Coronavirus: Please use this thread for all COVID19 talk!

But that is obviously going to happen with their strategy to the virus. And if that is an enormous death toll then I have a completely different vision of life and death on this planet.

 

These are still trifling numbers in the daily expected deaths of any country. I am interested to how closed off to any other model everyone is. Some countries may benefit from different approaches. Your supposition one way apparently trumps supposition another way - but it is still too early to tell.

My point is these inflated words and suppositions are no different to what the Trumpists do. There is no skyrocket. Skyrocket suggests thousand of unnecessary deaths, not hundreds.

Here is a connected point. In January my wife's grandfather died when he got the flu. The death certificate says dementia killed him because flu was just the trigger. Dementia killed him. We need to be careful not to rewrite the rules to fit the narrative, because if these new rules are the truth, flu had a much higher death rate than we currently rate it at...

 

Have you paid for this argument?

 

Reposted because I couldn't figure out why it kept breaking my quote tags.

 

I was trying to have a reasonable discussion, but I suppose I shouldn't have bothered.

 

They aren't trifling numbers at all. Sweden has, on average, about 1750 deaths from all causes a week. Despite a likely serious undercount of COVID deaths, at least a 33% increase in deaths from all causes occurred the past two weeks. And it's still rising.

That's why I keep mentioning excess deaths, because it's a thing that can be measured, and in every bloody country there is a massive spike in the number of deaths above the norm. It's not a matter of what is written on the death certificate.

 

That is a matter of perspective. Would the Swedish people rather risk a 30% increase on their death rate or shut their country down?

Is your point that Sweden is too stupid to look at their own data and make a reasonable decision? You could be right, but it is also possible Sweden will be just fine at the end of all this.

 

It kind of is about what is on the death certificate. Not meaning to be harsh here, but the more 'excess' deaths of people who are really unwell there are now, the lower the death rate will be next year...

 

To some extent, sure. But there are a lot of people dying who wouldn't have died next year, either. Or the next year.

And at some point, if the argument is that someone was infirm because they'd have died from an illness eventually, you're really just working with John Maynard Keynes' famous axiom: in the long run, we are all dead.

 

In the long run we are.

The provisional number of deaths registered in England and Wales in February 2020 was 43,653; this represents a decrease of 13,053 deaths in comparison with the previous month and a decrease of 2,143 deaths in comparison with the same month in 2019.

Fewer people died in February than the previous year by 2143.

Swings happen both ways. I am not saying this is not an awful disease and I am sure I am totally wrong to think Sweden might possibly have chosen an approach which might suit the country, but I will look at the data when this is all over and make that decision.

Edit: and my wife's grandfather died a year or two early be because of flu but more because he was already frail from dementia. Dementia killed him and is on the death certificate. Flu was the last push. Dementia is still the biggest killer here, not corona, imo. We shall see in hindsight.

 

I'm sorry, loading, but this is just completely erroneous. Swings do happen, particularly in winter months, because you can have better/worse flu seasons. But look at the difference there: comparing like-to-like (Feb. to Feb.), you get a decrease of 5%. In the week ending April 3rd the jump compared to the same time in the UK was over 60%. The next week was the highest number of deaths on record in any month in the past ten years. That doesn't happen in Aprils.

5% is expected variance; the others are completely and utterly beyond the norm.

 

Sure. That is why I am locked up in my house, rotting. This is a crisis. Yadayadayada. But the deaths in Sweden are not skyrocketing.

And this conversation has kept me entertained for 10 minutes, so cheers.

 

A jump of 30% or more in deaths, that is escalating, is indeed a skyrocketing death rate. It's true that they haven't had to start storing bodies in spare rooms, as they are in some countries, but Sweden is -- without much testing -- banking on the idea that about 30-50x more people have been infected than they have known cases, which exceeds any other estimate.

 

I think the majority of replies have been just that reasonable no name calling or profanity. Semantics re the description of the rate of rise and the accuracy of the fingers of little importance. Anyway yer minute's up off you trot.

 

Erm, OK. This seems to be your approach to ideas you don't like? I will trot off.

 

I believe the concensus is about 10 times as many people have had it as has been reported and a death rate between 1 and 4 percent. Thede are figures we can see with clarity when this is over. And comparing the UK to Sweden will then be very interesting.

 

Comparing Sweden to a country that had lead time and actually took action would be a better comparison, frankly. The UK isn't a good comparison for lockdown versus no lockdown, as by the time the UK did anything at all, it was already set in stone that this would get very bad.

 

Posting a Monty Python sketch and paraphrasing it isn't in any way expressing my like or dislike of your stance. Just injecting a bit of humour, if that causes offense that's your problem to address.