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Comment by Devils-Avocado | Hacker News Reader

Little excess mortality seen this week in Europe:

https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country

Deaths in Sweden tracking 2.4% higher than 2018, and even then explained by very low deaths in 2019 due to weak flu seasons:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

Our mess is listening to frauds like Neil Ferguson from the Imperial College who have a track record of consistently over-estimating deaths from each new pathogen.

The West is aging and each flu season will have greater mortality spikes. COVID at best is a once-a-decade unusually strong flu variant which we have severely overreacted to - probably spurred on by Chinese propaganda and their fake reporting.

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I don't really agree with your stance but I see you've been downvoted and so I have upvoted you. I don't think your viewpoint should be censored by being downvoted into deletion as I am seeing your opinion mirrored by friends who are intelligent and well-read on the subject.

One friend is in fact a physician who was on the front-line saving elderly patients ill with covid, and they still believe that the socioeconomic costs to our future generation is too great and lockdowns too blunt a tool to protect hospital capacity.

So I'd rather people (re-establish) the arguments against your point for reasons of posterity rather than simply censor you as I am seeing similar polarisation of views over covid as I have over other important discussions of the recent years.

I am not an expert in this field so don't really have any primary sources to add, though I personally know people who died and nearly died untimely from this disease.

I agree with your sentiment. Simply censoring out arguments that aren't stated offsensively is not how healthy discourse works.

That said I happen to disagree with his conclusion. As can be seen from SARS, MERS and now again SARS-CoV-2 swift action by Asian nations has been effective multiple pandemics in a row.

On the other hand Ebola, Zika and SARS-CoV-2 in African, South American and Western nations has exemplified what can happen if you react too slowly and without enough force. (worth mentioning African nations mostly learnt their lesson here and used the systems developed to combat Ebola to shut down Covid19 fairly rapidly).

As a resident of Thailand I am probably somewhat biased but I see the lockdowns having been very effective here which allowed us to mostly return to daily life after only 4-6 weeks of extreme lockdown. This also follows for Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan and even China after they were able to get everything under control.

Arguing against something that clearly works and has allowed these nations to reignite their economic engines without fear of health system collapse seems disingenuous to say the least.

OP’s view is indeed rather unusual and insular, and depends on ignoring the Asian and African experience.

The West reacted slowly, too heavily (closing parks?), and then declared victory too quickly, and spent little time over the summer preparing any systems to actually beat the virus.

I live in one of the few western areas that did beat the virus (the atlantic bubble of canada) and life is much more pleasant than elsewhere. It just took about six weeks more restrictions, and actually aiming at winning.

Most of the west adopted a “just prevent the hospitals from collapsing” goal, which is a stupid goal if your only tool to do so is heavy handed lockdowns. You’re guaranteed to have yo-yo lockdowns.

The only coherent strategies are developing an effective test/trace/isolate system or local elimination. The west doesn’t seem institutionally capable of the former.

>probably spurred on by Chinese propaganda and their fake reporting.

What the hell are you talking about? What propaganda or fake reporting?

China initially denied there even was a virus or that it was dangerous. Just like Europe. Just like the US.

What kind of weird conspiracy websites are you getting this information from and how did you end on this site? Don't those places have comment sections too where you can discuss with like minded people that are also shopping for confirmation basis data points for their xenophobia.

China has a very scary government but that's no reason to for us here to just make shit up. It actually dilutes from the real risks and criticisms.

> China has a very scary government but that's no reason to for us here to just make shit up.

China can open their firewall and let their citizens speak freely if they have nothing to hide.

China has an extensive diaspora of people who stay in regular touch with relatives back home. You'd know this, if you actually spoke to any Chinese immigrants.

This diaspora knew about how serious COVID was back in January.

If they had millions of people secretly falling sick today, this diaspora would have heard about it. It hasn't, and they don't.

For all intents and purposes, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and yes, China have brought the virus under control, while we are faffing about with millions sick.

I dont understand why you are defending the Chinese regime?

> This diaspora knew about how serious COVID was back in January.

I know because lot of them were buying masks and other PPE from Australia and sending it to China. Too bad they did not care about their host country.

Not sure why you are talking about South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam they are much more open than China.

> I know because lot of them were buying masks and other PPE from Australia and sending it to China. Too bad they did not care about their host country.

Do you have the same expectation of self-sacrificing patriotism from, say, a non-immigrant millionaire (there's a lot of those around, especially in booming real estate markets), who sits on a mountain of wealth instead of 'helping their host country'? Or is it just constrained to middle-class immigrants, who are trying to help their relatives survive a pandemic?

Christ on crutches, this has an odd air of xenophobia about it.

Its both relatives and the Chinese regime who sucked PPE from Australia and Australian hospitals could not get masks because of that. Its the same Chinese Govt who tried to cover up the pandemic in the first place.

Christ on crutches, this has an odd air of supporting evil dictatorial regime about it

Global mortality associated with seasonal influenza epidemics: [1]

  World Health Organization (WHO) estimated the annual mortality burden of influenza to be 250 000 to 500 000

To date, 1.2 million people have died from covid [2]. The year isn't finished, and for the first 3 months the spread of covid was only starting.

Currently, around 5k to 7k people die per day from covid, and that number is expected to go up since the daily new cases are increasing (from around 300k per day end of September, to around 450k per day end of October)

Comparing it to an unusually strong flu variant is drastically underplaying the severity.

All of these numbers are despite international lockdowns and efforts to stop the spread. The numbers would be far, far higher if no measures had been taken.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Stop spreading this drivel. Covid is well on the way to causing as many deaths in 1 year worldwide as TB; it's already killed three times as many people as malaria; comparing it to the flu is laughable.

And all of these deaths and infection numbers are low because we have reacted - not strongly enough - much more than we do to a flu. If we had taken the usual flu measures, the deaths would skyrocket from overwhelmed hospitals, as has been seen in early unprepared regions (such as the Bergamo region in Italy).

During the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak in the UK, it wasn't a small percentage increase of deaths, the number of deaths DOUBLED.

The graph from the Office of National Statistics makes that very clear:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

With everyone who can staying at home, people not dying in car accidents, or getting the flu, you would expect there to be a vastly reduced rate of mortality.

Instead, there's a moderate increase, despite us taking drastic preventative measures. Lift the measures, and mortality will skyrocket.

... Meanwhile, in parts of Asia, the lockdowns have lifted months ago, and life is back to normal. That's what happens when your government takes this disease seriously, instead of half-assing it's response to the epidemic.

The article is about how the west didn’t take it seriously enough, early enough — not that they overreacted.

Sweden (and most of the EU and US) has done terribly compared with China, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan measured in deaths per million. These countries took a proactive, serious approach and have successfully prevented widespread local transmission.

China has done an amazing job at preventing the spread of coronavirus, considering its huge population, long borders, and volume of international trade.

… and, yes, China has used measures which are much easier in an authoritarian police state as part of that response. That puts the onus on those of us who disagree with that on working to have our countries be more like South Korea, Taiwan, NZ, etc. since the Chinese government has not hesitated to point to the differences as proof that their system is superior.

To add another data point: From Mar-Aug,the number of deaths in New York exceeded the expectation by 65%. The US total from Mar-Jul was 20% higher than expected.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2771761

I believe that Germany is seeing so little excess mortality exactly because they did an acceptable job with their lockdown.

Italy and France are seeing excess mortality.

Can you clarify the point you are trying to make, because at the moment I can only interpret your post as: "It's all overblown, these measures are not necessary".

I don't agree with your conclusion but Neil Ferguson has indeed been wrong. His model predicted 85,000 deaths in Sweden by now. I don't understand why the Imperial models are still taken seriously.

Please stop parroting this kind of misinformation.

This is a popular right-wing trope but I’ve never seen a source despite the reports being available and the full model being on GitHub. Can you provide a citation for that exact claim?

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-ana...

https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/covid19model

In Sweden it's a left-wing trope (the right wants lockdown and masks while the left supports the lax approach so the model has mostly received criticism from the left) and I believed it but you're completely right, so I apologize:

https://twitter.com/imperialcollege/status/13077606155456061...

> Thanks for confirming: Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model did not point to 85,000 Covid deaths for Sweden; another researcher did. A mean time-varying reproduction number Rt estimate in March is not a prediction of deaths nor is it a model for predicting them.

Ah, I should have been more specific that I only follow this in the English-language media so I’ve seen it newspapers in the UK or Australia (the US discourse doesn’t mention this much).

> COVID at best is a once-a-decade unusually strong flu variant which we have severely overreacted to - probably spurred on by Chinese propaganda and their fake reporting.

dang, why are you allowing this kind of shit on here? Please step up and sort this out.

> dang, why are you allowing this kind of shit on here? Please step up and sort this out.

You're the one who's wrong:

SARS-1 2003

MERS 2012

COVID-19 2019

Mortality for under 30: 0.05%

Mortality for 30-50: 0.1%

And nobody believes any reports from China or the WHO.

So true. Saying China did a good job is like saying the USA should suspend the Constitution and do the same thing:

Wuhan death fog https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/fears-thick-dea...

Wuhan protests: Incinerator plan sparks mass unrest https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-48904350

Chinese woman describes Wuhan virus patients being burned alive https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3881683

Video shows interior of new Wuhan 'hospital' resembles prison https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3870468

You Can Now Go to Jail in China for Criticizing Beijing’s Coronavirus Response https://nypost.com/2020/01/30/chinese-residents-face-jail-if...

Video appears to show people in China forcibly taken for quarantine over coronavirus https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/video-appears-show-people...

"They treat us like we're the virus": Africans evicted from housing in Chinese city https://observers.france24.com/en/20200413-coronavirus-niger...

> Saying China did a good job is like saying the USA should suspend the Constitution and do the same thing

This is a ridiculous statement.

China has done a good job on dealing with Covid and so have South Korea and Taiwan. Restrictions are all mostly lifted within these countries and life is mostly back to normal.

They key to their responses is not that they are awful dictatorships. They were prepared, they have taken strong and necessary measures and their population voluntarily made efforts for the benefit of all even if that meant some personal sacrifices.

The relative failures of many Western countries is due to, I think, lack of preparation, lack of leadership, and misguided refusal by many to make the necessary and quite limited personal sacrifices on the false pretext that they are a threat to personal liberties.

China simply stopped reporting on corona once Xi realized the Chinese economy was tanking, which would threaten the stability of the CCP. Now he just has a famine to manage, but hey, if 50% population losses are fine (Mao quote), no biggie.

However, their door-welding quarantine would work if you did it on a large enough scale for 2 weeks. But then do you weld-in the welders? lol. (Apparently the CCP delivered daily takeout to the weldees. We're not setup for that in the US.)

dang, once again, can you do something about this rancid xenophobia. It has no place in a serious discussion.

Thanks.

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