Sweeden is one example, the death toll is still manageable and the life is pretty much still normal.
Not a country: florida, it is one of the state in the usa that has the least covid related restriction. They are doing very well. Went there myself to visit recently.
Its not hard to see why lockdown is not worth it. According to cdc, covid has very very low ifr :
It gets real dark real fast. The Post link suggests that their approach has worked, as long as you value a human life at no more than $1.1m. They are approaching 8k deaths and their approach is suggested to have added 5k to that.
“ Assume that the differential Swedish approach dampens the GDP fall this year by 1 percentage point. This represents a gain of approximately $5.6 billion. Also suppose that the approach has caused 5,000 extra deaths — a reasonable guess from comparisons with other Nordic countries. How could one estimate that loss of life in economic terms? The value of a statistical life, used by the Swedish Transport Administration in its cost-benefit analyses of investment in traffic security, is approximately $4.6 million. Using this number, the economic cost of lost lives would be as high as $22.9 billion — clearly outweighing the benefits from the smaller GDP fall. One might argue that the value of lost lives should be set much lower, as the vast majority of deaths have been among elderly people, with fewer years left to enjoy life: 89 percent of the dead in Sweden have been above 70 years of age, and 67 percent above 80. One reaches the break-even point in my calculation if one lowers the value of an average life lost to $1.12 million. For the Swedish approach to be “profitable,” the average life lost must be valued lower than that.”
That this is not some uncontrollable inevitability is the whole point. Places that were proactive have less economic harm and far less death and illness. I suppose people aren't going to change, so the ship has sailed for much of the world, but it wasn't inevitable for vast numbers of people to get infected.
As far as 1/200 being subjectively low, if something had a 1/200 chance in killing you, would you do it 5 times a day? We can answer probably not of course, because you probably wouldn't do it once a week (or you wouldn't be).
The point is, even without any precaution, they might never be infected in the first place, so probably death from covid for this specific age group is : probability of getting infected * 1/200. So even less than 1/200.
If I'm in this age group, obviously I would happily take this chance, if the alternative is lockdown/restriction.
> As far as 1/200 being subjectively low, if something had a 1/200 chance in killing you, would you do it 5 times a day?
It would probably be considerably more fun to self isolate while taking up drinking, smoking, motor biking without a helmet and a variety of other risky activities. At least those are interesting, and they are probably less risky.
That is his opinion, which I disagree. I myself would not consider it 'failed'. Sweeden total death this year is not significantly different compared to previous year.
What are you taking about? Sweden reported that this November was the deadliest in the last 100 years since the Spanish flu in 1918. Compared to Norway, Sweden has 20x more deaths from covid (Sweden 8000 vs Norway 400 deaths) and Sweden has only 2x population (10M vs 5M). And Norway has a better GDP than Sweden despite stricter lockdown policies.
Searching about I see data like yours and ones like those I include below, which show an excess. Why these differ, I don’t understand.
In your link, if you assume the death rate for the remainder of the year will remain static and calculate the end of year total (it’s roughly adding 5%) you get a number that looks like it spikes, but not hugely.
The below show a clear excess and a long tail after the spike in deaths.
A conspiracy theorist acquaintance of my sisters sent her data in our country that was wrong, same argument - look COVID-19 isn't killing anybody, it's a plot, blah bah. The raw data (weekly mortality) is published by government on a weekly basis and I just explained to my sister how to download it into Calc or Excel or whatever and see for herself.
One of the recurring things with conspiracy theorists is that they aren't in the least interested in fact checking. They're engaged in a search only for reassurance that they're correct, if you give conflicting data they keep searching but if any source will agree with them it must be right.
You probably shouldn't add only 5% based on the remaining days. Deaths stats are frequently preliminary for weeks or even a few months as reporting itself may be delayed (in particular right now if you're quarantined and a sick person passes peacefully regardless of cause what's the point of breaking quarantine to do paperwork more quickly? They aren't any more or less dead if you do the December 1st death paperwork on December 15th)
We'll see what the number end up, covid has spread since the beginning of this year, highly unlikely that in next 2 weeks suddenly the death jump significantly.
Also keep in mind that the excess death may or may not be due to covid alone.
> highly unlikely that in next 2 weeks suddenly the death jump significantly.
Is it? Cases have been spiking but deaths are going in the other direction or are flat lining. There is usually an increase in deaths about a month after covid cases go up.
Even conservative modelling predicts a lot more deaths (+50%) and less conservative models see a doubling or more.
Not a country: florida, it is one of the state in the usa that has the least covid related restriction. They are doing very well. Went there myself to visit recently.
Its not hard to see why lockdown is not worth it. According to cdc, covid has very very low ifr :
0-19 years: 0.00003
20-49 years: 0.0002
50-69 years: 0.005
70+ years: 0.054