Sweden steadfast in strategy even as virus toll continues rising

Washington Times ^ | 05/26/2020 | By DAVID KEYTON - Associated Press

[SeekAndFind]

STOCKHOLM (AP) - Sweden’s government defended its response to the COVID-19 global pandemic on Tuesday despite the Scandinavian country now reporting one of the highest mortality rates in the world with 4,125 fatalities, or about 40 deaths per 100,000 people.

“Transmission is slowing down, the treatment of COVID-19 patients in intensive care is decreasing significantly, and the rising death toll curve has been flattened,” Foreign Minister Ann Linde told foreign correspondents at a briefing in Stockholm. “There is no full lockdown of Sweden, but many parts of the Swedish society have shut down.”

More than 76,000 people have been made redundant since the outbreak of the disease and unemployment, which now stands at 7.9%, is expected to climb higher.

Sweden took a relatively soft approach to fighting the coronavirus, one that attracted international attention. Large gatherings were banned, but restaurants and schools for younger children have stayed open. The government has urged social distancing, and Swedes have largely complied.

But opponents to the government’s strategy gained an influential voice this week after the country’s former state epidemiologist, Annika Linde, expressed doubt about the strategy adopted by the Swedish health authority. She said that in retrospect she believes an early lockdown could have saved lives.

“Most likely, we would still be a bit worse off (than other Nordic countries), but better off than we are now, and we would possibly have gained time to prepare the strategy to protect the elderly,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Monday.

Sweden’s epidemiologist from 2005 to 2013, Linde headed the country’s response to swine flu and SARS and says she felt provoked by comments from a leading member of the health agency claiming Sweden’s strategy was the best in the world, irrespective of the number of deaths.

[sicsempertyrannisDenver]

The Left: Sweden is the model we should follow. They have socialized healthcare and schools and, and, and

Also the left: Sweden is gonna kill everyone off. We should never be like sweden

[wildcard_redneck]

I hope that Sweden has the guts to stay the course because they are making every other country in Europe and the Americas look like criminally incompetent fools.

[seastay]

Tolls always rises , its impossible for an accumulation of deaths to decrease unless they are brought back to life , and when that happens we wont need the media to tell us.

[dynoman]

“More than 76,000 people have been made redundant “

What??

[proxy_user]

This is British English - in the US we say “more than 76,000 people have been laid off”.

[Steve_Seattle]

Everybody’s “virus toll” keeps rising. But as a matter of fact, there are signs that Sweden is not only “bending the curve,” but may be on a slight downward trend, about where we were three weeks ago.

[WashingtonSource]

We have a number of plains states in the United States that never had a lockdown and never had any serious problem with the coronavirus. They are deliberately keeping a low profile, it seems, so as not to attract any attention.

[PeteB570]

Well, anybody that goes to their site will see they are clearly over the hump.

The top center section cycles through “New Cases” - “Total Cases” - “Intensive Care” and “Deaths per day”

Kvinnor = Female and Män = Man

Bottom center is cases by age group on the left and deaths by age group on the right.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

The Slimes. LOL. That rag isn’t worth pissing on.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Tolls always rise, its impossible for an accumulation of deaths to decrease unless they are brought back to life . . . "

Touché. Perhaps the author meant that Sweden hasn't "flattened the curve," but it actually might have already done that, and might be on the cusp of lowering the curve.

It looks to me that Sweden might be where we were about three weeks ago. At that point, the US was just at the end of a plateau of new cases and deaths, but since then we have seen a fairly steady decline in both.

[PeteB570]

“...But as a matter of fact, there are signs that Sweden is not only “bending the curve,” but may be on a slight downward trend, about where we were three weeks ago....”

They flattened it a few weeks ago and have been on a downhill slide.

See the link at my post # 9.

[Steve_Seattle]

I've looked at the county-by-county stats for about ten or fifteen states, and in all of them there are still a lot of counties with zero CV deaths and a lot more with fewer than five CV deaths. In most states, 90% of the CV cases and deaths are in about ten or fewer counties.

For example, as of two days ago, Ohio had 50 counties with fewer than five CV deaths, and 22 of those had none.

[jerod]

Sweden will be fine and they won’t be locking down... Because all ‘locked down’ countries are now opening up... They essentially have no choice. The world’s economy is likely going to take the better part of a decade to survive a two month shut down... And you can probably add five years of recovery time for every month longer that you remain shut down.

These unprecedented lock downs were biggest man made screw up in recorded human history.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

Sweden = Anti-Cuomo

[catnipman]

"despite the Scandinavian country now reporting one of the highest mortality rates in the world" that's a total lie; sweden is number six out of the top ten: " https://www.statista.com/chart/21170/coronavirus-death-rate-worldwide/

[USS Alaska]

40 deaths per 100,000 people = .0004 that is .04% which is a rounding error when it comes to causes for deaths.

Cancer, heart conditions, drug overdoses all kill way more than chi-com virus.

[rfp1234]

Obsolete!