Comparing COVID deaths to the impacts of lockdowns

Another COVID trend lately is to compare the number of deaths from COVID to other sources of death in attempt to downplay COVID or justify fighting restrictions.

Unfortunately, logic does not actually support this.

Why can't you compare such numbers? Simply because the data is incomplete. Saying that the lock down has caused X deaths and that the virus has caused Y deaths ignores how high the death toll would be if the lock downs hadn't been enacted.

In short, if you want to compare COVID deaths to lock down related deaths, then you need to compare it to the deaths that there would be due to COVID if the lock downs didn't happen.

Comparing the numbers AFTER mitigation measures are taken is cheating.

Another problem with a lot of the metrics, is that at one person I saw cited deaths from delayed medical treatment and counted them under the lock down deaths. And that is also cheating. If we didn't lock down, the impact on the health system would be even greater and these deaths would have happened and likely in even greater numbers. So, it is actually more correct to lump them in with the COVID deaths if you feel you need to add them to one camp or another.

And how can we compare where the numbers would be without a lock down? By looking at mortality rates and estimating the spread of the virus.

Realistically, unchecked, it could likely spread to 75% of the population in a year. Exponential growth is a pretty crazy thing. We'll err on the side of caution and say 75% is 25 million (it is actually closer to 30m). And, the mortality rate in Canada is 2.3%, so let's call that 2%. 2% of 25 million is 500k. Unfortunately, that is an overly optimistic number. As we saw in the first wave in Italy, when hospitals reach a point where they need to triage that number escalates. Italy hit a 7% mortality rate at the height of the first wave. And that was rising and only halted by introducing strict lock downs.

While we can speculate that it would have gone higher, we don't really have data to support that. So, I'll give the "nay"-sayers another leg up and say that Canada's mortality rate would cap out at 6% if we had no lock downs.

Adjusting our earlier calculation, we're now up to 1.5m deaths and even more long term illnesses, and secondary deaths caused by the system being unable to treat people.

Now, let's see how that compares to other sources of death in Canada. Whoops! What happened? Oh yeah, your argument got obliterated. Even if you added all of the top causes of death together you wouldn't even reach the original 500k deaths. And none of those would even come close to touching the 6% mortality rate death count. And ALL of my calculations were rounded DOWN.