A careful look at the Swedish death statistics
There is here a long and very academic recent article on Covid deaths in Sweden, The author looks at all sorts of confounding factors before we can make a judgment about whether the Swedish death-rate is high by historical standards.
For me, the most interesting point to emerge was that the death rate in 2019 was unusually LOW, so you would expect some rebound from that on regression to the mean alone. He calls that the "Dry tinder effect". So we could expect the 2020 figures to be above average on that ground alone. And, sure enough, when you combine the 2019 and 2020 years you have two fairly average years. So the claim that Covid caused a high death rate in Sweden falls rather flat.
Let me quote his final conclusions:
My personal take on Covid 2020 in Sweden is as follows:
Yes, Covid 2020 was real (and continues to be real at least until spring 2021, as all seasonal viruses). The number of deaths 2020 was higher than it should have been, which ever way we define “Excess”. Not exceptionally higher, and far from all the disaster scenarios painted by media, politicians and failed scientists.
Was Covid 2020 our generation’s “Spanish Flu” ? No. Far from it, as can be seen in the graph showing 1918 above, and by comparing mortality rates, where non-age-adjusted mortality 2020 is on par with that of 2012, and age adjusted mortality 2020 on par with 2013.
Was the Swedish Government’s response adequate ? To a large extent yes. Until they panicked and lost their mind in November 2020, and introduced “The Swedish Enabling Act“, a form of legislation that is a disgrace to any nation pretending to be democratic.
Where “The Strategy” failed was in protecting the frail and elderly, particularly in the care homes. The strategy also failed in overall crisis & contingency planning & management, where various governments since the early 90:ies have radically reduced investments and capacity in health care, care of elderly as well as many other vital parts of the societal safety net. So, the frequently repeated “Isolate, or our hospitals will be overwhelmed!” mantra was primarily caused by several decades of catastrophic political decisions and priorities regarding medical care and other critical societal function investments and resources, as much as by the virus itself.
What the future brings will be seen by those who survive. Myself, I’m afraid that more doom & gloom will follow for a long time in the tracks of the “2020 Covid Experience”, even if we should manage to eliminate the virus, e.g. by vaccine, during 2021. The psychological effect on populations having spent a year or more in Lockdown, thus missing most of what makes life and living worthwhile, will be interesting to observe, as will be whether social interaction patterns and behaviors eventually return to normal, or whether our future social interactions will be so deeply ingrained by Anno Covidis that we will, similar to Pavlov’s dogs, continue regarding fellow human beings as potentially deadly virus vectors.
Similarly, as this recent article (Swedish) shows – 90000 (!) medical treatments cancelled during 2020 – we will also have to expect further “Excess Deaths” down the road, where these deaths are only indirectly caused by Covid.
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Real Threats to Democracy Still Come From the Left
It is a well-rehearsed fantasy that Trump supporters threaten democracy. It is an observable fact that the left does
If self-congratulatory pats on the back could cause skin damage, Trump haters would have leprosy. Having been on a witch hunt to burn him at the impeachment stake since he took office, they believe they are vindicated forevermore.
But apart from their brutal mistreatment of President Donald Trump from the beginning through their coordinated and malicious hoaxes that incidentally rejected lawful election results (in 2016), and apart from the question of whether they have some legitimate complaints against him, this is still not mainly about him. In a few days, he’ll be gone. This is about whether America will descend into tyranny.
Just as the left exploited COVID-19 to damage the economy and President Trump’s political fortunes (as the Democratic New York governor’s and Chicago mayor’s recent call to reopen their economies demonstrate), and just as it milked the virus to exercise unprecedented control over Americans, it is now exploiting the Capitol riot to shame conservatives into succumbing to its efforts to further consolidate its power and erode our liberties.
I would love nothing more than to turn down the volume, take a breather from politics and pretend that partisan strife can be overcome by virtue-signaling platitudes, but that would be a delusional, selfish cop-out. Unless we no longer believe in American exceptionalism, the principles of limited government and the blessings of liberty, we are honor bound to continue the fight.
Whatever caused the breach of the Capitol, whatever percentage of the malefactors were Trump supporters and no matter how much their complaints coincide with those of the 74 million Trump supporters, their misdeeds do not taint the entire lot of us or what we stand for. They do not render moot our concerns over election integrity.
The overwhelming majority of Trump supporters oppose and condemn violent riots, including the riot at the Capitol, and they strongly sounded the alarm about them during the left’s march of mayhem and anarchy throughout America’s cities last summer. For the most part, Democrats who are now decrying riots remained silent. Many of those who voted for Trump’s impeachment have literally called for political violence.
Additionally, millions still believe (and observed) that there were massive election irregularities and that COVID was cynically used to relax voting procedures, which led to most of this insanity in the first place. All these efforts to demonize Trump and intimidate his supporters will not make them believe otherwise, and it will not calm the turbulent waters of political unrest in the country.
Did you read the articles of impeachment? You might find Trump’s speech to his supporters objectionable, but to say that he willfully encouraged violence, when his actual language called for peace, and to use that as a specification for impeachment is chilling, especially when we have evidence that the riots were planned far in advance of his speech (per CNN, no less).
Just as troubling, did you see how this Democratic-controlled Congress, with the help of 10 Republicans, snuck in the “fact” that Trump “reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it be a landslide’”?
You may think Trump’s claims are outrageously false, but do you believe the Congress of the United States has any business declaring the expression of such an opinion an impeachable offense? Trump is entitled to his opinion until his dying day, as are the millions of Americans who share it. There is no question that Trump’s legal efforts to challenge the election failed — that’s a fact. But the leftist narrative that Trump’s allegations of election fraud “are false and not supported by the evidence” have been inserted in every liberal-media news report since Trump first started challenging the election. In other words, they dismissed these claims as factually false way before they’d even been formally filed. Now Democrats have outrageously memorialized their narrative in their articles of impeachment.
Even if the election-night shenanigans didn’t change the result of the election — and I’m not sure we’ll ever know for certain – way too many suspicious things occurred that night, and way too many state laws were changed in the middle of the stream to relax voting procedures. Many warned this could potentially lead to misconduct and rampant distrust in the election results. If election-integrity reform measures aren’t undertaken, I don’t see how it’s possible to restore confidence in our system.
Feel free to call us hypocrites in an effort to shame us into silence about the Democrats’ double standards on violence, rioting and threats to our democratic system, but the issue isn’t hypocrisy. That, too, is a distraction. The issue is whether the left, in reality, is threatening our liberties, about which there can be no reasonable doubt.
Whatever you do, don’t take your eyes off the big ball of leftist tyranny. This nation is now under siege by the digital oligarchy, which is censoring political speech with every bit as much power as an authoritarian government. It is about to be under siege by a Democratic-controlled government, one of whose prominent members, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is threatening to create an investigative commission to “rein in” the media following the D.C. riots.
Go ahead and bark about President Trump’s intangible so-called threats to our democracy, but while you’re falling for that diversion, understand that many Democrats are on the verge of proposing concrete measures to undermine our constitutional system in ways that will ensure their permanent majority, from opening our borders to turning territories into states to legislatively neutering the Electoral College to enacting federal laws that legalize obscenely lax voting procedures and more.
While you’re busy hating on Trump and his supporters, ask yourselves whether conservatives ever call for the silencing of their political opponents. The answer is never, or almost never.
In the meantime, leftists are purging conservative speech and conspiring to destroy conservative digital competitors. Leftist students at Harvard University seek to ban Trump administration officials from speaking on their campus and are now calling for revoking the degrees of Trump supporters and aides. Where are the long-lost civil libertarians in the Democratic Party?
It is a well-rehearsed fantasy that Trump supporters threaten democracy. It is an observable fact that the left does.
Be peaceful, but stay vigilant, because freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.” Indeed, we are well into that menacing generation today.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/77076
***********************************Now the Washington Post Admits Trump Did Not Incite the Capitol Riot
With the second bogus impeachment in the books, the Washington Post has finally seen fit to admit that President Trump did not incite the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 with his speech, acknowledging that it was, in fact, planned in advance.
The article, published Tuesday, the day before Biden’s inauguration, declares in its headline “Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say” and opens with the following paragraphs.
Self-styled militia members from Virginia, Ohio and other states made plans to storm the U.S. Capitol days in advance of the Jan. 6 attack, and then communicated in real time as they breached the building on opposite sides and talked about hunting for lawmakers, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
While authorities have charged more than 100 individuals in the riot, details in the new allegations against three U.S. military veterans offer a disturbing look at what they allegedly said to one another before, during and after the attack — statements that indicate a degree of preparation and determination to rush deep into the halls and tunnels of Congress to make “citizens’ arrests” of elected officials.
U.S. authorities charged an apparent leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group, Thomas Edward Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va., in the attack, alleging that the Navy veteran helped organize a ring of dozens who coordinated their movements as they “stormed the castle” to disrupt the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.
Several paragraphs later, here’s what the authors of the article concede:
The arrests this weekend of several people with alleged ties to far-right extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, suggest that the riot was not an entirely impulsive outburst of violence but an event instigated or exploited by organized groups. Hours of video posted on social media and pored over by investigators have focused on individuals in military-style gear moving together.
CNN acknowledged last week that the storming of the Capitol was planned prior to Trump’s speech, reporting that, “Evidence uncovered so far, including weapons and tactics seen on surveillance video, suggests a level of planning that has led investigators to believe the attack on the US Capitol was not just a protest that spiraled out of control, a federal law enforcement official says.”
The CNN report and the Washington Post article completely undermine the entire case Democrats made for impeaching Trump. As I previously noted, the riot at the Capitol was either planned in advance or inspired by President Trump’s speech. It simply cannot be both. That the media is starting to acknowledge the whole thing was planned in advance now, after the bogus impeachment, is no accident.
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