The actual death toll was 5,400, and now the deaths are declining precipitiously. Of course every death is a tragedy, but the harm done from a national lockdown, which includes youth missing out on a year of school, and thousands of small businesses being destroyed, would have been more of one.
Like Michael Levitt, who's the 2013 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for research in complex systems, says, society has forgotten that people die.
10,000 people per million die every year in Sweden. That rate increasing by 500 is not that abnormal - it happens in bad influenza seasons. If every one was forced to stop working and shelter at home for months every time an infectious disease temporarily rose the death rate by 10%, it would lead to disaster over the long run.
90% of deaths in Sweden have been of those over the age of 70. If the statistics are anything like those in Italy, almost all of these victims had pre-existing conditions.
This is not to lessen the tragedy of their death. This is to point out that most of this tragedy predated their coronavirus infection - their life expectancy was already very limited due to other factors.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v...
The actual death toll was 5,400, and now the deaths are declining precipitiously. Of course every death is a tragedy, but the harm done from a national lockdown, which includes youth missing out on a year of school, and thousands of small businesses being destroyed, would have been more of one.
Like Michael Levitt, who's the 2013 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for research in complex systems, says, society has forgotten that people die.
10,000 people per million die every year in Sweden. That rate increasing by 500 is not that abnormal - it happens in bad influenza seasons. If every one was forced to stop working and shelter at home for months every time an infectious disease temporarily rose the death rate by 10%, it would lead to disaster over the long run.
90% of deaths in Sweden have been of those over the age of 70. If the statistics are anything like those in Italy, almost all of these victims had pre-existing conditions.
This is not to lessen the tragedy of their death. This is to point out that most of this tragedy predated their coronavirus infection - their life expectancy was already very limited due to other factors.