A brief reminder that all-cause excess mortality data from EuroMoMo continues to show that Sweden does *not* have very much excess mortality yet, and that the Netherlands has about the same spike as Belgium.

Unfortunately I dunno how to get raw data out of EuroMoMo, and even this chart required a Kind Soul whose twitter handle I now cannot find buried somewhere in my mentions to strip the data with some kind of dark witchcraft code magic.

But here's the site it's from: https://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/zscore_country_total.html

If you think EuroMoMo's delay-adjustments are reliable (meh; they're better than nothing but definitely tricky in times like this), then Spain probably had it worse than Italy, but is coming down faster too.

But England is gonna have it even worse than either probably. Switzerland also still definitely is on the upswing. The Netherlands was bad but, again, pretty comparable to Belgium, which did lock down?

The latest weeks of data definitely could be wrong. Lots uncertain. But so far there is no evidence that all-caus eexcess mortality in Sweden is any higher than in Denmark, and it's just a hair above Estonia and Norway. Finland of course has anomalously LOW deaths.

So maybe imposing a lockdown would have led to Sweden being like Finland and having below-normal deaths??? Maybe? Or maybe they'd be like Norway and Denmark and be.... exactly where they are now?

Oh sorry I found it, source is @browserdotsys

Now look I'd much prefer having raw death data here than EuroMoMo's Z-scores. It's a wonky metric and I don't like it.

But I really don't think the data we have supports the idea that Sweden is paying some huge mortality cost for not locking down.

However, I'm not sure that Sweden will avoid bad economic outcomes either. We'll see, but the idea that Sweden is gonna sail through this economically seems PRETTY WEAK to me.

My suspicion is actually 1) lockdowns don't reduce deaths a lot and also 2) lockdowns don't hurt the economy that much.

By the way, here's the data back to 2015.

I want to be clear, I am NOOOOT arguing that it's just a flu, and I am NOOOOOT arguing for business as usual. COVID is very bad and we should take drastic measures to beat it. It's a lot worse than even a bad flu season.

My argument is, very very simply, that even if you believe, as I do, that COVID is a massive pandemic mortality risk, that strict lockdowns are not especially effective tools for beating the disease.

REALLY wish euromomo would post raw data.

Also FYI on the economic front, here's unemployment rates in Nordic/Baltic countries.

Sweden was already seeing worsening economic conditions.

Even in countries without lockdowns and soft rules still have massively negative impacts on businesses. Nobody banned flying on airplanes, and yet air traffic is down 90+% even domestically. https://twitter.com/donciccio807/status/1250742702016278534

Moreover, even if you have no lockdowns, if all your trade partners are locked down, your business will come to a standstill.

The whole fetish over lockdowns, one side being like "ANYTHING SHORT OF LOCKDOWN IS MURDER" and the other side being like "LOCKDOWNS ARE PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR A SECOND GREAT DEPRESSION" is unseemly and ignorant.

It turns out epidemics are scary and people tend to stay home during them. If you add on modest assembly restrictions, travel discouragements, and school cancellations, you're gonna get a huge decline in economic activity.

It's a pleasant and therapeutic fantasy to tell ourselves that we can push and pull on some easily conceptualizable-levers to achieve clearly-defined social outcomes.

But it turns out that's just not true.

Especially for a problem like epidemic disease, you can't just turn an off switch. Your only solution is population-level resistance, which means you have to find ways to induce widespread social cooperation for a very long period of time.

The entire focus of policy should be on finding ways to create social mobilization and cooperative activity to prevent epidemic spread. This doesn't just mean lockdowns! It means education, awareness, communication, etc.

When the first 72-hour lockdowns were conducted in west Africa during Ebola, the government knocked on ***70%*** of all doors in impacted areas and delivered care packages of soap, information pamphlets, etc. Ebola was beaten WAY faster than models projected.

Information saves lives.

Which is to say... China's weeks-long coverup is to blame for this whole thing. Their coverup followed by ham-fisted lockdown CREATED a global pandemic.

More evidence that economic effects are, to a considerable extent, independent of lockdowns: https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1250471852633448448

INFORMATION

SAVES

LIVES

Stop giving credit to HEROIC POLICYMAKERS.

YOU are beating COVID. By wearing a mask. By taking it seriously. By reducing activities. By loving your neighbor and laying down your (social) life for them. Population-level resistance and social mobilization out of mutual love.

All made possible by the almighty virtues of FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION brought to courtesy of DEMOCRACY and a FREE PRESS and FUNCTIONAL MARKET-BASED SIGNALS.

WAVE YOUR DEMOCRACY FLAGS PROUDLY OH MY PEOPLE

Your love of neighbor and your system's commitment to giving you good-faith information from a gajillion different disagreeing sources and publicizing a vigorous debate has lead to an UNPRECEDENTED pace of social learning.

And look, yes, I already had a strong prior that open democracy, open markets, and high levels of social trust were already basically Good Things that solve most of society's problems so this is one of those "when you've got a hammer" moments but folks I'M ACTUALLY CORRECT HERE.

My favorite thing about Lockdownistas is they simultaneously are like, "It's too early to say that lockdowns have failed in Italy!" AND "The flattening curve in X lockdown country is proof that lockdowns work" or "The bad experience of Netherlands/Sweden prooves lockdowns work."

You cannot have both!

Either it's been long enough for us to call balls and strikes, or it hasn't and we remain at the "we have literally no evidence of if lockdowns work at all" stage.

There is simply no reason to presume lockdowns are especially effcetive just because China is like "hurr duh hurr du Wuhan du hurr"

Also I should note that a narrative where "we beat COVID through contentious lockdowns" is probably damaging to society in the long run while a narrative of "we beat COVID through a shared commitment of mutual care and regard" is annealing and empowering (cc @Noahpinion ).