A simple check of excess mortality shows that something has already killed more people than would normally die during a bad flu season in areas affected by the virus, and we're nowhere near the end of the infection. And that's with lockdown measures that obviously suppress a bunch of common causes of death.
To successfully argue that covid-19 is less bad than the flu, you would have to show that all these extra dead people died of something other than covid-19. Good luck with that.
Yes, and Sweden has excess mortality that is higher than a bad flu year for Sweden, and the excess mortality matches up pretty well with the official covid-19 death count.
Which means that covid-19 is deadlier than the flu.
Many are seeing sharp increases in mortality, higher than normal flu years. If covid-19 isn't deadlier than a normal flu, then death rates must have spiked in all these countries because of something else. That is one extraordinary claim if I ever saw one.
(In addition, it's false that Sweden isn't doing a lockdown. Sweden is simply one of the countries that have enacted the least harsh lockdown measures. It's a grayscale, not binary.)
We accept people dying from the flu every year, because vaccines and other measures have pushed the death rate low enough. It is also very rare that young people die from the flu, and since there is a vaccine there is an element of personal responsibility.
In comparison, unmitigated covid-19 seems to be 5x-10x deadlier than a regular mitigated flu, and covid-19 cases requires a lot more healthcare resources in the form of ICU beds and ventilators, which is a very limited resource. If we run out of ICU beds, people will start dying of other preventable things like heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents. In addition, covid-19 kills far more young people than the flu does.
It is very probable that we'll live with a mitigated coronavirus for a long time ahead, either by getting vaccines, or by discovering treatments that reduce the fatality rate. But as long as we don't have those mitigation strategies, lockdowns are all we have to reduce the fatality rate low enough for us to accept it.
Right now covid-19 is excessively deadly, and that is why we are in lockdown, and will remain in lockdown until it isn't, or until economic desperation changes the tolerance for its fatality rate.
5x-10x * ~0 is not a huge difference in practice. Flu is also contained towards the winter, what would it do for the whole year?
I've already had the virus and known several friends to have it, we're not spring chickens, but were otherwise healthy. Our daughters didn't even get it, sons were mild. So fear mongering about the young is not very compelling.
Lockdowns are useful in big dense cities, they make a lot less sense in sparser areas. One size does not fit all.
We can't tell yet. That's the problem with all this bullshit. Science does not let you predict the future. It's like that old mathematics quote, "All models are wrong. Some models are useful."
We really have no idea what the results of US vs Sweden or Tennessee vs Virginia will hold up by looking at it now. We need to wait 12 months, look back, add some margins of error, find correlations and debate about the potential causes.
I can understand everyone being upset and wanting things now. People are dying. Other people are 2 months behind on all their bills and going to food banks for the first time in their lives to feed their families. Despite the contrary, most States are still denying unemployment to independent contractors and business owners like hair dressers.
But making any type of prediction at this point is irrational. We need to weight everything. It's not as simple as Lives vs Economy .. the economy provides for lives.
