This very much depends on the age groups... For people younger than 40, covid still killed less people than traffic accidents, overdoses, suicides etc. in my country. In the 85yo+ group, the story is a bit different.
Interestingly enough, most of the covid restrictions affected the young the most, while the old were mostly unaffected (tehnically they were all affected the same, but most old people are at home and in beds when curfews started).
Well yeah, but you have to put things in perspective... we took away basic human rights (movement, assembly, relatively even speech), to save less people than if we banned driving for <40yo. Even with the vaccines, and the passive forcing of vaccinations (eg. limiting stuff you can do unless vaccinated or tested daily), most of the services where you needed the vaccine/test were used by the young people (shopping malls, cinemas, etc.), and not old people (who stereotipically just go to normal stores, pharmacy and a doctor).
Just the number of extra suicides due to curfews was probably higher than the death rates in those age groups.
In comparison, in total (so all age groups, including the 85yo+), we had more cigarette related deaths in those two years than of covid, and we still sell cigarettes pretty much everywhere.
No, we did that to save the much higher number of people that would have been affected if we didn't impose restriction at the peaks. How much higher those numbers would have been is of course debatable. But given the exponential nature of spread, one assumes many more people would have been infected. And running out of hospital capacity to treat people would obviously have made deaths much worse.
Cigarettes are very different in that mostly affect the person smoking (in many countries we do indeed ban smoking in enclosed public places).
There is literally no reason or evidence that think that the restrictions had any effect at all let alone a significant one worth the trade offs. If for some reason you are allergic to Sweden you can compare England Winter 2022 with Germany, or Scotland or Wales. Or Germany to Switzerland after Feb, 16th 2022 when they dropped their measures. Or Florida with Cali. It didn't do anything. I am sorry but it's time to learn the truth.
You cannot compare the effects of restrictions on a vaccinated population to the effects on an unvaccinated one.
Restrictions were not introduced to "save" people, in such a way that you could restrict the lockdowns to the more vulnerable elderly population. Such a lockdown would have to be draconian (China-style).
Rather, restrictions were introduced (except for Australia and various countries in Asia which had zero case policy) to curb the growth in the occupation of hospital beds before the hospitals were full. Up until the introduction of vaccines and more contagious variants (Delta/Omicron) there were clear effects on Rt from the introduction and lifting of restrictions. Reduction of the reproduction rate cannot be achieved with a lockdown only of >60 year old people, since (like vaccination) the effect is inversely proportional to the amount of people not being locked down.
In Denmark at least, through all of 2020 we had 0.0% increase in mortality. 2 weeks after we started vaccinating that number climbed to 12.6%, so we might find that the vaccines have killed even more people.
Certainly if you did the deceptive deed of tracking "dead with vaccine" like we do for the disease.
> Certainly if you did the deceptive deed of tracking "dead with vaccine" like we do for the disease.
Where are they not tracking "dead with covid" separately from "dead from covid"? Here in the UK we have very clearly recorded separate numbers for these (the "dead from" number were ~66% the "dead with" numbers until recently with the rise of Omicron meaning that far more people have covid and far few people are dying from it).
In Denmark we have only tracked "dead with" and then mid 2021 we had a large study to figure out the actual number of dead, which turned out to be about 120 people.
Hundreds of thousands died with a positive PCR test, yes. But then everyone who died had one taken. Certainly, a number of those died because because of this particular infection but the average COVID death was a very old person who had two or more preexisting conditions.
So the real question is: how many have died who would not have died of the flu or RSV or Andenovirus or Beta-coronavirus or any of the other innumerable causes of respiratory infections?
Not to mention, this has nothing to do with people younger than 40 or even younger than 60.
There is data on excess mortality and the answer is, a lot. This is also why the with/from covid debate is pointless. If 100.000 people have died more than they would usually die, then no matter if they died due to covid or their condition was aggravated by it, that's 100.000 more people dying than in a year without covid.
Well except that a lot of countries didn't have any unusual excess mortality in 2020. And anyway how do you separate the deaths caused by the measures from the deaths caused by COVID?
"Bergmann’s case illustrates a shift on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, as doctors rethink when and how to use mechanical ventilators to treat severe sufferers of the disease - and in some cases whether to use them at all. While initially doctors packed intensive care units with intubated patients, now many are exploring other options.
England had 70.000 more deaths than usual in 2020 (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...), how many of those were from care homes? The balance was ~30.000 in mid April, were all of them in care homes? And even if so, how do you justify the remaining 40.000 that died later in the year?
> Killing people with ventilators:
Also April 2020, so the question is the same. How do you justify the excess deaths from the second half of 2020 and 2021?
> except that a lot of countries didn't have any unusual excess mortality in 2020
Which? How did death causes compare in 2019 and 2020?
These are two examples of how measures specifically meant to fight the disease caused a lot of deaths. Care homes also had deaths from loneliness and despair due to banning family visits, another pandemic measure that is still going on today.
“There are still obstacles in place when trying to visit a loved one in a care home and the impact has been and continues to be devastating. The safeguarding issues I am seeing and hearing about are atrocious. Residents left for hours in dirty, wet incontinence pads leading to dangerous pressure ulcers. Malnutrition. Dehydration. End of life medication given to patients without their or their family’s consent. Psychological trauma, post traumatic stress and suicides have resulted because of this. Multiple systems are failing, including Local Authorities and the CQC. It is a complex situation that needs a bold approach by both empowering families and galvanising government action to hold public bodies to account and stop private equity firms placing profit over people.”
The single largest group of people, between 40% and 60% depending on country, to die from coronavirus were from care homes [1],[2] so it stands to reason that measures applying to care homes had an outsized effect on corona virus mortality.
And indeed, Sweden, after admitting it did wrong by the care home residence in Spring 2020 and taking steps to rectify the situation, got their deaths under control which allowed them to end 2020 at (minus) -2.3% age-adjusted relative mortality.
This study uses unadjusted mortality which does not account for an aging population. In particular it doesn't account for Sweden's 2019 negative excess mortality. I look at this report by the UKs Office of National Statistics:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
Table "Table 2: Relative cumulative excess mortality ..." is the most interesting. It shows that more than half of these European countries had absolutely nothing exceptional going on mortality wise between 2020 and June 2021. I'm not sure how the Corona narrative (100000k death / month without lockdowns!!) can account for this data. If it's really only the virus we should've seen mass mortality everywhere especially the places with a more "hands off" approach like Sweden. That's just not what happened.
> half of these European countries had absolutely nothing exceptional going on mortality wise between 2020 and June 2021
That's not how I read it. First, all except Norway, Finland, Estonia, Denmark had at least +20% in 2020. Second, it's the peak that the graph plots so you cannot use it to take conclusions over the whole year. All the graph can tell you is how hard the country was hit by the spring 2021 wave compared to 2020.
Interestingly enough, most of the covid restrictions affected the young the most, while the old were mostly unaffected (tehnically they were all affected the same, but most old people are at home and in beds when curfews started).