Interesting, didn't realize that the winter of 2023 was about as bad or worse than the winter of 2022. It seems this is the first normal winter since 2019.
That's a good way to remind oneself how much our perception of a problem is manipulated by the news. That works both ways. They can blackhole a major event, or put a giant microscope on top of a tiny event. You may decide to trust or distrust the news, but you can't decide to hear about something you don't know is happening, and likewise, even if you think another "it's the end of the world" coverage is bullshit, it will still occupy the debate, and therefore your mind.
No grand conspiracies are needed.
While taking substantial precautions to limit the spread there was that many deaths and hospitals were on the brink of collapse. More spread would have started a terrible rationing of care leading to a much higher spike in excess mortality, especially in immune naive populations.
Now despite almost everyone moving on from precautions, due to substantial immunity, we’re no longer on the precipice of spiraling out of control.
Yeah it’s not nearly as newsworthy because we’re not on the edge of a cliff anymore. It wasn’t just the death rate, it was the way it could have exploded.
Also - you can argue that fewer covid precautions may have resulted in a collapsed healthcare system. However, in reality, the NHS occupancy rates for 2020-2021 were double-digit less than previous years.
edit: which is higher than some recent annual flu totals they have, but considerably lower than estimates of annual flu deaths I’ve seen elsewhere? I feel like I’m missing some context for interpreting these numbers.
In Ireland, at one point in the pandemic, a lot of attention was paid to rip.ie, an obituaries website, because the non-hospital official death count was _months_ in arrears; the mechanisms around death reporting were just not designed for realtime analysis.
For some sense of the scale, the WHO estimates 15 million deaths globally by end 2021, vs 5.5 million confirmed in the same period. But generally the WHO uses the confirmed figure; the estimate would rile up conspiracy theorists. I'd expect, given the situation in the US, that the CDC would be even more politically sensitive.