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