>Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries and all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths following the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) policies. We do not find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier had lower excess deaths. We do not observe differences in excess deaths before and after the implementation of SIP policies, even when accounting for pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.
In 2020 it clearly was higher. Denmark, Finland and Norway avoided the spring 2020 death wave, whereas in Sweden mortality was 20% to 50% (well, 48%) higher during the weeks of April and May 2020.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
After the first two devastating waves during the Spring and Autumn of 2020, Sweden in fact 'locked-down' in some ways more restrictively than our nordic neighbors - all of which made timely interventions that meant their restrictions on meeting en-masse in public were for shorter periods and less intrusive on people's everyday lives.
The narrative that it was a 'free-for-all' in Sweden has been fostered retrospectively by neo-liberal groups that placed economics above human lives. In their eagerness to be 'proved right' after the fact, most Swedes now embrace this historical revisionism.
The statistics that show that Swedish "excess deaths" were low or even lower than other countries were cooked-up by a journalist from a right-wing newspaper in Sweden (SvD), who noticed that if one discounts the downward trend in excess death for the last 25 years in Sweden, together with dispensing with demographic weighting, and then averaging the 3 years from 2019 onwards (which includes the period after vaccination), then miraculously you can squeeze the numbers you want from the raw figures.
If you go to:
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-stringency-index
take away the default countries, and instead add Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
Then make sure you also click "Align axis scales" you will see that Sweden only had fewer restrictions than its neighbors during a very short period at the beginning of the pandemic (during the first wave).
After that, Sweden had both more stringent restrictions than all its neighbors, and had those restrictions in place for a longer period of time.
The narrative - the historical revisionism, the myth that a very large number of people want to promote, and which has even become some sort of amnesiac 'reality' for many Swedes - should not be mistaken for what really happened.
/edit I actually found this in my bookmarks fyi: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01098-x
But Tegnell is the architect and main proponent of the historical revisionism that I'm talking about. He is the man at the center of the controversial policies.
Even while they were being enacted, Sweden was fed a narrative of exceptionalism by Tegnell and the mainstream media, who never mentioned the comparative liberality of the other Nordic states' policies, and maintained the fiction that we were still following the most liberal strategy (even to this day).
Tegnell is massively popular in Sweden. In fact, as deaths accumulated and it looked more and more like he was following a disastrous path, his popularity increased exponentially.
Criticism or even mildly questioning Tegnell was (and for a large part, still is) totally off-limits: there is absolutely no way I'd mention my doubts about him or his policies to my fellow Swedish colleagues or friends.
edit: Incidentally, for those who can read Swedish (or use Google Translate), this series of contemporary articles is a really great overview of the events in Sweden seen from a skeptical perspective:
https://floderochtekoppar.blogspot.com/2021/09/sveriges-hant...
And yes there is definitely a weird "Swedish exceptionalism", which interestingly Swedes from all sort of political persuasion exhibit.
None of the international discussions about restrictions has been about restrictions around elderly care. Sweden did actually issue some, which some described as prison-like for those impacted, but that was about a year into the pandemic. It was also seen as too late, with vaccine and proper staff/gear/protocols being more effective tools.
Sweden had negative excess mortality from Jan 2020 to Spring 2021, so fewer people died than expected in this period. These COVID waves just weren't devastating in any way, and yielded virtually no deaths "of" and not "with" COVID. It's strange that you are so convinced that Sweden's data doesn't disprove the effectiveness of lockdowns...
> neo-liberal groups that placed economics above human lives
Ah, I see.
According to this, Sweden had quite bad excess mortality in 2020 in April and May, and some in June. And then again from mid-November 2020 to mid-January 2021.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
There are many different ways different sources have tried to estimate cumulative excess mortality. Depending on the calculation methods, different sources have ended up with quite different results.
What is your source, and what method did they use?
It can be debated what model should be used and governments don't always have consistent methods of baselining. With different models you can compute some excess mortality in Sweden but those have their own flaws.
But it's worth calling out here that the reason you have to dive into the details of what precise baseline model you use is because the number of deaths was so very tiny on the scale of a country. A simple graph showing the absolute numbers puts it in perspective:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...
Alternatively, a graph of deaths per 100k people shows how surprisingly normal 2020 was in Sweden:
https://i0.wp.com/swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/swede...
It looks initially dramatic but that's only due to the massive drop in 2019. In reality 2020 had the same number of deaths per pop as in 2015! Nothing special happened in 2015.
Given that 2019 was an abnormally low year, 2020 would have been a bit higher than normal anyway even with no pandemic. But we're still looking at numbers pretty much within the realm of normal variance. If somehow you'd never heard of COVID, then someone had shown you that graph and asked "did something catastrophic happen in this decade" you'd probably have said no. Although 2020 is a bit higher, it's on the order of a few thousands of people, not something you could have noticed in a country of millions short of saturation-level media coverage.
That's why it's hard to say but important to hear: these levels of death simply do not matter. How do we know? Because some countries have had high and persistent levels of excess death since the end of the pandemic, but as COVID isn't the explanation hardly anyone cares. There's just no link between levels of death and severity of reaction, in our society.
Many European countries have an ageing population, and thus the number of yearly deaths increase year to year. For example Finland in 2010–2019 had about 0.8% increase in yearly deaths every year. If the deaths followed this model and thus there was absolutely no excess mortality (and no random variation), the simple method you cite would compare 2020, 2021 and 2022 to the average of 2015–2019, and would estimate 2.4%, 3.2% and 4.0% excess mortality for years 2020, 2021, 2022 for Finland.
Whereas Sweden doesn't have an ageing population structure, due to lots of immigration in the past 20 years. And Sweden didn't have an increasing trend in yearly deaths in 2010–2019.
This simple method overestimates the excess mortality for many countries, if they have an ageing population structure. Then you end up comparing overestimated values to Sweden's value that it not overestimated.
I'm happy to grant a different baseline though. It goes from being a really small number to a really small number. Remember that everything that happened was justified by claiming a 3.something% IFR and 100% infection rate in a single giant wave. That never came close to happening and the places that used very light touch approaches had no different outcomes to places that went full totalitarian. That's the important thing here.
Many factors: different demographics, population density, culture, what does "locked down" mean in different countries / areas, what does "significantly higher" mean...
One important point though is this probably confuses correlation and causation. Areas that were hit harder tended to lock down harder.
> Overall there's no evidence that lockdowns actually reduced mortality
People post this occasionally, and I'm going to keep calling bullshit. What happens is someone posts a fringe paper that supports their view whilst conveniently ignoring the large body of established scientific orthodoxy that supports the obvious conclusion: that restricting human interaction slows down transmission of a respiratory disease that transmits through human interaction.
I must admit this belief mostly comes from the claim Sweden did better, and the fact that where I live had almost no lockdowns and did better than the rest of my country.
Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition?
Lockdowns were absolutely harmful - I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise. They were effective in stopping health systems collapsing, which is why pretty much everywhere implemented them when it looked like their health systems were about to be overwhelmed. (cf Italy in early 2020). That would have been catastrophic compared to the harms of lockdown.
In terms of suicides specifically, the evidence is not clear. I've seen studies that indicate suicide rates did not increase or actually fell during the pandemic, e.g. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... . There were also fewer deaths from road traffic accidents etc. However, there were lots of other harmful effects such as secondary effects from the economic impact.
> Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition?
There have been a number of studies concluding that lockdowns were effective. I doubt digging them up will convince any of the sceptics in this thread.
But since you ask... how about this Royal Society report? https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-p...
Are there any particular papers in the report that you think are evidence that lockdowns prevented health system collapse and were beneficial overall?
I had a preliminary skim of it and decided to check the first relevant citation for lockdown effectiveness. It has the same problems as most of the studies I have seen: it does not include any of the second order effects. Of course virus transmission is reduced by limiting interactions but this is only one part of the story. This may be answered in some of the other references but I need to put it aside for now.
It's three years later now and the numbers are in. There is plenty of high quality data from all Western countries.
However data driven policy decisions should be much more fine grained than that. We should instead identify specific situations where different type of lockdowns would make sense.
But the data is clear. Prolonged periods looks bad, at closing schools were clearly the wrong decision on every time scale.
What made a difference in Sweden was that vaccination rates were really high and they were administrated quickly.
Had the anti-vaccine ideas spread more Sweden would be much, much worse off.
I could cite the most objective sources and statistics, but if you haven't figured it out by now, you don't want to. You're on the level of flat-earthers. The only difference being there's way more of you than of those idiots. And if you think the number of people believing in something somehow gives it credibility, then you should start preparing yourself to meet Allah in the afterlife.
If they didn't reduce transmission, but we were told they did, then we suffered the problem of moral hazard. We thought we were protected so we went out and caused more risk to us and others. Possibly increasing the number of deaths.
So I don't think they saved lives at all, they might have increased people's risk thinking they were protected and they weren't, also spreading it more.
They didn't allow us to open en-mass.
>Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries and all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths following the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) policies. We do not find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier had lower excess deaths. We do not observe differences in excess deaths before and after the implementation of SIP policies, even when accounting for pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.
This experimental gene therapy has killed 17 million people and had no discernible benefit, according to a very sound study
[0] https://correlation-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/20...
There was a discussion here too, but it was hot garbage so I'm not linking to it.
The higher the vaccination rate in a state, the lower the deaths after the vaccine was introduced. This is unaffected by the age of the state.
The fact that this shift only emerges after the introduction of the vaccine means we can pretty much rule out any demographics-based causes. The "low vax" and "high vax" states were pretty much even before the vaccine. The only reasonable conclusion is that high vax rates directly caused lower death rates.
Nobody will worry about transmission when it provably reduces mortality
> So I don't think they saved lives at all
Thank deity we have data proving otherwise
And even bigger thanks to Darwin who rarely disappoints
If you want to look at dodgy science, anything around "moral hazards" is on very shaky grounds...
Blaming and labelling has the opposite effect though.
> Unvaccinated, infected inmates had an estimated 36% risk of spreading the virus, compared with 28% among infected vaccinees. After adjustment, any vaccination, previous infection alone, and both vaccination and previous infection cut the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission by 22%, 23%, and 40%, respectively.
> Booster doses and more recent vaccination further lowered infectiousness among vaccinated inmates, with each dose conferring an 11% risk reduction; the risk of transmission rose 6% for every 5 weeks that had elapsed since the last shot.
And now we have the opposite situation with those who have had the most boosters and now more likely to catch the new variant that is out.
It is not. The study is available for you to review if you like.
> And now we have the opposite situation with those who have had the most boosters and now more likely to catch the new variant that is out.
I’d like to see that study. Cite, please.
Sure:
www.NewEarthTimes.com/publications/VaccinesKill/New-vaccine-makes-more-infections.html
/this is a joke
It is not.
Erm yes it is ... from the study:
> In adjusted analyses, we estimated that any vaccination ... reduced an index case’s risk of transmitting infection by 22% (6–36%)
CI is much wider than 8pp and the estimated absolute transmission risk CIs actually overlap at 31%. So the study results are consistent with there being no actual difference, also.
If this is the best evidence of a difference in transmission it's not very good.
Also this is Omicron which hardly matters. The justification was the earlier variants.
(That's what makes it such a good observational study population; a whole bunch of variables are controlled away by default.)
Do your own research.
Hear me out. In my mind, there are so many reasonable and logical ways in which those studies can be manipulated and interpreted in a manner that goes a certain direction (that I'm distrustful of). The reason I'm there is that a lot of trust was lost over a long period of time and multiple instances. So a whole host of related side-issues need to be resolved and "proven" false with studies before I can get back to a high-trust zone with modern medicine when it comes to covid and other such "hot" topics.
I appreciate that loss of trust is real, happens fast, and takes longer to recover. Recovery itself demands some acceptance that not all evidence is unequivocal, or comprehensible.
Versus
>I can tell you now that honestly a good study won't convince me to trust the prevailing narrative.
You're not on the fence.
Covid and climate science denial can be strengthened by having a 'discussion'.
This is because conspiracy thinking is actually immune to evidence. The denialist will subvert your evidence in a way that it proves the conspiracy. In here they will probably complain that 'correlation is not causation' or some other methodology 101 trope, whereas the audience will think "oh, yeah, this is complicated, smart people are debating it, I guess the jury is still out and we don't know for certain if climate change is real or not, and the vaccines are not a silver bullet either, lets just wait until the debate is over'.
But, in fact, the debate is over.
So no, in this case the onus is one the person attacking a vast body of scientific literature proving beyond reasonable doubt that vaccines are effective to come up with something supporting those wild claims. It is not up to me to provide a literature list that nobody will ever read anyway, and anyone who is even remotely interested in finding the truth can google such a list in 5 min.
It would just be nice to get a finger pointing in a direction, not the middlefinger.
"Actual data from US prisons" took me about 20 seconds to find a reputable source for (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37736396), likely less time than your comment asking for it took to type.
Do you really think that behavior will improve the knowledge gap?
They also could have stopped the spread for the early variants, but the later ones were simply too contagious. There simply was no chance to keep transmission fully down at that point.
That’s changing the goalposts. The vaccines were not necessary for the vast majority of the population or society as a whole to “open up”.
That’s assuming you analyze only physical harm from the spreading virus. After months of brainwashing, they were definitely required for large swathes of the population to given them a mental protection to come out of their shells.
> They also could have stopped the spread for the early variants, but the later ones were simply too contagious. There simply was no chance to keep transmission fully down at that point.
There was never a chance to keep transmission fully down. It was like trying to prevent a cold or the flu from spreading.
COVID was a major threat to a significant part of the population. The vaccines were effective and reduced the threat to those people enormously.
It would have been very nice and useful to stop transmission and achieve herd immunity. But even without that the vaccines were a huge win and saved a lot of lives.
"There were 11 COVID‑19 cases in the Moderna COVID‑19 Vaccine group and 185 cases in the placebo group, with a vaccine efficacy of 94.1% (95% confidence interval of 89.3% to 96.8%)."
It's easy to create false memories because the politicians and pharma industry simultaneously swapped the narrative to stopping hospitalization and death once it became completely clear the vaccines were not stopping infection, but that is not what their initial purpose was.
[1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20210202223626/https://www.moder...
Your summary: "They claimed vaccination would completely prevent infection."
Perhaps you just can't read?
> The median length of follow up for efficacy for participants in the study was 9 weeks post Dose 2. There were 11 COVID‑19 cases in the Moderna COVID‑19 Vaccine group and 185 cases in the placebo group, with a vaccine efficacy of 94.1% (95% confidence interval of 89.3% to 96.8%).
> Cases of COVID‑19, starting 14 days after Dose 2, were defined as symptomatic COVID‑19 requiring positive RT-PCR result and at least two systemic symptoms or one respiratory symptom.
A SARS-CoV-2 infection and a COVID-19 case aren't the same thing, for the same reason a HIV infection is not the same as having AIDS. The 94.1% number comes from counts of actual sickness, despite your assertions to the contrary.
You complain about that, but proceed to doing it yourself, and you don't even address the point unlike the person you responded to.
> It was like trying to prevent a cold or the flu from spreading.
Which is funny, because even the very mild measures we had here in the Netherlands totally succeeded in preventing the flu from spreading. Haven't had a cold or flu in 1.5 years whereas normally would be sick at least 2-3 times. One strain of the flu was completely eradicated.
When you say stuff like this, it makes me think you have the wrong idea about who was the victim of brainwashing.
[1] - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6191...
The "summary" of the article is that "COVID-19 can cause severe illness in children and adolescents" followed by numbers talking about a shocking increase in rates. The fact it's talking about people hospitalized with COVID is hidden in a wall of text written in language that most people wouldn't be able to decipher. That more people tested positive for a more contagious variant, in any setting, is the most unremarkable news imaginable - spun into a terrifying headline, by the CDC no less.
I see no way to imagine that article was written in good faith. And it's been the absolute norm for the past 3 years now.
By how much, in numbers?
There is an enormous body of knowledge proving vaccines did reduce transmissions, you can easily find them online. So a claim that goes counter to the outcome of hundreds of studies should have some backup, otherwise it no better than saying 'here is a snowball that proves 100% of climate scientists are wrong'
I see a lot of armchair quarterbacks making statements about public health, but it ussually ends up being poorly informed speculation.
China also claims they've found it in fomites (inanimate objects) like frozen food shipments. Though, I dunno if I believe that one.
Given that lens, the ultimate outcome of the pandemic is "almost everyone eventually gets covid." As a result, the vaccines -- in reducing mortality -- saved an absolutely immense amount of lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/business/economy/income-p...
Going back up now.
And socialized medicine.
Really, what a fine example for e.g. New York to follow!
In a broader international comparison, Sweden (and Europe generally) did not fare well. Countries that took a zero-CoVID approach, such as China, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Singapore ended up with much lower death rates, because most of them vaccinated their populations before allowing the virus to spread.
One of the key traits of conspiracy thinking is immunity-to-evidence:
"Conspiracy theories are inherently self-healing, evidence that counters a theory is re-interpreted as originating from the conspiracy. This reflects the belief that the stronger the evidence against a conspiracy (e.g., the FBI exonerating a politician from allegations of misusing a personal email server), the more the conspirators must want people to believe their version of events (e.g., the FBI was part of the conspiracy to protect that politician)"
The real crux isn't whether some advocate for lower populations—clearly, many do—but the operational aspect: who executes, under what authority, and how? For instance, if a group of biologists and engineers aim to reduce Earth's population to 4 billion by 2400, the implications—like fewer children and potential space colonization—are vastly different than a group of anthropological philosophers striving for the same population count by 2033, which could necessitate more drastic measures.
These logistical issues, whether it's stealth tactics versus open methods or the necessity of opportunistic partnerships, remain conspicuously underexplored.
>Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries and all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths following the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) policies. We do not find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier had lower excess deaths. We do not observe differences in excess deaths before and after the implementation of SIP policies, even when accounting for pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.
And no, none of those field hospitals built in parking lots and stadiums everywhere were used, either. In Wales, for example, Millennium Stadium was converted into a temporary field hospital with 300 beds and capacity to expand to 2000 beds. It was such a big deal that a public contest was held to name it Dragon's Heart Hospital <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Heart_Hospital>. However, said hospital never had more than 46 patients at one time, and was closed in six weeks for lack of use!
Even in NYC, which really did see overloaded hospitals briefly in March-April 2020, USNS Comfort treated a total of 179 patients. USNS Mercy treated a total of 77 patients in LA.
To your point (a), old-age homes should have been much better protected, but it's virtually impossible to shield them off when the virus is raging outside. The most effective way to protect the elderly would be to reduce transmission of the virus in society as a whole.
To your point (b), that's what happens in a pandemic. There's a completely new disease, and doctors don't know how to treat it effectively. Everyone is trying to do what they can, based on experience with treating other diseases. You can't base public health policy around a belief that doctors will instantly know the correct way of treating a pandemic disease. You have to take dramatic measures to reduce transmission in a situation like New York faced in early 2020.
You can see this most clearly in the zero-CoVID countries, which had dramatically lower death rates during the pandemic. Taiwan and China had virtually zero deaths for much of the pandemic, because they traced literally every infection chain and capped it off. They reopened after vaccinating most of their populations, which means that most people in those countries had a primed immune system when they first got infected. As we know from numerous studies, that dramatically reduces mortality.
The distance between topics has to be somewhere close to a world record!
This would not be accepted with any other type of vaccine (with the notable exception of influenza).
What do you base this bizarre claim on?
From the package insert for the Pfizer vaccine:
> COMIRNATY is a vaccine indicated for active immunization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in individuals 12 years of age and older. (1)
A single indication, "not getting it". This is what the clinical trials tested and this is what the FDA approved.
You can be infected with a pathogen without developing the disease associated with the pathogen.
As with HIV (SARS-CoV-2) versus AIDS (COVID-19), the disease you can get from the virus is not the same thing as the infection itself.
It was supposed to prevent the disease - basically postive test + symptoms. It didn't.
You called that very statement a "bizarre claim" upthread.
Try this: "Seatbelts prevent injury and death in car accidents."
They don't prevent every single one of them, but no one calls the above statement a lie. Your standard - requiring a vaccine be perfect at its purpose - is an invented one in bad faith to win an argument.
The discussion was about Covid. Covid is the disease (infection+symptoms). The vaccine was supposed to prevent you from "getting it".
That alone demonstrates the vaccine can help you not get it.
We have loads of evidence of it lessening symptoms; for a non-zero amount of people, that'll mean going from symptomatic to asymptomatic, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 infection but not COVID-19.
Vaccines have never been expected to be perfect in this regard; some polio vaccines can give people polio, for example.
(The idea that "turns out it only prevents hospitalization and/or death, not mild symptoms" is a bad result is also lunacy from the start.)
>>>> Vaccination was never about "not getting it".
Of course it was about whether the vaccine prevents you from "getting it" (it being Covid). The original claim was that it was 95% effective in preventing you getting it.
> We have loads of evidence of it lessening symptoms; for a non-zero amount of people, that'll mean going from symptomatic to asymptomatic, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 infection but not COVID-19.
We have loads of crappy evidence showing that (see below). Crappy means highly confounded observational data.
> Vaccines have never been expected to be perfect in this regard; some polio vaccines can give people polio, for example.
No one expects them to be perfect, but the original claims were they were supposed to be 95% effective in preventing Covid. Real world efficacy is no where near that. If there's any efficacy at all it is in the low teens.
[BTW, there's a huge debate about the oral Polio vaccine. The US stopped vaccinating with it two decades ago because of that risk]
> (The idea that "turns out it only prevents hospitalization and/or death, not mild symptoms" is a bad result is also lunacy from the start.)
It would be luncay if anyone actually claimed that.
The problem is that claiming that it prevents hospitalizations or deaths requires evidence. Reliable evidence.
A recent NEJM correspondence demonstrates quite vividly how terrible much of the evidence for that claim was:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2306683
(the original author's response is especially hillarious)
It was approved for the prevention of Covid (the 'D' stands for disease). It was supposed to prevent you from getting Covid, regardless of severity, and it didn't.
And if we're citing anecdotal evidence. I know of no one who got anything more than flu symptoms, and for most it was mild, regardless of vaccination.
That includes obese diabetic 80s year olds. I know of no one personally who went to the ER except for a vaccinated friend who panicked.
On the other hand, I had the wonderful experience of catching the first virus and the delta variant. I should have been more protected than with the vaccine by itself as the data clearly showed at the time but it still hit me, a 34 year old decently fit person, almost equally as hard. I had 2-3 weeks of incredibly high fever along with a bunch of other nasty symptoms.
We’re all different. My retirement age mom has never been vaccinated (even though I wish she would have) and she’s either never caught it, which I doubt, or it was so mild she didn’t realize it.