containing respiratory virus epidemics or in hospital wards. The more expensive, irritating and uncomfortable N95 respirators might be superior to simple masks. It is unclear if adding virucidals or antiseptics to normal handwashing with soap is more effective. There is insufficient evidence to support screening at entry ports and social distancing as a method to reduce spread during epidemics.

The RCT papers on hospital mask users I've read either count only N95s, or confound them as the main mask type by including polypropylene masks too. The statistically significant results support N95s when fitted well.

Mask mandates for civilians are polyprop or even cloth. Not N95s, which are infeasible for general population members. WHO and CDC did not recommend masks for general populations in past respiratory virus outbreaks/pandemics. Are we done yet?

A citation of interest might be [2].

> Are we done yet?

I probably am, but feel free to comment if you think there's still something of value to add.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6993921/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19797474/