It may protect you from the coronavirus, so if you want to risk increasing your chances of having pancreatic cancer instead ...
Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy questioned as Stockholm death toll mounts
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It may protect you from the coronavirus, so if you want to risk increasing your chances of having pancreatic cancer instead ...
icerat
Philosopher
I've actually had my opinion on snus reversed. Negative health effects seem to very minor. Most of the reported problems like pancreatic cancer don't seem to be of concern.
Aesthetic effects are another issue ...
Squeegee Beckenheim
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The article defines it as "the actual development [...] generally following the government’s prediction". Also that the entire point of a lockdown is to ensure that the healthcare system doesn't get overwhelmed and that the evidence indicates that "the growth in intensive care patients has slowed down remarkably and the number of patients currently in intensive care has flatlined" while hospitals have the capacity to care for up to twice as many patients as they currently are.
I've not done a deep dive into the situation in Sweden and I don't know if there are other issues that the article doesn't go in to which could have been mitigated by a lockdown, so I can't really judge, but it seems to me that this argument is worthy of consideration.
The biggest argument against it on the face of it is that if a vaccine is developed then slowing the rate of infection may have saved more lives. But we know from other countries that lockdowns have a cost in lives, too, and it stands to reason that there will be a further cost that isn't immediate - people made financially destitute or needing to forgo medical treatment, etc. can have their lives shortened for many reasons in many ways.
It's impossible to say at this stage which strategy would ultimately save the most lives. And I have to say that when I first heard about it I was appalled at Sweden's strategy. But I'm not going to dismiss an argument out of hand simply because it goes against what I initially assumed to be true, especially if that argument appears to be backed up by the data.
I think it would be a mistake to form a solid opinion one way or the other until we have access to all the relevant facts, but this piece does move my needle somewhat from "this is a bad idea" towards "maybe it's not such a bad idea". Time will tell. It always does.
Yeah, but Denmark is now talking about allowing public gatherings of up to 500 people. Apparently it's now okay if more people get infected. It's suddenly okay if more people die.
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Yeah it's okay if people die.
icerat
Philosopher
What they neglect to mention is that the largest hospital network in Stockholm instituted a policy of not placing the elderly into ICU, and despite them being a higher percentage of reported infections in April cf March, they dropped to less than half the March rate in percent of ICU beds.
Whether this policy is (or was) wider spread is unclear, however there's been numerous media reports from people claiming it has happened to them (or their loved ones)
Is this enough to have stabilised the ICU demand? Unfortunately the data that would make it possible to analyse isn't available, but I suspect it is.
Personally i think the biggest argument is treatment improvements rather than a vaccine. Potential treatments can be in place orders of magnitude faster than a vaccine, and there are several extremely promising ones already on the horizon.
Sure, and that's a discussion to be had in the open, not hiding behind data that gives a false impression.
Hilariously, last week one of the (many) supporters of the Swedish approach had an opinion piece and he cited research showing a significant increase in cancer deaths following lockdowns. He even provided a link to the research.
He missed the part (it was even in the title!) that this effect wasn't found in countries with Universal Health Care.
Outside the ethical considerations of ignoring treatment effects on mortality, I have no quarrel with the approach of a "soft lockdown" in general. What I have a quarrel with is supporting the approach by -
(a) gaslighting the public with data that is entirely unreliable
(b) claiming scientific research says something when in reality it says the opposite
(c) taking an approach where success is based enormously on "protect the elderly" and then essentially doing nothing to put that in place or monitor it, just expecting it will magically happen. (it has not)
Yes, time will tell. I have not been encouraged by several promoters of this approach, including Sweden's current and former Chief Epidemiologists (and now Stanford's John Ioaniddis) claiming this virus will end up with an IFR about the same as the flu (0.1%).
Numerous places, including Lombardy, New York, Madrid have all exceeded 0.1% *population* mortality rate.
John Giesecke (former Chief Epidemiologist and current paid advisor to the Swedish Health Authority) this week gave an interview where he used that figure to predict final death tolls of around 2000 in Sweden and 12000 in the UK. He did this despite having been told earlier in the interview that the UK death toll was already over 13000. Sweden's is almost certainly passed 2000 as well.
It's worth watching -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY
I early on discovered that many of the main players involved in the decision making in Sweden all studied epidemiology at The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Chris Whitty, UK Chief Medical Officer and original proponent of this "herd immunity" approach in the UK, is a long term Professor there, it's obviously a school of thought.
There are also some other specific legal challenges Sweden has, I outlined them on a twitter thread you might find interesting.
There is nothing sudden about the decision to make the restrictions a little less strict. On the contrary, it was the intention from the very beginning to loosen the restrictions gradually as soon as the spreading of the virus was somewhat under control.
When the restrictions were introduced, it was too late to choose the Icelandic strategy. (If they had banned ski tourism to Tyrol, which I think they should have done at a much earlier stage, it would have been a different story.)
But instead of following the Swedish strategy of achieving herd immunity by letting to virus run wild, the Danish strategy brought the rate of infection down from 2.4 (if I remember correctly) to 0.6, which was the point when it had been made feasible to loosen the restrictions while still keeping an eye on the rate of infection to prevent it from getting out of hand.
I'm not crazy about the way Denmark has handled the pandemic (compare Denmark and Norway, for instance!), but I'm glad that I don't live in Stockholm ...
Yes, your point of view has been pretty consistent from the very beginning of this thread.
icerat
Philosopher
Source for that? AFAIK the large event ban is in place until September
It's not just legislative issues that restricts the Swedish governments ability to enact coercive measure, there are practical issues as well. If you are supposed to have a "lockdown" and mandatory curfew you need someone to enforce it.
Guess what? Swedish police is already heavily understaffed as it is right now, especially in Stockholm where the outbreak has been worst.
If the police are supposed to play hide-and-seek with people who violate the curfew or be rifling through shopping bags to see if people have bought any "unessential" items and stuff like that, then that's going to lock-up that many cops who could be doing something else.
Swedish criminals have not stopped blowing up apartment entrances or bodegas.
Guess what? Swedish police is already heavily understaffed as it is right now, especially in Stockholm where the outbreak has been worst.
If the police are supposed to play hide-and-seek with people who violate the curfew or be rifling through shopping bags to see if people have bought any "unessential" items and stuff like that, then that's going to lock-up that many cops who could be doing something else.
Swedish criminals have not stopped blowing up apartment entrances or bodegas.
Seems like Denmark wants to catch-up this summer. I'm sure you can cope with roughly half of the deaths Sweden has experienced.
icerat
Philosopher
There has however been nothing at all stopping Folkhälsomyndigheten issuing "Allmänna råd" (a strange kind of "binding advice" with limited actual legal power) that simply says #STAYATHOME
They have not done that. As the Giesecke interview makes extremely clear, the strategy here is to aim for herd immunity as quickly as possible while trying to keep health care demand under control and protecting the vulnerable.
The approach assumes several things -
(a) the virus can't be stopped using suppression and mitigation ("the hammer and the dance")
(b) there will be no vaccine prior to herd immunity being achieved naturally
(c) there will be no treatment available to significantly decrease mortality until herd immunity is achieved
(d) immunity of some type is actually achievable
(e) the vulnerable can be protected
I consider this approach ethically indefensible, especially combined with the acknowledged refusal to actually model potential deaths using this approach
icerat
Philosopher
Thanks. That's still 3 weeks away and assumes a continued decline. With appropriate testing and tracking protocols that may very well be acceptable
What are you talking about? Even if we look at per capita deaths (i.e. per million), we get this result:
Sweden: 176
USA: 129
Denmark: 64
Norway: 34
Sweden is now on the Top 10 of Covid-19 deaths.
I don't think it's a good idea, but I guess it's an attempt to make the conservative parties happy by making it possible for cinemas, theatres, concert halls and restaurants to reopen.
I'm SG's age, but even though I'm not in any of the other risk groups (except
, of course), I don't think I'll visit any crowded places until after I've acquired immunity - one way or the other.- Status