[cas14655]

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.

[bonzini]

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.

[cas14655]

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?

Such as

Discharging hospital patients into care homes:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/28/the-covid-care-home...

"The practice of discharging untested patients from hospitals to care homes remained in force until 15 April 2020."

Killing people with ventilators:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ventil...

"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.

[bonzini]

> Discharging hospital patients into care homes:

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?

There are studies for this such as https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35099995/

[cas14655]

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.

https://appgpandemic.org/news/hospital-and-care-home-visitin...

“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.

> There are studies for this such as https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35099995/

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.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/half-of-corona...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2020/05/26/nursin...

[bonzini]

> 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.

[cas14655]

I am talking about this table:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/download/table?format=xlsx&uri=/peopl...

(warning excel)

It shows that of the 32 European countries 17 didn't even exceed an excess of 5% in the whole period from 2020-01 to 2021-06.