• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

There’s No Hint of a Negative Association Between Stringency Index and Excess Mortality in Europe

by Noah Carl
14 December 2021 8:37 AM

I previously reported on Youyang Gu’s analysis of Covid death rate and average stringency index across U.S. States. As you may recall, Gu found essentially zero association between the two variables: there was no evidence that states with longer and more stringent lockdowns had fewer Covid deaths.

One weakness of Gu’s analysis is that he used the official Covid death rate as a measure of mortality. This is problematic for two reasons. First, different states may count Covid deaths in slightly different ways. And second, the official Covid death rate doesn’t account for differences in the age-distribution across states.

Since older people are much more likely to die of Covid, states with more old people will tend to have more Covid deaths. For example, more than 20% of Floridians are over 65, compared to only 12% of Alaskans. Hence you’d expect more Floridians to die of Covid, all else being equal.

Incidentally, Gu did find an association between average stringency index and the unemployment rate. (States with longer and more stringent lockdowns had higher unemployment.) This suggests that average stringency index at least partly captures the extent to which different states curtailed economic activity.

As I noted before, the ONS recently published estimates of age-adjusted excess mortality for most of the countries in Europe, covering the entire period from January 2020 to June 2021. And this measure doesn’t suffer from the two problems outlined above.  

I therefore decided to check whether there’s a negative association between average stringency index and age-adjusted excess mortality. Other commentators have produced similar plots before, but I haven’t seen one based on the latest estimates from the ONS.

Results are shown in the figure below. The left-hand chart corresponds to the ONS’s earlier estimates, covering the period up to 18 December. The right-hand chart corresponds to the latest estimates. (The reason I included the left-hand chart is that the one on the right is somewhat affected by the vaccine rollout.)

In any case, neither chart shows any hint of a negative association between average stringency index and age-adjusted excess mortality. States that had the longest and most stringent lockdowns do not have lowest mortality. In fact, both the correlations are positive.

This doesn’t mean lockdown had no effect on the epidemic’s trajectory in any country. But it does suggest that any effect it did have was swamped by other factors (e.g., geography, population density, household structure).

The countries clustered at the bottom of the right-hand chart are the Nordics, Cyprus and Malta. As I noted last time, these are all geographically peripheral countries that used border controls to contain the virus. The only one that made extensive use of lockdowns was Cyprus (see lower right-hand corner). And this appears to have paid off.

However, larger countries that made similar use of lockdowns (see centre of chart) have had much higher mortality. I take this evidence that lockdowns may work in countries like Cyprus or New Zealand when combined with border controls. But that they don’t seem to do much in large, dense, highly connected countries like Britain.

Tags: EuropeExcess MortalityLockdowns

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Why Did Sajid Javid Tell Parliament that Daily Covid Infections are 16 Times Higher Than the Latest ONS Estimate?

Next Post

First Omicron Death Shrouded in Mystery Due to Government Secrecy, Experts Claim

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

14 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Anti_socialist
Anti_socialist
3 years ago

Viruses do what viruses do.

15
0
Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
3 years ago
Reply to  Anti_socialist

They exist to exist!

1
0
arany madar
arany madar
3 years ago
Reply to  Anti_socialist

Why would a piece of RNA inside a capsid do any of ths?

0
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago

The key point remains that SARS-Cov-2 does not warrant any exceptional measures, anyway. Let’s not forget the fundamental con.

21
0
miketa1957
miketa1957
3 years ago

The countries clustered at the bottom of the right-hand chart are the Nordics, Cyprus and Malta. As I noted last time, these are all geographically peripheral countries that used border controls to contain the virus. The only one of them that made extensive use of lockdowns was Cyprus (see lower right-hand corner). And this appears to have paid off.

However, larger countries that made similar use of lockdowns (see centre of chart) have had much higher mortality. I take this evidence that lockdowns may work in countries like Cyprus or New Zealand when combined with border controls. But that they don’t seem to do much in large, dense, highly connected countries like Britain.

I can’t remember exactly where, so don’t have a link, but there was a peer-reviewed study posted a long time back that concluded the same, that there was no correlation between lockdowns and mortality, except in geographically isolated countries that could shut their borders *before* the virus arrived, NZ being the obvious example. This would make sense: if you have a very low incidence, then localised lockdowns can nip the breakouts in the bud, so to speak. But once the virus is endemic, good luck with that.

BTW: I think NZ is a s**tfest for other reasons.

11
0
SimonfromAshby
SimonfromAshby
3 years ago
Reply to  miketa1957

We have family in New Zealand, including our only grandchild who is three and a half, that we haven’t seen since January 2020.

Closing borders like New Zealand has was and could only ever have been a temporary measure. The virus has embedded itself as a worldwide endemic disease ad now NZ has to go through what we have been through to achieve any sort of natural resistance.

In the meantime its economy, fsmily life’ health and particularly mental health all suffer.

6
0
sceptic nz
sceptic nz
3 years ago
Reply to  miketa1957

I’m in NZ and matters are grim here in my view. People who are still asleep may disagree. At best IMO all that our draconian lockdowns and border closures have done is delay the inevitable. We are at the beginning of our first real wave but still in an effective lockdown, with “vaccine” passports, loads of “vaccine” mandates leaving sectors that were already under pressure like Health and Education scrambling for staff, nearly everyone wears a mask everywhere (we have mask mandates for most things). Mental health, which was strained before Covid seems terrible. People seem angry and scared (either of Covid, or of the State). Businesses are going under at unheard of rates. Our healthcare system is very strained. We have tens of thousands of kiwis who can’t get home because of the border controls. Whilst the wave we are in seems to be declining, probably because of summer and a freshly jabbed population, when the jabs wear off in time for the winter I suspect we will see a massive outbreak.

1
0
Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
3 years ago

My partner/girlfriend has just told me that at the church in the next town northwards (it’s the town this village is joined to) there’s a Christmas Carols thingy coming up – but – you guessed it – only for the ‘vaccinated’. The ‘unvaccinated’ are NOT welcome. My partner is ‘vaccinated’ (double jabbed) and could go but says she’s not, out of principle.

It’s quite disgusting how these ‘Christians’ are tending to their flocks. Why don’t the vicars and bishops just cart the ‘unvaccinated’ off to the gas chambers and get rid of the lot?

This is in Finland, where the ‘News on the television keeps bleating out “Corona passes” “Corona Passes” “Corona Passes” “cases!” “cases!” “cases!”…

bishop.jpg
10
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

It’s “THE LOVE OF”

sorry this thing get me annoyed.

Money is just an aid to temporal barter, i.e you can get things when you need them, not just when you have something to exchange (as in normal barter). i.e. you can store you time*productivity until you actually need someone else’s time.

3
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_cleansing_a_leper

Just protest outside by reading all three of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew 8:1–4, Mark 1:40–45 and Luke 5:12–16.

4
0
Hugh
Hugh
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

And maybe wear some sort of yellow badge – perhaps one with “ungeimpft” on?

0
0
covidschmovid
covidschmovid
3 years ago

One weakness of Gu’s analysis is that he used the official Covid death rate as a measure of mortality. 

Given that the covid mortality figures are a palpably fraudulent fantasy, then yes, I’d say that was a weakness.

A lot of the counter-analysis floating around suffers from the same problem: accepting, as a core premise, some aspect of the official narrative. What surprises me is that, after two years of lies, otherwise critical thinkers still mount arguments that fail to trace back assumptions to the root.
I would suggest that readers track back to the original papers, or direct analysis thereof, that claimed the existence of a new virus in the first place. It’s full of holes you could drive several coaches through. It’s barely credible.
The Corman-Drosten paper that managed to deliver a ‘test’ for the elusive new virus, without having a sample of supposed virus to work on? Methodically questionable, to say the least. And that’s before we get to the blatant conflicts of interest, or the 24-hour peer review. This too is not a credible piece of work.
Dr Andrew Kaufman has given Sayer Ji (find it on Odysee) a review of the (absence of) ‘science’ underpinning the new variant. You owe it to yourselves to check it out.

This crap will continue until more people get over their last vestiges of cognitive dissonance, and take a sober look at the first principles, the root narrative. After all, if many now accept that their governments and establishment institutions have engaged in a 2-year campaign of fraud and lies, it seems appropriate to go ‘full red pill’ and reassess the starting point for all this.

The holy of holies for those promulgating this barrage of bullshit is that the core narrative must be believed. The house of cards rests on that. In our vestigial faith that, somehow, our institutions can’t be that cynical, we are complicit in the cover-up. It’s like a disappointment too far: the final realisation that much of what you experience in life is someone else’s narrative. But blow down the house of cards, and you can begin to think more clearly.

5
0
FrankFisher
FrankFisher
3 years ago

Are the dates correct on those charts?

0
0
Robert Liddell
Robert Liddell
3 years ago

Noah
Another great analysis. Why on Earth do other journalists, government scientists and politicians not do this work, or at least pick it up and repeat it or discuss it?

0
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

16 May 2025
by Will Jones

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

29

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

25

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

19

News Round-Up

18

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

December 2021
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Nov   Jan »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences