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Sweden wins by staying open


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2020 Apr 20, 9:49pm   2,335 views  64 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-swedish-experiment-looks-like-it-s-paying-off

20 April 2020, 2:37pm

Two weeks ago, I wrote about ‘The Swedish experiment’ in The Spectator. As the world went into lockdown, Sweden opted for a different approach to tackling coronavirus: cities, schools and restaurants have remained open. This was judged by critics to be utterly foolish: it would allow the virus to spread much faster than elsewhere, we were told, leading to tens of thousands of deaths. Hospitals would become like warzones. As Sweden was two weeks behind the UK on the epidemic curve, most British experts said we’d pay the price for our approach when we were at the peak. Come back in two weeks, I was told. Let's see what you're saying then. So here I am.

I'm happy to say that those fears haven’t materialised. But the pressure on Sweden to change tack hasn’t gone away. We haven't u-turned. We’re careful, staying inside a lot more. But schools and shops remain open. Unlike some countries on the continent, no one is asking for ‘our papers’ when we move around in cities. The police don’t stop us and ask why we are spending so much time outdoors: authorities rather encourage it. No one is prying in shopping baskets to make sure you only buy essentials.

The country’s Public Health Agency and the ‘state epidemiologist’, Anders Tegnell, have kept their cool and still don’t recommend a lockdown. They are getting criticised by scientific modellers but the agency is sticking to its own model of how the virus is expected to develop and what pressure hospitals will be under. The government still heeds the agency’s advice; no party in the opposition argues for a lockdown. Rather, opinion polls show that Swedes remain strongly in favour of the country’s liberal approach to the pandemic.

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1   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2020 Apr 20, 9:52pm  

While LA Mayor is crying on TV about saving lives, and griping about minimum wage being too low.
2   mell   2020 Apr 20, 10:00pm  

Ironically it's a socialistic country that has to show the US the road to freedom in this case. If it weren't for the leftoids and their moralizing delusions of grandeur we would have never opted for lockdowns, but instead appealed to common sense and the freedom to make your own decisions, principles this country was founded on.
4   Bd6r   2020 Apr 20, 10:02pm  

mell says
Ironically it's a socialistic country that has to show the US the road to freedom in this case. If it weren't for the leftoids and their moralizing delusions of grandeur we would have never opted for lockdowns, but instead appealed to common sense and the freedom to make your own decisions, principles this country was founded on.

Swedish are extremely bizarre leftoids/socialists who occasionally show a lot of common sense.
5   Ceffer   2020 Apr 20, 10:09pm  

A thousand suicides to save one gasping, hypertensive diabetic with cigarette induced emphysema on a ventilator is not too high a price to pay! Where is your compassion? I can see you are not compassionate people and need to be eliminated.
6   Misc   2020 Apr 20, 10:45pm  

Ceffer says
A thousand suicides to save one gasping, hypertensive diabetic with cigarette induced emphysema on a ventilator is not too high a price to pay! Where is your compassion? I can see you are not compassionate people and need to be eliminated.


... but but there was that one eleven year old ...
7   clambo   2020 Apr 21, 12:04am  

Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia did what my dentist did for decades and kept working; they put on a mask.

In those countries the infected are few.

Instead of saying “You don’t need a mask, hospital workers do”, we all should have worn masks a month ago.

People are doing it now, although it is a little late for some places.

What a shame and a waste of money, freedom and lives for not doing what some sensible people did.
8   Tix2fun   2020 Apr 21, 12:26am  

Agree not allowing mask back in early March was biggest blunder USA made, and that was followed by Friday March 13th Emergency declaration when people rushed to supermarkets to stock essentials without mask and no social distancing it felt like Black Friday rush. The count we are seeing now is the result of the foolish mistake made by government,CDC and WHO. I give credit to Trump for banning travel from China on Jan 31st but after that he just stopped no vetting and checking temperatures of people entering USA from Europe. I feel our government underestimated impact of coronavirus.
9   Patrick   2020 Apr 26, 9:55pm  

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/26/845211085/stockholm-expected-to-reach-herd-immunity-in-may-swedish-ambassador-says

Sweden's ambassador to the U.S. believes the country's controversial strategy of imposing only limited restrictions — and not locking down the country — is bearing success, with the capital Stockholm on course to reach herd immunity in the next few weeks.

"About 30% of people in Stockholm have reached a level of immunity," Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter told NPR. "We could reach herd immunity in the capital as early as next month."

Herd immunity means the majority of a given population has become immune to an infectious disease by either recovering from it or through vaccination. Some researchers have put the threshold for coronavirus herd immunity at 60% in some areas.
10   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2020 Apr 27, 4:11am  

ThreeBays says
If this is accurate, Stockholm IFR is around 0.56%.
Do you know the method used to calculate the IFR? If it is based upon PCR, it will underestimate exposed folks by a factor of over 10.
11   Misc   2020 Apr 27, 4:12am  

It is hard for leftists to realize that the best course of action for government is to do nothing and treat this as they would any other flu. Stockholm's population is about 2 million. If they only have 1209 deaths, that puts this dreaded disease far below the death rate of the regular flu (don't worry I know there are more deaths to come), but when the final numbers come out it will be comparable to the death rate of a regular flu strain.

The flu generally infects about 8% of the population during the course of a year. Even onboard the Diamond Princess which was an ideal setting for Covid-19 (hundreds of sick people walking around, no real quarantine procedures, and confined spaces) only 19% onboard came down with it. Basically Covid-19 will have run its course in the US as well as Europe over the next couple of weeks. The quarantines did very little. The higher IFR for New York could be attributed to medical professionals over labeling deaths as Covid-19 related.

Rightists think that the disease has hit or will shortly hit about about the average infection rate for a flu strain (about 8%), the lockdowns did little to constrain the disease, and if people don't develop long term immunity the whole idea of the lockdowns is silly.
12   WookieMan   2020 Apr 27, 5:06am  

ThreeBays says
what nobody is really mentioning is that Sweden is just letting the disease kill it's people.

Actually I think that's what a lot of us are saying here. It's accelerating the death of the old and weak by maybe months and in a few cases years. A vast majority of them had multiple underlying conditions, not just one. It's very clear it's difficult to stop the virus in that segment of society.

So we decide to shut down, wait for a vaccine that won't be 100% successful most likely, to save in most cases people that had months and best case a couple years left. And people that could have just as easily died from the flu or some other bacterial infection. That's the reason 20M+ people are out of work. We cannot keep printing money. Well we can but shouldn't.

The hospitals have not been overwhelmed. Statistically with who this is killing, the first wave has likely prevented it from even being possible to overwhelm healthcare in the future.

TL:DR - We're killing otherwise healthy people, businesses, families, marriages, education, etc. for some people close to meeting the Grim Reaper anyway. Not logical one bit.
13   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2020 Apr 27, 5:09am  

NYC hospitals were overwhelmed during the 2017-2018 flu epidemic. It's just poor planning. And the flu vaccine is not very effective in the elderly. It is unlikely a COVID-19 vaccine will be, either.
14   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 27, 1:04pm  

How many died in Sweden? Around 2000

How many died in similarly populated Belgium? About 7000.

One didn't lockdown, the other did. And yes, while Sweden's density per person, calculated over the entire country, is far less than Belgium, consider that 80% of Swedes live in the Southern third of the country, the Northern 2/3 is mostly unpopulated Arctic and sub-arctic, and most of those in the Southern 1/3 live on the Baltic and Kattegat Coasts. So the density difference is not as profound as raw data suggests.

Interestingly, they are showing similar patterns of flattening.
15   mell   2020 Apr 27, 1:08pm  

I stopped supporting the lockdowns long ago when it started being all hypothetical about the number of deaths and not about the overloaded hospitals anymore. This is retarded leftoid bs. Voting left has consequences. The bay area will suffer like no other area in the country from their idiotic "leaders". It's equally retarded now as banning all cars to prevent daily fatalities from accidents. They have stooped quite low on the IQ scale and quite high on the dictator scale.
16   HeadSet   2020 Apr 27, 1:42pm  

This is why the president was asked "How many deaths are acceptable?"

No, that was a "gotcha" question that has no good answer.

What a lot of you are saying here is we should let 1M to 2M Americans die, based on some not very well worked out ideas of their survival prospects if they had not contracted the virus.

No, what we are saying is the 1M to 2M is very inflated, and the real number will not be changed significantly by a lock down.
17   CBOEtrader   2020 Apr 27, 2:04pm  

HeadSet says
No, what we are saying is the 1M to 2M is very inflated, and the real number will not be changed significantly by a lock down.


The data supports this. The models were wrong. Shutting down into an unknown virus can be understandable. Now that we have data, we know a huge portion of NY has had the virus w a tiny deathrate. Data from around the country shows a highly contagious virus w a significant portion of the population exposed resulting in a flu-like .1% or so deathrate.
18   CBOEtrader   2020 Apr 27, 2:08pm  

ThreeBays says
WookieMan says
TL:DR - We're killing otherwise healthy people, businesses, families, marriages, education, etc. for some people close to meeting the Grim Reaper anyway. Not logical one bit.


This is why the president was asked "How many deaths are acceptable?" which of course he said none. What a lot of you are saying here is we should let 1M to 2M Americans die, based on some not very well worked out ideas of their survival prospects if they had not contracted the virus.


Ok threebays, how many deaths from the lockdown are acceptable? Perhaps you havent heard of the "Biblical famine" w an estimated 120 million new starving people from the lockdown. How many will die from the lockdown? How many is acceptable to you?
19   Shaman   2020 Apr 27, 2:34pm  

“Life’s full of hard choices, isn’t it?”
-Ursula the SeaWitch.
“The Little Mermaid”
20   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2020 Apr 27, 3:21pm  

ThreeBays says
1M to 2M is not very inflated. Iceland's data is consistent with IFR of 0.5%, and New York is looking closer to 1%.
You continually evade the question of how these people are diagnosed. PCR under reports folks who have been infected, as the method relies on the detection of viral DNA, which won't be around when your immune system clears out the virus. Symptoms as well under report.

C'mon, don't be a troll, out with the data.
21   marcus   2020 Apr 27, 3:42pm  

rd6B says
Swedish are extremely bizarre leftoids/socialists who occasionally show a lot of common sense.


Yeah, funny how that works.

Being so polarized as we are has only one main benefit, and that is the oligarchs get a lot of what they want, by distracting us with bullshit.

Other than that, you might think the polarization is good for having less government, but it turns our even that isn't true.

More polarization, means less good government and more corrupt government, but it keeps us distracted while the owners fuck us (and themselves ) over.
22   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 27, 3:49pm  

marcus says
Yeah, funny how that works.


Mainly because their reaction is 180 degrees from San Fran, NYC, California, Michigan, and other US Blue States.
23   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 27, 3:49pm  

ThreeBays says
New York's antibody studies are going to be the best data we have for a while. Largest study with 7500 people, and a high rate of positive infection.



Coronavirus Antibodies Present In Nearly 25% Of All NYC Residents, Cuomo Says; Un-PAUSE In Certain Regions Of NY Might Begin In May
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/27/coronavirus-antibodies-present-in-nearly-25-of-all-nyc-residents/
24   marcus   2020 Apr 27, 3:57pm  

NoCoupForYou says
Mainly because


Being socialist, when the government intervenes it's more nuanced and measured. WE end up with a sledge hammer, over doing it, and not knowing how to transition out of it, with the politicization and polarization just making it all the more difficult. Everyone wants to vilify the other pole, too concerned with blame, and not wanting to let the other side have credit for solutions.

Trump Cultists are too married to one pole to comprehend what I'm talking about.

We've lost the ability to collectively make decisions. If NYT or Brietbart publishes an article with the perfect solution, half the country is not going to want to believe it.

Can you not see how fucked up that is ?

Sweden doesn't have this problem.
25   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 27, 3:59pm  

marcus says

Being socialist, when the government intervenes it's more nuanced and measured. WE end up with a sledge hammer, over doing it, and not knowing how to transition out of it, with the politicization and polarization just making it all the more difficult. Everyone wants to vilify the other pole and not let them have credit for solutions.

Trump Cultists are too married to one pole to comprehend what I'm talking about.


So you think hard Blue States in the USA are over-reacting? It's not Trump and the "Trumpets" pushing for endless quarantine of healthy people and not-at-risk kids or up to senior age adults.
26   mell   2020 Apr 27, 4:01pm  

marcus says
NoCoupForYou says
Mainly because


Being socialist, when the government intervenes it's more nuanced and measured. WE end up with a sledge hammer, over doing it, and not knowing how to transition out of it, with the politicization and polarization just making it all the more difficult. Everyone wants to vilify the other pole and not let them have credit for solutions.

Trump Cultists are too married to one pole to comprehend what I'm talking about.

We've lost the ability to collectively make decisions. If NYT or Brietbart publishes an article with the perfect solution, half the country is not going to want to believe it.

Can you not see how fucked up that is ?

Sweden doesn't have ourproblem.


So what? Just because the population is polarized doesn't mean the govt should decide for them. This is a free country - or at least supposed to be one of the freest. Let the people decide when and how they want to do business and work. No need for a perfect solution or model from either NYT or Breitbart. What's this obsessions with perfect solutions? Go with the math at hand, sure if suddenly people would start dropping dead like flies you can roll it back again and actually people may be more amenable to it. But there's almost a zero chance that that will happen and the dictatorial governors and mayors know that very well - they can't be that stupid - so it's malfeasance and TDS.
27   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 27, 4:08pm  

Great, Herd Immunity. Let the healthy people take the virulent strains and beat it down, then share the dead viruses with the less healthy and older that are self-quarantining.

Of course, what's actually happening is that the aged are futzing around grocery and drug stores out of curiousity, while the young and healthy are stuck at home jobless and/or out of school.
28   marcus   2020 Apr 27, 4:09pm  

NoCoupForYou says
So you think hard Blue States in the USA are over-reacting? It's not Trump and the "Trumpets" pushing for endless quarantine of healthy people.


No, I think the quarantine was fine. But I think going forward, the right has latched on to the idea of opening the economy back up. It's like they jump on it like little children, "we get this position, this is our position."

They know it would soon be time to transition out of it, so any movement in that direction looks like a win for the right, even though it was obviously what needed to happen and it should happen in a rational way.

Our system is extremely broken, and we don't fucking know how to work together.

Think back to Obamacare. If republicans and democrats had worked together to find a truly optimal soulition, Obama would have gotten too much credit. THat might even mean another term. We can't have that (we did anyway).

This is not the same, and I have faith in democrats being ever so slightly less childish than republicans, but it's not enough. . Figuring out the best way to transition out of this should not be political, and I believe that republicans being on the side of sooner is better, works against it happening sooner, in the same way that democrats being in favor of good healthcare reform made it less possible.

Trump participates in this politicization by encouraging protests and states to be competitive about it. I'm just stepping back and observing how utterly broken our government is,.

All Trump can think about is winning. Instead of inviting bipartisan meetings and decision making on this that everyone can share credit for.
29   Al_Sharpton_for_President   2020 Apr 27, 4:24pm  

ThreeBays says
Dude, I share data all the time. NYC is based on the anti-body study, now with the 2nd stage done.
Thanks. Not sure what it means, compared to antibody tests in other regions. We don't know the composition of the 3000 random walk-ins. And as Wookieman pointed out, the sickest die off first.

Try running these numbers. Use the antibody positive percentages for each age range x number of NYC residents in that age range x deaths for each age range. You can find age demographics for NYC. I used a site which matched up perfectly for the three higher age ranges.

Here is what I found:

Fatality rate 75 and older: 7.6%.
Fatality rate 65-74: 3.4%
Fatality rate 45-63: 0.8%

I assume that it is even lower for the below 45 age groups.

Now one could theorize that younger folks are more ambulatory and likely to walk-in off the street to be tested, skewing the sampled population towards the healthy. And dead folks and folks in hospitals and nursing homes aren't going to be walk-ins.

I only did this once, after some decent cabernet, so errors are certainly possible. Run the numbers and see what you come up with.

https://newyork.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
30   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 27, 4:39pm  

marcus says
All Trump can think about is winning. Instead of inviting bipartisan meetings and decision making on this that everyone can share credit for.


That's not what I recall. I recall a stimulus package delayed at the last minute by Squad requests for controversial new programs and funding that had nothing to do with the virus or the economic fallout.

I recall a whiplash 180 from Fartwell and Pelosi and DeBlasio urging people to gather in large numbers to visit Chinatown festivities, demanding people use the subway as normal and not utilize private cars, and insinuating masks in public were Xenophobic over-reactions, to Trump didn't provide enough Hospital Ships/Ventilators/Masks. All of which turned out to be false; we never had a crisis, despite journalists rushing at the first sign of a crowded hospital. In fact, hospitals are experiencing layoffs as people delay procedures and tests during the Virus.

In fact, what are Democrats up to right now? Trying to give the full stimulus to people married to illegal aliens.

U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents who are married to illegal immigrants are not eligible to receive $1,200 stimulus payments under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that Congress passed.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has introduced a bill to change that and allow each partner in a mixed status couple — legal and illegal — to receive coronavirus stimulus payments for a total of $2,400, if they filed joint tax returns.


Eligible recipients also receive $500 per child under 17 listed on their tax return for 2018 or 2019. The income ceiling for the full payments is $75,000 for single filers and $150,000 for joint filers.

Under the CARES Act, which passed the Democrat-led House of Representatives with a voice vote last month, anyone who filed a joint tax return with an illegal immigrant who uses a tax ID number in place of a Social Security number (SSN) is not eligible for the payments.

Omar's bill, titled the Recovery Rebates Improvement Act, would "amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow 2020 recovery rebates for individuals filing a joint return if one spouse satisfies the valid identification number requirement."

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/swedens-stay-open-approach-creating-herd-immunity-quickly-ambassador
31   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Apr 27, 5:13pm  

ThreeBays says
Note "Fatality rate 45-63: 0.8%" -- those are crap odds don't you think? Remember the rightists trying to argue it's just 0.1% overall? We're probably looking at the need to isolate everyone over 45 or 50.


Is 45-63 the same as the entire population? What is the rate 0-17? 18-44?

“Using statistical methods, we are 95 percent certain the true amount of infection lies between 4.4 percent and 7.9 percent of the population,” Gimenez said. That means somewhere between 123,000 to 221,000 residents potentially have been infected by the virus.

https://www.local10.com/news/local/2020/04/24/miami-dade-mayor-um-researchers-discuss-initial-findings-of-covid-19-study/

We'll know in about a year, maybe in a few months, what the real rate of infection was - not just those who got tested, which is a small subset of all those infected.
32   WookieMan   2020 Apr 27, 5:46pm  

ThreeBays says
What rightists have tried to argue is it's just 0.1% overall with a majority of that being 70+.

Not sure your point. The data hockey sticks by age. That's undeniable. The rate is unknown because not everyone has been tested. We do know it's not as bad as you think it is. The data has shown that. You keep going back to NYC, one of the worst hit spots. Why? And what does this have to do with right or left? It's a virus. You're showing your true colors here, which is fine. But you seem offended that anyone would question you. That seems weird?
33   mell   2020 Apr 27, 5:58pm  

ThreeBays says
NoCoupForYou says
ThreeBays says
Note "Fatality rate 45-63: 0.8%" -- those are crap odds don't you think? Remember the rightists trying to argue it's just 0.1% overall? We're probably looking at the need to isolate everyone over 45 or 50.


Is 45-63 the same as the entire population? What is the rate 0-17? 18-44?


It's lower in those ranges, but doesn't change my point.

What rightists have tried to argue is it's just 0.1% overall with a majority of that being 70+.


Those with crap odds and those staying on the safe side can stay in. What's your point? Also the total odds of dying are far less even if you give generous odds of contraction at 25% by going out totally careless. Then you have to subtract the odds of dying from anything else for that group and you probably end up with an additional 0.05% risk. Or 1 in 5000. You want to shut down the economy over that even there are easy measures to protect oneself?!
34   Patrick   2020 Apr 27, 9:36pm  

We need mass civil disobedience.
35   mell   2020 Apr 27, 9:47pm  

Patrick says
We need mass civil disobedience.


As a fellow bay area resident you must be equally stunned. I read that Bakersfield MDs are pressing for early reopening cause CA had so few symptomatic cases per MM capita yet a lot of exposure and those bay area leftist dictators just go the exact other way against all data. My worst case scenario was May 15 or so but end of May seems almost deliberate evil.
36   Patrick   2020 Apr 27, 9:49pm  

Yup, at this point it's just deliberate sabotage of the economy.
37   WookieMan   2020 Apr 27, 11:43pm  

ThreeBays says
All the arguments against what I put up are contrarian opinions that aren't supported by facts and critical thinking. They also happen to be from rightists.

Your assumptions are wrong. I'm not right or left. I'd say I'm 40% left and 60% right. I'm nuanced enough to understand there's good and bad from both sides. I actually think that's the way most this site leans if you can believe it.

I've gotten in plenty of arguments over my more left leaning views with people here that I agree with 90% of the time. We're not all supposed to be the same. Argument and discord is what brings about progress. If we all agree on the same thing we're fucked.
38   Bd6r   2020 May 28, 12:27pm  

ThreeBays says
Do you have the data? Do the Bakersfield MDs want us to be like New York?

For that, they would need to discharge COVID patients to nursing homes, which the Stunning and Brave NY D Gov Cuomo ordered via his bureaucrats...see below


39   Bd6r   2020 May 28, 12:29pm  

Also, I'd better trust Norway health chief than random Patnet commentators who have shown some lack of scientific knowledge:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/norway-health-chief-lockdown-was-not-needed-to-tame-covid

Camilla Stoltenberg, director of Norway’s public health agency, has given an interview where she is candid about the implications of this discovery. ‘Our assessment now, and I find that there is a broad consensus in relation to the reopening, was that one could probably achieve the same effect – and avoid part of the unfortunate repercussions – by not closing. But, instead, staying open with precautions to stop the spread.’ This is important to admit, she says, because if the infection levels rise again – or a second wave hits in the winter – you need to be brutally honest about whether lockdown proved effective.
40   Bd6r   2020 May 28, 12:35pm  

And more...Dear of the Progressive Humanity Cuomo gave immunity to nursing home executives after big campaign donations,

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/26/andrew-cuomo-nursing-home-execs-immunity

A few excerpts:

"People are 7.5 times more likely to die from Covid-19 in states with corporate legal immunity"

"In March, Cuomo’s administration issued an order that allowed nursing homes to readmit sick patients without testing them for Covid-19. Amid allegations of undercounted casualties, the governor also pushed back against pressure to have state regulators more stringently record and report death rates in nursing homes."

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