Back in March of last year, I pointed out that Covid’s impact on mortality had been small relative to pre-existing differences across Europe. In other words: increases in mortality within European countries were smaller than the differences that existed between them before Covid arrived.
At the time, I relied on a crude measure of mortality: number of deaths per 100 people aged 65+. We can now observe the same pattern using the latest data on life expectancy.
Life expectancy in a particular year is defined as the number of years a person born in that year could be expected to live if he or she experienced the current age-specific mortality rates (at each age 0, 1, 2, etc.) during the course of her life. It is therefore closely related to the age-standardised mortality rate.
Both statistics take into account the ages of those who died, as well as the age-structure of the overall population. Hence they’re ideal for comparing across countries and over time. The only advantage of life expectancy is that it’s easier to interpret: talking about the number of years someone can expect to live makes more sense than talking about a standardised rate of something.
Consider the chart below, which show life expectancy in selected European countries from 2000 to 2021.
Of the countries shown, Latvia saw the largest decline in life expectancy of around two years. (That’s using 2019 as the baseline. If we used the average of 2015–2019 as the baseline, the decline would be somewhat less than two years.)
Is this a large amount? In terms of year-on-year changes, yes. Latvia hadn’t seen such a big decline since the fall of the Soviet Union. But in terms of pre-existing differences across Europe, not really. In 2019, Italy’s life expectancy was 8 years higher than Latvia’s. So in a normal year, Latvia experiences four pandemics worth of mortality, relative to Italy.
We can also compare Sweden to the other Nordic countries, as in the chart below. The first thing to notice is that even in 2020, when Swedes supposedly faced “disaster”, they actually lived longer than both Danes and Finns. At the height of the pandemic, Swedish life expectancy was 82.4, compared to ‘only’ 81.5 in Denmark.
The next thing to notice is that although Swedish life expectancy did fall in 2020, that was largely because it had risen the year before (which led to the build up of ‘dry tinder’). As you can see, Swedish life expectancy in 2020 was approximately the same as in 2018 – an unremarkable year when no one spoke of “disaster”.
If you smoothed-out the rise and subsequent dip in Sweden’s life expectancy, its trajectory would look similar to that of other the Nordic countries – contrary to the oft-heard claim that Sweden was an outlier among its peers.
Of course, the declines in life expectancy would have been larger if we’d done nothing in response to Covid. But the point is: there are already much greater differences across European countries, and these haven’t caused anything like the reaction we saw to Covid. Which would suggest that we overreacted.
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In the great Physics Lab up in the sky, Professor Richard Feynman will be smiling wryly. As concluded in the report of the 1987 Presidential Commission into the Challenger space-shuttle disaster…
“…For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.“
True. Though – you will take this medicine whether you want to or not, and it will not cure you anyway is not really “public relations” `😏😏
Easily predictable.
Aren’t the same group of morons trying to ‘dim the sun’ through geo-engineering?
Truly clown world in overdrive.
Meanwhile hydrocarbons as abiotic energy can form in years. Entirely renewable.
Abiotic energy? Is that a thing?
Lots of people think it is. I don’t generally like quoting Wikipedia, but here is an article about it, although Wikipedia does what Wikipedia does and repeats the established doctrine, in this case that oil and gas come from dead creatures, something which even from an early age I thought sounded implausible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
When clouds cross the sky, output from solar panel falter and fluctuate, in the same way that changes in airflow cause output from wind turbines to fluctuate.
This cause frequency fluctuations which cause grid shutdown.
Weather-dependent electricity generators do that. Surprise!
Looking on the bright side, it’s keeping some branches of academia busy: https://www.ieee-jas.net/en/article/doi/10.1109/JAS.2024.125013 This one is on the topic of instability, rate of change of frequency etc.
And clouds move quicker than the wind changes and the peak risk to the grid will be when solar panels are at maximum output in the middle of the day. Just remind me again what time the grid collapsed.
Tony Blair wading in – clearly he’s on manoeuvres. What’s he after?
Perhaps they want to ditch the net zero nonsense without making it look like a u turn? Too much of a coincidence that he comes right after the blackout…
And just before the local elections where the public will give their verdict.
Local elections? What local elections? Denied to us here in Essex by the government, on the pretext that there will soon be a reorganisation of our local authority, making elections a pointless exercise. The more cynical locals see it more as a strategy to stop us expressing our disgust at what Labour’s doing in government by voting for anyone else.
Wants to be Klaus’s successor doesn’t he at the WEF?
Still pushing shit like carbon capture though.
Until the “CO2 is bad” meme is dead and buried there’ll be no salvation.
Money for his new carbon capture venture.
Could just be that he is a complete tosser? Simple answer is often the correct one.
That *almost* goes without saying… he doesn’t do or say anything unless there is a quid in it for him, he out Tory’d the Tories when he was in office
Dunno, but for a change he is right on this one
Whilst Blair’s conclusions are broadly ok, the logic he uses to get there is poor. I think he says it the way he thinks voters might listen, rather than by analysing the facts and stating them
A politician’s gambit there.
It’s sickening to see how people like Blair who spend all their time pontificating to the rest of society thinks he can turn on a dime and hope that everyone either doesn’t realise or forgets that 10 minutes ago he was aggressively advocating the opposite and that he helped create the hysteria he now denounces.
He and George Soros agreed all this in April 1996.
More sickening is the amount of money that Tony The Liar receives for what appears to be nothing of use whatsoever.
“Most political leaders are decent people who do want to do the right thing…”
Really, Tony? Well thanks for clearing that up for us… 😫
I just thew caution to the wind and ventured over to http://www.bbc for this subject. Not been there for nearly 10 years. I hoped for the best but found the worst. It’s like a bad stand up comic’s description of why life is shit. Utter drivel, made up nonsense, and stated facts that are conjured out of thin air with no evidence whatsoever. It will be another 10 years at least before I return.
The War Criminal is all in favour of carbon capture.
It would be a very good idea therefore to check whether Blair has financial “interests” in the carbon capture SCAM.
Given the deafening silence from the BBC and Miliband I think we can safely assume that the Spanish blackout is a direct result of Net Zero policies. Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s what….
Who would have known? ——–Everyone who isn’t brainwashed with phony planet saving propaganda and who know a little, bit about energy. ——Mainly that you cannot run Industrial Society on sun and wind. But the tragedy is that our UN and WEF lackey politicians do not care. All they are concerned about is following instructions from the phony planet saving technocrats and ignoring their own citizens who actually voted for them. —–PS Tony Blair already said 6 months ago that nothing we do here regarding ne Zero will make the slightest difference to global climate. But ofcourse anyone who knows anything about this issue does not need Tony to tell them. But when a left wing look up to person like Blair turns against net Zero then Miliband is in a spot of bother.
My apologies for posting this again, but I do think this article makes an important point:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dfleming/p/the-long-game-of-tony-blair-from?r=ylgqf&utm_medium=ios
We might have guessed – if that evil skank Blair has anything to say on the subject.
Thanks for the link.
NetZero cannot and will not ever work
https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-net-zero
Being “asked” to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle? If only.
Anyone know what Blair thinks about the recent sun dimming nonsense?
In the midst of all this, there’s good news for China, Russia, and anyone else who wants to weaken western nations: they don’t need to worry anymore about sabotaging our power grids, because we’re doing that ourselves by building in vulnerability in the form of intermittent renewables. They just have to sit back and wait for the chaos to arise.
So Spain is ending nuclear power. It’s not about low carbon energy, it’s about less energy. Blair is the consummate politician, he has not changed any of his opinions, he just knows when to row back a little bit.