[pw201]

Comparing winter excess death peaks, where government interventions (like lockdowns) didn't occur, with COVID19 peaks doesn't tell you what would have happened without the interventions. You (I think) say the interventions caused the peaks (or maybe that they're no worse than winter flu peaks so govts shouldn't have intervened, you're not clear on your exact view). The experts say the interventions stopped the COVID peaks from being higher. They also reduced flu deaths as a by-product (https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/128766013743239577...).

> Again, there's just no evidence of anything unusual happening here.

In Switzerland, something unusual certainly happened compared to 2017, namely a peak outside winter flu season (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/health/state...). What caused that, in your view?

In Sweden, where the government stopped short of a full lockdown but messed up care homes by refusing to hospitalise people with COVID19 symptoms (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52704836), excess deaths also peaked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#Ex...). Were the Swedes also panicked into not going to hospital? What did the care home deaths die of?

To return to the question which started the thread, the PHE stats in the UK overestimate by including people who died for other reasons after a positive test, but this effect cannot have caused anything like the error in the statistics that you claim: a back of the envelope calculation based on typical lifespans (http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2020/07/mountains-and-mole...) gives 20 wrongly-counted deaths per day. If you're claiming that the panic lessened that life expactancy by keeping people out of hospitals, I'd note that even if every single missing cardiac case dropped dead, that's 250 people per day, no where near the 1700 we were seeing at the peak. If PHE continues to count old positive tests now, it will matter, because there are many fewer deaths in total.