COVID - How did we do? Not so good.

 

COVID - How did we do? Not so good.

There are many factors that might be considered when evaluating how we handled COVID including, but not limited to, mortality, loss of learning and economic disruption.

We have recently learned that the closing of in person schooling has had a horrible effect on children in the US with this effect worse for children with lower socioeconomic support.

We saw the devastating effects of "two weeks to stop the spread" that lasted months on small businesses and jobs.

With respect to mortality, I decided to look at performance of the US and the EU with respect to Sweden. Why Sweden? It is a developed country that minimized the disruption to business and education. Schools were open.  Masks weren't mandated. Businesses were not closed.

What we see is that as of January 21, 2022 the US was close but still had 18.1%  more deaths than Sweden which was close but slightly higher, 5.8%, than the EU.

What is interesting is to see how things have been since January 21, 2022.  If we look at the relative change in performance of the US and EU with respect to Sweden we see that during this period the US was 63.6% worse than Sweden and the EU was 33.5% worse. Note this is not an effect of the time after the date because we are looking at the change in cumulative deaths relative to Sweden.

My conclusion is that the US slightly under performed before January 21, 2022 and significantly underperformed after that period.

What is particularly sad and disappointing is that the Administrative state of the FDA and CDC, the main stream media and social media all worked together supported by Democrats that relished in the disruption to business, education and society, to prevent any discussion of an alternative approach that may have been much closer to Sweden's than the one followed by the US. Most obvious and significant was The Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020, a document now signed by almost 16,000 medical and public health scientists and 47,000 medical practitioners whose key point was: "As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection." See https://gbdeclaration.org.

This effort was opposed by the FDA and CDC and squashed by the main stream media, social media and Democrat leaders.