05-13-2021, 10:46 PM
Quote:The numbers look always very big but look at them in perspective of total deaths per year. Also would numbers be so much higher if no lockdowns were set??? For example in the Netherlands positively tested people were not obliged to stay at home.....well they were but nobody checked/enforced this......25% of them actually didn't obey quarantine rules.....and because supermarkets were the only shops that were open....people would concentrate there.
Lockdowns are not very effective (compared to no lockdown) on average because unless you enforce them, some people ignore them, and if you don't have a lockdown, sensible people isolate themselves anyway. But you only have to look at the case of China to see that severe lockdowns obviously work, since they didn't use any other method, didn't have any vaccines, and yet have effectively eradicated it within their borders. While the repressive state apparatus of China is hardly something to be emulated, the lesson here is that lockdowns need to be better enforced. Telling us that lockdowns are not very effective when you are also advocating the same "not such a big deal" attitude that makes lockdowns ineffective in the first place is more than a little frustrating. They work fine if people obey them.
Quote:The only very clear fact that everybody agrees on is that obesity was the most important factor determining this high death toll.
I'm pretty sure everyone with half an ounce of sense knows that the most important factor in determining this high death toll is *the spread of Covid-19*. If they had contained it in Wuhan, there would have been no excess mortality. I'm all for improving health care, poverty, mental health, and whatever else. There is no either/or about this, stopping the pandemic has no bearing on whether people will eat healthier, or we will give more generous foreign aid, or improve the social safety net. But if we want to save peoples' lives *today*, our most effective intervention is to stop this pandemic.
-Jester