Posted on 05/17/2020 2:55:50 PM PDT by thecodont
By late March, nearly every country in Europe had closed schools and businesses, restricted travel and ordered citizens to stay home. But one country stood out for its decision to stay open: Sweden.
The country’s moderated response to the coronavirus outbreak has drawn praise from some U.S. politicians, who see Sweden as a possible model for the United States as it begins to reopen.
“We need to observe with an open mind what went on in Sweden, where the kids kept going to school,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, said at a hearing Tuesday.
But while Sweden has avoided the devastating tolls of outbreaks in Italy, Spain and Britain, it also has seen an extraordinary increase in deaths, mortality data show.
In Stockholm, where the virus spread through migrant communities, more than twice the usual number of people died last month. That increase far surpasses the rise in deaths in U.S. cities like Boston and Chicago, and approaches the increase seen in Paris.
[...]
Swedish public health officials have defended their strategy, while acknowledging that the country has failed to protect the elderly. The goal is to limit the spread of the infection without having to lock everything down, they said.
“Once you get into a lockdown, it’s difficult to get out of it,” said Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell. “How do you reopen? When?”
Instead of imposing strict lockdowns, public health officials said that Swedes could be relied on to go out less and follow sanitation guidelines. That proved to be true: As a whole, Swedes visited restaurants, retail shops and other recreation spots almost as little as residents of neighboring countries, according to Google mobility figures.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
88 as of today, from Doughty One.
Restaurants in the UK France Italy and Spain were totally shut for months. They had ZERO costumers.
“virus spread through migrant communities”
Are those the no-go Muslim communities?
I still haven’t seen well examined context for the CDC data about pneumonia to really understand what’s driving the numbers and what they mean.
In any case, what’s becoming clear is that COVID-19 is a tale of two cases: either you’re overall pretty healthy and COVID-19 doesn’t have much of any impact on you, or you have some underlying conditions and COVID-19 kills you. In other words, if you have any weakness in your body’s ability to fight it, a COVID-19 infection can very easily become deadly. If you’re older, obese, malnourished, or have some other sickness or medical problem, COVID-19 can be a major problem for you. If you’re pretty healthy, it’s probably no big deal for you. Problem is, we have a lot of unhealthy Americans and I worry for them.
“Right now Sweden is running 100 more deaths per million than we are.’
sweden’s population is about equal to New Jersey’s, so if your figure is accurate, that would be an extra 1,000 deaths ...
‘I’m not on the Sweden bandwagon though.’
gee, really...? who knew...? you’re giddy running all your numbers about Sweden’s incompetence, who’d have thought you weren’t a fan...?
There is zero evidence that the economic damage in Sweden is significantly less than the rest of Europe.
I think a major problem is that people have forgotten how things like TB and Smallpox operated so regularly and without warning in American society (along with everywhere else in the world) for so long. Polio as well. Most of those alive today have no memory of what it was like before vaccines shielded us from these terrible things. The pervasive fear among parents that a Polio outbreak could kill their children or leave them maimed for life. The horror of reading about hospitals filling with patients who were sick and dying. We got vaccines for these things and they went away.
Now people are refusing vaccines, convinced they don’t do anything or that they’re poison. They have that luxury, having never experienced the wrath of Smallpox or Polio first-hand. Just some myth in a fake history book I suppose, repeated by us old farts too senile to remember correctly.
UK 511
Italy 528
Spain 591
France 431
NY 1456
NJ 1157
Michigan 490
Sweden 365
Sweden is VASTLY better off than New York, New Jersey. And better off than the UK France Italy and Spain and all with no lockdowns.
Sweden's death rate per 100,000 is slightly higher than nearby Finland and Norway, both of which did have a full shutdown.
Slightly higher.
I think the evidence is pointing to the fact that social distancing, forcing everyone to either work from home or be laid off, and wearing masks for the few times you are permitted to leave your home is no more effective than common sense behaviors like staying home if you are ill, and staying away from the elderly and other vulnerable segments of the population.
See fact #3.
In Stockholm, where the virus spread through migrant communities, more than twice the usual number of people died last month.
Maybe if they had stayed in their own country instead of living off the Swedish taxpayer, they’d all still be alive.
Swedish public health officials have defended their strategy, while acknowledging that the country has failed to protect the elderly.......Swedish public health officials have defended their strategy, while acknowledging that the country has failed to protect the elderly, just like the Governor of New York and Mayor of NYC, Governor of New Jersey, Governor of Washington, Governor of Pennsylvania, Governor of Massachusetts...fixed it.
Nope, just the epidemics this country has endured without media hype or shutdowns in yours and mine lifetimes over the past 50 years......to make it simple for you, lets just deal with the 2009 Swine Flu and the 2017-18 shall we?
Don't you find it odd that you survived each and everyone of them and are still alive...?....And I'll bet you never wore a protective mask for either of them.....Am I right?
LOL!
Hopefully yours is too or you're typing from the grave.........And that would be pretty damn creepy......
More deaths now less deaths later. But once this thing flattens the per capita death tolls will be similar.
The US decided to drag the death count out over a few years so we will have to wait sometime for the reapers harvest.
Hey, NYTimes. You do understand that we’re working with curves, right? What Sweden was doing was accepting steeper infection & mortality on the front-end of the curves in return for a quick steep recovery on the other side. We’re just getting to the top of the roller coaster ride now. Sweden’s payoff is yet to come.
Everybody else is accepting casualties over a longer period. The area under the curve is probably the same. But the flatter peak helps the healthcare system.
Jeeze, NYTimes... keep you eyes on the ball and present a fact of 2 that doesn’t fit your preconceived notions.
Perhaps Sweden has far more “health capital” than countries like Italy and Spain? Gotta start thinking beyond the casualty inputs and start considering the infrastructure.
The tests are garbage. My mother died less than 2 weeks ago. First test: Negative. Second test (not the quick-test): Positive. She died an hour after I got the lab results. 81 years old. Alzheimers for 10 years.
** I don’t think the shut down was a bad idea during the first 30 days when we had no idea what we were dealing with. **
In other words, Democrat governors ‘declared war’ without an exit strategy. Rather that their strategy isn’t sufficiently flexible to deal with changing circumstances. I’m looking at you Gov. Wolf (you slope shouldered incompetent).
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