Sweden avoiding lockdown

In terms of the overall area under the curve, Ireland is fairly high in the EU table. While we were the very highest for a only short period of time, we tended to stay fairly consistently near the top throughout the pandemic.

We're now paying for it, sadly, in terms of high excess deaths.

My comment was in response to your post about ..

"...postponed or cancelled health screenings & elective procedures, are very likely to be leading causes of our unusually high excess death rates..."

Traditionally done by the health service. Though can be out sourced.

Lockdown measures were constantly being changed. Introduced and withdrawn. Trying to rewrite a narrative of being locked down in your house unable to exercise for 2+ years or to this day doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

"...Prof Smyth recalled the early stages of the pandemic...." Clearly alludes that it was in stages, as in not constant.

Funny how the guys who were falling over themselves to argue excess deaths are now doing the same trying to argue there wasn't any. 😁

So the facts have moved from 'clearly the strictest lockdown in Europe' to 'fairly high' and 'near the top'.

So just to be clear, your reply when presented with statistics given by Oxford University and the Financial Times is "no, they're wrong, I know better"?

Right...

The chart, and statistics run from January 1st 2020 to the present day.

The excess deaths are against expected average for that stated country. Its not possible to have fewer excess deaths every year for decades, you're not understanding the concept.

Your selective graphing has been queried on the thread by other posters.

Several posters have queried how the 'strictness' was established, as it does not reflect the reality of the lockdowns in 2020 across Europe. That is not a 'statistic', that is an assumption made by the authors which feeds into the statistics and reflects how granular a view of the data they took to build their statistics. Entirely valid points have been raised by multiple posters on how strict in reality Ireland's lockdown was versus France and Belgium.

What is the 'expected average' of excess deaths? It is just based on a previous baseline e.g. 2015-2019, or was the 'expected average' adjusted to take into account demographic changes since the baseline?

So it is possible to have fewer excess deaths every year using non age adjusted figures, it may simply reflect a shrinking population. It is possible to have higher excess deaths every year, it may simply reflect a growing and or aging population.

Age adjusting is an important step for valid comparisons especially the more years that have elapsed since the baseline. Because otherwise, there may be no real increase in excess deaths, or such demographic changes may be a significant factor in more people dying. It may just reflect an increase in the size of the population of highest mortality risk in the country - compared with the previous baseline for that country. The graph you have cited does not appear to be age adjusted - it just reflects a previous years baseline.

This has been pointed out to you multiple times on the thread already. This age adjusting is a basic concept in actuarial analysis of excess deaths.

Eh no, you said Ireland clearly had the strictest lockdown in Europe, even looking at your skewed view of Europe (no Greece, no Italy, no Spain, no UK, etc. all countries that stricter lockdowns than us at times) in that diagram it is a real struggle to say Ireland was anywhere near the strictest. Try creating the graph with Ireland, Greece, France, Belgium, UK, Italy, Austria and your numbers fall apart.

Or better yet, look at the global tool on that site with the time slider, it shoes that the first week or two in January 2021, is the only time in the three year period when Ireland had a stricter lockdown than the rest of Europe. So I suppose you can say Ireland clearly had the strictest lockdown in Europe*.

*for about two weeks in Jan 2021

I think we need to be careful when we say this or that country had a stricter lockdown than Ireland. Are we looking at peak periods or are we averaging over the entire Covid period. When we do this average, we see that Ireland comes fairly high in the rankings.

I was pointing out the nonsense statement of another poster who said 'Ireland clearly had the strictest lockdown'. That is not the case, we neither had the 'highest strictness' nor the' longest strictness'.

When people make absolute statements like that, to backup some other point they are making, it undermines their whole argument.

Maybe, but did we have one of the highest levels of lockdown on aggregate?

(Very simple :Just measure & combine both factors (strictness & duration) for each month of covid & then average them for the whole period)

That's where afaik Ireland consistently comes out near the very top of measures. I.e. we had one of the longest & strictest lockdown regimes in aggregate.

And it's this measure & the net excess deaths (as a proxy for all the direct negative health effects of the disease) since covid & to this very day that really matter imho. (I.e. that gives a great indication of your bang for buck on lockdown measures or otherwise for preventing avoidable deaths & unnecessary adverse health effects )

Sweden seems to indicate that most authorities & governments got this balance vway wrong I.e. the cure was worse than the disease.

That is indeed true, but you have to go with whatever data and measures are available. By the metric under discussion, Ireland is was one of the more stringent countries in the EU when the area under the curve is measured.

In addition, I think the practice is that if a measure was introduced in one region, it was counted as affecting the whole country for the purposes of the index.

While this intruduces inaccuracies, these inaccuracies will tend to push up the score for countries with regional polices such as the example you gave, Germany.

Ireland did not have much in the way of regional policies (there were some) so should be lower in the ranking for that reason but we are not. This furthers the case that Ireland had strict policies by EU standards.

It's simply the area under the curve, just taking out vaccinations as they are another item entirely imho.

Lockdown measures and vaccination programmes are interdependent but are ultimately separate things. This is obvious surely!?

Yeah you still don't understand so I will spell it out as best I can and link you to the source.....at some points in time over the last three years, lockdown measures varied depending on if you were vaccinated or not. The red line in the chart I shared measures the weighted average of 'strictness' for both vaccinated and non vaccinated people in each country. The same chart has a total of three plots for each country: strictness for non-vaccinated, strictness for vaccinated and a weighted average of the two. I have no clue why you are talking about removing vaccination programmes?

Since government policies may differ by vaccination status, a stringency index is calculated for three categories: those who are vaccinated; those who are non-vaccinated; and a national average which is weighted based on the share of people that are vaccinated.

a bit like this study

That's not a study, it's an opinion piece by an economics journalist.

There was a convergence however I think it's probably more true to say that as time went on and restrictions were gradually relaxed other countries changed and became more like Sweden rather than Sweden changing to be more like other countries. Sweden, after all, never had much in the way of restrictions.