The handling of Corona and the measures taken in the various countries are anything but uniform. In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko saw little reason for his country to shut down. The numbers seem to prove him right, much to the chagrin of the lockdown fanatics.
The measure of a lockdown, currently presented as having no alternative, is also always justified by juggling numbers. Thus, the lockdown is supposed to serve to reduce the number of corona positives and thus protect the population. To this end, the numbers of Corona deaths are also constantly presented to persuade citizens to comply with the measures. But in Belarus it is completely different, it is, so to speak, out of the ordinary.
Life without measures
While the demonstrators against President Alexander Lukashenko are praised for their courage - presumably also because they are protesting without masks and distances - the numbers of Corona infected and Corona dead are doubted. After all, the latter in particular are decidedly low compared to other countries, especially in light of the fact that there has been no such thing as a lockdown or significant restrictions on public life. However, the explanation that the figures are embellished - after all, the country is also accused of electoral fraud - would fall short of the mark. For the first three calendar weeks in January, the following figures are reported for Belarus: 1st week 14,031 people tested positive and 75 dead, 2nd week 13,367 and 65, 3rd week 10,251 and 58 with a population of around 9.5 million. For Austria, the comparable periods were 15,133 and 378, 11,406 and 383, and 10,421 and 348. The explanation for the apparent differences, especially in deaths, may vary.
Deaths due to lockdown?
For example, the high number of hospital beds, a good structure of the epidemic and health protection authorities still from Soviet times or the significantly lower life expectancy of around 74.6 years - in the EU countries this is significantly higher beyond 80 years - are cited as possible reasons. However, an important point is simply forgotten: There never was a lockdown. As the respected epidemiologist John Ioannidis has shown in his studies, lockdowns have no significant impact on the incidence of infection. On the contrary, they cause massive collateral damage. The fact that mortality in Belarus in the Corona year 2020 was even slightly lower than in previous years could well be due to the fact that the population was not tortured with measures such as lockdowns.
Different counting methods
Also, the low number of Corona deaths compared to Austria need not be a case for "falsification," as is sometimes speculated, but is the result of a different counting method. In Belarus, for example, an attempt is made to differentiate in the figures between deaths from and deaths with corona virus, whereas elsewhere this distinction is not made. Thus, the question arises whether the very low excess mortalities in some countries for a lethal pandemic are not related to the measures taken rather than to the corona virus.
https://www.wochenblick.at/weissrussland-hat-der-verzicht-auf-einen-lockdown-tode-verhindert/