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

[dann]

I mean, on a country lane in the middle of nowhere?

See my wind hypothesis!

 

[Samson]

A week or two ago I went for a walk in the lanes near my home and started to collect litter from the verges as a means of passing the time. I was dumping the stuff in wheelie-bins at farm road-ends, although I did take one empty vodka bottle home to put it in the glass recycling.

Anyway, one of the items I picked up was a discarded face mask. I mean, on a country lane in the middle of nowhere?

Well, this is the curious case of New Zealand, where hundreds of thousands are wearing the masks in absurd settings like that, but off they come in the hostelries and restaurants. I recommended masks and gloves to be issued before entering supermarkets at level 4, but that is still deemed unnecessary, while people mask up in isolated breezy streets doing their duty.
I dunno. I could post a hundred pictures but I am sure I can be believed without doing so.

 

[dann]

The number of cases increases dramatically at teachers’ education – The headmaster regrets ‘hugging exercise’

Yesterday, I forgot that we have an emoji for this!

From now and until we have been vaccinated, we can use it as an emoji for people who deliberately spread the virus.

 

[dann]

Well, this is the curious case of New Zealand, where hundreds of thousands are wearing the masks in absurd settings like that, but off they come in the hostelries and restaurants. I recommended masks and gloves to be issued before entering supermarkets at level 4, but that is still deemed unnecessary, while people mask up in isolated breezy streets doing their duty.

Probably not the same people!

 

[Childlike Empress]

Belarus update, three weeks into a period of large public demonstrations both against and for the government:

As of 2 September, 72,141 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Belarus. The number of new cases is 179 per day, the Healthcare Ministry reports.

70,900 patients recovered and were discharged from hospitals (+294 patients in the 24 hours). A total of 691 coronavirus patients have died (+5 in the 24 hours) since the outbreak. Belarus has conducted 1,543,966 tests (+9,174 in the 24 hours).

That is there are 550 COVID-19 infected people in the country at the moment.

 

[dann]

Belarus update, three weeks into a period of large public demonstrations both against and for the government:

As of 2 September, 72,141 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in Belarus. The number of new cases is 179 per day, the Healthcare Ministry reports.
(...)
That is there are 550 COVID-19 infected people in the country at the moment.

This isn't the Belarus thread. And you don't seem to notice that something must be wrong with at least one of the two highlighted belarusfeed numbers.

 

[dann]

Friday:
Coronavirus - countries (Worldometers, Sep. 4, 2020)
Deaths per million (Total deaths) New cases Serious/Critical
Sweden: 577 (5,835) 256* 16 *according to SVT.se. I don’t know how reliable that number is since the recommendation now is that ”You shouldn’t get tested unless you have symptoms.”
Denmark: 108 (627) 173 3
Finland: 61 (336) 25 1
Norway: 49 (264) 40 1
Iceland: 29 (10) 7 0
Iceland has 96 active cases, Faroe Islands 34, New Zealand 111.
The Faroe Islands have 36 in quarantine, 2 hospitalized, and all tests from yesterday analyzed.
For the second day in a row, a traveller was tested positive at the airport (KVF.fo, Sep. 4, 2020)

With the rising number of cases, the Danish health authorities threaten with more restrictions – like when they clamped down on the recent outbreaks in Aarhus and Ringsted:
Advarsel fra myndighederne: Smitten skal ned inden mandag ellers … (DR.dk, Sep. 4, 2020)
Warning from the authorities: The rate of infections has got to be reduced before Monday or else …

 

[Childlike Empress]

This isn't the Belarus thread.

But it is the Norway, Denmark, Icland etc thread because those are the countries you need to cherry-pick for your continued hating on your neighbours. I'm aware of that.

And you don't seem to notice that something must be wrong with at least one of the two highlighted belarusfeed numbers.

The answer is in the paragraph you ommited from the quote.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

But it is the Norway, Denmark, Icland etc thread because those are the countries you need to cherry-pick for your continued hating on your neighbours.

 

[steenkh]

I have only seen a few, but I haven't been at a train station yet. The ones I've seen weren't in places with a lot of cigarette butts so they could be due to one-ear users and wind.

I checked the locations more carefully yesterday, and I have to say that around Østerport station (a station in Copenhagen) I found none at all, but I saw six trampled down face masks close to Roskilde station. It seems somebody has cleaned up at both places, and perhaps littering is more prevalent in Roskilde.

 

[steenkh]

But it is the Norway, Denmark, Icland etc thread because those are the countries you need to cherry-pick for your continued hating on your neighbours. I'm aware of that.

You are right that practically from the start this thread developed into the non-US, non-England thread.

 

[dann]

But it is the Norway, Denmark, Icland etc thread because those are the countries you need to cherry-pick for your continued hating on your neighbours. I'm aware of that.

A comparison with neighboring countries is nothing more than that: A comparison with neighboring countries. It is obvious why you and Clutch Cargo consider this comparison to be 'hating on Sweden.'
You seem to have forgotten why you were so fond of the Belarus numbers in the first place: They were supposed to show that the pandemic is a "mass psychosis" because your "Uncle Luka" said so. But the Belarus numbers do nothing to put Sweden in a better light with its death toll from Covid-19 at 74 per million at this point. When you first mentioned the country in post 307, it was 15. Since then it has passed Iceland, Norway and Finland, but not yet Denmark, and there is still a l-o-o-o-n-g way to go before it gets anywhere near Sweden.

The answer is in the paragraph you ommited from the quote.

No, it's not. Here's the omitted (since irrelevant) part:

70,900 patients recovered and were discharged from hospitals (+294 patients in the 24 hours). A total of 691 coronavirus patients have died (+5 in the 24 hours) since the outbreak. Belarus has conducted 1,543,966 tests (+9,174 in the 24 hours).

In your first two posts in this thread, posts 12 and 13, you were actually still onto something: Europe was ill prepared for the pandemic due to neoliberalism's short-term thinking. That was when you were still somewhat rational and hadn't gone full the-pandemic-is-a-hoax conspiracy theory. Many European countries had actually destroyed PPE because it costs money to stockpile stuff, even stuff that's as cheap to stockpile as PPE: 'No need to have a stock of PPE. We won't need it and if we do, we can always buy it.' Which wasn't possible when everybody wanted it at the same time, of course...
That Sweden is the Nordic country affected most by the neoliberal ideology was the reason why herd immunity became its strategy, albeit in a very dishonest way that pretended that it was never the case while it let almost 6,000 people die and an unknown number get maimed for life by the "mass psychosis".

 

[dann]

... but I saw six trampled down face masks close to Roskilde station.

Those disgusting RUC students!

 

[dann]

USA har gått om Sverige i antal döda per capita
USA har nu registrerat 573,9 döda per en miljon invånare och går alltså om Sverige med motsvarande 573.
Totalt har 187 757 personer avlidit med bekräftad covid-19 i USA, i Sverige 5 835.
Peru, Belgien, Spanien, Storbritannien, Chile, Brasilien och Italien har hittills fler döda per capita än USA och Sverige. Även San Marino och Andorra har högre andel dödsfall men har också mycket liten befolkning i förhållande till övriga nämnda länder.
Senaste nytt om coronaviruset (SVT.se, Sep. 5, 2020 – 11:33)

The USA has now overtaken Sweden in number of deaths per capita
The USA has now registered 573,9 deaths per million population, so the country overtakes Sweden with 573.
In total 187,757 people have died with confirmed Covid-19 in the USA, in Sweden 5,835.
So far, Peru, Belgium, Spain, the UK, Chile, Brazil and Italy have more per-capita deaths than the USA and Sweden. Even San Marino and Andorra have higher death tolls, but they also have much smaller populations in comparison to the other countries mentioned.
Latest news about coronavirus

Per-capita deaths (deaths per million) according to Worldometers:
#7 Chile: 600
#8 Brazil: 590
#9 Italy: 588
#10 USA: 580
#11 Sweden: 577
#12 Mexico: 518

 

[Samson]

Here is an article

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12362489

It concludes:

"The Public Health Agency of Sweden published new studies of the antibody levels among blood donors, which showed that the proportion nationally with antibodies had slowly risen since March, reaching about 7 per cent of the population by the end of June, and close to 12 per cent in Stockholm.

In Rinkeby-Kista, the worst-hit Stockholm suburb, as many as 18 per cent of the 530 16- to 69-year-olds who agreed to be tested had antibodies.

Tegnell said the difficulty in finding a representative group to test for antibodies made judging immunity in the population "extremely complicated".

"The most important thing we see right now is the continued fall in the number of infected, and part of the explanation for the continued fall that we see is fairly certain to be that we have quite a large proportion of the population who are immune."

I am not impressed by this because it tells me 80 to 90% of people at best interpretation are still at risk of death, long covid, or extreme discomfort and certainly great anxiety.

Any thoughts?.

 

[Rolfe]

A lot of people seem to be pinning their hopes on there being a substantial cohort of people who are seronegative and yet are somehow protected, perhaps by cell mediated immunity. I think that's wishful thinking myself. A better explanation is likely to be that people's behaviour has changed in the face of the threat of the virus, and that many more of those now being infected are collecting a much smaller viral load when they do so, leading to significantly milder clinical illness and significantly lower mortality. Whether this will decrease the incidence of long covid I think remains to be seen. Sweden may be the place were we see it.

 

[Childlike Empress]

No, it's not. Here's the omitted (since irrelevant) part:

Let me do the math for you: 72,141 (diagnosed) - 70,900 (recovered) - 691 (dead) = 550 (currently infected)

Not really difficult.

To the rest of your post: Spare me your misguided attempts at reading my motivation for posting this kind of information to your unappetizing thread - it's obvious to most.

 

[dann]

Let me do the math for you:
"The number of new cases is 179 per day"
"there are 550 COVID-19 infected people in the country at the moment."

179 is almost one third of the alleged number of cases. This (and the death toll of the last three days: 4, 5 & 5) makes it highly unlikely that the number of active cases is only 550.
Your Uncle Luka must have put the people who counted the votes at the latest election in charge of counting SARS-Cov-2 cases.

 

[dann]

Saturday:
Coronavirus - countries (Worldometers, Sep. 5, 2020)
Deaths per million (Total deaths) New cases Serious/Critical
Sweden: 577 (5,835) 256* 16 *according to SVT.se. No new numbers till Monday.
Denmark: 108 (627) 189 3
Finland: 61 (336) 36 1
Norway: 49 (264) 23 1
Iceland: 29 (10) 1 0
Iceland has 88 active cases, Faroe Islands 34, New Zealand 112.
The Faroe Islands have 36 in quarantine, 1 hospitalized, and all tests from yesterday analyzed.

 

[dann]

A lot of people seem to be pinning their hopes on there being a substantial cohort of people who are seronegative and yet are somehow protected, perhaps by cell mediated immunity. I think that's wishful thinking myself. A better explanation is likely to be that people's behaviour has changed in the face of the threat of the virus, and that many more of those now being infected are collecting a much smaller viral load when they do so, leading to significantly milder clinical illness and significantly lower mortality. Whether this will decrease the incidence of long covid I think remains to be seen. Sweden may be the place were we see it.

This reminds me of a question I've had but forgot to ask: A couple of months ago, you mentioned that a viral load may be too small to lead to an infection. It has to be big enough to overwhelm the immune system in order to be able to invade the cells and make them produce new copies of the virus.
Is it possible that several of those too-small-to-cause-an-actual-infection viral loads in the course of weeks or months could contribute to some kind of 'training' of the immune system?