When, the summer before last, the results of the first Covid wave began to be tallied in the media, there were different ways of measuring the devastation. One way of looking at the pandemic was to focus on how many people died — more than half a million around the world by the end of June. Another was to try assessing the complicated impacts of the various measures taken to combat the virus. When a lot of the functions in society were frozen, people struggled — especially the most vulnerable.
For those who preferred the first perspective, there was plenty of data to lean on. Meticulous records of the death toll were being kept in most countries, especially the wealthy ones, and presented in stylish graphs on various sites: the Johns Hopkins University website, Worldometer, Our World in Data.
It was a lot harder to measure the consequences of the lockdowns. They appeared here and there as scattered anecdotes and figures. Perhaps the most striking data point came from the US: by the end of the academic year, a total of 55.1 million students had been affected by school closures.
But still, the death toll was more interesting. In early summer, The New York Times had published a front page completely devoid of pictures. Instead, it contained a long list of people who had died: a thousand names, followed by their age, location, and a very brief description. “Alan Lund, 81, Washington, conductor with ‘the most amazing ear'”; “Harvey Bayard, 88, New York, grew up directly across the street from the old Yankee Stadium”. And so on.
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Apr 16, 2022·edited Apr 16, 2022Liked by NE - nakedemperor.substack.com
Even more inconvenient, the local municipality (or shire, council, town, however you call a smaller local administrative unit - we call them communes, no joke) of Sölvesborg had the best results in Sweden. Why? Because the woman in charge there simply asked her relevant chiefs of departments (kindergartens, schools, nursing homes and such): "What do you need from me to keep people from getting sick or dying?" And then she delivered what the medical and other professionals needed. Simple as. Zero political strategy involved, unless actually doing a good job is a political strategy - a rather novel one...
Problem is, Sölvesborg is in the main run by the Sweden Democrats. If you take Trump Derangement Syndrome by way of NYT and MSNBC and crank it to 11, that's how the swedish media - state or otherwise - has treated that party for 20 years.
80%+ of Covid deaths, confirmed post mortem that the virus and infection was present upon death, was among 70+ with one or more comorbidity, and the rest among younger people with comorbidities. A disporportionately large number of negroes got very sick, prompting a brief local debate about why, but the lid was firmly jammed back on when it became clear that the dastardly duo of genetics and ignorance was to blame, rather than swedish state health care.
Oh dear, Covid has been like a neverending pain-train to the PC police over here, since reality refused to play ball according to script :)
I guess I would say the death stats are interesting because so many were mislabeled as cv but primary causes may have been or were other co-morbidities, or they weren't even sick at all but got labeled that because of a false positive or asymptomatic cv .
Even more inconvenient, the local municipality (or shire, council, town, however you call a smaller local administrative unit - we call them communes, no joke) of Sölvesborg had the best results in Sweden. Why? Because the woman in charge there simply asked her relevant chiefs of departments (kindergartens, schools, nursing homes and such): "What do you need from me to keep people from getting sick or dying?" And then she delivered what the medical and other professionals needed. Simple as. Zero political strategy involved, unless actually doing a good job is a political strategy - a rather novel one...
Problem is, Sölvesborg is in the main run by the Sweden Democrats. If you take Trump Derangement Syndrome by way of NYT and MSNBC and crank it to 11, that's how the swedish media - state or otherwise - has treated that party for 20 years.
80%+ of Covid deaths, confirmed post mortem that the virus and infection was present upon death, was among 70+ with one or more comorbidity, and the rest among younger people with comorbidities. A disporportionately large number of negroes got very sick, prompting a brief local debate about why, but the lid was firmly jammed back on when it became clear that the dastardly duo of genetics and ignorance was to blame, rather than swedish state health care.
Oh dear, Covid has been like a neverending pain-train to the PC police over here, since reality refused to play ball according to script :)
Millions of people were denied freedom and now are going to suffer because of it.
I guess I would say the death stats are interesting because so many were mislabeled as cv but primary causes may have been or were other co-morbidities, or they weren't even sick at all but got labeled that because of a false positive or asymptomatic cv .