Shouldn't epidemiologists revisit the case of Sweden? Hasn't their approach actually worked?

[CPNY]

Iran for example is number 28 on that list with 14,634 deaths and 278,827 total infected people. The Iranian officials estimate that 25 million people have been infected and not 278k . WTH! I do not know if the real number is 25 millions or 20 or 10 but I do not think anyone can say with a straight face that 278,827 is the actual number.
If I understand correctly you trust the reported numbers from countries like Burundi, Bhutan, Togo, Mexico, Brasil, Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe just to name a few and for that reason you can rank success among the 200 countries on that list.

Among the countries you can trust, Sweden is doing pretty well especially since we were let to believe that they were going to be number one on that list without a lockdown. The number of deaths in Sweden is 5% of what it should have been based on the initial models.

Also let's acknowledge that the last chapter of the virus has not been written yet. The deaths in Sweden may have been close to zero in the last week but you cannot say the same about the rest of the world.

Iran estimates it has 25 million coronavirus infections

Iran's president on Saturday estimated as many as 25 million Iranians could have been infected with the coronavirus since the outbreak's beginning, as he urged the public to take the pandemic seriously, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

www.ctvnews.ca

I’m confused, wasn’t the media showing cell phone videos of body bags piled up in Iran??? I meannnn that couldn’t have been propaganda. Everyone who died with COVID didn’t die from COVID. Yet, that’s not what the count suggests.

 

[Roger830]

Swedish economy was the least harmed in Europe

Sweden had one of the most relaxed COVID-19 lockdowns in the world. There's growing evidence that it helped it weather 2020's economic storm better than anywhere else.

Though Sweden was not immune to the pandemic's economic impact, it was the only major economy to grow in the first quarter of the year.

markets.businessinsider.com

 

[Rjbeach2003]

Just checked today to compare Sweden's death rate to US. Even though many Governors want to act like Sweden and do so, if our death rate as a nation was the same as Sweden's we would have 184,000+ plus deaths today or nearly 30% higher. The governors of FL. GA, TX and AZ want to catch up with Sweden though.
The Governor of CA has admitted that he okayed opening too soon, thus CA's rise in cases.

 

[DannyTS]

Just checked today to compare Sweden's death rate to US. Even though many Governors want to act like Sweden and do so, if our death rate as a nation was the same as Sweden's we would have 184,000+ plus deaths today or nearly 30% higher. The governors of FL. GA, TX and AZ want to catch up with Sweden though.
The Governor of CA has admitted that he okayed opening too soon, thus CA's rise in cases.

Glad to talk about US as a whole if you do not like to compare with individual states.

In the last two weeks Sweden added 4,642 new cases (trending down) and US 860,409 (trending up).
In the last two weeks there have been 66 deaths in Sweden (trending down), 9,895 deaths in the United States (trending up) .

It ain't over till it's over. At this pace, there is no reason to believe that US is not going to get to 184,000 deaths soon. The projections show it will be there between August 24th - September 27th but I hope they are wrong.

 

[DannyTS]

Why are we talking about this anyway? Is it to "prove" that masks and social distancing aren't important?

My point is that we have at our disposal a number of tools: isolating the vulnerable, social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks etc. but also closing schools, retail and other businesses, borders and quarantine, social tracing and so on. Some of these tools have little to no social, economic and legal downside (social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks etc) but they may be highly effective. The other measures can have grave consequences and looking at what Sweden has done may not be such a terrible idea.

 

[Brett]

My point is that we have at our disposal a number of tools like: isolate the vulnerable, social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks and others but also closing schools, retail and other businesses, borders and quarantine, social tracing etc. Some of these tools have little to no social, economic and legal downsides (social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks etc) but they may be highly effective. The other measures can have grave consequences and looking at what Sweden has done may not be such a terrible idea.

right, a socialist welfare state teaches America how to "do it right"

July 22, 2020

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sweden-coronavirus-death-toll-projections/

 

[DannyTS]

right, a socialist welfare state teaches America how to "do it right"

I do not know Brett, when I read the news about Sweden and compare with the actual data I see two different worlds. If you want to contribute to this thread you have to do a little better than showing you have access to Google search. You are only making my point that there has not been a serious discussion about this.

deaths/day in Sweden:

Experience

experience.arcgis.com

 

[jabberwocky]

It looks like Sweden is pushing the envelope again...would be interesting to see if those who have recovered from diagnosed cases of Covid would now be exempt quarantine restrictions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...immunity-can-last-half-a-year-after-infection

“Sweden’s top health authority says people who have had the novel coronavirus are likely to be immune for at least six months after being infected, whether they’ve developed antibodies or not.

In new guidance published on Tuesday, the Swedish Public Health Agency said it’s now considered safe for individuals who’ve been infected to come into contact with people in high-risk groups.

‘We don’t see cases of people falling ill twice from Covid-19,’ state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said during a press conference in Stockholm. ‘Hence, our assessment is that if you do get Covid-19 you are immune, even if you don’t develop antibodies.’”

 

[Rjbeach2003]

Wyoming Guy. Curious where you got that chart. In the last three days there have been 2000+ deaths in the US. That chart seems to show near zero deaths in that week. More information please

 

[DannyTS]

It is possible that New York City, Sweden may have reached herd immunity already. Fingers crossed

PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION
Herd Immunity Threshold Against COVID-19 May Be Lower Than Believed: Researchers

Herd Immunity Threshold Against COVID-19 May Be Lower Than Believed: Researchers

Herd immunity to COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus, could be achieved with fewer people being infected than previously estimated.

www.theepochtimes.com

 

[DannyTS]

This is the actual study, not peer reviewed yet

Abstract
It is widely believed that the herd immunity threshold (HIT) required to prevent a resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 is in excess of 50% for any epidemiological setting. Here, we demonstrate that HIT may be greatly reduced if a fraction of the population is unable to transmit the virus due to innate resistance or cross-protection from exposure to seasonal coronaviruses. The drop in HIT is proportional to the fraction of the population resistant only when that fraction is effectively segregated from the general population; however, when mixing is random, the drop in HIT is more precipitous. Significant reductions in expected mortality can also be observed in settings where a fraction of the population is resistant to infection. These results help to explain the large degree of regional variation observed in seroprevalence and cumulative deaths and suggest that sufficient herd-immunity may already be in place to substantially mitigate a potential second wave.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.20154294v1.full.pdf

 

[jabberwocky]

And my guess is that we’re getting close to herd immunity in many other US states as well. My guess is that we will see peaks in August with numbers starting to decline into the fall.

I know this is completely unscientific, but if we take the roughly 400k cases in Florida and use the estimate that there are about 10X the cases out there that have not been detected then you have around 4M cases. That is pretty close to 20% of Florida’s population. It will be interesting to see if things start to plateau there.

 

[Conan]

Bullet-points from the article cited below:
What went well
Mental health
Ramping up ICU beds

What went OK
Daily briefings ... for a while
An engaged and compliant public
The economy

What didn’t go so well
PPE and availability of tests
Policy around masks
The vulnerable elderly population
Achieving herd immunity
Lack of tracking and data collection in schools

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/17/how-sweden-fought-coronavirus-and-what-went-wrong.html

 

[DannyTS]

Bullet-points from the article cited below:
What went well
Mental health
Ramping up ICU beds

What went OK
Daily briefings ... for a while
An engaged and compliant public
The economy

What didn’t go so well
PPE and availability of tests
Policy around masks
The vulnerable elderly population
Achieving herd immunity
Lack of tracking and data collection in schools

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/17/how-sweden-fought-coronavirus-and-what-went-wrong.html

If you look at the post #60, they may have achieved herd immunity already. Time will tell, fingers crossed. The first 3 points of what went wrong can probably be made about 90% of the planet.

In the last 2 days they did not report any deaths and "only" 15 in the last week. For comparison, California had 684 in the last 7 days or 11.69 times more deaths per 1 M population than Sweden.

Experience

experience.arcgis.com

 

[Brett]

Bullet-points from the article cited below:
What went well
Mental health
Ramping up ICU beds

What went OK
Daily briefings ... for a while
An engaged and compliant public
The economy

What didn’t go so well
PPE and availability of tests
Policy around masks
The vulnerable elderly population
Achieving herd immunity
Lack of tracking and data collection in schools

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/17/how-sweden-fought-coronavirus-and-what-went-wrong.html

The US now has daily coronavirus briefings (again !)

And the US stock market has Amazon and Tesla !

 

[DannyTS]

In terms of deaths/ 1 million people, Sweden is now number 18. Delaware had a spectacular advancement to the 15th place. Pennsylvania will probably exceed Sweden next week. This is a TUG exclusive! We are getting ready for Bret to post another article that Sweden is the worst in the world , that is OK.

 

[Brett]

In terms of deaths/ 1 million people, Sweden is now number 18. Delaware had a spectacular advancement to the 15th place. Pennsylvania will probably exceed Sweden next week. This is a TUG exclusive! We are getting ready for Bret to post another article that Sweden is the worst in the world , that is OK.

View attachment 23976

yes - Danny with a fixation on the socialist state Sweden ... where people respect the federal government ....

 

[DannyTS]

You can call it fixation if you will. What they did was the only honest path because they did not go into a lockdown without telling people how they would get out of the lockdown and that they would be back to square one soon after they ended it. Their way also had the most chances of long term success because it relied on the cooperation of the public rather than trying to coerce them for a long period of time.

 

[DannyTS]

deleted

 

[grupp]

I thought this was a well balance article on what is currently going on in Sweden, doesn't really get into the debate on the merits of their approach to the virus. I don't believe you can draw any conclusions yet, but does give some possibly reasons for the downturn. It does seem that the articles bashing their approach have dried up some in the last few weeks. But maybe that is because things have gone so wrong in a few areas the US, which is more interesting and has drawn attention away from them.

I don't know if their approach was better than ours, but do find interesting to see how it works out for them. Whether it was right or wrong they chose a path that was different than the rest of the world and stuck to it despite criticism from all sides.

https://www.thelocal.se/20200724/why-are-swedens-coronavirus-figure-falling-so-sharply

 

[Brett]

I thought this was a well balance article on what is currently going on in Sweden, doesn't really get into the debate on the merits of their approach to the virus. I don't believe you can draw any conclusions yet, but does give some possibly reasons for the downturn. It does seem that the articles bashing their approach have dried up some in the last few weeks. But maybe that is because things have gone so wrong in a few areas the US, which is more interesting and has drawn attention away from them.

I don't know if their approach was better than ours, but do find interesting to see how it works out for them. Whether it was right or wrong they chose a path that was different than the rest of the world and stuck to it despite criticism from all sides.

https://www.thelocal.se/20200724/why-are-swedens-coronavirus-figure-falling-so-sharply

Sweden - right or wrong -
maybe socialized government health care is better
maybe paying a 70% personal income tax is better
maybe a 25% sales tax is better
maybe having a small budget for defense spending is better

!

 

[grupp]

Sweden - right or wrong -
maybe socialized government health care is better
maybe paying a 70% personal income tax is better
maybe a 25% sales tax is better
maybe a small budget for defense spending is better

!

Just curious, what does any of that have to do with Covid 19?

 

[Brett]

Just curious, what does any of that have to do with Covid 19?

some people here claim that those living in Sweden are better off than Americans (COVID 19 and otherwise)

maybe epidemiologists .... maybe not

 

[DannyTS]

some people here claim that those living in Sweden are better off than Americans (COVID 19 and otherwise)

maybe epidemiologists .... maybe not

Who are those people? Maybe you are confusing social media platforms. And again how is that related to Covid?

Regardless of the political system, virtually every country locked down at one point or another with the exception of Sweden. This is not political as much as you would like it to be. It is a pity if you think that trolling all threads with political innuendo is the way to go.

 

[Brett]

Who are those people? Maybe you are confusing social media platforms. And again how is that related to Covid?

Regardless of the political system, virtually every country locked down at one point or another with the exception of Sweden. This is not political as much as you would like it to be. It is a pity if you think that trolling all threads with political innuendo is the way to go.

LOL !!!
"if you think that trolling all threads with political innuendo is the way to go"