A week ago I saw this graph. It shows the excess mortality per country. The gray zero line indicates the expected number of deaths. The red line indicates to what extent (approximately) an increase could be based on measurement errors or coincidences. Anything above the red line can be attributed to corona. There are currently no indications of other causes.
Yesterday I heard a professor (Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg) explain that the corona fear was deliberately sown by pharmaceutical companies. According to him, there is no need to be afraid of the virus. He is right. You shouldn't be afraid of death either, it's the only certainty in your life. I would even like to say: you just shouldn't be afraid at all! Never!
Being afraid is an evolutionary artefact from when we were surrounded by threats and could not yet think properly. Being afraid has a limited function in today's society. It's about taking the right measures. According to that professor, you shouldn't take any measures at all. Why are people always so straightforward?
Insisting that it is an ordinary flu wave is not possible, with this excess mortality. Insisting that a flu virus has been added, that is possible. That's bad too (the flu is not a sweetheart either) but let's deal with it that way, and not like a killer alien that comes to eat us all. Fear is a bad counselor, I agree with the German professot.
Lockdown: the best protection against corona?
In a lockdown we die less, but we don't really 'live' either. In the Netherlands it is not too bad, but here too the lockdown is sufficient to have a devastating effect on people and society.
So it is indeed a nasty virus: no immunity, no medicine, no vaccine and therefore nastier than a seasonal flu. At least I can't think of any other reason for all those death peaks in so many countries. (At the same time, you wonder why other countries get away with it. That is being investigated.) The symptoms also appeal to the imagination: suffocation is of course terrible.
The graphs show the mutual relationships between the countries. The exceedance has been magnified to make the differences clearly visible. The exceedance of the expected mortality is undeniable and at the same time manageable. Think of SARS and MERS with mortality rates in the tens of percents, even among younger age groups.
It cannot be read from these graphs, but it is not 10x as much mortality as normal, nor 2x as much. It's probably not even half as much. And nowhere near 10% or 20% mortality, as was feared in the beginning. At most, we have gotten a flu. Not good news, but also no reason to hang up society.
The measures must be proportionate. Those who shout 'we don't have to do anything' are just as wrong as those who demand a total lockdown. It's going to be a difficult time. Playing with death is something you have to be able to handle, but if we are not prepared to do that, death will play with us.
