COVID: Sweden was right. Everyone else was wrong.
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Lockdowns are the primary cause of excess deaths, at least as of 2022. This may change as time goes on of course.
See here: https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/16ZqiHaIOf/x/c/4Tpysgl5vDY
This is a fallacy that is being spread to essentially forgive the pharmaceutical industry.
Lockdowns are the primary cause of economies dying, not people dying. People are dying from mRNA shots. That is why a country like Sweden still has excess deaths despite no lockdowns.
The facts are literally right in front of you.
I posted the facts. You are wrong. Sweden has excess deaths because of covid. Lockdown+covid was far worse than covid by itself.
The pharma companies should be held liable for all the side effects they have unnecessarily caused to the young, but there can be no argument that they saved the lives of a shitton of old people.
Wait, Sweden has excess deaths because of COVID? The same COVID that stopped killing people a while ago while excess deaths continue to CLIMB instead of decrease?
Please explain that one to me. COVID killed off some old people then did nothing, the shots are what is continuing this trend.
Swedish excess deaths were falling consistently until recently. You absolutely may be right that vax side effects are causing the recent turnaround however. It is unconscionable that they were ever given to any healthy/young person.
china virus was only lethal to those already dead
mRNA vaccine makes sense if you're old, but it's not so simple as to just count deaths of vaccinated vs unvaccinated.
For instance, VA found that unvaccinated people who did not get covid died at a significantly higher rate than vaccinated who also did not get covid during the study period.
Maybe unvaccinated were less risk averse so they end up dying more from accidents, or they're already in hospice and don't really care if they die from the cancer in a month vs covid in a week, or something else. But in any case they're different groups and can't be compared directly.
Also non-covid excess deaths - mostly heart related - started right as the vaccines were given out in large amounts and lockdowns were being lifted because people felt safe from the vaccine so if lockdowns were responsible it'd have to be from like getting fat or something like that paired with behavior change at the time vaccines were given like resuming jogging. It's possible, but it seems more likely that a vaccine known to cause lots of heart problems would be responsible for mostly heart-related deaths that started at the same time as the vaccine was given.
Sure, but if you look at the data I posted, the vaccinated/unvaccinated 60+ age death rates have converged as of about 2022, but they were staggeringly different in 2020. I don't see any plausible explanation other than covid for the massive difference in 60+ aged deaths between the vaxxed and unvaxxed in 2020.
If the vaccinated group are just healthier people, like they were in the VA study I saw, then you shouldn't expect it to converge afterwards. They should have lower death rate post-covid as well, so converging could indicate lasting damage from the vaccine.
If the people who didn't get the vaccine didn't get it because they were in hospice then the vaccine wouldn't have kept them alive, and generally the older you are the more likely you are to be in hospice and know you're dying soon. Here you might expect the lines to converge later, because the people in hospice now thought they were fine a year ago and got vaccinated.
There's lots of ways simple data like "number of people who died" can be very misleading. Another example is the vaccines delay when you'll get covid rather than preventing it, so many vaccinated people got different strains from unvaccinated. Vaccinated with omicron vs unvaccinated with delta is attributable at least somewhat to luck; had the virus gotten more deadly the unvaccinated who got it early could have been better off.
And that's why we use randomized trials instead of self-selected ones, so you know it's not any number of confounding factors, but for the vaccine the control groups were disbanded so we don't have the data that says the only difference is the vaccine and by how much.
While I, in general, agree with your concerns about backwards looking analysis, confounders, and misleading data, in this case the numbers are so extreme that occam's razor points strongly in the direction of causality (or at least a shared cause). And since we don't have randomized prospective trials, we have to look backwards and do the best we can.
Speaking of shared causes, if you have any data or anecdotes to suggest that most of the unvaxxed people died in hospice and weren't given the vaccine because it was pointless, please send it my way, because it would drastically change my opinion (of course!)
Regarding differing average health levels of the two groups and the convergence. Totally agreed that this convergence could indiciate long-term health complications from the vaccine. Right now, if I had to bet, I would say both that the vaccines saved a lot of elderly lives, but will also cost lives in the future due to side effects (and given the extreme age stratification of death rates from covid should never have been given to the non-elderly).
And yes, it is 100% possible that the vaccines 'got lucky' by saving lives by preventing people from getting delta until omicron came about, but in that case the vaccines still saved lives. And I most certainly am not advocating for -more- mRNA vaccinations post-omicron.
Finally, since I never mentioned it - looking at just excess deaths in general between the two groups is basically the best you can do, since it limits bullshit from covid classification, but it is still susceptible to bad vaccination classification. More discussion here: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/01/10/no-lockdown-sweden-seemingly-tied-for-lowest-all-causes-mortality-in-oecd-since-covid-arrived/