Hey, Iâm only right 99% of the time. Nobodyâs perfect. Iâm fine with admitting when Iâm wrong and I was definitely wrong about the death rates.Â
Now that youâve brought this back, you wanna talk about some other statements that aged poorly?
âShutting shit down is the best way to contain the infectionâ
According to you, the state with the elderly population that never shut down should have an uncontained infection compared to the younger populations with strict measures in California and New York.
What didnât age poorly is how useless lockdown measures and mask mandates have been for affecting these numbers. They do not matter compared to other, far more relevant data points.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full?fbclid=IwAR0sOs6lZjqlxELIYJCHm56Ijg8ZT5shzbWjeJ78RyKbfYkHu5byVkFlbK4
Results: Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65°] latitude and in the [â35/â125°] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.
https://pandata.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Exploring-inter-country-variation.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3UdVuFx-RlzkmTBZYk_BylJYUU3pAnGPNxjb9J1va8Tt96uAnyVqJd_EQ
It is noteworthy that neither average nor maximal lockdown stringency are at all correlated with the residuals or the response variable. Lockdowns do not appear to reduce deaths or flatten epidemic curves in any way. We suspect that the survival of the perception that they do is a result of the belief that initial epidemiological modelling, which failed to take into account, inter alia, the factors presented in this article, was accurate. This creates a sense that the difference between modelled and actual experience is owing to lockdown, when instead it is owing to model error. The picture presented is consistent with the oft-cited observation that the reproduction rate decays quite linearly, producing Gompertz-family fits and that this linear decay is interrupted neither by imposition of lockdown measures nor by their termination. The burden of proof for lockdown efficacy must surely reside with the proponents for this intervention. We find no evidence that is supportive and have yet to see evidence in support of this previously untested intervention.
What didnât age poorly is how negatively people are affected by the lockdown measures.
What DID age poorly was all those lockdown states and countries claiming they beat the virus due to their authoritarian measures only to have their cases and deaths spike to the exact same degree as the places who did not impose these measures.
Even your tendency to downplay the seriousness of the lockdown consequences when compared to your worry about the consequences from the virus spreading has also been studied:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103120304248
In Study 1, American participants evaluated the same costs (public shaming, deaths and illnesses, and police abuse of power) as more acceptable when they resulted from efforts to minimize C19âs health impacts, than when they resulted from non-health C19 efforts (e.g., prioritizing economic costs) or efforts unrelated to C19 (e.g., reducing traffic deaths). In Study 2, New Zealand participants less favorably evaluated the quality of a research proposal empirically questioning continuing a C19 elimination strategy in NZ than one questioning abandoning an elimination strategy, although both proposals contained the same amount of methodology information. This finding suggests questioning elimination approaches is morally condemned, a similar response to that found when sacred values are questioned.Â
So yes, my predictions about death rates was way off base. My overall point about the efficacy of lockdown measures in affecting these rates and the seriousness of the negative effects that lockdown measures bring was not and in fact was borne out from the facts.
Your point, on the other hand, was thoroughly stamped into the dirt.
Thanks for bringing the post back, so I could post the evidence!
