We didn't lock down for the Hong Kong flu or similar pandemics, because the damage caused by a lockdown is immense. Health damage caused by delayed cancer screenings and organ transplants. Psychological damage caused by lockdown and unemployment. Unbelievable economic damage. How to respond to a pandemic is a trade-off.
People die in traffic accidents every day. Do we set a nation-wide speed limit of 5 MPH? No. Of course not. We accept that the benefit of travel are worth it, and we strive to make travel safer because every death is a tragedy. That's a balanced approach. For mild pandemics we should also seek such a balanced approach where we protect the old and the vulnerable and let everybody else live life as normal.
Hong Kong flu was significantly less deadly than Covid in United states, perhaps 3 to 10 times. NYC death rate is at least .2% which would translate to 600 000 death across the US, and that is a very rough estimate. Even more importantly without lockdowns you'd get even worse clusterhell in the hospitals, which would have to do triage between neverneding stream of Covid patients and "normal" patients, who need an urgent surgery, and that would lead to enormous death rate rise so your argument is backwards actually.
At least a million people died of the Hong Kong flu. Much more as a percentage of the world population. And Covid19 doesn't seem to take hold anywhere in the pacific rim, regardless of policy. Lockdown or not, masks or not, good or bad hospitals, it doesn't matter. None of the countries in the rim got hit hard. This tells us it's all about herd immunity, and about getting there with as few casualties as possible.
NYC locked down after peak infection; completely pointless. If you're going to lock down you have to do it way early, before the virus has spread everywhere. Sweden didn't lock down. Did we see uncontrolled spread there? Nope. The virus came and petered out after infecting a critical mass of people.
The NYC death rate would never hold over the entire US because a large part of it was the result of disastrous policy of sending covid patients to care homes, and an aggressive venting policy that killed many. Bear in mind that covid19 is a hotspot disease and some parts of the world are always going to get hit much worse than other parts of the world. Extrapolating from outlier hotspots is bad science.
I am not talking about whole world; I was talking in particular about US. It is still unclear about the final death tall of Covid, but it clearly is going to be close to a million, perhaps 2 or so. You operate with a very odd definition of Pacfifc Rim btw, USA, Canada, Mexico, Equador were all hit badly - all of them are countries of pacific rim.
Sweden is actually an excellent example of a bad policy. Economically doing as bad as their neighbors, and had enormous death toll compared to Norway, Germany, Iceland, Denmark and Finland, countries (esp. Norway) with similar culture and attitudes. Also we are in summer now, and the virus may well come back and hit Sweden with a lot bigger force, just because so much more of it there.
Not locking down during the Hong Kong flu was by the way a terrible decision. Had they introduced at least some measures, such masks and limited lockdowns the number of dead would have been much lower.
I by the way divided NY rate by 3, I counted as if all of NYC had acquired the disease. So no, .2% is reasonable expectaion, and .1% of total population of will clearly be reached within several months, it is already halfway there.
Sweden did a lot better in Q1. It was the only western European country with positive growth, and it vastly outperformed everybody else. I expect they'll also outperform the rest of Europe in subsequent quarters, but this will remain to be seen. The death toll in Sweden is completely in line with its neighbors. This is evident when you look at All Cause Mortality. Their definition of "with covid" deaths is far more generous than their neighbors, so comparing the numbers from worldometers is not apples-to-apples.
My analysis suggests Sweden is very close to herd immunity, and they won't have a second wave. The countries that haven't reached herd immunity yet can choose between locking down in perpetuity or dragging out the process for no gain. There is no vaccin and the virus can't be contained or exterminated. People in the west won't put up with a totalitarian China style lockdown.
The research on mask effectiveness is still very contradictory. The health organizations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland all claims masks don't work, as did the CDC and WHO. Research clearly indicates some viral load is blocked by masks, but there aren't any studies that connect mask use with actual infection rates. We don't even know to what degree asymptomatic infections are a thing. I suspect a large percentage of infections happen because symptomatic people refuse to stay home, and anecdotal evidence from superspreading events supports this.
Deaths in the US are trending down and will continue to trend down in 95% of counties. There will be hotspots here and there in places that didn't get hit in the last few months, but there won't be a second wave. You see deaths doubling from here, I think that's exceedingly unlikely.
I do not operate with "all cause mortality". I look at the excess death in April May, and in Sweden is so much higher it is not a serious conversation to even dispute that.
Epidemiologists look at annual deaths cumulative from the start of the flu season, exactly because we care about total mortality and not about noisy spikes in the data. And that picture looks completely different: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcTV1OmWsAE3kAs?format=jpg&name=...
Remember that 2018 and 2019 were unusually mild flu seasons, so many people had already outlived their actuarial life expectancy when covid hit.
I do not play in creative accounting. There is a visible by naked eye large bulge of excess death in April and May in Sweden, which exctly equal to number of counted covid deaths, and same for Norway - a much smaller bulge, exactly equal to number of death from Covid. What you are engaging in is exactly kind of accounting caused credit crunch in 2008.
Yours remind me of a comment from an (in)famous Brazilian political commenter that claimed that "more people die by choking" at the beginning of the pandemic.
Many people have made statements that didn't age well. Hopefully you haven't forgotten about the ludicrous statements made by prominent epidemiologists, virologists and organizations like the WHO. Meanwhile we could trust the news to produce panic porn 24/7. Mass graves in Central Park! Sweden is doing an experiment in Human Sacrifice! Hopefully when the pandemic dies down we'll reflect on how the media and the scientific community completely failed to inform the people.
People die in traffic accidents every day. Do we set a nation-wide speed limit of 5 MPH? No. Of course not. We accept that the benefit of travel are worth it, and we strive to make travel safer because every death is a tragedy. That's a balanced approach. For mild pandemics we should also seek such a balanced approach where we protect the old and the vulnerable and let everybody else live life as normal.