You're made for each other. Excess deaths capture the deaths from lockdown related causes too, like my grandmother, who died when her social life was indefinitely stopped, and teenagers that committed suicide due to lockdowns
Excess deaths don't tell us how deadly COVID really was, they tell us how deadly COVID plus the COVID response really were.
Someday historians will argue: which was worse? The disease or the treatment? I don't think it's as clear cut in reality as you or your "friend" that you're mocking think.
Maybe both of you should try listening to the people you disagree with
The problem with blaming the response, is that a strong response with very strict lockdowns is sometimes a result of a weak early response. That is, if you hesitate with doing lockdowns, you'll eventually be forced to do a much more severe and longer lasting lockdown anyway. A weak response will also overrun the hospitals, which makes it difficult for them to diagnose and treat other diseases.
Norway has had no significant excess mortality through the entire pandemic. In recent months it has been well below 0%. It has been consistently been better than Sweden, which has had less restrictions and a similar culture.
The restrictions in Norway has been less severe than many places with higher excess mortality. Why is that? My theory is that Norwegians have been very compliant with advice and restrictions set by the government, and the government has been pro-active with enacting restrictions. This has helped contain and suppress the spread of the virus to smaller geographical regions, so that other areas can avoid lockdowns. And it reduces the duration of outbreaks, meaning you can lift restrictions again more quickly.
So my theory is that fighting against restrictions is extremely counter-productive. It only serves to create a culture of ignoring government advice, and makes politicians hesitate to enact necessary restrictions early, with the end result being more restrictions in total, not less.
Sweden had an abnormally low death rate in 2019; Norway did not. Averaged over the past two years, Sweden's death rate in 2019 and 2020 is just 1.2% above 2018, as compared to Norway's 0.48% below 2018.
It's quite likely that many people who would have died in 2019 in a normal year died in 2020 instead.
Suicides were down in 2020 in the US. Australia had long and strict lockdowns, so has Vietnam. But they have negative excess deaths in 2020. There's no evidence whatsoever that lockdowns increased deaths, with the possible exception of an increase in fatal traffic accidents due to more speeding.
> Excess deaths capture the deaths from lockdown related causes too, like my grandmother, who died when her social life was indefinitely stopped, and teenagers that committed suicide due to lockdowns
If only we had an easy mathematical tool to calculate how many people in the excess mortality numbers didn't die of COVID. We could call it "subtraction".
But whether someone died of Covid or not is also another area of dispute. The "it's just a flu" crowd can cite dubious websites saying "Oh the government is fudging the stats, there were many deaths being recorded as Covid-deaths even if they're not (Stupid example: man flies off motorcycle into wall, dies. Autopsy shows he has the virus in his blood, the conspiracy theorists will say the Illuminati/Bill Gates/the government will record that as a death due to Covid).
Inversely, there's also reports of governments not testing people who died for the virus, to make their numbers look good so they don't end up in some "Do not travel" list, or because they don't want their population angry and removing them from power. Even India is still fudging its numbers lately.
At least it's hard to dispute the status of being dead, and "excess deaths" is a usable number.
It would be interesting if we could "reload from a save point" and try surviving the pandemic without lockdowns. IMO the number of COVID deaths would be higher. Of course some people think otherwise would hypothize the opposite.
I guess a glib response would be to say "Look at fucking India right now". And it's a bit binary to argue e.g. "Sweden didn't have a lockdown, look, it wasn't that badthere.". Uh, even without a lockdown, Swedes changed their behavior (a lot of work from home, cafes and restaurants became emptier), and if we reloaded from that save point and didn't impose lockdowns, the cautious people would still stay home. And I wonder how many of the "But muh freedom!" moaners would be name-calling responsible organizers who cancelled concerts and festivals as "fascist nazis", etc.
> teenagers that committed suicide due to lockdowns
This turned out to be false expectation. Turns out that while teenagers were unhappy and did not enjoyed the situation, they were able to adapt without destroying themselves.
Excess deaths don't tell us how deadly COVID really was, they tell us how deadly COVID plus the COVID response really were.
Someday historians will argue: which was worse? The disease or the treatment? I don't think it's as clear cut in reality as you or your "friend" that you're mocking think.
Maybe both of you should try listening to the people you disagree with