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on comparing approaches

A valuable comment to one of my other blog posts triggered this text: Mario - May 16, 2020 at 4:00 AM As of your writing the death toll was similar in both countries, but it developed drastically different after that. As of today Sweden hast 3.646 confirmed deaths and Austria 628. Would you mind updating your post accordingly? Do you still think their way was better/smarter in any way? @Mario: you're having a good point. In the end, we'll have to look at the overall death statistics at the end of the pandemic to know which response was better with regard to the number of lives lost. In addition to that, we'll have to account for the number of healthy life years lost and many other factors. As of today, the average age of the Swedish COVID-19 victims is above the average life expectancy in Sweden. Aside of the COVID-19 body count, there are certainly many things that I prefer about the Swedish approach. Politicians have a publicly known set of experts and act acc...
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Amateurhafte CO2 Messung unter provisorischer Mund Nasen Maske (hochgezogenes Sommerkleidchen) bei Volksschulkind

EDIT 2020-05-15: Habe das Video vorerst auf "privat" gestellt, da der Effekt eine Diskussion unter Kinderärzten und Experten mit einem offen Brief erzielt wurde. Da ich kein Arzt bin und das Video Fehler und Einschränkungen enthält, denke ich, dass eine weitere Verbreitung nicht produktiv wäre und bitte auch darum, dass die mittlerweile veröffentlichten Kopien offline genommen werden. EDIT: 2020-05-16: Leider wurde das Video von zu vielen anderen Benutzern erneut geteilt, wodurch ich es nicht in meiner Macht liegt, dieses zu entfernen. Da die anderen Kopien ohne die einschränkenden Hinweise verbreitet werden, habe ich beschlossen, es wieder auf "public" zu setzen, da so zumindest die Hinweise bei meiner Kopie vorhanden sind. Manche User, welche mein Video verbreiten, behaupten, ich wäre ein Arzt. Ich habe jeden, der mir unterkam, kontaktiert und darauf hingewiesen, dass ich kein Arzt bin. Weiters habe ich gebeten, die Kopien und adaptierten Versionen wieder ...

on the economy

People dispute that money and goods should be given up to save lives. Every person having their heart in the right place will answer that saving lives has priority. If it was just that simple. Unfortunately, when done without caution, one might give some people additional years of life while taking away far more healthy years of others. Resources generally are limited. The more resources are directed towards a single objective, the fewer are left for other objectives. Spending more resources in reducing fatal COVID-19 casualties means that fewer resources can be spent on preventing fatal casualties of hunger and other infectious diseases. A country with a partial or complete lockdown sacrifices vast resources while not strictly focusing on protecting people vulnerable to COVID-19. But these resources are missing elsewhere - for example to prevent children from dying around the world. Saving children with vaccinations against, for example, polio costs less than 20 cents per child [1...

on comparing numbers

Ask yourself: why is the upsetting daily SARS-CoV2 body count not put into perspective with total death cases from the previous day / 7 days / 30 days of the current and last year or last two years? Death is one of the greatest taboo topics of our society. It is inconvenient to think about it, even though every one of us is aware that our life will end at some point. The vast majority of us want that point to be as far in the future as possible. As a consequence, death is usually not very present in the media. That has changed since the massive outbreak of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV2. One obvious effect of this disease is the high media coverage of casualties due to the sickness while other causes of death are still not covered. The lack of comparing the numbers with normal mortality data obviously has an alarming effect, potentially causing mass panic. For example, Sweden has had no excess mortality in the latest available data (week 13) [1] while employing very modest means. ...

on closing schools

Hold on Sweden, the World's Eyes are on You I am a very critical person. I try to fact check whatever I hear or read. And to understand the motivation underlying the statements as well as what they intend to achieve. I am from Austria and am currently living in Austria. I love this country and have moved back here three times after having lived in three other great countries. Nevertheless, I surely am amongst the most critical people when it comes to Austria's response to SARS-CoV2. Why exactly am I so alarmed, you will ask. There are so many reasons, but I'll pick two. First, like so many other countries, the Austrian government waited with strict counter measures until the spread of the disease was unstoppable in Austria. Second - and that is the much more important reason now - Austria flipped to an authoritarian lock-down that is presented - day in and day out - as the sole inevitable option. The latter must trigger a creative person's critical ...