Sweden did not lockdown its economy or close its schools in response to the coronavirus. They did ban gatherings of over 50 people. Sweden has been able to keep most of its economy open.
Sweden’s deaths per million from Coronavirus is lower than Italy, Spain, France, UK, Netherlands and Ireland. Sweden is only slightly worse than the USA and is better than 9 states.
Sweden did protect their seniors by not having visitors to senior centers.
This suggests that targeted lockdowns where the overall economy is open but the vulnerable populations are protected is workable. This is even without extensive contact tracing and testing.
It also shows that the Mayor of New York messed up badly by not canceling major events like Chinese New Year festivities.
It is better to contact trace and have monitored quarantines.
It is also better to wear masks and have better hand hygiene.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
I live in sweden and one of the bitter facts here is the disasterous death rate in ealderly homes.
Practicing social distancing in a crowd is difficult, even if you exclude those that don’t care about harming others or act intentionally to prove some delusional point. I’ve pretty much abandoned all hope of starting back up vacation travel this year.
And if there is no herd immunity because not enough survivors come out the other side with high levels of antigens? Be careful what you wish for!
LOL, Honestly thats more locked down then most places in the US effectively.
Dear smugger guy, We all die in the end, why not just off ourselves now right?
What EXACTLY do you think will happen to Sweden if the immunity turns out to be temporary, but they’ve gotten iss spread throughout their country?
Scientific proof COVID-19 create by America.
Documentary Proof: University of North Carolina Generated COVID-19
Documents below will show that research to create COVID 19 began in the United States in 2006 and culminated in a successful bio-weapon in 2015, with work done at the University of North Carolina and at Harvard and at the Food and Drug Administration’s lab in Arkansas.
Their work was titled:
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
COVID 19 was a US Army bio-weapons project to manufacture a pneumonia-causing disease that would be nearly impossible to vaccinate for in patients over 40 years old.
The study was run by the University of North Carolina and funded by USAID/CIA. It chose a Chinese bat virus and chose to include a medical facility in Wuhan as well.
Now we know why, a smokescreen of the blame for a program China had little or nothing to do with, something satanically evil and purely American.
Complete document
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/04/29/pravda-us-army-created-covid-19-in-2015-research-proofs-or-debunking-you-pick/
You know that healthcare costs money, do you? Which means that number of people dying prematurely is directly depending on economy’s health.
And objectively, there are a lot of cases when healthcare can make much bigger difference than the one between dying of pneumonia at 82 and dying of cancer at 83.
Every single living human is financially invested in not having a lockdown.
France has put in place a severe lockdown and for a population of 67 million has more than 24,000 deaths. Sweden with the same population would have 15470 so about 35% less deaths. Telling.
I didnt new sweden was an American state, but must be a low level Trump state and thus be at the botom of the list from the picture which we cannot scroll down..
They don’t test post morten and testing has been done in the area of Stockholm, where about half of Swedens corona victims are. In total, they tested about 0.7% of the population in Stockholm.
Interestingly, publicly available statistics shows that we probably underestimate the number of corona fatalities by a factor of two. By comparing the “normal” death rate of Stockholm to the actual one in the week 14 and 15 (and it got worse after that) we observe that officially 440 died of covid-19, but there was a surplus of 1040 dead in 2020. For the preceding weeks the death rates of 2020 were actually lower than the “average”.
Testing is not readily available; the state is not advocating or offering widespread testing. As of now, there are no private alternatives, so Sweden is going all in on “herd immunity”. And in the governments position is that testing is “unecessary” since allmost all are going to get it anyway. So why waste resources…?
Socialist Sweden is showing those dumb Taiwanese and South Koreans how to deal with a pandemic.
Sweden is showing those dumb Taiwanese and South Koreans how to deal with a pandemic.
Lockdowns are economically unsustainable. Looking long term, with the U.S. debt already over 20 TRILLION and climbing, all Americans (including me) are living on borrowed prosperity. COVID debt does just pushes our society faster towards collapse. There will come a day when the well finally runs dry. What happens then when the next pandemic hits? Perhaps instead of playing Chicken Little saying “the sky is falling!” we ought to try and find an economically sustainable approach to fighting a pandemic.
I’ve been the following the CDC stats for the U.S for about 6 weeks. The number of new cases on a daily basis has stayed steady that entire time. On average each day it’s been between 20-30 thousand new cases. There’d been no decline whatsoever. Using your argument there should have been a steady decline since early April. It has not happened.
The way things work is to explain why places that have *not* locked down are not showing substantially different curves. If the lockdown is the working mechanism then in *every* case you would see the same thing, and in *every* case of no lockdown, you’d see a substantial difference. Either the results follow lockdowns or they do not. If they don’t, then it’s not the lockdown wotdunnit, is it. And my point is that they don’t. In science and engineering the rule is that you have to be able to explain the stuff that doesn’t fit the model. If you can’t then you don’t know what you think you do. You just carry on with your presumptions and proof by repeated assertion, though.
If so, then why repeatedly does the rate of infection and deaths start declining 2-3 weeks after lockdowns are implemented? Where we agree is that if people follow social distancing and good hygiene all the time, then yes the R rate will also fall. The problem is that in densely populated areas, it’s virtually impossible to follow social distancing to the extent required while sustaining the economy. Try getting around
central London without using crowded public transport. If you enforced the required social distancing on public transport there, then the majority of people couldn’t get to work. Masks for all may help in this regard, but they are not perfect at stopping someone from infecting those nearby because they are not medical grade and fitted perfectly. If the virus gave everyone obvious symptoms social distancing and self isolation alone should work sufficiently well, but it appears the majority of those infected show few if any symptoms. Hence people spread the virus without meaning to in crowded and enclosed spaces, even when trying not to.
Where I’m from, it’s maths. I’m perfectly aware, having lived there for four years and working for an American company my entire career, that other nations, use math. I could say we invented the language and we get to decide, but I was just being sarcastic to the child I was replying to in the first place, since the child was making an inane comment about my maths skills.
Uh yeah, good to verify the proceeding premise. The more time the better…
As a general rule of thumb: if you are going to correct someone’s English, just type it into google first to make sure they aren’t, in fact, correct.
Medical history has got several diseases that appeared, were feared for a time, and then disappeared.
Old texts have doctors describing a disease, multiple sources give clear, consistent descriptions of a particular illness with some old time name like “purple malaise” or “the shaking” and then it just disappears and modern doctors have no idea what it was.
Hello, many thanks for this much information, I am really shocked, especially as to the public approach to the issue of face masks. How about testing, how easy is it to get tested in Sweden? And do they test post mortem?
“more death later” – assuming there will be no effective therapies in any foreseeable future, and so, that we didn’t already bought ourselves some more time for waiting. Also, some little fearmongering and panicking by the authorities did help to spread the good habits, otherwise here in PL most people just wouldn’t mind. We aren’t Swedish, by no means. 🙂
Salomob, African, actually IKEA has ten production facilities here in Poland, as it did for quite some time, even before the fall of communism.
This still shortens the time span between their removal of lock-downs and introduction of any actually efficient therapy or a vaccine. I don’t mind this virus rolling through an entire population if it stops producing this many deaths or permanent (pulmonary etc.) disabilities. Otherwise we can just continue counting dead bodies. Still countries will reopen soon just for the fear of having nothing to return to, after a prolonged lockdown. I think the fearmongering did work in my country (PL), for we’ve never been as disciplined as the Swedes.
If having a per capita death rate 50x more than S. Korea is considered a win then you’re right.
There is no app to to try to trace the spread of covid-19, not even now. One private company made an app for collecting data of the various symptoms of the decease. It was made in one week-end by a private entrepreneur for free, but neither the state nor the municipalities wanted it. In fact, the bureau of public safety ordered another state bureau to stop collecting data related to the symptoms.
The motivation was that it could “upset” the public (!) if such data was collected.
In nursing homes, the elderly is not given oxygen, since the personel is “not trained” to administer it. Administrators will not risk patients “turning on the oxygen too much”. Its only with patients that have very specific respiratory diseases (kol) that could possibly suffer from too much oxygen.
Instead – this is the icing on the cake – the elderly are offered morfine so that they can die in the nursing home without suffering. The cynicism is incredible: we will not help you survive but just ease your death. And we are not willing to bend one rule in an extraordinary situation to save you.
On the same vein only the young are connected to respirators. This is part of the official medical policy – or triage – that is distributed to hospitals. If you are old, you would have died anyway so why waste resources on you…
Borders. Compared to our neighbour counties – Finland, Norway and Denmark, – Sweden has closed it’s borders 1-2 weeks later. And still Sweden is taking refugees. Is that not a just a tad bit reckless?
Nobody is wearing a mask in public in Sweden. Nobody.
How come? Well, our great “expert” Anders Tegnell assured us that masks would not help in the beginning of the pandemic, with the motivation that it would not be perfect. Some air would flow beside the seals. How stupid is that? If you can reduce the rate of transmission in public by even a factor of two, is that not worth having?
Most likely, this was a lie to prevent people from hoarding mask with the intent of keeping the masks for the medical personel. But now, production has ramped up. There are several local suppliers that have factories with – literaly – hundreds of thousands of N95 masks stored in factores, ready for shipment. But minicipalities are not buying, and neither are companies or private citizens.
Let’s start with protecting the elderly. There has been no testing of the personel working at retirement homes, even today! That means that you have no means of preventing the decease to spread into the vulnerable retirees living there. Furthermore, the personel have not be equiped with masks, but can only use their normal apron or gloves.
In fact, when personel wants to bring their own masks to protect themselves, it has been construed as “refusal to work”. I.e. if care takers come to work with a mask they have been threatened by termination! It’s hard to imagine what drives the local administrators, but a fair guess is that “do not worry the elderly” by wearing a mask. The central government is clearly incompetent for not pushing for this right away, and now they don’t want to admit to their previous oversight so they can’t recommend it now.
Brian is missing an important point about Swedens handling of the corona virus: it has been extraordinarily incompetent. How large a portion of the deaths so far could have been avoided? 50% ? 80%?
By some obvious and simple measures a large portion of the deaths could have been avoided by some very obvious measures that were not taken, even while keeping the economy open:
In all of these areas, Sweden has been lacking. Moreover, the situation has been exacerbated by obvious lies and an unwillingness to admit to being wrong and doing better next time.
Ikea has – not counting local suppliers – most of its factories in Europe: Poland (12), Sweden (3), Russia (3), Slowakia (4), China (2), USA (1), Portugal (1), Hungary (1) and Lithuania (1). That’s 22 our of 28 factories located in Europe [1]….
Number of stores – the best proxy for sales that I can find – in Europe is 266 out of 456, i.e. a majority of the factories [2]. Which makes perfect sense: you locate the production of the cheap, heavy parts where they are sold (mostly Europe). The rest – LED-lamps, textiles, refrigerators – is probably sourced from China or other Asian countries. Note that a LED-lamp might be cheap, but it is not cheap by *weight*. Particle boards – the main building material of Ikea furniture – is dirt cheap per weight by comparison.
So if you buy a piece of furniture in the USA or Europe, you are most likely buying locally manufactured product. If you buy a LED-lamp, a freezer or a pillow, you are probably buying a Chinese made product, like in any other store.
Which brings me to your comment. You clearly had not done your research. Would it be too much to ask for you to gather your sources *before* making blanket statements? And yes, of course you owe me – and everybody else – an explanation/motivation for your broad statements if asked to…
(2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_IKEA_store
Your quote doesn’t actually say that most Ikea products are manufactured in China, only low cost countries. However, other sources I have found does mention China, both as a major market and as a major supplier. I have not found any explicit numbers detailing how much is produced where.
Ikea sells furniture but also other products, such as fridges, lamps (bulbs), plastic containers, textiles and other non-wood products. My guess is that China produces for the chinese market and the electronics (along with Malaysia and other countries). Perhaps China also produces textiles; difficult to know.
Ikea – under the name of “Swedwood” – manufactures in 9 countries [1]. The bulk of the factories seem to be in Europe, albeit in low cost countries.
(1)
https://inter.ikea.com/en/inter-ikea-group/ikea-industry/
” Manufacturing. Although IKEA household products and furniture are designed in Sweden, they are largely manufactured in developing countries to keep costs down. For most of its products, the final assembly is performed by the end-user (consumer).”
“The material is low cost and the production is highly automized.”
Exactly. The design is sent as a data bundle to the machine in whatever production area (translate that as developing country or call it the same name the Donald called it) they choose, and an underpaid semi slave puts a sheet of MDF into a machine which then does the manufacturing and when he takes the finished product out of the machine. Some semi slaves daughter wraps it and sticks a bag with some screws and an allen key on the box.
If I doubt something I see, hear or read. I look it up before I express my doubts. What prevented you from doing so? Do you think I owe you an explanation, Poophole.
Actually, “uh”, we don’t know what will happen. Will all nordic countries end up having the same death rate? We simply don’t know.
We only know that Sweden doesn’t have a chance of getting lower death rates than what is given by a “free” spread of the virus.
I dont believe that. Source please.
Furniture is heavy and cheap; we are talking about roughly 1-3 USD per kilo. The material is low cost and the production is highly automized. So it would be far more logical to have local production . Show some evidence….
The important point, i think, is how well the local medical system. in HK, we are free to get treatment and check when necessary. We have 5 continuous days of no new infection. The big proportions of infected person is coming back from overseas. Also HK has very dense population, but everyone wear mask. Thanks to our medical workers, though some are on strike.
Assuming, of course, that your hospitals don’t get overloaded. As has happened in multiple real world examples.
Any sensible country will have an ocean barrier around it.
Admittedly, for some places this may require some extensive digging, but they should have thought of that before establishing their current borders.
There is a reason that the Australian national anthem boasts “Our land is girt by sea” but nobody, nobody at all, boasts about “we share a land border with RUSSIA!”
These people are probably doing more to stop the spread than most countries in lockdown…they are just not being forced to. They are very cautious people. Look at their road fatality rate: 2.2/100,000. The US? 12.4/100,000. You have to go the Monaco or Micronesia to find lower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
OK, Norway beat them by a smidge.
I know people are out and about, most without masks around here, with our lockdown.
I think I am being realistic. The amount of effort directed at fighting this is just unprecedented. There are 90 vaccines in the works: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01221-y
One is already in stage 2 testing.
And all sorts of other things to treat the disease are being investigated.
Do you want to plunge the world into a period of 5-10 years of abject misery and economic depression to save 1-2 million? For 0.3% of the population? Because what you advocate requires the world to be locked up for 2 years. War and misery follows depression. As in war that will kill many multiples of millions. That’s Stalin level malevolence you’re exhibiting in the name of being a do-gooder. Keep your eye on the ball. Think.
Herd immunity cannot be reached without a vaccine. Without a vaccine you get a predator-prey logistic equilibrium. This is the reason why no contagious illness has ever been eradicated before the invention of vaccines. Even the plague has a persistent (albeit low) number of cases. Regards
Riddle me this. When the virus spreads wildly amongst the school and working age population if you got your way, who will protect the older generation from getting infected by their younger family and friends?
Since there is no reliable treatment yet, as you clearly assume from your logic about area under the curve, then many of those older folks will die in the next few months if there is no lockdown. There’s around 49m Americans over 65. Based on the latest mortality stats, covid mortality is between 5% and 20% for those over 65 (older being higher). Even using the lower bound 5%, that’s 2.5m deaths.
Even if we use the most optimistic assumption of actual infection rates, which lowers total population mortality to under 1%, population mortality rates for the over 65 population remain in the range of 2-10%, which equates to at least 1m deaths in the over 65’s in the coming months.
You want 1-2m deaths on your hands just so you can stop home schooling?
Why don’t you read the reports and model assumptions on the Imperial College website and then come back for a grown up debate. It’s about lowering the total number of deaths, not just those in the first wave, and the report explains the logic behind their policy recommendations.
By the way, it’s maths not math.
Models are just that, models. They are only as good as the assumptions used even if the logic is sound. This is a new virus, and still very little is known reliably about it. That’s why the output has changed week to week. You can only model based on your best available data. If you don’t like the results, then that’s your problem.
For a start, the output models don’t estimate mortality, that is an assumption based on the available data. At the time models like Imperial’s first started being shared in public, the assumed mortality rate was around 1%. There may or may not be evidence it’s lower based on community antibody testing, but that’s still an assumption, and it’s not yet proven. We are still arguing over the reliability of the antibody tests.
Secondly, I was talking about US deaths. In WWII, there were around 420k US deaths. That’s close to the estimated Covid19 death toll if only Swedish style social distancing were in place, and the mortality rate is around 1%.
And then some. Like models predicting a mortality rate of 5-6%. We have 6 million tested in the US with 1 million confirmed. That is a massive sample size and it is hard to argue sampling bias given the symptoms are nonspecific or nonexistent. Scaled up, this means that 50 million people [17%] are infected and about 60k have died so far. That is around 0.1% mortality rate.
“models showed”
Models showed and have shown a lot of things that never took place.
What we know is that the mortality rate is about 0.1%. You’re going to get that with or without a lockdown.
Note: MODELS predicted a mortality rate of about 5-6%. 50-60 times that amount.
There are about 50 million people in the US estimated to be infected from the virus. Even if you scaled that up to everyone becoming infected, the fatalities would be around 300k.
“These are numbers of deaths not seen since WWII”
The event that killed 70 million people.
There is a difference between having a treatment that is FDA approved, after full clinical trials and widely available with full side effect profile known and one that is in the works.
They have left and right because it goes against healthcare agency guidelines.
Note: Goes against them. The video of Dr.Dan Erickson was NOT medically or scientifically unsound. Sequesting those two doctors, along with others across the country that are warning of the hazards posed by prolonged lockdown despite what they are seeing in clinic[not what we thought we would] is EXACTLY how this virus spread in Wuhan- sequestering and intimidating the people that are on the frontlines.
For the record, there were follow ups to their video by experts. One was an immunologist. If you want a physician’s perspective, I can tell you why their rebuttal to the Erickson video made no sense.
Of course he didn’t and shouldn’t.
Sweden did not lock down.
The others did.
Naturally, their mortality rate is higher because their infection rate is higher.
For NOW.
As soon as they open shop, what do you think will happen, Einstein?
As the population is developing herd immunity, the virus should also be evolving to be less lethal. Symptomless carriers are much more likely to spread the virus than those with a severe reaction, so the flatter the wave, the less rough it will be on the downslope. Meanwhile dozens of teams are working on a vaccine, so maybe those thousands of deaths later on won’t happen at all, if it’s slowed enough.
Well Mr Glass-Half-Full, I’m happy you have such confidence. 🙂
Speaking of positivity, I’m looking at CDC data showing a very low death rate for under 55 unless obese or heart problems, so I’m thinking it’s time to put most of the <55 group back to work monday. And as a side note — as an involuntary home-schooler, I want the schools to reopen… yesterday.
It’s not a very useful comparison, try looking at overlapping curves, ourworldindata.org
Treatments will come that reduce deaths to a small fraction of the current level. Maybe it will be CAP-1002 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/capricor-data-reports-100-percent-131510422.html
Maybe it will be famotidine: https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/famotidine-heartburn-drug-coronavirus
Unless we wait, they won’t know what to give people…beyond oxygen. It will be a lottery. Some people will get lucky, while many more will not. With time to complete studies, they will know what to give people. They might even have 3 or 4 choices and with that choice be better able to reduce risk due to some underlying condition.
Thumbs up
That’s what I said… the order for elderly herein Colorado is to stay home. Don’t have concerts and big sports cuz that’s stupid. Keep your social distance cuz flatter is better
For those that think that a lock down doesn’t matter because the same number of people will die from COVID-19 in the longterm. I say that’s absolute bunk because the treatments will improve with time (they already are starting to improve) and hopefully an effective vaccine will be created (the current indications are that this will happen.)
PS. I don’t a follow up on any replies because the reply feature doesn’t work for me… so shout your lungs out, I don’t care.
According to one Swedish official, Sweden didn’t need an official lock down, the Swedish Government made recommendations and the Swedish people being sensible followed them without the need of an official lock down.
No. At first it was correct because there was no data on who was affected. But now that it’s known who is at risk, you quarantine THEM and let everyone else loose to do their work.
Dear Smug guy, you’re trading low death count now for more death later. If COVID is in your country at all and has a death rate of 0.5% then you’re going to lose 0.5% now or you’re going to lose 0.5% over time until herd immunity is reached. But you’re going to lose 0.5% of the population one way or another.
if you locked down and they didn’t, then what do you think is going to happen to your infection/death rates when you open up?
You are wrong. There is zero evidence that lockdown has done anything. We have lower death counts than anticipated as much as because the virus only successfully attacks the compromised and the elderly. Hand washing and masks and physical separation are probably what DOES work. You do not know that lockdown made any actual difference. Lockdown does do one thing quite well, however: murder the economy.
We have 6 million tested in the US, with 1 million positive. That is 2% of the population. Great sample size and the disease either presents with no symptoms or non-specific symptoms. This makes sampling bias unlikely.
So, extrapolating that, 17% rate, we have 50 million in the US that are infected. With a mortality rate around 50k, that is a mortality rate of 0.1%.
well, yea, because they didn’t lock down. As soon as Norway opens up, what do you think is going to happen to those infection/death rates?
They fully planned this.
Protecting the elderly? What good are lockdowns in nursing homes where they are useless?
The numbers you cite are utter nonsense from the earliest model guesses, but so what… the numbers will be the numbers. You just can’t seem to get it. It’s called math. If you do not have herd immunity then high numbers will die in each wave until herd immunity is reached. Curve flattening is merely putting off deaths until the next wave starts up. What Sweden is doing is hoping enough get a low dose and this low dose helps develops the immunity. If so then Sweden will not experience a second or third or fourth wave causing even more deaths. Lockdown countries will. If the basic math says ‘n’ will die in the road to herd immunity, then ‘n’ doesn’t change. You will still see the same count of deaths, just over a longer period than Sweden.
You’re doing a fine job comparing apples to earthworms. We were told that lockdown was required to prevent overwhelming the health system. Sweden’s healthcare system has yet to be whelmed, much less overwhelmed. In the US we have Fauci nattering about a 2nd wave. The “flatten the curve” nonsense has been interpreted by some to declare victory over the apostate Swedes. No. Math says that the area under the curve does not change, meaning the number of deaths does not change. That means Sweden can elect to go for more pain now in an effort for her immunity and reduce future pain… or they can be like the USA where the death count in the 2nd wave (no herd immunity) will equal that of the first. Misery stretched out *and* murdering the economy (curve flattening at present) vs misery on speed dial but an intact economy. You write as if Sweden will experience more deaths per capita overall etc than anyone else. This is wrong. Do the math (if you can.) US policy is premised on assumption of quick vaccine. There is no vaccine. Nor will one come soon. There is one way out of this. Herd immunity.
Deaths are a lagging indicator and they are pretty clearly down from the peak which being charitable to you would be two weeks ago.
# of new cases isn’t the best indicator. Deaths are a bit harder to massage unless Sweden is reclassifying people who die with the ‘rona as some other death. I find this to be unlikely in a country like Sweden.
J.O. : Jonestown Onanist
Lets face it the non elderly with no co morbidity were not affected very much anywhere else either.
When politicians and medics introduced lockdowns it was to “flatten the wave” (to prevent the medical system from getting overwhelmed) that doesn’t mean it will stop the tide. Will the other countries arrive at the same number of fatalities eventually? We will know more by the end of the year if we are still around.
I live in New Zealand an insular country with a small population and we will probably able to stop – eradicate it. But bigger countries with lively cross border traffic that is hard to control ???
Most of IKEA design is done in Sweden, the headquarters are in Holland and manufacturing is outsourced to China. Wuhan here you come.
Did you just say that people are idiots for thinking that their country is superior to another, but actually Sweden is superior to others?
No. The logical extension is we should have exposed all the young healthy people with almost no risk of harm like Sweden did and build herd immunity. We then open seniors back up to contact. Now we have no heard immunity and are starting to open back up. If I am in a nursing home and you say I have to go into solitary confinement for 2 years then piss on it. The avg lifespan in a nursing home is 2 years anyway. Whats the point of a not tech savy senior rotting in solitary?
J.O.?
Well, the more we flatten our curve, the less steep it can get later as there is more herd immunity. If we just quarantined the elderly back in February, we surely would have still overwhelmed the health care system. Now we see sensible openings of things in the States with elderly still mandated to stay home. So in effect, we are probably doing the right thing.
took down this video:
bitchute.com/video/WLp53rpJ2B7i
“Millions of cases. Small amount of death”
People forget that every year around 60 million people die as a normal course of things. Death is a fact of life. Like stupid chickens, people panic when they hear that a few thousand people are sick or have died. This whole shut down of the world economy is ludicrous. It’s exposing the fallacy of the over-protective nanny-state. It’s just another excuse to pay out trillions to their cronies and further enslave the world. People are being fooled by the numbers because they can’t grasp how many humans actually exist on the planet. So what if 200,000 people have died out of 7,700,000,000. ~85 million more will have been added this year.
I’ve listened to enough of his press conferences to say that he never says that he did nothing.
The largest failing of the federal government was the CDC botching the initial tests and the FDA standing in the way of the private sector doing testing.
Models don’t show, they predict and often poorly.
More to the point there is NYC-Long Island-Jersey-Philadelphia and then there is the rest of the country.
The rest of the country is doing rather well compared to the Tri-State Hotzone.
Better still starting TODAY NYC will sanitize the subway cars every night! This would have been really good to do… say 45 days ago.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495279-cuomo-orders-nyc-subway-trains-sanitized-every-night
Its day 45 of New York Lockdown and Mayor Cuomo has asked the MTA to start cleaning the subways every night.
So that’s right. 45 days in to being a pandemic hotzone the governor pushes to start sanitizing the subways on a daily basis, to say nothing of NY’s policy of sending elderly covid patients back to nursing homes so they can infect others.
I don’t really know what Trump has done that compares to those.
The media’s chattering focus is on one problem, when there are a million other problems waiting in the wings. Lockdowns are killing people. It is a disgrace to quarantine strong healthy young people and bankrupt hospitals for a hopped up coronavirus from China.
I am disgusted at the pajama boy J.O.s who are praying for Sweden to collapse. These doom wishers are a waste of good air.
New York has terrible leaders at state and local levels. A very bad habit.
Models showed that without any lockdown or social distancing, around 2.2 million would have died in the US in 3 months. That’s assuming the healthcare system didn’t collapse at the same time from the 20 million who would have been very sick. Applying Swedish style measures alone would have cut the death rate to around half a million. These are numbers of deaths not seen since WWII
We don’t know the mortality rate in any country, yet. We could have up to 50x more infected than we know about, some studies show. This will rate as a bad flu season. Many dead, yes, but it’s the same group of people who are vulnerable to the flu and other diseases. U.S. should never have gone down the response road it did. Target hot spots, and those at risk to be careful.
These figures you mention are with lock down and social distancing. What would the death toll be without those measures once our health services were overwhelmed? I personally am happy we did not find out. My family have quite a few elderly that would not have survived this disease, and considering that statistically this disease time period will be a blip on a long term graph I call it a win.
Well over 90% of deaths from this disease are from people over 50 years old, so really we are protecting our massive elderly population more than anything. By a logical extension of your argument, we should let the disease decimate them, or worse, just to save money on Social Security and Medicare and damage to our economy from these programs.
Corollary:
Every simplistic gun culture argument that compares other countries with the USA as a pro or con to the USA’s gun crime problem. There’s no other USA to compare with. No other country has the history or culture of the USA.
>> Every simplistic quarantine culture argument that compares Sweden with other countries and tries to hinge it on something else than culture. Never mind the non arguments that feed on the gutter below that fallacious debate: that you’re a sheep or that you’re just a sore loser, or whatever crass noise.
For your sake, I hope failure to see sarcasm is not extinction!
Morons the world over using whatever sophistic means to simplify whatever facts to fit their version of “us vs them”
e.g. “sheep” “deep state” “hate” etc. The same kind of sophistic BS down in kindergarten as up in the White House: e.g. blame others for what you yourself are doing. The same kind of trashy noise and gish gallop you have from 4chan and video game warriors and twitter and youtube trolls. Keyboard nonsense you never have to be accountable for but can spam and pollute with.
Sweden has “better” discipline. That’s all there is to it. Same as ever: culture. Culture is the only single factor, not whatever self-serving bigotted conspiracy. Not the idiots in Russia or the M-E hating on the USA, not idiots in the USA hating on Russia or brown people countries they’ve never visited, not Christians nor Jews nor whatever idiotic navel gazing “Us vs Them” noise.
Culture is the difference between a good and crappy future. Between a social group (micro or macro) surviving and being healthy and good to each other, and not.
Morons with keyboards using every comment section as some zero sum game are not “good”, even if they BS’d their way to the white house. They’re no better than sophists ever were in all of history.
There’s plenty of material wealth for everyone. And space, and time. And sci + tech, which is the same thing in different dimensions: extracting local order from general entropy.
Sophistry is entropy. So is being less than good to others.
Yeah, Cuomo turned the nursing homes in to ‘charnel houses’… We always knew they were bone-yards, but active houses of death?
“Cobble Hill Health Center CEO Donny Tuchman e-mailed four officials to report that his facility had over 50 symptomatic patients scattered through the building an almost no gows and warned that there is no way for us to prevent the spread under these conditions…. Someone wrote back 20 minutes later – with a standard attachment offering advice on how to conserve PPE. (In reply, Tuchman repeated the fact that Cobble Hill didn’t have anything to conserve.)
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/the_wuhan_virus_reveals_the_rot_in_americas_democratrun_cities.html?fbclid=IwAR01aFI0C_J5VTR_H2JHTo46FMJ7TxVnDb3apiBXT_3v5H2wwI-TTMnvyNY
I think the purpose of the article was to show difference between lockdown and no lockdown. Norway, Denmark and Finland had more lockdown than Sweden, hence why the author chose to compare Sweden and US.
The debate about “our” strategy here in Sweden is quite intense.
I think the truth is more simple, we cant lookdown, it would collapse the system.
The elderly/retirement homes, has been poorly protected, due too weak municipal manegement.
I belive South korea is doing, what we all sholuld be doing. track trace small lock downs.
It’s killed 2400 people in Sweden. Smoking in Sweden kills 12,000 people per year. I would say they are doing pretty well on Covid. Maybe start at the top of preventable diseases and work your way down. Heap scorn upon them for their smoking strategy, obesity, suicide. After you have corrected all those bigger issues then start thinking about shutting down economies are ripping peoples rights away. It’s not like we have examples of where authoritarian governments in Europe lead……
Are you kidding? 70,000 US deaths projected compared with 38,000 car deaths per year. It’s like saying feel free to go ride in a car. Which everyone does…. Also if you are young and healthy cars would be much riskier than kissing someone with covid. The funniest thing about it is people like you claim to be relying on the “Science.” I wish a statistic teacher took you aside and had a chat.
Isn’t that what mzs11200 was saying? That the US has incompetent leaders? Giving an example of incompetent American leaders doesn’t disprove that at all.
Most of the infections happened in immigrant areas and in care homes where a lot of immigrants work.
Non-elderly native Swedes were not affected as much.
Darwin is happy to take you to one side and have a word with you – feel free to go out and swap spit.
I’m from Poland a country with the most serious lockdown on the planet and one of lowest COVID infections per million (google that). Sweden rate of infection and death is an order of magnitude higher. But apparently their propaganda works way better, you would not but your IKEA Blomvasger lamp from an infected country would’t you?
He will tout Sweden, then say he was right to do nothing, then see that Sweden is a mess, then try to say he did not do nothing. . . . He will look bad, just like a neurotic power addict.
If you look on the map of z-scores on that site, you’ll see Sweden has “Very high excess deaths” compared to neighbouring countries, which is consistent with the COVID data, in that Sweden has a much higher death rate from COVID than Norway, Finland and Denmark.
Both, as is rational.
So how many days is “several days” then?
You seem very emotionally invested in finding a reason not to have a lockdown. Or is it financially invested? It’s hard to tell.
I don’t believe the COVID 19 death statistics can be trusted. They are open for manipulation.
It is better to look at the excess mortality:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#z-scores-by-country
Sweden had some excess mortality but not as extreme as Spain, UK and others. Also, it looks like it is going down now.
The decline covers more than just the last few days. People hoping for Sweden’s failure, of course, will grasp at any loophole.
Life savings are no use to the dead.
Lol, I never mentioned Trump. Projecting much?
The decline has been steady now for almost 2 weeks. Hopes for Sweden’s failure are being dashed.
“The 7-day moving average of Sweden’s deaths and ICU cases have been declining since April 16.” Wrong in that the last week of official data is incomplete.
Did you read this bit: “Reports of new intensive care hospitalisations to the Public Health Agency might be delayed by up to several days, especially around weekends, possibly introducing delays in reported number of cases for the last few days. Data on demographics are updated weekly with a delay of several days.”?
A 7-day moving average for deaths and ICU cases in Sweden show steady decline since April 16. See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Sweden#Statistics
The “greater good of the economy” means the greater good of people’s lives — damage it and you seriously damage people’s livelihoods, life savings, hope for their children, and, on the margins, people die.
You sound like someone who has tried to tell people about Janov!
Why do you hate Trump?
2355 people in Sweden have just died from a horrific disease. Go tell their families that it was necessary for the greater good of the economy.
The 7-day moving average of Sweden’s deaths and ICU cases have been declining since April 16. It looks like people who are emotionally invested in the lockdown are just as emotionally invested in hoping that the Swedish example will fail. But it’s not failing now, and it will look even better when the full accounting of economic and social costs are made.
for Sweden is immense. Just cos Sweden used common sense and are now in a powerful position there is much bitterness amongst the sheep.
Take a closer look at what actually is happening in Sweden. The death count in Sweden seems to bounce around, but certainly not going down yet. Sweden has 19,621 confirmed cases and 2,355 deaths – for a country of 10.2 million. Currently, half the country lives in single person households, half the country is working form home, PT usage down by 50%, foot traffic down by 70%. So, even though they aren’t in an official lock-down, regular Swedes are doing their own social distancing en masse.
They didn’t protect their elderly that well, I’m fairly sure the virus got into a lot of aged care homes.
The Swedish economy will still go into recession. Perhaps it will be much less bad than everywhere else, but we won’t know for a few years I guess.
In Sweden the numbers are still increasing, in Italy, Spain, France, UK, Netherlands and Ireland the numbers are going down.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-cases-per-million?tab=chart&year=2020-04-25&country=SWE+GBR+FRA+IRL+NLD+ITA+ESP
Of course, Brian didn’t compare Sweden to its neighbours – he compared it to the UK & Netherlands (much more densely populated, connected, and urbanised countries) and Italy & Spain (which bore the worst of the pandemic at the start with the least time to prepare.)
Why wouldn’t you compare Sweden with Norway?
Getottahere. Did you even read this article? De Blasio ran around Chinatown in March (!) telling people to go out and have fun. No worries! Just exactly what scientific insights was he drawing on? You should be embarrassed of your hate.
Funny outside of New York America’s healthcare systems seems to have done as well as Germany’s has…funny that.
Also give me a break. This coming from the same people who blather on about heteronormativity and how gender us a choice.
Science to many people is like a religion. As long as it benefits them they are willing to wail and cry and shout heresy but when it isn’t they can act like they “knew it all along” or simply ignore, logic, reason and the scientific method all together.
Yesterday Sweden recorded 81 new deaths. The other three countries recorded 13 new deaths between them
Sweden’s infection and death rate is far, far higher than its neighbours – Norway, Denmark and Finland:
Deaths:
Sweden: 2355 (pop 10m)
Norway: 206 (pop 5m)
Finland: 199 (pop 5.5m)
Denmark: 434 (pop 5.7m)
If you were going to single out a Nordic country for having a successful strategy, Sweden is the last one you’d pick.
The fact that it’s still not as terrible as the US just shows how late and piecemeal the US response was, not how well Sweden performed.
Sweden used common sense and they didn’t fall for the nonsensical hysteria.
The so called Swedish strategy was not really a strategy.
Just a lack of preparations, readiness and lack of resources, lack of equipment etc. The health care system was in collapse before this started. The authorities had no control over anything except the media so what’s happening is a result of that. All actions were taken too late by paralyzed leaders.
They failed miserably protecting the elderly. The virus has infected a majority of the institutions for senior care.
That’s really funny!
Google Stefan Löfwén. The most incompetent leader imaginable. He tried to start his career as a welder but unfortunately, it was too difficult so he became a politician. No education and never had a real job.
Sweden also has something the US doesn’t have…. A leader who respects basic science. They also have a functional healthcare system, but y’all aren’t ready for that conversation…
春暖花开，下次再来！