Posted on 06/08/2020 2:16:22 AM PDT by Morpheus2009
Sweden captured attention for its relaxed approach to containing the spread of COVID-19 this year.
Social distancing was encouraged, but shops and restaurants stayed open, those younger than 16 continued to go to school and borders stayed open to European visitors.
That helped the economy continue to grow in the first quarter, unlike many other nations. But, with some data showing Sweden had the highest per capita death rate in the world last week, the architect of the country’s strategy says it might have been a mistake.
Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said there is “potential for improvement” in the government’s no-lockdown strategy, suggesting a more effective policy might have been somewhere between what Sweden opted for and the strict restrictions other nations imposed.
Tegnell’s comments are an about-face: For months, he’s insisted his nation’s approach was more sustainable.
It has so far prevented the country from suffering the kind of deep economic blow other nation’s felt — Sweden’s economy grew 0.4% in the first quarter from a year ago, while the eurozone (which Sweden is not part of) contracted more than 3%.
Still, Robert Bergqvist, chief economist at SEB, says Sweden’s economic trajectory can be impacted by a number of factors.
“Exit policies in other countries in Europe — we are very dependent on exports. It also depends on recovery strategy,” Bergqvist said.
He said despite Tegnell’s comments, prospects of a lockdown now in Sweden are uncertain, and though public finances are strong, new restrictions would come with a price tag the country likely couldn’t afford.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketplace.org ...
well they tried what they thought would work. It failed. It was, coldly speaking, a good experiment to compare Sweden (10 million) to a combined Norway-Denmark (excluding Greenland) - both have comparable populations (10 million), area (excl. Greenland) and population densities as well as culture.
Sweden rejecting government imposed social distancing showed that social distancing does work — remember that the Swedes naturally already do social distancing - 54% of their households are single-person, they largely work from home, they aren’t the huggy-touchy people like Italians etc.
It seems that quarantines do work — but for us to be 100% sure we need to wait until 2022 after the second-wave comes (or doesn’t) and then we can properly compare Sweden to N-D (excl G)
ping
or we can stop worrying like little girls about an illness where the average age of death is 82 and now the rate of mortality is said to be .4% :-)
It seems that quarantines do work.Looks like it. The numbers in Germany also appear to support this conclusion:
Inferring change points in the spread of COVID-19 reveals the effectiveness of interventions
This article has been cited a lot in the German media.
Every day could be our last I’m not going to worry about it. But to those covid mask wearing pussies go nuts.
It was a trade off. Ruining 1000’s of businesses and creating unrelentving f.inancial hardships is not imo excusable in trying to savev lives which could otherwise be saved by having those MOST IN DANGER self quarantine.
We should stop worrying about it - however now is the question - did the quarantine help?
In the 1919 Spanish flu comparing cities in the USA, in hindsight it showed that quarantines did both lessen the number of deaths and also had faster recoveries.
With the exception of Northern Italy, medical systems didn’t get overwhelmed. So that’s a win.
But now we know the virus better and we know treatments that seem to work and we as a world are better prepared.
So the quarantines are lifting - first in China and now in Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. Soon western Europe and the Eastern USA will open. With precautions and masks in crowded spaces we are prepared.
If you believe the numbers, I don’t.
I think Sweden has tried to do what a lot of us wanted to
see done. Right now we’re fighting to get back out there
and be more like Sweden, so we can’t fault it a lot.
While I don’t think they did it for this reason, it still
pleases me that they were the canary in the coal mine for
us.
As we contemplate opening up, it’s a stark reminder of what
could happen.
None the less, we have to get back out there. Some folks
will die. Some folks always do.
We can’t lock up and live our lives in fear.
What I hope comes of all this, is that some folks who
always scream “P A N D E M I C” at the first sign of a
runny nose in more than six people at a time, will think
long and hard about pushed that narrative from now on.
We DO NOT want to encourage another shut down like this
ever again, unless there actually is a disease where the
numbers really are 5-10%, or higher.
If you get the urge, just leave the forum for a few days.
I agree. I would have felt that there should have been priorities once we knew more, such as a graduated by age approach where the sick elderly are most locked down and protected by sanitation measures, for example.
I know more people who committed suicide during this lock down than I know who died from virus.
the story is nearly a week old and deceptively states:
“But, with some data showing Sweden had the highest per capita death rate in the world last week”
which means for a particular week in May Sweden declared a high number of deaths, for whatever reason.
also, after Tegnell spoke to Swedish public radio:
3 Jun: BBC: Coronavirus: Sweden’s Tegnell admits too many died
However, (Tegnell) was unclear what Sweden should have done differently and at a press conference later on Wednesday later he underlined that “we basically still think that is the right strategy for Sweden”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52903717
Sweden (457.53) is 5th in deaths per million behind Belgium 804.04, UK, Spain and Italy 560.95 - Statista
with a soft lockdown, Sweden should have shown an exponential higher rate of deaths. it didn’t. lockdowns have not been vindicated.
end all lockdowns and stop destroying people’s lives and their economies.
well, it depends — I wear the mask not for myself, I’m in my 40s, not overweight and fit enough. I’m guessing I MAY have got the virus sometime in early April as for a day I had breathing problems I’ve not experienced before. Ok, big deal, I took paracetamol and the next day was weak but ok. However, if I had gotten the virus, me wearing a mask lessened me giving it to other people.
People of course took this to extremes - in both ways - the wear plastic all over you crowd and the no-masks, no nothing crowd.
The right way was in-between - wear the masks and be hygienic.
That’s true to the extent that a microbiologist being interviewed by the British Magazine Spiked pointed out. They knew since around January that the death rate would likely be less than 1 percent and mostly focused with the elderly based on what happened in Korea.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/we-could-open-up-again-and-forget-the-whole-thing/
While the overall numbers are important, details are important. Are there available breakdowns by race, age, locale, etc.?
It’s easy to see why when most of all the deaths, 80 percent or more - were from people in nursing homes. People who are not just elderly, but elderly who are also sick and/or disabled that cannot care for themselves. The big question that would answer why you don’t know many people who died would be how many people do you know personally who are in assisted living?
Depending on the city, 60 to 80 percent of all COVID-19 cases were people who were mostly confined to being indoors.
Keeping Sweden and N-D (excl G) in mind, the alternative for not quarantining was to have a lot of your 60+ relatives dead.
One thing I don’t fully understand is why this shut down ruined businesses in the USA while in Eastern Europe they survived
Going forward: We really don’t know what the exposure rates were by country. We need to do significant anti-body testing to get a sense as to what percentage of each countries population had exposure. If, say, Sweden’s exposure rate is not significantly higher than the US or it’s neighbors then that would also seem to indicate that Sweden’s “Herd Immunity” strategy failed. I’m not prejudging here. I think that the broad, undifferentiated population lockdown was a poor strategy. We’ll be paying for this in lives and lost treasure for a decade.
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