Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy questioned as Stockholm death toll mounts

[Samson]

...you've cited the NZ Herald, but just to make it clear thats a syndicated article from the Daily Mail, where the original headline was "Why Sweden, pilloried by the whole world for refusing to lock down - with schools staying open and no face mask laws - may be having the last laugh as experts say Stockholm is close to achieving herd immunity."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...lloried-world-refusing-lock-having-laugh.html

Sweden are not close to achieving herd immunity

And to be quite clear I regard Anders Tegnell as a charlatan.

 

[dann]

More Tegnell nonsense yesterday in a German paper:
Interview mit dem schwedischen Staats-Epidemiologen Anders Tegnell: Sich nur auf Masken zu verlassen, ist sehr gefährlich! (Bild.de, Aug. 9, 2020)
Interview with the Swedish national epidemiologist Anders Tegnell: It is very dangerous to rely solely on face masks

He is as predictable as Trump. Like an old dog, he just keeps repeating the tricks that have worked before: Nobody in the entire world, or at least nobody I've heard of, claims that face masks alone are the solution to the pandemic. And yet he keeps repeating this phrase as if he doesn't know how misleading it is.

Meanwhile, back in Sweden:

Forskaren Tom Britton: Bland annat bör användande av munskydd vid trånga folksamlingar inomhus rekommenderas.
”Sveriges coronastrategi behöver ändras inför hösten” (DagensNyheter.se, Aug. 9, 2020)

The researcher Tom Britton: Among other things, the use of face masks in crowded indoor spaces should be recommended
"Sweden's corona strategy needs to be changed before autumn

 

[Samson]

More Tegnell nonsense yesterday in a German paper:
Interview mit dem schwedischen Staats-Epidemiologen Anders Tegnell: Sich nur auf Masken zu verlassen, ist sehr gefährlich! (Bild.de, Aug. 9, 2020)
Interview with the Swedish national epidemiologist Anders Tegnell: It is very dangerous to rely solely on face masks

He is as predictable as Trump. Like an old dog, he just keeps repeating the tricks that have worked before: Nobody in the entire world, or at least nobody I've heard of, claims that face masks alone are the solution to the pandemic. And yet he keeps repeating this phrase as if he doesn't know how misleading it is.

Meanwhile, back in Sweden:

The researcher Tom Britton: Among other things, the use of face masks in crowded indoor spaces should be recommended
"Sweden's corona strategy needs to be changed before autumn

Sometimes it helps to consider 3 possibilities, and in the case of face masks

If everyone wears them all the time
1. Will more people get covid?
2. Will the same number of people get covid?
3. Will fewer people get covid?

Only one answer can be correct.

 

[dann]

Sometimes it helps to consider 3 possibilities, and in the case of face masks

If everyone wears them all the time
1. Will more people get covid?
2. Will the same number of people get covid?
3. Will fewer people get covid?

Only one answer can be correct.

There are more possible answers, for instance: Will more people get covid in some situations and fewer in other situations? But these are questions that can't really be answered by means of clinical tests: You can't divide people into two groups, with or without face masks, and them expose them to the virus. And Tegnell won't recognize the studies that have been made with other viruses because ... well, they aren't coronavirus. And these are the guys who, in other contexts, love to compare SARS-CoV-2 to the flu!

This is what is so infuriating about these ********. We know that any kind of evidence doesn't matter to Tegnell because he decided against face masks at the beginning of the pandemic - for whatever reason. The reason he states is that science hasn't proved that face masks help prevent or slow down the spread of the virus. Consequently, there must be something wrong with every study that seems to indicate that face masks help: In the countries where face masks seem to work, for instance Japan, they have taken other measures than face masks, so you can't really know if face masks work or not. But if you can point to any country recommending face masks that exhibits a rising number of infections, then it must be because face masks don't work. It isn't due to anything else.

It's the same attitude Tegnell and his fans have to lockdowns. They don't acknowledge that lockdowns have an immediate effect by lowering the number of new infections. Instead they point to the number of deaths, which keeps rising for two weeks after lockdowns, and even though it's self-evident why there will be more deaths even after the transmission of the virus slows down, to Tegnell and his fans it must be because lockdowns don't work.
They are cherry-picking explanations as well as facts.

At the same time, he makes claims and decisions based on no proof whatsoever. For instance the idea that people will break the social-distancing rules if they start wearing face masks. He hs decided that it is a choice between social distancing and face masks, so you can't possibly do both.
It doesn't even appear to him that face masks would be very useful in situations where people can't keep a distance even though they would like to do so. On public transport, for instance.

And nobody asks him for the studies that prove his insane idea, and it doesn't seem to matter that there aren't any because that is what Tegnell has chosen to believe. In this respect, Tegnell is as stubborn as Trump, and I have come to suspect that he is as intellectually lazy as Trump, too. I don't think that he keeps up with the latest research at all, be it on face masks or anything else. He seems to be on the lookout only for ideas that can support what he has already decided.

This is also why he (as well as his buddy Giesecke) keep repeating that we can't know anything until it is all over. And I think that they hope that everybody will then have forgotten about all the false claims they made throughout the pandemic: We made it through, we are still here - except for those who aren't.
Again: Much like Trump!

 

[Samson]

I am seeing a growing admiration for Tegnell and within New Zealand.
Kerrie Woodham is an influential radio host.
This is loosely associated with a group of people who deny a correlation between predictions from decades ago that increased CO 2 would show increasing temperatures at the poles before elsewhere.
I lament that revisionists will operate outside of scientific methology.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

No, don't say that no one really knows what's going on. There are many things we do know at this point, and there are many we don't know.

What I do know for a fact at this point is that Sweden has been flying blind almost from the beginning and based its strategy on Tegnell's claims about the development of the pandemic. Claims that he often pulled out of his ass based on nothing whatsoever. One of his ridiculous assumptions, for instance, was that Swedes were so superior to all other nationalities that its population of old people probably wouldn't be affected much because old Swedes were healthier than everybody else's old people, and Sweden's health care was superior to health care in Southern Europe. You know, those primitive Mediterraneans just can't cope in comparison with Sweden, so Sweden would never have the number of deaths that Italy had. For some reason, it's a story we don't hear much anymore.

It already helped when the Italian ambassador pulled out statistics that proved the idea of Italian inferiority wrong.

Months ago, Tegnell more or less ordered Denmark to open up its borders for Scanians because the number of infections in Scania allegedly was lower than than the corresponding number in Copenhagen. And it was, of course. It was a fact, but it was also a fact that people in Scania weren't tested nearly as much as people in Copenhagen, which fortunately occurred to the Danish health authorities before they opened up again.

I imagine that Norway very recently opened its borders to people from Scania because it was also fooled by Sweden's appeal to (misleading) statistics.
Throughout this pandemic, Sweden, led by Tegnell, has been trying to prove to the world how well it was doing, and it has been doing so by presenting its misleading statistics to a world, which, for the most part, is unaware how incomparable Sweden's numbers of new cases have been to their own the whole time.

You can't expect journalists to know all the details. In the early months of the Swedish outbreak, for instance, I read Greta Thunberg's story of how she and her father might have had Covid-19! They both got sick, but since Sweden didn't even test people with symptoms, there was no way of knowing if they had had Covid-19 or not. People were only tested when they were hospitalized. A lot of them probably still are. And that is the reason that makes it so ridiculous when Gavin presents this number and expects it to prove something
That is another fact that we can be absolutely sure about.

That is something that we do know, and that is what makes most Swedish claims insane. I am not even sure if Sweden knows about all of its nursing home deaths: When you prescribe palliative care long distance, i.e. by phone, i.e. letting people die in the nursing homes in spite of available beds in ICUs, then I no longer trust anything said by ******** like Tegnell and Giesecke. By the way, this Swedish version of long-distance triage isn't something that I hear Tegnell and Giesecke brag about when they are talking to journalists abroad - or in Sweden. But it is much easier to make foreigners think that the Swedish health-care system wasn't overwhelmed, i.e. that at least this part of the Swedish strategy worked, when you can just point at the Swedish (******* useless) numbers.

You are new to this thread, Clutch Cargo. If you really want to know what has been going on in Sweden for the past several months, you should go back and start at the beginning, April 4, 2020. The story about the Italian ambassador, for instance, is in there somewhere. But you can also choose to take the blue pill and simply believe everything Tegnell and his fanboys tell you. You know, what Gavin seems to be doing.




Yes, there is still more to understand, but I think that this is yet another one of Tegnell's and Giesecke's lies you have taken to heart: Because we can't know everything about how this pandemic is going to end until it does, we can't know anything along the way.
That Sweden has been flying blind from the start makes it much easier for them to make this claim, but we still know how Sweden has been flying blind and why: Because that's the way the two ******** wanted it, and they have been busy covering up for it ever since.

I am still amazed that Swedes didn't seem to question Tegnell's authority even when he refused to believe that New Zealand had managed to hammer down the virus as successfully as they did. He declared that it was "impossible!" How can you trust a psychopath like this and let him be in charge of your health and lives? Do you have any reason to trust him other than a need to believe in Swedish exceptionalism?

There has been plenty of criticism against Tegnell. I am a sincere SD supporter, I read Nyheter Idag and sometimes (very seldom) Fria Tider … and I listen to Björn Björkqvist, Samhällsnytt, Jimmie Man, Exakt 24, Jellybean Gen, and Joakim Lamotte whenever I think they have something important to say.

 

[Rolfe]

Here's an interesting graph that demonstrates just where Sweden and Scotland diverged. Also how different Scotland now is from England. The divergence is the point where Scotland stopped doing what England was doing.

[imgw=700]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee-hHHxWsAAje9I?format=png[/imgw]

Basically we were doing what England was doing until early May, and we looked like England and Sweden. Two weeks or so after we diverged from the English strategies and switched to doing much more like what Denmark, Finland and Norway were doing, our death statistics started to look like those of these latter countries. The tragedy of course is the deaths that occurred because of that politically-motivated decision back in February not to think and act for ourselves based on our own situation but to copy England in "lockstep". People are pointing to the much better situation since the change of tactics and trying to excuse the catastrophic initial decisions on that basis, but I'm not so sure.

 

[dann]

I am seeing a growing admiration for Tegnell and within New Zealand.
Kerrie Woodham is an influential radio host.
This is loosely associated with a group of people who deny a correlation between predictions from decades ago that increased CO 2 would show increasing temperatures at the poles before elsewhere.
I lament that revisionists will operate outside of scientific methology.

If you are against lockdowns, for whatever reason, Tegnell will be the one you refer to if you want to make your claims sciency, and Sweden's strategy will be the one that you want to emulate.
Abroad, the fans of Tegnell tend to be small business owners and politicians who pretend to cater to their interests, in the USA the Republicans. Any restrictions placed on business interests will be considered anti-business even when, as in the case of SARS-CoV-2, it is actually more a question of distinguishing between long-term and short-term business interests.
People's health, and in particular old people's health, isn't of much concern to them.

But then there is also the problem with the party landscape in modern democracies: What do you do as opposition to hold on to your job at the next election?
In Denmark, it is very obvious that it's a problem for the parties of the opposition how to profile themselves in the middle of the pandemic. On the one hand, they may want the nation to get through the pandemic as unscathed as possible, but on the other hand, they need to convince the voters that they would have been the better managers of the current crisis, and that they will be better than the current government at reestablishing the economy when the pandemic is over.
To many of them, Tegnell will appear to be the answer to their dreams. Some of them might even want to see the lockdown strategy fail because it might further their political careers.

I don't find much about Kerrie Woodham in this context. Is it Kerre or Kerrie?

 

[dann]

There has been plenty of criticism against Tegnell. I am a sincere SD supporter, I read Nyheter Idag and sometimes (very seldom) Fria Tider … and I listen to Björn Björkqvist, Samhällsnytt, Jimmie Man, Exakt 24, Jellybean Gen, and Joakim Lamotte whenever I think they have something important to say.

There has been some criticism. I have primarily focussed on the criticism from scientists like Björn Olsen and the other 22 critics of the Swedish strategy instead of the political rivalries.

I have watched a couple of the Swedish press briefings, and I've been astonished how much the journalists let Tegnell get away with. And many Swedes appear to be concerned about this lack of criticism and investigativeness, too:

Aug. 7 – 11:43

Om ni tycker svaren vid FHM's presskonferenser är otydliga och undvikande så är väl det ert jobb att påtala detta då. Ni säger att det är svårt att gräva vidare när man inte vet så mycket. Blev oerhört förvånad av detta svar av en journalist. Oerhört passiv och undvikande aporoach! Hur förklarar ni brittiska journalisters arbetssätt? Har de mer kompetens och driv?
Karin

Hej Karin, brittiska journalister vet inte mer om sjukdomen än vad vi gör. I grund och botten är det studier som avgör vårt kunskapsläge och vetenskap tar tid. Det har trots allt bara gått några månader sedan vi konfronterades med ett helt nytt virus. Om brittiska journalister är allmänt mer kritiska till myndigheter beror nog på vilka medier du följer. mvh Sara
Sara Milstead

Hej Sara, Igår när SVT ställde frågan om unga vuxna och om det bör vara distansundervisning även under höstterminen så svarade Tegnell att - nej det är nog alldeles försent för det. Varför ställer ingen följdfrågor på ett sådant svar?
Helene

SVT gjorde en längre intervju efter presskonferensen. Det är vanligt att man ställer frågor efter den allmänna utfrågningen. mvh Sara
Sara Milstead

• 09:53
Ni journalister måste "steppa" upp lite. Man blir lite avundsjuk på exempelvis de engelska motsvarigheterna. Betydligt tuffare.
Tova

Hej, jag gissar att många utgår från FHM:s presskonferens. Vi kan ställa fler "tuffa" frågor, som vissa uttrycker det, men jag tror att frustrationen många gånger bygger på att svaren är undvikande och otydliga på de frågor som faktiskt ställs. mvh Sara
Sara Milstead

På tal om presskonferensen och att ni journalister inte får svar på era frågor: är det då inte er uppgift att fortsätta gräva? Att ställa frågor? Att jaga ansvariga tills ni fått svar?Robin

Att gräva är svårt i en situation där vi inte vet så mycket. Det fordrar att det finns tydliga svar, och det gör det inte på många frågor. Har du något konkret uppslag får du gärna mejla och tipsa oss.
Sara Milstead
Senaste nytt om coronaviruset (Aftonbladet.se, Aug. 7, 2020)

I can empathize with the journalist in a situation like this: They are not epidemiologists. But they could try to consult experts like Björn Olsen, maybe even have an open chat with him online. I'm pretty sure that he is watching the press briefings, too, and he would know which questions to ask and how to continue when Tegnell & Co. are being unclear and evasive.
It is much too easy for Tegnell to run circles around them with his appeals to alleged 'science' and 'research' that they don't understand. Tegnell is almost never specific when he refers to science and research, and he rarely comes up with proper explanations for anything. His imbecile idea that you have to use either face masks or social distancing is just one of many examples that show his incompetence just as much as Trump's in the USA - considering that only one of those two is supposed to be an actual epidemiologist.

 

[dann]

Here's an interesting graph that demonstrates just where Sweden and Scotland diverged. Also how different Scotland now is from England. The divergence is the point where Scotland stopped doing what England was doing.

[imgw=700]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee-hHHxWsAAje9I?format=png[/imgw]

Basically we were doing what England was doing until early May, and we looked like England and Sweden. Two weeks or so after we diverged from the English strategies and switched to doing much more like what Denmark, Finland and Norway were doing, our death statistics started to look like those of these latter countries. The tragedy of course is the deaths that occurred because of that politically-motivated decision back in February not to think and act for ourselves based on our own situation but to copy England in "lockstep". People are pointing to the much better situation since the change of tactics and trying to excuse the catastrophic initial decisions on that basis, but I'm not so sure.

I assume that when England's graph is as steep as it is (more so than Sweden's), it must be because they actively encouraged people to spread the infection as much as possible at the beginning of the epidemic: Sports events in March 'caused increased suffering and death' (BBC News, May 26, 2020)

 

[Rolfe]

All this talk about Sweden achieveing something called "herd immunity", as if that was a desirable goal. You need to ask what the situation of the country with respect to the virus will be when that goal is achieved. You will find that this is not a good situation at all, because what they are describing is not what is normally understood by the term herd immunity.

 

[Rolfe]

I assume that when England's graph is as steep as it is (more so than Sweden's), it must be because they actively encouraged people to spread the infection as much as possible at the beginning of the epidemic: Sports events in March 'caused increased suffering and death' (BBC News, May 26, 2020)

That is my opinion, yes. They didn't just decide to stay open and let it happen, they encouraged the virus to spread to all parts of the country as quickly as possible. If you look at other European countries that had bad epidemics there is a variation within these countries, with the epidemic more contained to a particular region and steps being taken to protect regions that the virus hadn't yet got such a hold on. Nothing like that happened in Britain, with people being encouraged to travel to sporting events and then back home, in the case of Cheltenham this was often hundreds of miles.

We were more or less being told it was our duty to get the virus to further the herd immunity goal, even as out of the other sides of their mouths they were telling us about handwashing and making minimal murmurings about social distancing. They didn't want to protect anyone or any region. We could have protected our vulnerable islands but we didn't. Why would we, when the whole plan was for at least 60% of people right across the country to get the virus?

I believe the thinking behind this was coloured by Brexit. Brexit was all the politicians were thinking about in late January and into February, and the date for the end of the transition period is of course 31st December. I believe Johnson saw the best strategy as being to have as fast an epidemic as possible, to get to this magical mythical 60% infection as soon as possible, so that it would be all over well before that date. Indeed, his infamous Superman speech in early February indicates that he envisaged a negotiating benefit from this, in that Britain would be over it all and functioning normally while negotiating with wimpish countries still distracted by trying to protect their citizens from infection.

The result was that England in particular was very badly hit, much more so than Sweden. Then on about 18th March it began to dawn on Johnson that he was making a catastrophic mistake, although it still took him another week to lock down. By that time the virus was so all-pervasive that the mortality figures soon became absolutely appalling. And then he sat on his hands during the lockdown without making rigorous preparations for a managed opening-up, and he has opened up too soon and without a functioning test trace isolate operation in place. So the death toll continues to mount.

Scotland finally realised what was going on, diverged from the English suicide pact, got a functioning test trace isolate system up and running, and opened up more slowly (though still allowing the pubs to open too soon I think). But thousands of people died needlessly.

 

[dann]

Were the ICUs overwhelmed in the UK the way they were in Sweden? Did they have the same kind of long-distance triage combined with palliative care for residents of nursing homes?

 

[dann]

Monday:
Coronavirus - countries (Worldometers, Aug. 9, 2020)
Deaths per million (Total deaths) New cases Serious/Critical
Sweden: 571 (5,766) 649* 34 *since Friday according to SVT.se.
Denmark: 107 (620) 373* 2 *since Friday
Finland: 60 (333) 17 1
Norway: 47 (256) 23 2
Iceland: 29 (10) 4 1
Iceland has 114 active cases, Faroe Islands 88, New Zealand 21.
The Faroe Islands have 900+ in quarantine, 1.648 are awaiting results from tests carried out Aug. 8 and 9.

Denmark:
Nye krav om mundbind i offentlig transport gælder nu seks kommuner (TV2.dk, Aug. 10, 2020)
Face masks now mandatory on public transport in six municipalities - And they encourage using it in shops and malls as well.

Én coronasmittet smitter lige nu 1,4 nye personer (TV2.dk, Aug. 10, 2020)
R₀ now 1,4

 

[dann]

Norway transfers some of the Swedish regions that they had opened up for from status green back to red because their levels of infection are too high again.

This again proves that no one (really) knows what is going on. Everyone is guessing. ...

This must be the reason wht Norway decided to close its borders for people from Scania:

SOPHIE STIGFUR - 15:30
Antalet bekräftade coronafall har ökat i Skåne den senaste veckan, rapporterar P4 Malmöhus.
Regionstyrelsens ordförande, Carl-Johan Sonesson (M), säger nu till kanalen att han vill att regeringen funderar över att ta tillbaka de reserestriktioner som rådde i Sverige före midsommar.
Senaste nytt om coronaviruset (Aftonbladet.se, Aug. 10, 2020)

 

[Rolfe]

Were the ICUs overwhelmed in the UK the way they were in Sweden? Did they have the same kind of long-distance triage combined with palliative care for residents of nursing homes?

Officially no, but there were some nasty incidents, like doctors trying to get blanket "do not resuscitate" forms signed for elderly and handicapped people. There was a public outrage about this though.

 

[dann]

Much like when they rationalized the death toll with the argument, 'Well, they were going to die soon anyway,' most Swedes also seem to have accepted palliative care for nursing home residents with the argument, 'Well, they wouldn't want to die in ICUs on ventilators. It's better for them to die where they are.'
I guess these 100+-year-olds would have been left to die 'for their own good': Centenarians recovering from the virus (BBC News, May 30, 2020)


ETA: Can you help us out here?

 

[Clutch Cargo]

All this talk about Sweden achieveing something called "herd immunity", as if that was a desirable goal. You need to ask what the situation of the country with respect to the virus will be when that goal is achieved. You will find that this is not a good situation at all, because what they are describing is not what is normally understood by the term herd immunity.

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the theory (or proven fact) all about those who are immune NOT INFECTING OTHERS? When Europeans went to the new world they were immune to many diseases but it didn't prevent them from either 1. themselves infecting the indigenous population or 2. bringing with them the diseases to which they were immune?.

 

[Gavin]

You really don't want to learn, do you?! To prove your hypothesis, it might have been a good idea to include the number of cases in nursing homes in those states. However, that might not even work because one of your numbers is completely useless and proves one thing only:
Sweden, Coronavirus Cases: 82,323; Deaths: 5,763
Georgia, Coronavirus Cases: 216,596; Deaths: 4,199

And you could know this without me having to tell you. You would just have had to combine the claims from the sources you have quoted from already in this thread.
Consider this: What did the Swedish doctor tell you about 'herd immunity' in Stockholm? How many people live in Stockholm? How does that number compare to your number of coronavirus cases?
It's amazing, isn't it?!
The only thing your numbers tell us is that they did some testing in Georgia, apparently, and in Sweden they only tested a small fraction of the population. (So did Georgia, I guess, but apparently its fraction of people tested was much larger than Sweden's.)

Georgia was the only state on my list with less deaths Stockholm as well as the rest of Sweden has flattened the curve and why he is saying they reached herd immunity I would rather take a locale doctor’s opinion then someone not in the medical field.


[/QUOTE]

So you are claiming that schools didn't lock down? That Japan didn't cancel the Olympics?

Don't let the title of this article fool you. The three C's are not unimportant, but ... :


How do you think that works in real life? In particular, how do you think it affects the owners of bars, discos and concert venues when people don't show up because they have been made aware of the dangers of doing so? And why do you think Sweden is so proud of its strategy?

In Denmark, discos and concert venues are still locked down - and I hope it remains so until the vaccine is there - but the owners are compensated. If I were the owner of a disco, I'd much prefer that situation instead of trying to keep it open as diminishing numbers of people show up because they are aware that going to the disco is a super-spreader event, which, I guess, was the reason why they remained open in Sweden: It would be in accordance with Sweden's attempts to spread the virus among young people to achieve herd immunity while conveniently forgetting that the same young people would go back to their jobs as care workers in nursing homes the next day!

As they write in ScienceMag:

So let's look at some of the things, apart from the three C's, that Japan did (and still does) and Sweden didn't do:
1) Lockdown of schools
2) Contact tracing
3) Wearing face masks
And let's look at some of the things that Sweden did (and still does) but Japan didn't (still doesn't) do:
1) Claiming that children don't spread the virus.
2) Claiming that asymptomatic virus transmission is unimportant (i.e. telling people to stay at home if they have symptoms and assume that they aren't infected if they are asymptomatic)
3) Telling people early on (in March!!!) that there was no reason to worry: It was already peaking and would soon go away.

Notice that Sweden to this day still doesn't do contact tracing! Instead, it is left up to people to tell their contacts that they may be infected. This is also the reason why Swedish epidemiologists don't know **** about how the virus spreads in the country, which, of course, enables them to remain ignorant of the spread that takes place in schools: Most children aren't affected much, so outbreak at schools only become apparent when teachers are infected, and even in those cases Sweden doesn't contact trace.

The report, which has not been peer-reviewed, found that during the period of February 24 to June 14, there were 1,124 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among children in Sweden, around 0.05% of the total number of children aged 1-19.
Finland recorded 584 cases in the same period, also equivalent to around 0.05%.
“In conclusion, (the) closure or not of schools had no measurable direct impact on the number of laboratory confirmed cases in school-aged children in Finland or Sweden,” the agencies said in the report, published last week.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-pandemic-spread-among-children-idUSKCN24G2IS
They also flatten curve

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/2...lly-shows-kids-are-not-spreading-coronavirus/

In fact, the report found that it was extremely rare for children to bring an infection into the home. It found that just 2.7 percent of potential “index cases” (first case in the home) were under age 20. Imagine twisting that into a call for school closures. It’s astonishingly reckless.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/2...lly-shows-kids-are-not-spreading-coronavirus/

Denmark only had all on voluntary basis and only had Cases: 14,815 Deaths: 620

Depending on when you begin to tackle the pandemic, there are ways to do so without lockdowns. Japan did it without locking down private businesses, for instance. Iceland and New Zealand didn't lock down much. However, if the infection has already reached a high level - and in particular if you don't have the facilities to start doing TeTrIs fast, lockdowns are the only measure that can hammer down the virus. Sweden, however, didn't do any of those things.
Lockdowns have worked everywhere - except in the places where governments had an ambiguous attitude to them and therefore hesitated and switched from 'herd immunity' strategy to lockdowns and back again like in the UK, i.e. in the countries that Sweden prefers to compare itself with.

And I almost forgot this: Border enforcement measures to prevent the spread of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, July 24, 2020) But Swedes don't think that this measure has any effect. Tegnell has told them that there is no scientific evidence that it does.

there are ways to do so without lockdowns was the whole point and their schools have been opened since the first of June and they have had no problems school closure was the only change from Sweden besides the closed borders

 

[Ulf Nereng]

All of the new cases we've had in the past two weeks (Norway) have been linked to travel to red and yellow countries, sometimes followed by going to parties upon returning home. Plus the outbreak on the Hurtigruten cruiseline! One of their ships that is doing trips to the Arctic took on a bunch of sailors from the Phillipines and decided to "quarantine onboard" which is apparently allowed for ships that sail in international waters. One of them became symptomatic, something they decided to keep quiet for two days while visiting over sixty coastal communities along the Norwegian coast. We truly have a pandumbic as well as a pandemic!