Alex Berenson argues in alexberenson.substack.com/p/one-covid-ch… that Sweden had the best Covid strategy

Let's point out numerous obvious flaws in his analysis, shall we?

1/n Firstly, Berenson chooses to ignore Asian countries. Why? Because geography is "the most important factor in how hard Covid hits a country"

In other words: "countries who did better than Sweden don't count, because, well, I sAy So"

Such well-reasoned logic. Much wow 🤣

2/n

I modeled excess deaths per capita by age group, for each US state, since the beginning of the pandemic.

I believe this is the first time an analysis of this type has been done BY AGE GROUP for each state. This removes the need to do "age-adjustment" to compare states.

1/n Methodology, data, and source code are available on GitHub: github.com/mbevand/excess…

The raw numerical output, with excess deaths per age group are in this CSV file: github.com/mbevand/excess…

Charts follow:

2/n

Mask usage correlates with lower deaths

Based on NYT's mask survey across United States counties, plot deaths/capita recorded during the survey & up to 30 days later, along with each county's mask wearing score

Result:
Linear regression (Y log-transformed) R²=0.144 in red: There are hundreds of factors affecting the dependent variable (deaths). Ignoring ALL of these factors, looking at mask usage only, and still finding R²=0.144 is pretty cool/unexpected

Confounders abound!: people who wear masks often are likely doing more social-distancing. Etc.

A little thread on the Great Disinformer @ianmSC

Why Real Science™ isn't done with MSPaint charts.

His charts seem to claim that nothing works. Locking down doesn't work, masking doesn't work, vaccination doesn't work, your printer doesn't wo—wait scratch that one

1/n One iota of critical thinking is all you need to expose numerous errors in his charts:

Error #1 — Case ascertainment rate bias:

A country may detect 1 in 2 cases, while another 1 in 4. We say the case ascertainment rate is respectively 50%, and 25%.

I compiled a list—as exhaustive as possible—of all peer-reviewed & published research articles that evaluate the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions, specifically lockdowns on COVID-19

➡️Papers finding NPIs effective outnumber, by 8 to 1, those finding the opposite Criteria for inclusion in the list:

1-Be a RESEARCH ARTICLE (data, methods, results). Commentaries, opinion pieces, etc, do not qualify

2-Be PEER-REVIEWED & PUBLISHED among the 26,000 titles in Scopus

3-Be EXPLICIT. No secondhand interpretation of the data

Heads of government who have died of COVID-19

Confirmed:
1. Prime Minister of Eswatini, Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini

Suspected:
2. President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza
3. President of Tanzania, John Magufuli
4. Prime Minister of Ivory Coast, Hamed Bakayoko 1. Prime Minister of Eswatini tested positive on 15 Nov 2020, was hospitalized 8 days later, and died on 13 Dec.

bnonews.com/index.php/2020…

10 years ago @apenwarr wrote "Why bitcoin will fail"

BItcoin is up 15,000x since then, so he published a blog update admitting it may take "more than 50 years" to fail

Me too I can predict anything will fail within X years, if X is large enough 😀
apenwarr.ca/log/20211117 More seriously, he makes really illogical poorly-explained arguments.

1. "Bitcoin doesn't work because of Scams"

There are tons of scams on this thing called "Internet." Does it mean Internet doesn't work?

I am excited to report a discovery:

I found a 521-km sightline from Pik Koroleva. This makes it the 2nd longest sightline on the planet:

Start point 41.080000,77.769167 (Pik Koroleva, elevation 5800 m)
Bearing 188.914568°
End point 36.449604,76.867903 (elevation 6416 m)

1/n This 521-km sightline was found using a custom multithreaded program that is currently crunching through 2.4 million viewpoints. It will complete the full analysis in about 90 days

Above rendering is from panorama generator udeuschle.de/panoramas/panq…

2/n

Let's pick apart this preprint and see if Peter's claim holds.

I spent less than 1 minute scanning it, and I'm pretty sure it is flawed, but I'm going to review it live on Twitter

https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/1438924954637148166

Peter highlights "For boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization risk"

CAE = cardiac adverse event

I updated my chart comparing the fatality of covid vs flu

(data & source code: github.com/mbevand/covid1…)

Notice the new curve "Brazeau" which is 1 of the most comprehensive & recent analysis suggesting covid is more fatal than the flu even at ages as young as 5 years old All the official sources behind this chart are referenced in the README file:
github.com/mbevand/covid1…

A good track record is everything. If you don't have a good one, you are a bad analyst.

With that in mind, let's examine some of @MLevitt_NP2013's analyses and predictions

1/n Michael claimed Italy would end at 17k-20k deaths (

https://twitter.com/MLevitt_NP2013/status/1243905625714831363

)

Observed: 94k & and counting

Wrong by 5-fold

2/n

Sweden mortality over the last 120 years.

This week's update from SCB takes Sweden to 𝟵𝟴,𝟬𝟴𝟭 deaths recorded in year 2020. The country's seeing the worst excess mortality since the 1918 pandemic flu.

1/n Source: scb.se/en/finding-sta…

Above link is found under "Preliminary statistics on deaths" at scb.se/en/finding-sta…

2/n

Sweden mortality from 1900 to 2020.

This week's data update from SCB puts Sweden past a sad milestone: year 2020 recorded both the most excess *deaths* as well as the highest excess *mortality* (population adjusted) since the 1918 flu pandemic.

Let this sink in.

1/n Source: scb.se/en/finding-sta…

This is the link found under "Preliminary statistics on deaths" at scb.se/en/finding-sta…

2/n

Latest official Swedish population stats: 𝟵𝟳,𝟭𝟲𝟰 preliminary deaths recorded in 2020

As per my analysis year 2020 has:
➡️highest excess mortality since 1931 (population-adjusted)
➡️most excess deaths since 1918 flu pandemic
➡️highest absolute mortality since 2013

#sweden Source: scb.se/en/finding-sta…

Which is the link found under "Preliminary statistics on deaths (published 2021-01-11)" at scb.se/en/finding-sta… .

Here's my weekly update from SCB on mortality in Sweden.

Year 2020 has:
(1) the highest excess mortality since 1937 (pop. adjusted)
(2) the most excess deaths since 1919 (not pop. adjusted)
(3) annulled 7 years of all-cause mortality decline (highest ACM since 2013)

1/n For their part, the Swedish government estimates 4859 as of 30 Nov:

https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1340335248295411714

2/n

The timing of when self-sustained transmission starts is crucial:

A and B are 2 identical countries implementing the same lockdown policy at the same time

If self-sustained transmission starts 𝟱 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿 in A, then A will have 𝘁𝘄𝗶𝗰𝗲 the number of deaths This is just math, based on various estimates that the epidemic doubling time of COVID was less than 5 days before lockdowns in spring 2020
academic.oup.com/jid/article/22…

A thread to refute the nonsense spewed by #covid deniers/minimizers... #1 "It's just the flu"

No, vast majority of studies disagree:

https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1311764842160644096

This chart shows Sweden's mortality rate & excess deaths since 1900

While COVID-19 *seems* to be a small bump in mortality, 2020 has the most excess deaths of any year since the 1918 influenza pandemic

These ~4700 excess deaths are supported by SCB:

https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1331682386875084802

1/n The line representing average expected mortality on the chart is a LOWESS regression

Normally demographers use more sophisticated statistical algorithm (eg. Farrington) to do so. LOWESS is kind of a sloppy technique, but it works well enough

2/n

Things that happened in Sweden in last 2 months:

• family isolation
• ban public events of more than 8
• cinemas/museums/gyms closed
• nightlife curbed (alcohol ban)
• Tegnell: yes to face masks
• nursing home visit ban
• + many restrictions

Sources: see links below

1/n Family isolation: household contacts of infected persons not allowed to go to work (since 01 Oct) folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-pr…

2/n

I dusted off my COVID-19 model (that predicted the Florida July wave) & applied it to Sweden

After today's data update from the Swedish Public Health Agency (FHM) I confidently forecast Sweden will surpass the peak of 100 COVID deaths/day they had in April

Hard to believe?

1/n Specifically: by 25 December we will see Sweden has recorded 100 deaths/day around 11 December

(due to reporting delays, it takes up to 2 weeks past a given date to have a complete count of deaths on this date:

https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1327478102188912640

)

2/n

Covid lockdowns appear to reduce suicide rates

Suicide rates decreased during the lockdown in Victoria, Australia (paradoxically despite self-reported levels of depression increasing??)

Suicides (and other deaths) have also decreased in Peru:

https://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1314844027846500354

Victoria chart is from @sometimes_data — thanks!

Who else has data for other countries?