COVID-19 global death toll tops 5 million in under 2 years

Yeah, Norway has almost a tenth less deaths. A big difference. That's a failure in my book.

You're cherry picking. Sweden is very near to the UK (which had a strict lockdown) and had a lower death rate. Sweden falls very much in line with other European countries in terms of its death rates. By no means is it a statistical outlier. Sweden proves for a fact that the lockdowns did not make a difference. This is an inconvenient fact that cannot be simply waved away.

2020hindsights

Yes, timing was essential. Sweden did Sweat FA

Do you read at all, or just opine? Sweden did a lot of things. What it did not to go overboard with police state measures like some Australian states.

while Norway was locking down. Are they surprised

Western Sahara, Burundi, Laos, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Congo, Eritrea, South Sudan, Tanzania, Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leon, Ivory Coast and Mali did not lock down either, actually fundamentally they did "Sweat FA", and they have the lowest Covid numbers in the world. How does that fit int your narrative?

albaleo

Not so high, I think. The link below puts it at about seven times higher than Norway's and about three times higher than Denmark's. Yet about 70% of the UK's death rate.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/

Sweden's death rate is 8.92 x Norway's

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

It's difficult to understand these numbers.

It's not that difficult at all.

The article below concludes that "small differences in the timing and

Yes, timing was essential. Sweden did Sweat FA while Norway was locking down. Are they surprised

effectiveness of control strategies

Yes! Not locking down wasn't effective at all.

have dramatic effects on the resulting numbers of cases and deaths".

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9

Try doing some basic research before posting disinformation yourself (while falsely accusing others of doing so). 

Repeating right wing propaganda doesn’t make it true. The biggest vaccine denial is among the right wing idiots.

What I wrote in my post was correct. Black Americans are the most vax hesitant group, not just in total numbers but per capita.

It is not, wrong information is being spread deliberately or because people don’t know how to read data.

And yes, Black Lives Matter is very much anti-vax. You can easily google this to find mainstream articles reporting this.

You are confusing BLM with the klan!!!

Didn't actually explain why Sweden had almost ten times the death rate as Norway.

Not so high, I think. The link below puts it at about seven times higher than Norway's and about three times higher than Denmark's. Yet about 70% of the UK's death rate.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/

It's difficult to understand these numbers. The article below concludes that "small differences in the timing and effectiveness of control strategies have dramatic effects on the resulting numbers of cases and deaths". If so, it makes it difficult to compare alternative strategies.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9

Zaphod

Interview with a Swedish doctor here which puts the simplistic media narrative about Sweden in a different light:

A Swedish doctor defending Sweden. Well I guess that will be impartial. Didn't actually explain why Sweden had almost ten times the death rate as Norway. "Well Sweden normally do badly in pandemics, so it's because it's Sweden" Laughable. Meanwhile Norway next door locked down and had a much better outcome.

WilliB

Yes it can, as almost all the deaths were in nursing homes, and the difference in the systems has been been discussed. Do you read Swedish and Norwegian?

No they weren't. Many deaths were in nursing homes at the start of the pandemic because they failed to protect them and pursued a no lockdown strategy. But the vast majority of deaths in Sweden happened after November 2020, at which time they had improved the safety of nursing homes.

Interview with a Swedish doctor here which puts the simplistic media narrative about Sweden in a different light:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV1cVmA34tA

2020hindsights

No it can't

Yes it can, as almost all the deaths were in nursing homes, and the difference in the systems has been been discussed. Do you read Swedish and Norwegian?

For the younger population, the death rates are pretty much identical, aka around zero.

Zaphod

Wrong. Sweden did take precautions, following a traditional epidemic response model, but without radical lockdowns. And while the Swedish death rate is higher than in neighbouring Norway and Denmark,

Yeah, Norway has almost a tenth less deaths. A big difference. That's a failure in my book.

that has been plausibly been explained by the Swedish nursing home system (large centralized facilities instead of the small, distributed ones).

No it can't.

Peter 14

The US death toll remains the worlds highest because of its poor handling from the start.

Where do you get your data from?

The average US death toll of 2,297/mio is NOT the worlds highest, it is in the mid range.

And by US state, it varies widely, from 3,150/mio in New Jersey to 1,000/mio in Utah. Again, showing how misleading continent-wide figures are, not to mention world-wide.

Sweden has 10 million people and over 15k deaths while taking no precautions.

Wrong. Sweden did take precautions, following a traditional epidemic response model, but without radical lockdowns. And while the Swedish death rate is higher than in neighbouring Norway and Denmark, that has been plausibly been explained by the Swedish nursing home system (large centralized facilities instead of the small, distributed ones).

Australia has 25 million people, took precautions including lockdowns and has 1,448 deaths.

....while the borders are closed and people locked, sure. All you have done is postpone the epidemic and abuse the population.

Assume Australia followed Sweden's example and numbers, it would have had over 37k deaths if it was lucky. And many more victims with long term covid than they have right now.

Again, that is speculation on your part, based on a wrong premise. You try to compare a country that has dealt with the pandemic with one that has just pushed the cart down the road and violated human rights in the process.

Peter14

I am afraid the "world wide figures" are not on your side. Taking no action at all to curtail the spread of covid would have seen many more deaths from covid and other medical emergencies with hospitals overloaded and unable to treat everyone that needed it.

That is the famous "flatten the curve" argument. I (and I think all the critics) accepted that for 2 weeks. But after 2 years, it has lost its basis.

The number of dead could have been ten time worse with no action at all taken

That is simply speculation on your side, not an argument. By definition, you do NOT know what "would" have happened without the authoritarian measures in your country.

What you can do is look at the world-wide death rates and see that while they are all over the place, there is definitely NO correlation to radical lockdowns. To wit, the countries with the lowest figures include Western Sahara, Burundi, Laos, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Congo, Eritrea, South Sudan, Tanzania, Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leon, Ivory Coast and Mali.

Do you claim that that is because those places locked everyone down and forced mass vaccinations? Or is a young population with few problems like obesity and diabetes a better explanation?

And yes, you can "prevent" a virus infection in theory by forcing everyone to live like Bubble Boy, but is that sustainable and comes without other problems?

@ Peter14

It could have been and should have been much less. Certain nations took insufficient precautions and failed to keep their citizens safe.

And yet you give no examples. Presumably, because you have none to give. There are many counter examples that disprove your assertion. Sweden, for instance, did not do any lockdowns. Their citizens were basically free to live as normally the entire time (I believe they had a cap on large gatherings at 50 people, but otherwise no lockdowns at all). Sweden did NOT experience a death rate outside the norm. It was not a statistical outlier. In fact, it had a lower death rate than nearby UK, which had harsh lockdowns. Norway and Denmark had lower death rates (often touted in the media, as if somehow showed how much higher Sweden's death rate was), but the simple fact is that Sweden fell right in line with the norm. It was the control group population that didn't do a lockdown.

tl;dr The fact that Sweden exists and didn't lockdown or have a death rate outside the norm for the rest of the Western world proves your assertions that "lockdowns save lives" is false.

that the lockdowns did more harm than good, and the vaccines come with their own risk.

The lockdowns when done properly worked outstandingly to curtail the spread of covid and saved countless lives. The risk of taking any of the vaccines pales to insignificance compared to the risk of covid death or long term covid.

I imagine that the figures would not look significantly different from what we have, and the the world wide statistics are on my side.

I am afraid the "world wide figures" are not on your side. Taking no action at all to curtail the spread of covid would have seen many more deaths from covid and other medical emergencies with hospitals overloaded and unable to treat everyone that needed it. The number of dead could have been ten time worse with no action at all taken.

global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million

It could have been and should have been much less. Certain nations took insufficient precautions and failed to keep their citizens safe.

Los Angeles population = 3.9 million

San Francisco population = 875,000

Article is right about that actually.

LA proper is 3.9 million. Greater LA is 18.75 million: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles

we now know that the "ventilators" are almost a death sentence in themselves,

Really? Which respected scientist said this? I think you probably got duped into believing something not true by some idiot on the internet and didn't bother to do a scientific fact check of what you were told.

the lockdowns did more harm than good,

Eh? NZ and Australia had almost no deaths, and kept a strong economy. Their people were out watching concerts and going to bars.

Even countries like Canada, who did lesser lockdowns, had much fewer deaths, and kept their economies strong.

Unlike America, which, while keeping it's economy strong, has allowed hundreds of thousands to die.

I don't know what idiot you believed who said lockdowns didn't work, but they lied to you, and you didn't bother to fact-check it.

"Global death toll" is a completely meaningless category.

Yes, it is pretty meaningless. Reporting on 5 million deaths around the globe, as if there's any standardized criteria, is grossly misleading. In the US, for example, it is an established fact that many deaths attributed to Covid are people who had 2 or more terminal illnesses (often cancer and/or heart disease). This is contrary to how regular flu deaths are calculated (i.e. someone dying of cancer, who also had diabetes, who died while sick with the flu would not be counted as a "flu death"). Many people are dying with Covid, but not necessarily from it. Factor in reporting methodologies from around the world, especially third world countries, and its easy to see how unreliable this data is.

"Global death toll" is a completely meaningless category.

Only to the extremists. Not the scientists.

Do not spread disinformation, everything about that assertion I’d uninformed and wrong.

Blacks and minorities may form a lower proportion of the population but they are not lower in vaccines as a proportion.

Try doing some basic research before posting disinformation yourself (while falsely accusing others of doing so). What I wrote in my post was correct. Black Americans are the most vax hesitant group, not just in total numbers but per capita. And yes, Black Lives Matter is very much anti-vax. You can easily google this to find mainstream articles reporting this.

wow, Sydney is bigger than LA

Didn't know that

LA and SF population is way higher than 5 million.

Los Angeles population = 3.9 million

San Francisco population = 875,000

Article is right about that actually.

I honestly believe that these numbers are vastly inflated.

lostrune2

So thank goodness for first responders, the hospitals, the mass-produced ventilators, the masks, the lockdowns when necessary, and of course the vaccines that did not take too long to produce!

Well, we now know that the "ventilators" are almost a death sentence in themselves, that the lockdowns did more harm than good, and the vaccines come with their own risk. If you look at global figures, you find more correlation between general public health and population age thann with any of your "measures".

Those all did their roles to limit the casualties as best we can - imagine if we did nothing!

I imagine that the figures would not look significantly different from what we have, and the the world wide statistics are on my side. I am pretty sure you "imagine" something else.

According to a university math teacher, who has calculated and projected the further development, we have now managed to go about half of the pandemic path. In other words, expect another one and half a year to go with infection waves and rather many death tolls, before this pandemic is getting a bit more bearable and turning into only an endemic situation everywhere.

Lots of Covid death stats but not a lot of stats on:

Number of covid deaths, vaccinated vs unvaccinated by country and age-group

Number of covid deaths with and without co-mobitities

Number of vaccine deaths, by country and vaccine brand (Japan ministry of health has some frightening numbers here but the media never pick them up and the Media correctly assume that people don't go to the govt web page and look at the PDF files!)

Media never publish numbers without some bias or agenda. They want to create fear in direction A, or direction B but can't just lay out the facts so that people can decide for themselves, there's always a few pieces of the puzzle they conveniently don't share or cherry pick

What is the average monthly salary in Brazil?

What is average wage in Brazil? Average Wages in Brazil decreased to 2532 BRL / Month (487.155 USD / Month) in April 2021. The maximum rate of average wage for employees was 2589 BRL / Month and minimum was 2265 BRL / Month. Data published Monthly by Institute of Geography and Statistics.

@TrevorPeaceToday  08:58 pm JST

Brazil is NOT an upper-middle or high-income country, contrary to the article's second paragraph.

It is not even lower middle class.

Lots of things wrong in this article. It is Not JapanTruth.

LA and SF population is way higher than 5 million.

It could well be the Republican Trump administration was not more aggressive in fighting the war against Covid because it was poor folks, Black and Hispanics who were hardest hit by the pandemic. Historically the poor, Blacks and Hispanics have not supported the Republican Party. And in the 2016 election the majority of Blacks, Hispanics and the poor did NOT vote for Trump. Trump has long shown he is a petty vindictive, elitist who has limited if any regard for those outside his privileged class, for an example see Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest . Republicans have long resisted programs that help the poor, Blacks and Hispanics. And today the Republicans are trying to make it more difficult for those populations to vote

From what Ive heard more and more Hispanics are voting Republican.

I really fail to understand what the Democrats provide black and hispanic voters, but black voters in particular.

Someone care to enlighten me?

Record black employment versus record black homicide rates?

Yeah, I just dont get it

Japanese are dying in record numbers at home ,and not been counted, I know of 6 people died from Covid in my county

5 million that we could count so far - we won't know the real tally until all places are able to submit their counts whenever they're able to do it (obviously poorer countries can't get all their counts for a very long while - they don't have the instant capability)

5 million is still a lot of people in less than 2 years - that's more than the people who died in the decade of the Vietnam War and about the same number of Jews killed by the Nazis in 4 years of Holocaust! Some people here are heartless

And we only avoided more casualties because we actually did something about it. Imagine if we did nothing about it and just let nature run its course - it'd be even higher!

So thank goodness for first responders, the hospitals, the mass-produced ventilators, the masks, the lockdowns when necessary, and of course the vaccines that did not take too long to produce!

Those all did their roles to limit the casualties as best we can - imagine if we did nothing!

But 5 million is still a lot of people!

Lots of pictures and graphs for those of you who can’t be bothered to read or think.

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-by-race-ethnicity/

but they are not lower in vaccines as a proportion.

They actually are.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/nyregion/covid-vaccine-black-young-new-yorkers.html

Brazil is NOT an upper-middle or high-income country, contrary to the article's second paragraph.

So that's 5 million people who had the chance of a life on this planet snuffed out by: The C. C. P., from whom the silence of any apology or regret is deafening.

The world need to be compensated by China for unleashing this devastating virus on the whole world's population, and as they won't even acknowledge their responsibility in this regard, each and every person should take their own vengeance on the totalitarian dictator Xi Jinping by ruthlessly boycotting China and everything Chinese.

The cowardly Leader has not travelled outside China for over 2 years now, for one very obvious reason - he will hopefully be arrested by international lawyers and police who are waiting to charge him with genocide. This can't happen soon enough.

What on earth are you talking about? Black Americans are the most vax hesitant group in the country. Black Lives Matter is openly anti-vax and threatening demonstrations over vax mandates (look it up). This is during Biden's time in office.

Do not spread disinformation, everything about that assertion I’d uninformed and wrong.

Blacks and minorities may form a lower proportion of the population but they are not lower in vaccines as a proportion.

Republicans have long resisted programs that help the poor, Blacks and Hispanics

What on earth are you talking about? Black Americans are the most vax hesitant group in the country. Black Lives Matter is openly anti-vax and threatening demonstrations over vax mandates (look it up). This is during Biden's time in office.

Japan is even better off, Covid so far has killed 0.02% of the population here. At this rate, the country will be gone in ... only 5000 years!

...and of those, only 5% have been people under 60 years old.

Some pandemic.

In the U.S., for example, COVID-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic people, who are more likely than white people to live in poverty and have less access to health care

It could well be the Republican Trump administration was not more aggressive in fighting the war against Covid because it was poor folks, Black and Hispanics who were hardest hit by the pandemic. Historically the poor, Blacks and Hispanics have not supported the Republican Party. And in the 2016 election the majority of Blacks, Hispanics and the poor did NOT vote for Trump. Trump has long shown he is a petty vindictive, elitist who has limited if any regard for those outside his privileged class, for an example see Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest . Republicans have long resisted programs that help the poor, Blacks and Hispanics. And today the Republicans are trying to make it more difficult for those populations to vote.