Leading cause of death in the US, 2015-2020: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778234 (see table a few paragraphs down)

Heart disease, unintentional injuries, Alzheimer disease, and diabetes all jumped more than the expected trend.

2021 numbers I don't think will be finalized for another month or so.

One thing I've heard multiple doctors comment on is that they are seeing more patients who were successfully managing a condition have significant declines after a bout of COVID, even a mild one. That's definitely a bit of a philosophical question trying to assign fractional responsibility but you can also side-step this to some extent by looking at it as years of life lost — e.g. if someone with a manageable heart disease where patients tend to die 10 years older dies after having COVID, that's something like a decade where they could have been around their friends and family.

Yes so it seems if anything COVID deaths are being misclassified as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, etc

In places with good nationwide data like the UK and national level lockdowns, the excess mortality spikes also line up very well with the case outbreaks (especially pre vaccination), and considerably less well with other plausible causes of excess mortality (lockdown and unemployment induced stress, [long term effects of] reductions in access to treatment for chronic conditions)

...of lockdowns?

COVID denialists often attribute excess deaths to lockdowns as opposed to undercounting of deaths from COVID. I was just preempting that line by pointing out Australia had severe lockdowns but negative excess deaths.

As I recall the basis of the argument against lockdowns (which yes was made by legitimate epidemeologists before covid made everything so politicized and tribal) is that the disease eventually comes right back and infects everyone once the lockdown ends. I do think there is a good argument about allowing vaccines to be developed and delivered though. But benefits like preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed were believed to already be achievable with social distancing alone. So one must be careful to not give to much credit to the lockdowns alone.

As for excess deaths, it presumably depends on how well the country can endure the self-inflicted downsides (such as a recession) that comes with it. Countries where it causes severe problems probably are the very ones who didn't have the political will to maintain the lockdowns, leading to some biased conclusions. We also have lots of other issues caused by covid response such as shortages and spiking prices all over. Being outright dodged by pointing blame at some indermediate actor like "corporate supply chains" or "hoarders" or whatever.

The point is there are arguments that can be made on all sides. No need to insult and dismiss people.

COVID what-ists? You mean all manner of people who have all manner of opinions and reasons for them that just so happen to differ from the views presented as scientific consensus by government, media and celebrities?

Here is a summary of over 400 studies demonstrating lockdowns are ineffective or harmful:

https://brownstone.org/articles/more-than-400-studies-on-the...

Prepare a sufficiently convincing argument against each and every one of them, and against the credentials of each and every author, before using the term "denialist" in application to anyone other than yourself.

Ok. I don’t care what the purported “studies” say. China, Taiwan, Australia had hard lockdowns. Taiwan and Australia have accurate statistics — they had virtually no COVID deaths and no excess deaths.

Sweden is 62nd on a list of 180 countries on deaths per capita. We can argue back and forth like this but why bother? If you don't care what the studies say, your mind is made up, making discussion with you valueless - for you.

I’m not saying there’s a huge difference between light and lighter lockdowns (ie, Denmark/Norway/Germany vs Sweden). I’m saying lockdowns themselves don’t produce excess deaths vs baseline (as evidenced by Australia and Taiwan). Therefore, the excess deaths that occurred in the US, which are greater than official COVID deaths, indicate COVID deaths are being under counted, not over counted

Doesn't basing your conclusion on the two countries that support it, out of a pool of ~200 that exist, seem a bit tentative?

It's at about the same level as the counter argument regarding Sweden (which is one reason I made it).

Have a look through the studies I linked, you'll find several that perform rigorous analysis on a large number of countries, including in some cases specifically regarding excess mortality.

For example, have a look at Figures 2A and 2B from the following study. 38 countries compared by length of initial lockdown measures, versus per capita excess mortality for the period, and then the same measure compared across all states of the US:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28930/w289...

This doesn't support the hypothesis that lockdowns reduce excess deaths.

Won't even examine 400 counter-claims? That's "denialism".

Lockdowns working/not-working and/or causing collateral damage potentially eliminating other gains is not even remotely on par with astrology.

Lockdowns used in this manner are entirely unprecedented, and the long-term results cannot be known by anyone, only guessed at.

Your rigid adherence to them as beacons of purity only demonstrates your religious-like faith in them, which strikes me as having far more in common with astrology than well-evidenced arguments by well-credentialed individuals that they might not work or be counterproductive.

I have no strong opinion on the lockdowns. In fact, when you have the optimal amount of lockdown, a large minority of the population might well think that they're too lenient, and a different large minority of the population might well think that they're too strong.

What I object to is your demand that anyone disagreeing with you first go through 400 studies, individually, and find the flaws in them, and destruct the credentials of the authors.

You just said it's been proven that lockdowns are harmful. Now you're saying the longterm results can't be known by anyone, only guessed at.

No, I didn't. I said:

> Here is a summary of over 400 studies demonstrating lockdowns are ineffective or harmful:

You're welcome to present studies demonstrating the opposite, but even if you can find 400 of them (and I doubt you can), the best we'd have arrived at would be equal uncertainty either way.

The longterm results of anything for which a long term has not yet elapsed can indeed only be guessed at. The fact I need to point this out to many people is striking in its resemblance to some kind of mass delusion on their part.

But then you also said

> Lockdowns used in this manner are entirely unprecedented, and the long-term results cannot be known by anyone, only guessed at.

So which one is it? Are your studies useful, or can the results only be guessed at, and so what's the point of your 400 studies?

> The longterm results of anything for which a long term has not yet elapsed can indeed only be guessed at. The fact I need to point this out to many people is striking in its resemblance to some kind of mass delusion on their part.

It's amazing that you tell other people this yet don't seem to understand it yourself.