Comment by VancouverMan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VancouverMan | Hacker News Reader

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The obvious fearmongering and irrationality, especially from so-called "experts", was quite intense and prolific in Canada, too.

Even as early as June of 2020, the public health authority in Canada's most-populous city (fourth highest population in North America) revealed that the counting of deaths was being done using a methodology that sounds quite dubious:

"Individuals who have died with COVID-19, but not as a result of COVID-19 are included in the case counts for COVID-19 deaths in Toronto."

https://twitter.com/TOPublicHealth/status/127588839006028596...

By mid-2021, we started seeing news reports like the following:

"Patients died from neglect, not COVID-19, in Ontario LTC homes, military report finds: ‘All they needed was water and a wipe down’"

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadian-mili...

Stuff like that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Sadly, the widespread foolishness continued throughout Canada for most of 2022.

Even now, there are still remnants of it remaining in some cases, along with the irreparable long-term harm caused by the numerous unjustifiable policies put in place then.

> The obvious fearmongering and irrationality, especially from so-called "experts", was quite intense and prolific in Canada, too.

So much death and suffering and bereavement and sorrow the scale of which I have never witnessed in my entire life and I still read comments like these. Baffling!

A more serious take: excess deaths worldwide put us at 20+ millions deaths [1].

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

Yeah, all the people saying this was a 'cold', what about all the dead? What do you mean we overreacted, or it was fake, or a conspiracy? Look at all the dead, how do you ignore that.

This is bogus data, they took the officially reported numbers -- which were insane because they reported 'covid deaths' without taking into account comorbidities --, and quadrupled them for 'reasons'.

> So much death and suffering and bereavement and sorrow the scale of which I have never witnessed in my entire life and I still read comments like these. Baffling!

You should be ashamed of yourself for this hyperbole, you people have ruined many young people's lives for nothing, the least you could do is apologize. And this habit of constantly looking for numbers that are always wrong and feeding into your taste for impending doom is the greatest setback to science and the rational spirit I have ever witnessed in my entire life.

This is looking at total excess deaths. Those numbers are reliable, esp in middle to high income countries, because you're looking at the total deaths.

See https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... for example.

You can clearly look at year-over-year statistics and see the increased death count. What do you think caused it? An increase in eye-sight-related car accidents? All the people complaining about 'comorbidities' don't understand how cause of death is reported. When someone has Cancer, but dies from Pneumonia, should they list Cancer or the Pneumonia? All diseases have some 'comorbidities'. But if they didn't have Covid they would be alive. So Shame on you.

There were a lot of people avoiding medical treatment or diagnosis out of fear of Covid at hospitals and medical clinics, and this led to extensive delays in elective surgeries and delayed diagnosis of medical conditions such as cancer. Thus, fear of Covid resulted in numerous excess deaths. There were other factors too, like increased traffic deaths due to increased reckless driving due to emptier roads due to pandemic lockdowns.

It's also disingenuous to say that all deaths of people who had Covid were due to Covid. Many of them who caught Covid while in hospital for serious conditions would have died regardless of Covid.

Sweden has the lowest excess deaths count in the western world. They didn't lock down. That's not a coincidence.

Lockdowns increased social dysfunction, and this is the root of excess deaths. Funny how you also aren't mentioning the education disaster that the hysterical, statistically illiterate cowards who closed schools caused. Schools in EU and Asia were open. Just the North American fools closed theirs.

Btw, I know many people who blame excess deaths on the mRNA vaccines. They have the same data that you do for your theory of covid infection causing excess deaths: correlation and nothing else.

Drug overdoses are way up. Crime is up. Loneliness and depression and mental illness are at all time highs.

The vast majority of covid deaths were senior citizens. The vast majority of excess deaths happening now are working age people. And cowards who became irrational won't admit this because it's too painful for them to admit their complicity.

> Sweden has the lowest excess deaths count in the western world

Is that per capita or absolute numbers? Could you provide a reference?

Isn't Sweden already spread out? Kind of isolated already? It does seem like Sweden is held up as some special case as justification that lockdowns didn't need to happen. But aren't Swedes generally thin and healthy? Americans are fat and sick already, and probably less sanitary too, so not having lockdowns would have bigger impact.

That the vaccine causes more deaths than the virus itself is kind of a conspiracy theory. How is that even being used as reasoning these days?

Just saying correlation isn't causation is a cop out, just because something is correlated doesn't mean it can't be reasoned about, used as a data point.

Everything you say is true, it was hard times for a lot of people, drug use, crime, suicides, all up. What is wrong is using that to justify that we should have let more people die from the disease itself.

"Man, we would be so much better off, with less drug us, less crime, less suicides, if we had just allowed more people to die. If we only had the courage to let this spread naturally and allow more people to die, and be put out of their misery, times would be better now".

Not Swedish but a cursory read seems to show that they did ban gatherings (as small as 8+ people!). So, if Sweden is the pinnacle of Covid response then banning people from gathering (i.e. lockdowns) was correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_government_response_to...

> Sweden has the lowest excess deaths count in the western world.

This is false and full-on misinformation. It's sad to to see it in a forum like HN.

> They didn't lock down.

This is misleading as well. The Swedish public works differently. There is a high trust in government and authorities. The govt said this is dangerous, stay at home if you can, so people did. The degree of distancing was on par with all other Western countries. Source: I live there.

It's not possible to do this in other countries because people wouldn't give a damn unless there is a fine.

I won't comment the rest, you are too deep into conspiracy theory territory.

It's not false, and it's not "full-on misinformation". You provide zero sources to refute this claim, and claim that you "live there", as if that makes a single difference with the statistics or data.

Sweden indeed has the lowest excess deaths from all cause mortality, according to the OECD statistics referenced and linked to in this article, which is one of hundred published on this topic. Note that Sweden's excess deaths were not the lowest in the height of the pandemic, but fell to the lowest in 2022.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sweden-covid-and-excess-...

"Conspiracy theory territory" is an ad-hominem smear with zero substance behind it. I said nothing in my comment to claim any "conspiracy", and if you think that then you should reread what I wrote.

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