Node, 11:33 – “From a blanket denial that the figures were being manipulated, there is now an acceptance that they are”
The opposite is the case. The figure from Worldometers for covid-19 deaths is 31,241. The figure for overall excess deaths from Chris Giles of the Financial Times, based on work by the Continuous Mortality Investigation of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries suggests total excess deaths of 51,000 to 59,000. Even the lower figure presented earlier was 43,000 (from memory). It seems that covid-19 deaths are being underreported.
– “And from a position that civil liberties were of secondary importance to the need to control covid19, now you accept there’s a serious threat”
It’s Gould’s app I’m objecting to. But I’ve always said that the restrictions were worrying, but that it was a matter of lesser evils.
– “… it doesn’t matter whether we count those who die with or of the virus … it doesn’t matter if we include those who die of or despite the lockdown.”
I have answered both these points repeatedly. The “of or with the virus” argument is invalid, because the five year average already included ongoing deaths due to other conditions, and “excess deaths” are the deaths over and above the five year average*.
As for those dying of the lockdown, this, like covid-19, is another new cause of death that didn’t exist previously, so unlike co-morbidities it does need to be considered. But it looks to be fairly low because the death rate is falling even though the lockdown remains, so the rate of death due to the lockdown also remains, and it appears to be small. The big rise and fall is therefore due to something other than the lockdown itself, so it’s probably covid-19.
Additionally, that rise and fall follows the curve seen for covid-19 in other countries, so again it is probably due to covid-19.
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Node, I have answered you. You probably don’t understand, but in a scientific discussion you should now accept that your points have been considered and discounted; they are not valid, and they never were. They were merely mistaken. They can now be consigned to history, with an “OK, those ideas were wrong”, permitting the investigation to move forward.
That’s how things work in science. It isn’t a matter of opinion. It isn’t one “POV” versus another. Those points were shown to be wrong. They no longer have any relevance to the investigation, and if you were to raise them again you’d just be wasting everyone’s time.
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* – There may be a point here, but I’m ending up doing your thinking for you. If we now consider “those who died with covid-19 rather than those who died of covid-19″, yes, some people’s deaths will have been hastened by covid-19, and this may show up as a lower death rate in the future. Or it may prove impossible to tell, because long term averages vary anyway.
Compare with another scenario. Say in a very cold winter the Langeled pipeline failed and wasn’t repaired for a month. Electricity and heating went off, and twenty thousand people froze to death. Of course, most of those would have been old and frail, or have had other health problems. Did they die from or with the gas failure? Many were going to die fairly soon anyway, no? So we can let the energy companies off the hook for most of those deaths, right?