With yesterday’s detail CPI analysis, I am transferring the news/music blog post that normally appears on a Wednesday to today. This morning, I read the newly published report from the UK-based – Institute for Public Policy Research – Health and prosperity: Introducing the Commission on Health and Prosperity (released April 27, 2022) – which provides a sobering (to say the least) evidence base for how the pandemic has impacted on Britain’s health system and labour market. As more evidence comes out from the experience of the last 2.4 years, I wonder when those who demanded nations learn to live with the virus – by basically denying its existence – will reflect on the folly of their laissez-faire positions....Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The Covid trade-off between health and the economy did not exist
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
10 comments:
Bill is delusional. The average age of a Covid death is equal to life expectancy. The overwhelming majority who died had serious health issues. There would have been little economic disruption had working age people been allowed to go on with their lives.
Hindsight is 20/20. Lockdowns, masking and hastily fabricated vaccines don't work. We are lucky that Covid was age stratified, unlike the Spanish flu. Only a fraction of the population was vulnerable to it.
The lesson that should have been learned, is that there are natural phenomena that are beyond our ability to control. As much as we want to believe we are above nature, this is a reminder that we aren't. Time to abandon this technocratic authoritarian worldview.
Covid can certainly be controlled, and why we have been saving the lives so many of our high risk and older people.
Average life expectancy and expected life at some old age are very different concepts. The average oldster potentially dying from Covid has about 10 years of life left.
All cause mortality is unchanged. Where are the saved lives?
There have been significant US excess deaths since March of 2020. Mostly due to Covid and some due to Pandemic protocols presenting as HC access barriers.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
But with treatments and vaccines a great many older and high risks lives have been saved.
https://www.vox.com/22894978/covid-19-vaccine-lives-saved-deaths-avoided-omicron-chart
https://www.maximumprogress.org/blog/how-many-people-are-in-the-invisible-graveyard
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rise-in-non-covid-19-deaths-hits-life-insurers-11645576252
Peter Pan,
All cause mortality is unchanged. Where are the saved lives?
An example of a saved life is the person in a car accident who would have otherwise died were it not for the fact that we locked down to keep hospital resources available.
Reclassifying the deaths of unhealthy people as 'due to Covid' is disingenuous. No one can discount the presence of co-morbidities in 95% of hospitalizations, or the average age of the deceased. Shall we claim that children's lives were saved because Covid spared them?
Excess deaths get adjusted once next years data are in. When there are more people claimed, there is a mortality displacement in the subsequent months or years. Excess/surplus deaths are followed by a deficit.
Looking at all cause mortality reveals that the pandemic was not as severe as initially feared. It's just another step down from the ridiculous death estimates put out in 2020.
Saving people's lives with treatments or vaccines is not the issue. Pandemic policies are being criticized for the lives (or life-years) that were lost. We didn't need to disrupt the economy, or vaccinate everyone. Everything that was done subsequent to "flattening the curve" was an abuse of the public trust.
An example of a saved life is the person in a car accident who would have otherwise died were it not for the fact that we locked down to keep hospital resources available.
Mission accomplished by May 2020.
Mission accomplished by May 2020.
The time stamp on this article is Sep 2021.
Alberta is running out of ICU space. Here’s what the nightmare scenario would look like
Anticipating brutal decisions
If, say, a 38-year-old COVID-19 patient and a 50-something motorcycle crash victim came into emergency room at the same time, doctors would consult with critical-care teams to decide who was mostly like to survive in a critical-care bed, explains Dr. Paul Parks, president of the Alberta Medical Association’s emergency medicine section and an ER doctor in Medicine Hat, Alta.
If there were limited resources, that more-likely-to-survive person would get the heightened care.
If doctors can’t decide which of two patients was more likely to survive, each sick person should get equal chance of treatment. That means intensive care beds would be given on a first-come, first-served basis, determined by the first time stamp on their paperwork. If two patients with equal likelihood of surviving arrive at the same time, random selection will be used to decide who gets admitted.
A month later, in October 2021, military nurses arrived in Alberta. In January 2022, we were opening up field hospitals.
That's only a few months ago. Maybe it's different where you are.
Is it different in Nova Scotia?
After the lockdown in the spring of 2020, there were no more lockdowns until April 2021, which was a joke due to the number of loopholes. Lockdown policy played no role after May 2020. No mention was made of having to flatten the curve.
It was already too late by March of 2020. China's quarantine in January of that year was the only lockdown that helped slow the spread of Covid - within China. And Chinese officials were guilty of dragging their feet from November 2019 until January.
Now that the virus is endemic, and the population highly vaccinated, more people have died from 'Omicron' in 2022 in Nova Scotia, than in the last two years. This is what is touted as a success. I would rather they stop politicizing what is an unavoidable outcome. It's not like these people are being held accountable for their incoherent policies, their lies, and their negligence in 2020.
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