That's what the right echo sphere says. I read his emails obtained through the freedom of the information act request. He was doing his job, in a very professional way. He has made mistakes, but no, he's not evil and I'm glad we have him in that position. Take one example - the right say Fauci suppressed the lab leak theory. The emails say the exact opposite. Before anyone even brought up that idea in the media, one expert told Fauci (and I think this was early Feb'20) that there is something strange about the genome of this virus (it doesn't look natural and could be man-made). Fauci's response - assemble a bunch of experts to study this NOW - time is critical and if that is true, report this to their various government agencies immediately. In the email, he says he will give a head-up to the US federal agencies (FBI, DHS). A few days later, that same expert + team concluded it was natural in nature. False alarm, but one that was taken extremely seriously and professionally.
Which is a politically driven conclusion. The public was censored on Twitter and other social media if someone tried to explain why they think it is a leak from a lab. And now what...many experts say that is at least as likely.
Let's do that. Below are the excess mortality for the US, Sweden, NZ, Finland, and Australia. Sweden and Finland are neighbors with different early covid responses. Sweden went with fewer restrictions and later added similar restrictions to Finland. NZ and Australia stayed with Covid-Zero then relaxed around Omicron. The US is a mixed bag - some areas lockdown and some stayed open early on. Most did lockdown in the spring of 2020 then some started to relax later that year. They are mostly all relaxed now. You claim lockdown causes more death and pain and tell us to look at the excess mortality for that. We know that lockdown policies cause fewer covid death. The data also shows that lockdown policies cause much less excess mortality. NZ did the best. 1st year of the pandemic (Alpha/Beta - new virus, gov scramble) - US and Sweden have 30-40%+ excess mortality in Spring and Winter 2020. NZ, Aus, and Finland have <10% and even negative (neg 10%) excess mortality throughout 2020. Spoiler 2nd year of the pandemic (Covid vaccine rollout, Delta starts then Omicron creep in) - US and Sweden has 30-40%+ excess mortality in early 2021. The US has another high excess mortality in Fall 2021. NZ, Aus has < 10% and negative (neg 10%) excess mortality throughout 2021. Sweden decided to restrict more after Winter 2020. Their excess mortality stayed down after that. Spoiler 3rd year of the pandemic (Omicron took over, all relaxes restrictions) - The US has another high excess mortality in early 2022. Australia also has high excess mortality in early 2022. Then all of them hover around the same (~0-20%) since ~March 2022. Spoiler
Revisionist history...they never had lockdowns or mask mandates. So don't pretend that "more restrictions" led to excess mortality staying down.
You see private emails between virus experts working extremely urgently on covid virus as politically driven. LOL. You are stuck in the extreme right-wing echo chamber and can't get out of it.
I did not say mask mandate. I said "restrict more", which is exactly what they did. More to the important point - excess mortality data shows you are wrong about restrictions. More restrictions yield both fewer covid death and excess mortality.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/...n/news-story/df50001366bb09b6a20421520cbfbf53 Sweden has the lowest excess mortality rate after the pandemic, despite refusing to lock down Telling new data has shown an incredible fact about one nation that completely rejected lockdowns throughout the pandemic. Serious holes have been poked in the world’s response to the pandemic, with Sweden emerging atop a telling list of nations least affected by Covid-19. In a list of countries studied by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Scandinavian nation ranked lowest for overall cumulative excess deaths from 2020-22 at 6.8 per cent, compared to Australia (18 per cent), the UK (24.5 per cent) and the US (54.1 per cent). The results are even more poignant considering Sweden was one of the few developed nations that opted against widespread lockdowns. As governments scrambled to make the idea of locking down regular life palatable throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Sweden refused, opting for a “voluntary” approach to dealing with the spread. The nation of 10.4 million kept schools from closing throughout the biggest waves of the virus’ spread and did not mandate masks. It should be noted Sweden’s population density sits at around 25 per square kilometre, roughly half that of the worldwide average, with neighbouring Denmark having around 125 per square km. According to the Swedish government, the country’s response has been partly based on voluntary action. “For example, rather than enforce a nationwide lockdown, the authorities gave recommendations: to stay home if you‘ve got symptoms, to keep a distance to others, to avoid public transport if possible,” a spokesman said. Sweden started the first steps to ease the country's Covid-19 restrictions in June 2021, lifting certain restrictions on businesses’ opening times and caps on public events. The Scandinavian region has at times gone against the grain in its methods of dealing with the pandemic, with Denmark recently choosing against recommending vaccines for children due to the low risk the virus poses to young people, compounded with the Covid-19 vaccine’s questionable effectiveness at stopping transmission. In January this year, nearly 3,000 people gathered on Sergels Torg in Stockholm to demonstrate against the government’s vaccine passes, which were at the time still required to enter the nation. In April, Sweden lifted all travel restrictions from visitors overseas, meaning people do not have to prove they are vaccinatewd or negative for Covid to come to Sweden. As foreign governments scrambled to make the idea of locking down regular life palatable throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Sweden refused. In January 2022, nearly 3,000 people gathered on Sergels Torg in Stockholm to demonstrate against the government’s vaccine passes. Officials were repeatedly warned against lockdowns Health officials have been criticised for ignoring the widespread effects lockdowns can have on mental health, citing troubling data from some of the world’s most locked-down cities, including Melbourne. Documents released in 2021 showed Victoria’s Mental Health Minister was warned about the run-on effects of widespread lockdowns in a two-page ministerial briefing note, which also alerted him to a rise in youth self-harm incidents, hospital presentations and suicidal ideation. The measures were followed by police officials urging the public to tip them off about “illegal” family gatherings and household visits. Some states, including Western Australia, proudly employed camera drones to scale public areas for those breaching their hourly quota of outdoor time. There is a full inquiry underway into Australia’s response to Covid, with an independent review being funded by three major philanthropic organisations and headed by Western Sydney University chancellor Peter Shergold. “Schools should have stayed open,” the almost 100-page report found. “It was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments”. Health officials have been criticised for ignoring the obvious widespread effects lockdowns can have on the population. The report found school closures were “likely to have significant adverse impacts on children’s outcomes in education, social development and mental and physical health”. “For children and parents (particularly women), we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.” The report found lockdowns and border closures — among restrictions and overreaching provisions — were effectively inhumane and should only have ever been used as a “last resort”. “Rules were too often formulated and enforced in ways that lacked fairness and compassion. Such overreach undermined public trust and confidence in the institutions that are vital to effective crisis response,” it read. Documents released in 2021 showed Victoria’s Mental Health Minister was warned about the run-on effects of widespread lockdowns in a two-page ministerial briefing note, which also alerted him to a rise in youth self-harm incidents, hospital presentations and suicidal ideation. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said concerns raised by the report would make their way to a future inquiry on the pandemic. However, state leaders like Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who oversaw one of the longest lockdowns globally - with Melbourne clocking 262 days under stay-home orders - pushed back against the report’s findings. “There was nothing academic about COVID-19,” he told reporters. “There’s nothing academic about the fact that we didn’t have any vaccines.” NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said the country should be proud of its overall response, admitting “there were difficult decisions - we got some right, we got some wrong”. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk also defended her policies of effectively isolating the state for months. “We made the decisions in the best interests of Queenslanders and it kept Queenslanders safe,” she said. “I stand by our world-leading result when it comes to the number of lives that were lost compared to other jurisdictions.”
^^ both of those are wrong Credit for him to admit he was wrong. Too bad, most people won't see it after the original news article. NZ also disappeared from the updated post. Oh well. Oh, and the 2nd article, yea, I'm wrong but look at all the cool reasons why Sweden is still so awesome. The mental gymnastics. Good comedy. 1st post (right, that's not how you do this) "Update: The methodology used in this post to calculate ‘cumulative excess mortality’ takes the weekly excess percentage, divides by 52 and then plots the sum of these percentages over the specified period. The effect is to give at the end of a year an average weekly percentage excess for the year. For an analysis that uses a conventional understanding of cumulative excess mortality (using the total deaths divided by the total expected deaths up to the date) see Joel’s follow up post." 2nd post (oops, I was wrong) Another Definitive Guide to Excess Death During the COVID Era (substack.com) Oh no! It looks like I got it wrong!! Sweden is not the best performer in Europe in terms of overall excess deaths (this time up to 28-Aug-22).
A bit worse, mainly because they failed to protect their elderly properly in the first phase of Covid. But you know that already, of course. They still did a hell of a lot better than many countries which locked down.
Sweden didn’t introduce wide spread lockdowns or make mandates but they did impose limits on business and vaccine requirements. Also unlike the US the Swedish population was much more willing to follow government guidance. Most importantly once vaccines were widely available the Swedish population got vaccinated and about 87% of the population is vaccinated. https://sweden.se/life/society/sweden-and-corona-in-brief
Correct, it's always been more about behavior than policy (except in extreme cases like China). Swedes tend to trust their government and believe in the greater good. But credit where credit due for ATW's posts. Woman really enjoying her maskless husband here. And if that dude looks suspiciously like my avatar, I don't know what to tell you.
But Norway had lockdowns and restrictions and is right there with Sweden. Assuming your tweet’s data is correct, it would seem like the factor in lower deaths is smaller population with a strong social safety net. Even then, there are outliers.
The Swedes just went on with their lives. The leftist narrative "oh they trusted their government more" is just that - a narrative for people who always believe in big government.
It's not a "narrative" that they got vaccinated, and it's definitely not a narrative that behavior trumps policy every time. But yeah, that they avoided freaking the heck out, and for a virus this contagious? Not a bad move in hindsight. We were all doing the best we could while learning about a new contagion, and it doesn't need to be a politically left or right thing. Americans seem to have handled it especially poorly, as a country and society, based on the mortality numbers, but we're a heterogeneous, independently-minded people and there we are.
Being independently-minded is a strength, not a weakness. There is a pretty simple reason for the mortality rates, and contrary to what my friend Eric Topol thinks, it has nothing to do with masks or distancing. Obesity. People in the US are much fatter on average than people in most other nations. Age is important as well, but as Japan shows, with less obesity, you had fewer Covid deaths, even if your people are old.
Obesity is often talked about in the US. It's a factor but not huge compared to age. 65+ has a 5-8x risk of death compared to Obesity. Source: Kompaniyets L, Pennington AF, Goodman AB, Rosenblum HG, Belay B, Ko JY, et al. Underlying Medical Conditions and Severe Illness Among 540,667 Adults Hospitalized With COVID-19, March 2020–March 2021. To learn more, visit the Preventing Chronic Disease article: https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/21_0123.htm Japan is a good example. They have the oldest population and are densely packed. A high vax rate helps. Masking as a basic norm help. However, even before covid vax, they did well (very well given their population age). Some of the reasons: trust in government and good government messaging (they were one of the 1st to recognize or simply assume it's airborne dammit). They are famous for their 3Cs that other countries adopted later. 3Cs to avoid: closed environments, crowded conditions, and close-contact settings.
