No, experts in epidemiology or related fields of statistical analysis.
Absolutely true. Deciding on public health measures should involve weighing a range of risks, costs, uncertainties, and benefits, and different people will weigh different factors differently. But to weigh them requires getting the facts right and that does depend on expertise. Before you ask whether mask mandates are worth the cost, for example, you have to accurately assess how well they work. What you’ve written in this thread does not do that.
Yes, no one has proven, to the satisfaction of everyone, that masks work or don’t.
But the similarities of Covid impacts in states with mask mandates and without mask mandates is strong evidence for many of us that the mandates were not worth the cost.
Yes I’ve seen some of these articles where they say that the lockdown has harmed people, mainly psychologically and becoming the cause for loss of jobs.
No one has proven, to the satisfaction of everyone, anything ever. That’s not a useful standard.
Does this mean that yo accept it as good evidence because it confirms your prior belief, or does it mean that you did a detailed analysis of the data, correcting for things like the timing of the initial wave in different states and population density?
How does knowing how to do regression analyses help you if you haven’t done the analysis here?
The standard is, ‘Don’t think you know something just because your obviously flawed analysis happens to agree with what you want to be true.’ I don’t think that’s an unreasonable standard.
I too have done lots of regression analyses over the decades. I’ve also spent a couple of decades studying infectious diseases in general and viral outbreaks – including this pandemic – in particular. I spend a large fraction of my waking life thinking about how to analyze infectious disease and public health data from a range of settings across the world and telling others how they should or shouldn’t analyze their data. And with that background, I have no idea whether Sweden’s approach worked decently or badly, or how much difference state-imposed mitigation measures made in the US. Because when I haven’t done a detailed analysis myself and I haven’t read the detailed analyses of others who are competent in the field, I think ‘I don’t know’ is the best answer.
Some people do not recognize, or misperceive by underrating, what their personal responsibilities are. E.g., they resist mask mandates when mandates are indeed appropriate. It is not a matter of indecision but more like rebelliousness – people like that in particular need mandates, not unlike speed limits and reckless driving laws.
The Swedish strategy has not shown to be superior in any measurable aspect compared to the Nordic neighbours or internationally (Balmford et al., 2020, 2020k; Braithwaite et al., 2021; Bjorklund and Ewing, 2020). This Swedish laissez-faire strategy has had a large human cost for the Swedish society. However, relying on public responsibility seemed to have worked to some extent as a consequence of the Swedish high trust in authorities.
The Swedish strategy has also been at the base of the controversial Great Barrington Declaration (published October 4, 2020) aiming for natural herd-immunity by letting the infections spread in a “controlled way” in society (Kulldorff et al., 2020), with several of the initiators/defenders having strong ties to Sweden (2021e). This strategy is considered internationally as unscientific, unethical, and unfeasible (Aschwanden, 2020; Aschwanden, 2021; Khalife and VanGennep, 2021; Sridhar and Gurdasani, 2021).
This was particularly appalling:
It could be argued that the Swedish strategy was quite efficient and successful if the aim was to let the infection spread at a moderate pace in society. Yet the projected “natural herd-immunity” levels are still nowhere in sight 1.5 years after the start of the pandemic. Herd-immunity does not seem within reach without widespread vaccinations, and with newer variants it may be unlikely.
I think the difference here seems to be that you have set up what largely seems to be an ‘I told you so topic’, and are unwilling to admit that the facts don’t line up with your opinions.
It was a part of a conditional not a hedge. It could be argued it was successful if the aim was to let infection spread. That’s just good grammar, not weasle language.
