A Scientific Explanation Of Why Shutdowns Are Useless To Fight Coronavirus

That’s a meaningless chart. It assumes: 1, they know the date of first infection from each nation’s patient zero, and delta time to the decision to lockdown are at all analogous. 2, it seems there is no adjustment for size of each nation’s population, and the "death count". 3, it acts as if every nation is homogenous in its death rate, regardless of population density related to lockdown. 4, assumes every nation are somehow equal when counting deaths, and that, 5, lockdown is the only variable that could possibly effect daily death counts.

It’s absurd. It’s a chart put together by a person who has no clue what he’s measuring, or what he’s trying to compare, and in fact is comparing many unsimilar things. It’s throwing data against the wall and saying, see, they correlate. But what do they correlate when nothing is normed?!

As for comparing ANYTHING to the Spanish Flu epidemic as a analog for what should be done today, there’s no possible comparison. They quarantined the SICK, not the healthy. The shut down travel, and limited contact through social distancing, and instituted cleaning and strict antiseptic practices, even though they had no knowledge of viruses, but not the economy.

To analogies to the Spanish Flu with its millions of dead is sheer fear mongering, especially when we don’t see anywhere near those levels of contagion or mortality in COVID19.

Nope, it’s far from meaningless.

1. it’s based on the date of the first reported infection

1.b. the time to decision to lockdown is not unknown but a fixed known

2. the adjustment is about the daily deaths - it doesn’t account for population, but India is lower than China for instance, and Austria is behind Switzerland

3. It does - that’s how you take a reasonable model rather than have multiple variables

4. Again, a valid assumption

5. Again, that’s the variable - if you wish to add in more, that can be done - like anything you limit the variables otherwise you end up with thousands of variables.

It’s not absurd. It’s a valid chart showing that lockdowns have worked.

Clearly if you compare Sweden to Norway+Denmark, then forced lockdowns have worked — and remember that Sweden has had a non-forced but de facto followed lockdown

the adjustment is about the daily deaths - it doesn’t account for population, but India is lower than China for instance, and Austria is behind Switzerland

Daily deaths per country is a meaningless number. Period. It is counting bodies. What counts is deaths per capita, or deaths per 100,000. Not just a superficial count of the dead! That’s meaningless. . . especially when you’re relying on spoofed reporting!

Just in the United States we now know for a fact that "daily death counts" were inflated by local authorities and hospitals. The CDC adjusted the actual TOTAL COVID19 deaths downward by almost 20% in the first week in May. Don’t believe me? Go look! Covid death counts were including EVERY cause of death the locals and hospitals could possible stretch to include, including all seasonal influenza, pneumonia, stroke, myocardial infarctions, normal complications from diabetes, cancer, and the entire spectrum of normally expected naturally caused deaths! They even tossed in a few homicides, suicides, and automobile accidents in the counts!. The MSM is STILL using the inflated numbers. It was actually how miraculously the curves recording the deaths on the CDC’s charts from those other causes of deaths suddenly dropped like stones off of cliffs when COVID19 was started being reported for cause of death! Seasonal flu and pneumonia nose dived! The joke in the medical community among those looking at the charts was that COVID19 was miraculously curing everything else!

Of course, it wasn’t, the bean counters were just counting every death as Covid. Why? You might ask. . . Simple. MONEY! The States, communities, and hospitals got fully reimbursed and then some for patients with a Covid coding. No Covid coding? Meh. . . More cases diagnosed= more Federal funds. Put them on a ventilator? TEN TIMES AS MUCH! Dead, even more! No need to test! Just write it down and they can bill! Killed in an auto accident? Distracted driver because someone said he was coughing! Must be Covid! Write it on the death certificate. Smothered your baby because you’re sick and tired of being cooped up with no place to party? Covid anxiety related death! Shot your wife? Ditto! Covid related!

CDC went back and adjusted all those bogus ones out. If it really wasn’t a real, honest to God Covid, by-the-book, infection death, they wouldn’t count.

They did wind up adding a couple thousand nursing home deaths in that had been classified as pneumonia, because post Mortem blood testing of retained samples showed they were actually positive for Covid at death, just misdiagnosed.

Then you’ve got lying China. It’s on there. Garbage data.

France has moved its first known patient, and patient death, back to November and first week in December respectively, again by retroactive testing of suspicious pneumonia deaths. So much for the chart’s assumptions of first known deaths. Germany has also found a different patient zero date, as has Sweden. These throw the assumptions of the chart maker into a cocked hat.

The assumption that mere borders, in the EU, in the US, in India, somehow create a homogenous unit for which singular data can be extracted and then treated as if it exists entirely isolated from the construct it existed prior to its selection is a huge sampling error on these data.

Just for example, the creators of the chart use a singular data unit for the United States, somehow combining the 50 separate political entities which independently made decisions of if, when, and how strictly to lockdown, and then took an ABSOLUTE aggregate seven-day rolling death count, combined from all fifty of these discrete and completely disparate political entities, and used that as THE singular data representing ALL those political decision making entities, WITHOUT BOTHERING TO ADJUST FOR TOTAL POPULATION, to compare with the also non-population-adjusted of far smaller population political entities’ individual seven-day rolling death counts, and you think that MEANS SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT?

Look, let me put it this way. Let’s compare cars. In the United States there are approximately ~270 million vehicles. Italy has ~55 million vehicles. Those are interesting figures. . . but useless by themselves. You need to relate those numbers to the population their distributed among.

The population of the United States is ~330 million. The population of Italy is ~70 million. Got it? Therefore, there are ~1.2 people for every vehicle. In Italy, it’s ~1.3. Now you can compare like for like on an even keel.

Another way, generally used with death counts, is deaths per 100,000. Sticking with Italy, the COVID19 total death rate is ~45 per 100,000, their data shows that fully 60% of those were over 80 years old. For the US. Using the non-CDC numbers, it comes to 26 per 100,000. If we use the CDC’s adjusted number of ~57,000 then it’s 17.25 per 100,000, which is an overall population mortality rate of ~0.02%! Even Italy’s overall population mortality rate is 0.045%.

and remember that Sweden has had a non-forced but de facto followed lockdown

No, that’s MSM reporting twaddle. They had compliant social distancing. There was no Swedish "lockdown". Schools and businesses still operated. Stores were open.

Further statistics show that most new cases in lockdown cities and localities, the infections occurred In locked-down and compliant homes. So much for your arguments.

you said “There was no Swedish “lockdown”.”

That’s not quite correct — there was no forced lockdown. The public health authority has recommended as in other countries social distancing. This resulted for example that within days the majority of office workers started working from home. The same authority stresses the importance of isolating the elderly so they do not get sick. Many with older parents as I are shopping for them and leaving their groceries at the door so they do not have to go grocery shopping.

So although Sweden has not formally decided any lockdown measures in reality they are in effect

Sweden is about the size of Ohio in population (and California in area). The population density and populations themselves are definitely different. But for the sake of argument, let’s compare the infection and death rates in Sweden and Ohio and Cali as of today, May 15, 2020.

State/Ctry population deaths deaths/million
Cali 39.6 million 3,052 deaths 77 deaths/million
Ohio 11.6 million 1,537 deaths 131
Sweden 10.12 million 3,529 deaths 350 deaths per million population

Ohio has 4 times more density of population 109/km2 than Sweden 23/km2 but 1/3rd the deaths.

And that’s even though Sweden de facto implemented a partial lockdown.

Fine, you keep dancing, cherry picking your data and ignoring actual data, using worthless charts that use worthless data. I’m educated as an economist and took a lot of statistic analysis as part of that education and know how to recognize BS statistics when I see it. That chart is BS. You don’t compare raw number death counts between arbitrary population areas without norming the deaths per population to get a rate so you are at least comparing an equalized comparable number.

Using an arbitrary number of 50 dead in a total population of unknown size on a specific date beyond first infection is a USELESS and essentially valueless datapoint unless you know the universe from which each of those numbers is being compared and is especially meaningless when collected across 50 different political entities making independent lockdown/nolockdown decisions as is the case in the US.

For example, 50 people dead 60 days post first infection is possibly catastrophic in a universe of < 10,000 population, but it is a blip in a universe of a population of > 10,000,000 population, and mere noise in a universe of > 300,000,000 population, yet YOUR cited chart treats ALL of them equally. Had it only plotted the RATE per 100,000 population, THEN it might have some validity. It doesn’t.

You are doing better when you parse it down by comparing political entities of comparable sizes/populations. But even there you fail. Obfuscation by including California for area, but Ohio for population with Sweden fails, because the real variable should be population density per political entity. You’re mixing them. That’s not permissible.

Even that doesn’t work because population density figures for such entities are averaged for the entire state/country and fail to recognize that most Covid deaths occur in areas where the populations are concentrated, rather than averaged evenly across area of the entity. Washington State, for example had more than 80% of its Covid fatalities in a few nursing homes centered around the Seattle area. Most of New York’s very high numbers are in the New York City and its Burroughs. California is six major crowded cities surrounded but a lot of sparsely populated open spaces, with the few deaths it had mostly in those six cities with a few scattered in the boonies. Utah, where I live has had a total of 77 deaths, with the vast majority in Salt Lake City, where the population is clustered. Yet when you look at the population density for Utah, you’ll get a number per square mile that DOES NOT REFLECT the population density of SLC. Same for New York State, or California. Lock down? When and where in California, and how much? Do YOU know? No, you don’t. You assume you do.

You’ve not addressed any of the fatal flaws of those data in the chart I’ve pointed out. Not a single one. You’ve raised smoke screens to legitimize destroying our economy for a disease that is turning out to be about as contagious and as dangerous as a bad seasonal influenza.

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