A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.
The latest report from Sweden counts 744,286 infections and 13,402 deaths.
The latest report from Illinois counts 1,239,589 infections and 23,527 deaths.
Conditions in Illinois are such that a transition to a full reopening is in order. If I have to keep extending this post until Anthony Fauci comes to his senses, or resigns, or until the governor is primaried, or until the ukases are vacated, or until the cows come home, I will.
The Centers for Disease Control are currently reporting over five-and-a-half million Trump shots (in many cases, these are both doses of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines) administered statewide. The statewide recovery rate is still around 98 percent. The legislature, however, is still doing nothing to rein in the governor's ukases.
That's despite Sweden doing at least as well as most of more lockdown-obsessed western Europe, despite ignoring scary advice that their relatively moderate mitigations would be deadly. And now, Sweden reports fewer excess deaths (a calculation based on actuarial tables) year-on-year for 2020 than for previous years. "Who could possibly argue with more freedom and fewer deaths?" I'm waiting for J. B. Pritzker to defend himself.
Although public health officials aren't necessarily economists, they ought be sensitive to the notion of tradeoffs.
Public-health officials are supposed to consider the overall impact of their policies, not just the immediate effect on one disease. They’re supposed to weigh costs and benefits, promoting policies that save the most total years of life, which means taking special care to protect younger people and not divert vast resources to treatments for those near the end of life. They are not supposed to test unproven and dangerous treatments by conducting experiments on entire populations.The governor, however, gets away with an interview in which the Illinois death toll doesn't even come up. "I think I’m genuinely considered to be the most progressive governor in the Midwest, if not in the country right now." Let that be an indictment of so-called progressives.
Sweden and Florida followed these principles when they rejected lockdowns and trusted their citizens to take sensible precautions. That trust has been vindicated.
Last week, the governor trailed by 10,095. Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week is growing by around a hundred, or less. It's still growing, though, that despite Sweden having some of the same difficulties the rest of the European Union countries have been having with procuring and administering vaccinations.
As of 15 March, 10,070.
As of 8 March, 10,017
As of 1 March, 9,933.
As of 22 February, 9,857.
As of 15 February, 9,693.
As of 8 February, 9,623.
As of 1 February, 9,662.
As of 25 January, 9,739.
As of 18 January, 9,727.
As of 11 January, 9, 860.
As of 4 January, 9,595.
As of 28 December, 9,057.
As of 21 December, 8,414.
As of 14 December, 7,815.
As of 7 December, 7,049.
As of 30 November, 6,201.
As of 23 November, 5,706.
As of 16 November, 5,040.
As of 9 November, 4,516.
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