Posted on 05/22/2020 8:54:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Just 7.3% of Stockholm's residents have developed coronavirus antibodies by April's end amid Sweden's bid for herd immunity, a new study reveals. Sweden was one of a handful of countries that did not implement a lockdown to curb the pandemic even as much of the world shut down.
The results of the study, from 1,118 tests conducted by Sweden's Public Health Agency, is raising concerns over the country's hesitation to set strict measures to slow down the risks of transmissions. Its approach had come in for praise from the WHO, which called the country a "model" for battling the virus. That praise is beginning to now look more like some of the other misguided advice by the global health body over pandemic, which has raise U.S. President Donald Trump's ire.
The country's chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said in a press conference that the percentage was lower than expected. "But not remarkably lower, maybe one or a couple of percent," Tegnell said. "It squares pretty well with the models we have."
Sweden will still carry out the same number of tests every week, for an eight-week period.
Experts say that to achieve herd immunity, 70% to 90% of the population should have caught the virus and developed antibodies to it. Michael Mina of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health said in a recent interview for The World that no community has successfully achieved herd immunity without a vaccine.
Tom Britton, the math professor who helped developed the prediction model for Sweden's Public Health Agency, previously forecasted that 25% of the population should have been infected by May 1. He also predicted that the second wave of COVID-19 will come in autumn, but Sweden's infection rate will be lower.
Britton is now saying that that they might have made a mistake in their calculations.
"It means either the calculations made by the agency and myself are quite wrong, which is possible, but if that’s the case it’s surprising they are so wrong,” Britton said. “Or more people have been infected than developed antibodies.”
Figures from the Johns Hopkins University & Medicine show that Sweden has one of the highest deaths per capita, trailing Spain, Italy, France and the U.K. As of May 21, Sweden has 32,172 coronavirus cases and 3,871 deaths, involving mostly the older population.
Compared to most European countries, Sweden didn't close businesses and schools. Residents, however, were told to avoid long travels and the government emphasized that it's every individual's personal responsibility to avoid contracting COVID-19.
The government has insisted that its strategy against COVID-19 will work. Bjorn Olsen of the Uppsala University in Sweden said that reaching herd immunity is "a long way off” based on the study’s findings.
OR maybe it means the virus isn’t as virulent as the “experts” thought.
The purpose of the headline is to make us think that what Sweden failed, and that all must slavishly bow down in submission and put on our stupid masks and avoid people.
The mag is as trustworthy as forbes, time and teen vogue.
I never said that.
I actually said (if you keep reading my post) that they had a more sane response to COVID-19 than we did. It just didn’t save their economy. Sweden is running a socialist welfare state where the government runs a huge chunk of the major industries and even without a lockdown, it’s doomed to failure. I just wish people would focus more on how their social distancing measures (which didn’t include a lockdown) kept the spread in check just fine (no overwhelmed hospitals) rather than trying to hold up Sweden as some sort of economic success story.
Their hospitals aren’t packed full of people, but their economy is still failing. Their death rate looks bad today because they did nothing to protect the nursing homes. Aside from that mistake, their COVID-19 response was fine. Let businesses continue to operate with social distancing rules in place and protect the vulnerable. You get the best possible outcome with the fewest unnecessary casualties.
“we did not save anybody in this country...not one....”
I think you are totally wrong on this point. A lot of people are still alive because of distancing rules, but there is still plenty of time to catch it and die an early death.
But what’s the death rate?
People develop anti-bodies after being infected. So this article is essentially complaining that not enough Swedes are getting coronavirus despite NOT having a government-imposed lockdown. The implication is that an economy-destroying lockdown would have INCREASED infection rates and thus the percentage who have anti-bodies.
Doesn’t the antibody data sort of imply that covid19 isn’t nearly as contagious as hyped?
OR maybe the social distancing measures Sweden mandated since the beginning (including no bar service at bars and restaurants) work just fine and you don’t need a lockdown. That’s the lesson I take from this: lockdowns don’t do much more than basic social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19. If you can just have people who are sick stay home and people who don’t have any symptoms keep some distance and wash their hands, your hospitals don’t get overwhelmed like what happened in Italy.
Sweden’s death rate would be much lower if they’d made any effort to protect the vulnerable (particularly those in nursing homes).
RE: OR maybe it means the virus isn’t as virulent as the “experts” thought.
That was one of the thoughts that came to my mind.
Antibodies means that the person has been infected and his body has more or less, fought the disease, but why are there less than 10% infections when there is no lockdown?
Could that not mean that the virus is not as infectious as we originally feared?
It would seem this is a good thing. They didn’t shut down their country, they didn’t have massive numbers of death and not many people caught the virus. It shows the virus is not very contagious. Guess we’re not allowed to see any good when it comes to Covid. Kind of like AGW. Whatever happens it’s always bad.
EXACTLY!
That and it shows that Sane Practical measures work just fine without locking down.
Sounds like both of her statements are contrary to what every other doctor says. So of course she is the new FR armchair expert.
RE: your hospitals don’t get overwhelmed like what happened in Italy.
I wonder whether the Italian culture of giving HUGS have anything to do with the virus’ spread...
Sweden is doing fine. As long as old people and Nursing homes keep out of harms way, everything will be fine in Sweden.
Probably. Just like the threat of lockdowns inspiring mass panic-buying at Costco and grocery stores across the nation did plenty to help spreading it here.
They started talking about lockdowns, people assumed that meant you were forcibly locked in your home like what China did to their people, didn’t want to starve to death, so they swarmed Costco and Walmart and grocery stores around the country in a total panic. We packed everyone in the country into small confined spaces at the start of a pandemic and we wonder why our numbers blew up. If we had reassured everyone that nothing was closing and you could just make small modifications to your daily life, we’d probably have seen much lower numbers from this thing. To say nothing of the economic damage and the deaths from poverty that will come next.
On the FACE OF IT something doesn’t square here.
The other conclusion we might draw from Sweden’s testing is that COVID isn’t that easy to ‘catch’. We’re learning more about this virus every week, and much of what we ‘thought we knew’ was simply wrong.
The ONLY way to certify any percentage of a population with antibodies is to have tested 100% of the population. Any other number is the equivalent of a television Nielsen rating and monster WAG.
Actually she is in agreement with, for example, the research papers on Vitamin C which demonstrate that it is a potent natural antiviral for ANY virus. Including coronavirus.
People who like vaccines should take them. Just don’t try to force the rest of us.
Herd immunity was never their goal per an interview I heard w their ambassador to the U.S.
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