I’m looking at those numbers and the worst was Peru - 0.5% excess deaths.
Am I the only one whos just thinking none of this matters?
The reality is Sweden is doing an amazing job if there’s no lockdowns. Those lockdowns led to a massive increase in suicides[1], economic damage[2], inflation[3], massive increase in drug abuse[4], lost years in education[5].
Frankly, it’s hard to imagine this virus would cause more harm. Especially if the worst case is 0.5% excess deaths (almost exclusively from people near end of life). What’s the damage in years of education lost, the drug abuse, homelessness, inflation pricing out homes for those who can work...
long-term I expect Sweden will see lower deaths than any of the countries that locked down.
Your reference [1] does not talk about suicide, but suicide attempts, and to the extent it correlates with "lockdowns", it seems to directly contradict your claim:
> Among adolescents aged 12–17 years, the number of weekly ED visits for suspected suicide attempts DECREASED DURING SPRING 2020 compared with that during 2019 [...] mean weekly number of ED visits for suspected suicide attempts were 22.3% HIGHER DURING SUMMER 2020 and 39.1% HIGHER DURING WINTER 2021 than during the corresponding periods in 2019
(Emphasis mine). So, during three phases of the COVID-19 epidemic, suicide attempts decreased during one, increased during two. The US was in nationwide lockdown during only one of these phases, which happens to be exactly the one where suicide attempts DECREASED.
Source [2] talks about (indisputable) damage to the US economy, which you attribute to the (half assed) US lockdowns. But this is begging the question whether it was the lockdown rather than the epidemic which did the damage, and in fact, Sweden had a WORSE economic outcome than its neighbors.
> Especially if the worst case is 0.5% excess deaths
The deaths have, naturally, dominated the headlines, but there are other disabilities. One acquaintance in her early 20s has yet to regain her sense of smell after 8 months, and that's not all that rare a phenomenon: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/when-wil...
>>The deaths have, naturally, dominated the headlines, but there are other disabilities. One acquaintance in her early 20s has yet to regain her sense of smell after 8 months, and that's not all that rare a phenomenon: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/when-wil...
Anecdotes should not be the basis for unprecedented forced quarantine policies that target not the sick, but the healthy majority. To demonstrate the unreliability of anecdotal evidence, see how a large study on heart inflammation in young athletes caused by covid have debunked earlier anecdotal evidence on the issue:
Am I the only one whos just thinking none of this matters?
The reality is Sweden is doing an amazing job if there’s no lockdowns. Those lockdowns led to a massive increase in suicides[1], economic damage[2], inflation[3], massive increase in drug abuse[4], lost years in education[5].
Frankly, it’s hard to imagine this virus would cause more harm. Especially if the worst case is 0.5% excess deaths (almost exclusively from people near end of life). What’s the damage in years of education lost, the drug abuse, homelessness, inflation pricing out homes for those who can work...
long-term I expect Sweden will see lower deaths than any of the countries that locked down.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7024e1.htm
[2] https://www.marketplace.org/2021/07/29/our-lost-gdp-year/
[3] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi
[4] https://mullin.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID...
[5] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9731039/Shock-repor...