Rees's argument specifically mentions that it must be an error relating to biotechnology (possibly caused by "wierdos [sic] with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses"). There is no proof that the coronavirus was created or unleashed intentionally or accidentally.
I feel like it's a wash. Sure we have a million causalities but is it really a bioerror? The problem is that the definition of bioerror is not in the bet itself. I personally think this bet should either be invalid, someone should flip a coin or the one who submitted the bet should pay because he can always word the bet in a way that favors himself. If bioerror is kept ambiguous then he would win through redefining the terms of the bet by a later date.
By that definition, Tuberculosis which kills 1.5 million every year. Doesn't quite satisfy the bet by itself but a few lopsided months could easily be 1 million in a 6 month period.
Regardless, I don't think the lack of disease prevention was the intent of bioerror. The article says that bioerror is supposed to have the same outcomes as bioterror but I believe the implication is that it is also caused by a single human or organization.
> Also you need citations for you claim that it would have been possible to stop the spread.
There's plenty of countries who stopped the spread early on. With a concerted, worldwide, coherent effort, we could have done much better and, likely, have stopped the spread months ago.
Unfortunately, this all breaks down in the face of rogue states like the US.
There are only some islands who are in the position to effectively restrict travel, and totalitarian states whose numbers can't be trusted.
Infection rates vary by countries, but a lot of it is driven by hotspot outbreaks . And some who seemed to be doing good at first are suddenly getting their hotspot outbreaks at later points.
Those were different incidents, iirc he proposed shutting down travel when news about Covid came from China.
The other "closing of the borders" is about immigration laws. I'm not from the US, but I never understood the anti-Trump position there. Surely, if you have immigration laws, you should try to uphold them. You can criticize the laws and try to change them, but criticizing attempts to uphold the laws makes no sense.
It's surprisingly difficult to find data for previous years. I think we need a bigger picture, including the data for 2021 (when it has passed).
I found one CDC number of 12% excess deaths in the US this year. It's not obvious if that is an extreme event or not. I know for some other countries there were also big events in the past decade, but before 2017. The nature of averages is that some years will below them and some years will above them.
Here is one criticism but I don't know if it has merit, I only found it by googling for data of older years and I don't have the time to dig into it right now.
It is easy enough, and a 12% increase in anything YoY is significant enough to wrry about. That number is, my I remind you, with all the measures and lockdowns put in place.
And picking some random link of a random google search confirming your opinion without having read it s propably the best example of confirmation bias I have seen in quite a while.
I specifically added that I haven't validated the numbers, how is that "confirmation bias". I googled merely for the numbers of deaths in previous years. Do you know the numbers, and are the numbers in the article wrong? Or are you using your "confirmation bias" to assume they have to be wrong?
Using their numbers, I am not sure how CDC arrives at their estimate of 300K excess deaths, either. The average 2017-2019 appears to be 2833507. With three weeks to go in 2020, according to the CDC there are 2703232 deaths so far in 2020. So using the average of 60k deaths of the previous weeks, we should be arriving at around 2900K deaths, maybe 2950k. That's 120k more than the average, not 300k excess deaths. Jumps of up to 90K more deaths in the yearly account also seem to be not uncommon (among other things because of rising population size).
Maybe there is a delay with death certificates registering, but then the precise numbers don't make sense to begin with, and we'll really have to wait a couple of months for final results.
12% big enough to worry about - worry maybe, but will it register as a significant event with hindsight (like 10 years down the road)? And the argument of it being "with lockdowns in place" is not really convincing, as other countries with fewer lockdowns have not necessarily fared worse (afaik Sweden does not have more excess deaths than in some especially flu heavy previous years, for example). Also, the claim was that we will wonder about our stupidity of not having more draconian lockdowns.
Sweden showed much more excess deaths than neighbourig countries. Sweden is also implementing stricter measures, having basically admitted that their light handed approach didn't work too well.
And looking at these graphs (https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid) gives you a pretty clear picture. You see clear mortality spikes and, in the case of the US, an overall above average mortality rate. Just why anybody is trying to ignore that is just beyond me by now. And again, all this with measures in place.
The news about a change in "the Swedish strategy" has been greatly exaggerated in foreign media. The rules are basically the same as in April. Only main difference is 8 people instead of 50 in public gatherings. I can still arrange a private party in my own house with hundreds of participants if I wanted to.
Some of the recommendations have changed, but not by a lot. And not all recommendations have become stricter. For example: in April we were advised not to travel further than 2h from our homes, and the recommendations for 70+ were harsher than the rest of the population. These recommendations are no longer in effect.
Shopping centres are still open with unlimited capacity. Masks neither mandated or recommended. I was in a hospital a month or so ago, and saw one or two masks in total, and none among the nurses or doctors. Last time I was in a pharmacy nobody wore a mask.
It's not that there are no excess deaths in the US, the question is nevertheless if the scale is really so outrageous. And as I said, you have to look at the next year as well. It is not simply "Covid is fiction" vs "Covid will kill us all", it is the question of "how dramatic is it really". The narrative that every death in the world can be prevented is simply nonsense.
The change of policies in Sweden seems to be entirely political, not driven by the health authorities who stand by their decisions (I have a German article about it, but perhaps you can find something in English). The curve of deaths the second wave is much smaller than the first wave, nothing that really warrants such a change of course. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
As for excess deaths, you really have to look at it over the years, not just at single years. Comparisons with "neighboring" or "similar" countries don't automatically make sense, given that deaths are often driven by local hotspot events (like infections spreading in nursing homes).
