Did the Lockdowns and Mask Mandates Save Lives?

[Spoiler Alert - No, they did not]

There is zero evidence that the combinations of lockdowns and mask mandates saved any lives. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that they were almost as harmful as COVID, itself. This might like a fairly big claim, but having a look at the data, it’s what seemingly went down.

Over the last 20 years, in Alberta, we’ve seen a decline in YoY death rate by as much as 287 up to a maximum increase in death rate of 998 but a fairly steady climb. Given a rate of population increase per year fairly linear and prior to 2020, if you looked at the death rate over the years, it follows the same trend.

Some years for deaths, rate was under the average death rate per year (green), some years, was a little over (red).

When you add in the 2020 Death Rate in Alberta, we see a fairly significant spike:

COVID Deaths, right?

Some of them, sure.

According to Alberta Health Services, there were 1534 COVID related deaths for 2020. Subtracting those from the YoY total, we’d see the following:

Increase in YoY deaths in Alberta, after extracting the COVID deaths, gives us a total of 1508 deaths. An increase of 1508 Non-COVID deaths vs 1534 COVID Deaths. Average Rate of increase over the last decade - 532. Excess Deaths for 2020, Alberta - 976.

This, while Suicide Rate in 2020 was fewer recorded than 2019 in Alberta.

There is no question that the AHS Plan to Lockdown the highest risk demographics in places where Respiratory Viruses run Rampant during a Global Pandemic of a Respiratory Virus, was completely trash and may have resulted in a lot more death from COVID, but with almost 1000 Excess Deaths that were above of the last decade of average rate of increase, what are we going to be looking at for the end of 2021?

Lockdowns; Masks; Closing Businesses; Closing Schools…Hurt Everybody; Saved Nobody; Created a climate that caused an additional 1000 Deaths in the Province of Alberta Alone.

Do you think these ideas worked anyplace?

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Understanding how colossally bad the response was last year and having a look at the current case count from last year to current (10x the current case count YTD):

It’s kind of hard to get that warm and fuzzy feeling, hey?

Whether you believe in the threat from COVID or the efficacy/threats from the Vaccines, of what should be most clear is that we are facing some challenges moving forward.