I wonder how they account for cultural differences, since it doesn’t come up in the abstract. But there I go, thinking critically again!
Good article. It suggests that the death was not purely coincidental but was a direct result of the vaccine. Well worth reading because it correctly spells out the tradeoffs in treating very old patients with anything.
…for those with the most severe frailty, even relatively mild vaccine side effects can have serious consequences. For those who have a very short remaining life, the benefit of the vaccine may be marginal or irrelevant.
I like this bit:
The large clinical studies have shown that most people who receive mRNA vaccines experience discomfort a few days after vaccination; such as stab wound pain, lethargy, headache, muscle and joint pain, nausea and fever.
For most people, the ailments are just unpleasant and go away in a couple of days. However, we cannot rule out that such relatively mild side effects as lethargy, fever and nausea may lead to a more serious course in severely debilitated patients.
LOL. In other words, the typical experience is hard to distinguish from infection with COVID-19.
Google translate does an excellent job on Norwegian these days, btw.
Ah, a bit more than road accident deaths, then (1.35m in 2019). Which of course happen every year, not just in special years. And car accidents claim much younger lives (on average) than COVID-19.
I reckon it’s high time to ban cars. Or develop a vaccine against them.
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Yep. I was just pointing out a milestone.
I know. I was just being snarky again 
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In France, e.g., the effect of [more restrictive NPIs] was +7% (95CI ‐5%‐19%) when compared with Sweden, and +13% (‐12%‐38%) when compared with South Korea (positive means pro‐contagion).
So, lockdowns enhance the spread of the virus (by a small and rather indeterminate amount). I suggested this months ago. It’s pretty obvious that if you confine people to small social circles where they’re doing little else except breathing on each other, then you’re going to create a big problem.
Eh?
Your views are way out there to put it politely. What about 70s, 90s, 60s…Do they get a pass?
Pot kettle black if we take your ICU bed estimates into account.
I re-did the calculation on the basis of actual experience, and assuming that lockdowns actually work (which doesn’t accord with the experience of non-lockdown countries or with published research, but I’ll play by your rules).
What do you think those ICU numbers should look like if we “didn’t have lockdowns”?
Do you dispute my assessment of the UK’s fiscal predicament? Gain clearly thinks it’s no big deal, but offers no support for his position.
It’s easy to fling sunglasses around. Let’s see some actual analysis and some numbers.
I think the same thing about your views, but it’s possible that, like Gain, you genuinely don’t understand what your views imply (ie., that we must sacrifice a young life for every old life saved). Possibly you also see the world only in terms of COVID-19 - as indeed most politicians do - and you are completely ignoring every other problem we face. In other words, you’re ignoring the opportunity cost of the good that might be done with a 400 billion pound investment.
As I said: wanna give grandpa another two years? You foot the bill. That’ll be somewhere between half a million and 1.3 million, please. Easy credit terms available. Or perhaps you don’t really care that much about grandpa if you can’t forcibly seize other people’s life-years to realize your goals?
Have you asked grandpa what he thinks about all this? It’s possible his opinion is a bit more nuanced than yours.
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I care about my parents though. Vaccine on the way.
I just calmly ignore your extreme views on who gets to live and die.
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I did a casual five minute check on Google and realized your numbers were at least a factor of 10x off. The average hospital has 15 to 30 ICU beds not 200 ICU beds. It’s very easy to overwhelm their capacity to handle critically ill patients. What usually happens in that case is they funnel disaster victims to other hospitals. But in a pandemic you may quickly run out of that option.
Not to mention that several countries have actually built special hospital or facilities for COVID patients because they were out of room at the proper standing hospitals.
Those new places do have hundreds of beds. They filled up, then they emptied, and now they are full again.
Like I said, I redid the calculation. My initial estimate (as you correctly said) was too simplistic.
I know that. At the moment 10% of them are occupied by COVID-19 patients, on average.
My second calculation produced completely manageable numbers. And again, “ICU beds” are not precisely what’s required.
In any case, your entire argument is based on the assumption that stay-at-home orders and shutdowns of businesses and schools reduce the caseload. Since there is mounting evidence that they don’t (and may indeed make things worse) your argument is meaningless. Would you like to do another rant on the theme of “Of course they work, if they don’t work then my whole belief system falls apart, therefore they work”?
Ignoring reality works, in a narrow sense. But it’ll mess with your head when your conscience catches up with the enormity of the evil you have endorsed. You’ll have to deny it for the rest of your life, like those Chinese people who have to pretend that Mao was a saint in order to keep their sanity.
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Reality of what ? Reality is the world broadly follows my views where we cherish our senior citizens and parents and grandparents 
What do I deny exactly I don’t even know what you are talking about ?
Reality that people said vaccines won’t work and they do ? And that there are going to be many available And they won’t kill you wholesale ? With awesome new mRNA tech being introduced which can be used to combat many diseases .
Reality is my parents didn’t get it ,I’m happy , I hope it stays that way and they get the vaccine soon, few months tops I’m looking forward to taking it as well as getting covid in middle age can also be pretty risky (ten times higher risk than the worst flu and also one WILL get it eventually ) . Western world wasn’t prepared, now it’s much better prepared for the next one. This will mostly be done by the Summer in many countries.
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I and others have presented reams of numbers, calculations, and research, showing not only that the cost of “intervention” has been too high a price to pay, but also that we got nothing back for what we paid.
You have produced no rational argument to counter this. You’ve offered no good reason why the young should sacrifice themselves on the altar of COVID-19. Your only response to the facts has been “hahahaha” or “I have no idea what you’re talking about” or “but I love my grandparents, so everyone else can go fuck themselves”.
Reality is that you’ve been taken for a great and glorious ride, and I think you know it. Reality is that TPTB will keep milking this for all it’s worth. Reality is that there are more things - and people - in the world than Brian’s grandparents. And they all matter. Many of them matter more than your grandparents. I realise that this is my view, not yours, and that perhaps only 50% of the global population has managed to keep some tenuous grasp on the reality than was 2019. I’m just praying that these magical vaccines will stop this madness, but since politicians rarely let go of that bottle of 80%-proof power when they have it, I’m not very hopeful.
LOL. If an actual, genuine pandemic hit right now, we’d be dead in the water. We have learned nothing, changed nothing, and we’re prepared for nothing. If anything, there’s even more back-slapping hubris going on than there ever was.
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Simply not true . masks, PPE, vaccines , social distancing. Diagnostics, new drugs . Importance of public health management .
Like I said, we’ve learned nothing. We’re just rattling our magic charms at Nature and bragging about how great we are.
Well you aren’t making any sense right now. The org I work for is involved in multiple new approaches to vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. It’s actually a revolutionary time. Not all businesses and organisations are doing badly, plenty of doing better than ever. We haven’t laid off anybody nor have any almost any of our partners. We had furloughs but that’s it. So when people go on about young people don’t have options blah blah… here’s a hint…Study tech. Medicine, pharma , public health. Engineering, biotech , law, regulatory affairs . You won’t have a problem !
I wish I lived in your particular Matrix, Brian. It sounds like a lovely place.