Posted on 04/24/2020 12:07:46 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The novel coronavirus in Sweden has spread to over 17,500 people and killed more than 2,100, as of Friday, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University. While cases continue to grow, the country has taken the surprising route of not imposing a nationwide lockdown.
Despite international derision over the decision, the scientist behind Sweden's coronavirus strategy claims the controversial move has been effective as the increased number of people exposed to the virus will hopefully help prevent a second wave of infections.
The decision to not issue a lockdown "worked in some aspects because our health system has been able to cope," Anders Tegnell, chief state epidemiologist at Sweden's public health agency, told BBC's Radio Four's Today program.
The country has by far and away the highest death toll among Scandinavian countriesmore than double the number of cases in Denmark and nearly four times as much as in Finland.
But Tegnell argues: "At least 50 percent of our death toll is within elderly homes and we have a hard time understanding how a lockdown would stop the introduction of disease.
"We already had a law making it illegal for visitors to come to elderly homes. They need constant care, they need a lot of people coming and going to take care of them.
"So it's a bit unclear to us if a lockdown really would have stopped this from happening or not."
Earlier this week, Tegnell told CNBC that the agency is "still very concerned about the elderly. It's the group we said we needed to protect," he said, noting that the agency was working with different homes to see how the risk factor could be lowered.
Tegnell also claimed up to 20 percent of residents in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, have been infected with the virus,
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
An article published on March 27 and co-written by two epidemiology professors at Sweden’s Lund University, explains: “Like in many other countries, the spread of COVID-19 is quite uneven in Sweden. Most cases have been diagnosed and treated in the greater Stockholm area, and lately also in the northern county of Jämtlanda popular destination for skiers. On the other hand, some other geographical areas are relatively spared, at least for the moment. In the third largest Swedish city, Malmö, still only a few cases have been hospitalised at the time of writing.
Tegnell also claimed up to 20 percent of residents in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, have been infected with the virus, noting “We believe that we have an immunity level, if I remember rightly, somewhere between 15-20 percent of the population in Stockholm.
“This is not complete herd immunity but it will definitely affect the reproduction rate and slow down the spread (of a second wave),” he added.
A good video if you have time to watch......
Note they let the doctor answer the question not like the media here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY
I believe it. Because of this shutdown kabuki here, we have actually made it worse under one pretense (saving millions of lives) to another (sparing hospital capacity). Who would have thought the Swedes would have been the level-headed pragmatists?
I prefer the New York approach..... let the virus completely spread through the population through arrogance and ineptitude, while the media cheers on our arrogant and inept leaders...and viola!....herd immunity achieved....sure, we had to break a few eggs to get there....and our arrogant and inept leaders will lie and say that the lockdown is the reason the numbers are going down.... but some of us New Yorkers can figure out the truth... and now that we’ve weathered the storm, we won’t have to tippy toe in fear of the spread of a suppressed virus
Lockdowns did nothing to help old people in New Jersey, New York, or Virginia, all of which allowed widespread contamination of nursing homes, leading to huge outbreaks and widespread death.
Shielding long-term care facilities is an entirely different task than locking up healthy people. We needed to implement full-scale testing of all workers and patients, a temporary quarantine of workers until we could get better testing in place, throw all the PPE at them so they could change with each patient, and build isolation wards so that positive cases could either be immediately moved out of the facility, or else moved to an isolated section of the facility, and treated by different people.
We did none of that. NEw York forced nursing homes to take positive cases, which led to a lot of infections. Virginia refuses to let anybody use HCQ or plasma, apparently.
The country has by far and away the highest death toll among Scandinavian countriesmore than double the number of cases in Denmark and nearly four times as much as in Finland.
Swedens population is equal to both those countries combined.
Just over 2000 deaths in a population of 10.5M people. So is your goal to eliminate deaths in a society at all cost? So how many deaths from this are too many for you in order to justify the self-imposed collapse of the economy?
Good questions, too bad nobody asked them before executing the economy.
[Just over 2000 deaths in a population of 10.5M people. So is your goal to eliminate deaths in a society at all cost? So how many deaths from this are too many for you in order to justify the self-imposed collapse of the economy?]
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publikationsarkiv/i/influenza-in-sweden/?pub=63511
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
Amazing! Like many of us said, healthy people will be able to live their life relatively normally and elderly or people with immune sissies take extra precautions.
Strange how they predict a 2nd wave while building heard immunity.
Sweeden is doing their own thing with regard to isolating. I think most people
are aware of it by now.
Here are some numbers to help us look at this issue.
I hate to say it, because I want people back at work, but it seems to me
that Sweden has shown what going back to work might wind up doing. I
don't think it has to be that way, if folks are careful. From what I've
seen it doesn't seem like the Swedish people are careful. I may be off
base on that though. I only know what I've seen presented in the limited
media I observe.
Finland is still looking good.
Additional:
The second wave comment may be true. Who knows...
As this plays out, it will be interesting to watch.
[You got charts? Yeah so do I. Are you that sure that this lock down policy was the right one, even at the misery and suffering of these many, many millions of Americans out of work for who knows how long? ]
For some perspective, note that Singapore’s government is doing a lockdown until June. Now, this government has not just a majority, but a 90% supermajority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Singapore
It doesn’t need to worry about political pressure from virus deaths. And yet this government, which presides over a country with no natural resources other than its people, and which imports all its oil and energy, has gone for a lockdown despite the hits to its economy. This is not a government known for making emotional decisions. It is doing lockdowns because it perceives the high likelihood of a serious death toll if a lockdown isn’t implemented.
Huge death tolls, they are. 2000 Swedish people have died out of 10,000,000. .02%. 2/100ths of a percent. I hate to trivialize the value of people’s lives, but a number that small is statistically insignificant. The rate of .02 percent is double the rate of .01%. If one bank offered an ineterest rate of .01% better than another bank, it wouldn’t be worth the time it takes to get the money out of one bank to put it in the other. The only use for sub fractional numbers is so you can trollscare people.
Without the lockdown we would never have lost 500,000 people in the US. We wouldn’t have lost even 200,000 people. We have probably saved maybe 8,000.
[Without the lockdown we would never have lost 500,000 people in the US. We wouldnt have lost even 200,000 people. We have probably saved maybe 8,000.]
More Fake News spin. Sweden’s daily death rate had been just above the US rate, but with this data it’s now nearly double, AND STILL CLIMBING. Their strategy could be described as “survival of the fittest”. Simply kill off the old and infirm. Of course, a second wave would be better. The weak will already be killed off.
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