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

[dann]

Recent news, Denmark:

113 sundhedsansatte er smittet med corona den seneste uge (TV2.dk, Sep. 11, 2020)
113 health-care workers infected with coronavirus this week

44 nu indlagt med coronavirus – nedlukning af samfund er tæt på, advarer overlæge (TV2.dk, Sep. 11, 2020)
44 are now hospitalized with coronavirus – doctor warns that lockdown of society is getting closer

 

[dann]

Recent news, Sweden:

Tidigt i coronapandemin varnade Folkhälsomyndigheten om ”okunniga myndigheter”.
Nu har ett bråk blossat upp mellan MSB och FHM.
Bråket mellan FHM och MSB: ”Kunnat ta i mer” (Expressen.se, Sep. 7, 2020)

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Public Health Agency (FHM) warned against ”ignorant authorities”.
Now there’s a brawl between FHM and MSB.
The brawl between the Public Health Agency (FHM) and the Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB): ”Could have been involved more.” Much like Trump in the USA who wanted to calm down the American people, FHM seems to have wanted to calm down the authorities. They also claimed that the level of preparedness was good, which was obviously a lie, whether deliberate or due to ignorance.

Folkhälsomyndighetens makt över regeringens lag (Expressen.se, Sep. 11, 2020)
The power of the Public Health Agency over the government’s decisions

”Omdömeslöst att hosta och snörvla” (Expressen.se, Sep. 9, 2020)
”Coughing and sniffling is poor judgment” The leader of the Sweden Democrats attended a meeting in parliament after having been ill with symptoms that may be due to Covid-19, maybe to something else: He didn't get tested. He claims that he followed the rules and regulations laid down by FHM, and it's not unlikely that he did.

I höst kan vi vänta oss nya – men mindre explosiva – klusterutbrott. Men på sikt kan sars-cov-2 utvecklas till ett milt säsongsvirus som fortsätter att cirkulera bland befolkningen.
DN har pratat med tre epidemiologer om hur pandemin slutar.
– I framtiden kanske vi inte ens behöver ett vaccin, säger Joacim Rocklöv, professor vid Umeå universitet.
Tre epidemiologer: Så slutar pandemin (DagensNyheter.se, Sep. 11, 2020)

This autumn, we can expect new – but less massive – cluster outbreaks. But long term, SARS-CoV-2 may turn into a milde seasonal virus that continues to circulate in the population.
Dagens Nyheter talked to three epidemiologists about how the pandemic will end.
In the future, we may not even need a vaccine, says Joacim Rocklöv, professor at the Umeå University.
Three epidemiologists: This is how the pandemic will end It doesn't sound as reassuring as it is meant to, I think. To me, it sounds as if the elderly in Sweden should prepare for spending the rest of their lives in self-isolation.

Att kurvorna över antal smittade nu börjar peka kraftigt uppåt i både Norge och Danmark medan Sverige har ett något lugnare läge kan ha flera förklaringar.
Tegnell om Norges svenska coronastrategi: Inte en tävling (Aftonbladet.se, Sep. 10, 2020)

There may be more explanations for the curves of the number of cases beginning to point steeply upwards in both Norway and Denmark while Sweden is in a more calm condition.
Tegnell about Norway’s corona strategy: Not a competition Again Tegnell and Swedish reporters seem to forget that rising and falling numbers of cases depend very much on the level that you started out at – and on the number of tests that you conduct. The number of new cases is considerably smaller in Norway than in Sweden.

Sverige begår ett misstag som kan kosta hundratals liv. Det anser fem europeiska epidemiologer som SvD har talat med.
”Munskydd kan rädda många liv”, säger epidemiologen Antoine Flahault.
Sverige gör allvarligt misstag enligt experter (SydsvenskaDagbladet.se, Sep. 10, 2020)

Sweden is making a mistake that may cost hundreds of lives, according to five European epidemiologists that SvenskaDagbladet talked to.
”Face masks can save many lives,” says epidemiologist Antoine Flahault.
Sweden is making a serious mistake according to experts

Folkhälsomyndigheten borde bestämma sig och rekommendera alla att använda munskydd. Det menar professor emeritus Anders Vahlne.
Professorns kritik om munskyddan: ”Vill de ha smittspridning?” (Expressen.se, Sep. 3, 2020)

The Public Health Agency should make up its mind and recommend that everybody use face masks, according to professor emiritus Anders Vahlne.
The professor’s criticism of face masks: ”Do they want to spread the virus?”

 

[dann]

Recent news from the Swedish side of the Norwegian-Swedish border:

Swedish shop keepers near the Norwegian border are pretty upset because Norwegians don’t go shopping in Sweden:
Norska kommunens coronakrav ska få anställda att avstå Sverigeresor (SVT.se, Sep. 11, 2020)
Norwegian municipality’s corona demands are intended to make employees abstain from (shopping) trips to Sweden

Ingen fart på gränshandeln – trots Norges öppning mot Sverige (SVT.se, Sep. 11, 2020)
Border shopping hasn’t increased – in spite of Norway’s opening towards Sweden

Boende i norska kommunen Sør-Odal: Vi stannar hemma (SVT.se, Sep. 11, 2020)
People in the Norwegian municipality Sør-Odal: We stay in Norway

 

[Rolfe]

But long term, SARS-CoV-2 may turn into a milde seasonal virus that continues to circulate in the population.
Dagens Nyheter talked to three epidemiologists about how the pandemic will end.
In the future, we may not even need a vaccine, says Joacim Rocklöv, professor at the Umeå University.
Three epidemiologists: This is how the pandemic will end It doesn't sound as reassuring as it is meant to, I think. To me, it sounds as if the elderly in Sweden should prepare for spending the rest of their lives in self-isolation.

Yes, this defeatism really annoys me. This is not a virus we should be willing to allow to simmer forever, endemic to the population. It's not just that the morbidity and mortality rates are greater than we should be willing to accept, but that it's perfectly possible that catching the virus when you're young and have a low chance of dying from it will not protect you from catching it again when you're old and vulnerable. Endemic coronavirus could make hermits out of everyone over retirement age and reduce life expectancy sgnificantly.

This thing is eradicable. It would be eradicable without a vaccine if people would do what they're told, but they won't. However a vaccine will give the eradication effort the edge it needs to be successful. I can understand people in general not understanding this, but when actual epidemiologists spout such nonsense I get cross. It almost seems as if they're trying to normalise the idea of endemic coronavirus so they don't have to bother eith the work of stamping it out.

 

[RedStapler]

You must have an opinion, yes? Yes?

You could just answer the question...

 

[dann]

Yes, this defeatism really annoys me. This is not a virus we should be willing to allow to simmer forever, endemic to the population. It's not just that the morbidity and mortality rates are greater than we should be willing to accept, but that it's perfectly possible that catching the virus when you're young and have a low chance of dying from it will not protect you from catching it again when you're old and vulnerable. Endemic coronavirus could make hermits out of everyone over retirement age and reduce life expectancy sgnificantly.

This thing is eradicable. It would be eradicable without a vaccine if people would do what they're told, but they won't. However a vaccine will give the eradication effort the edge it needs to be successful. I can understand people in general not understanding this, but when actual epidemiologists spout such nonsense I get cross. It almost seems as if they're trying to normalise the idea of endemic coronavirus so they don't have to bother eith the work of stamping it out.

Björn Olsen is not an optimist:
Olsen: ”Covid-19 håller på i minst tio år till” (SvenskaDagbladet.se, Sep. 12, 2020)
Olsen: ”Covid-19 will continue for at least ten more years - Which is why he also assumes that he will get it at some point.

Den senaste tidens ökade belastning har gjort att proven kanske tas för sent – vilket kan göra dem meningslösa.
Överbelastat system kan göra tester meningslösa (SvenskaDagbladet.se, Sep. 11, 2020)

The recent increased load (of the testing systesm) means that testing may be carried out too late – which may make them pointless.
Overloaded system may make testing pointless

Detta talar mot en bred smittspridning i höst (SvenskaDagbladet.se, Sep. 11, 2020)
This speaks against massive spread of infection this autumn - Primarily because Sweden now has testing-and-tracing.

 

[Rolfe]

Twice in my career we had novel livestock vaccines threatening Scotland. Twice we managed to keep them out, helped by geography. Both viruses got into England to a limited extent but the English surveillance system was able to contain them.

Both summers were a bit fraught and hectic, especially for our colleagues in England who actually had cases to deal with. (We had some seropositivity but no actual sick animals.) We were prepared to go again the following year each time (these were seasonal summer viruses with an insect vector) but on both occasions the vaccine was developed and launched and used to eliminate the virus.

Vaccination was compusory for a year, but we don't vaccinate any longer. The viruses haven't been wiped out from the world but they don't threaten us any more.

Do these so-called experts know nothing? Complete eradication within a country's borders and compulsory travel vaccination is the short-term solution to this, and will work fine in conjunction with enhanced surveillance to ensure that anything that gets through the borders is found and stamped out.

 

[Arcade22]

Do these so-called experts know nothing? Complete eradication within a country's borders and compulsory travel vaccination is the short-term solution to this, and will work fine in conjunction with enhanced surveillance to ensure that anything that gets through the borders is found and stamped out.

Since clearly you know everything and anyone that could possibly disagree with you are nothing short of complete idiots, how about you apply your expertise and save Scotland first then? Or are you looking forward to another round of quarantine?

 

[dann]

No, not all people who disagree with Rolfe are "nothing short of complete idiots," but many of them obviously are.

You need to go back to page one of this thread and recapitulate your own appeals to false Swedish authority. You know, back in early April when only 150 people had died in Stockholm nursing homes and you were lecturing us about how lockdowns were not "sustainable" as if anybody had planned for them to go on forever.

Right now, whenever a country is loosening restrictions, Swedish journalists and politicians claim that they do so because they have been convinced by the superiority of the insane Swedish strategy, and in the meantime, some of the countries that have actually taken the Swedish approach to the pandemic strategy, states led by Trump's Republican governors, for instance, are overtaking Sweden's death toll.

The countries that never felt inclined to let people die the Swedish way are still 'dancing', and doing so quite effectively, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway and Finland, for instance, and even Denmark, in spite of the current set backs.

 

[Rolfe]

Twice in my career we had novel livestock vaccines viruses threatening Scotland.

Sorry, typing in a hurry, my reading group was about to start.

 

[dann]

We know nothing ...

Experts tell us what we do know and don’t know about COVID-19
It's been almost 8 months since the first coronavirus case was reported in the U.S. VICE News talked with some experts about what we've learned about the virus, and what we still don't understand at all.
[VICE news, Sep. 3, 2020)

ETA: And even SVT Nyheter seems to think that there are things that we do know about coronavirus:

I våras visste vi en hel del om coronaviruset, men många saker var samtidigt väldigt osäkra. Som hur farligt det var med övervikt –och varför–, om hur smittsamma barn egentligen är och om vi blir immuna efter en infektion.
Vissa teorier har bekräftats medan andra har kastats omkull.
Fem saker vi lärt oss om coronaviruset (SVT.se, Sep. 13, 2020)

This spring, we knew quite a lot about the coronavirus, but many things were very uncertain. Like for instance how dangerous it was to be overweight – and why – and how infectious children actually are and if we acquire immunity after having been infected.
Certain theories have been confirmed, others have been exploded.
Five things we have learned about the coronavirus

However, it does seem to be the product of Swedish confirmation bias when it claims that children don't really spread the infection.

 

[dann]

Saturday:
Coronavirus - countries (Worldometers, Sep. 12, 2020)
Deaths per million (Total deaths) New cases Serious/Critical
Sweden: 578 (5,846) 311* 13 *according to SVT.se No new numbers till Monday
Denmark: 109 (630) 341 4
Finland: 61 (337) 45 1
Norway: 49 (265) 47 1
Iceland: 29 (10) 0 0
Iceland has 67 active cases, Faroe Islands 8, New Zealand 108.
The Faroe Islands have 9 in quarantine, 1 hospitalized, and all tests from yesterday analyzed.
I don’t know where the two new cases came from, but they are probably travellers tested at the airport - like other recent cases: Follow-up Covid test proves positive (KVF.fo, Sep. 11, 2020)
Yet another positive Covid test at airport (KVF.fo, Sep. 9, 2020)


Politiet roser festglade unge efter løftet pegefinger: 'Folk var mere ansvarlige i nat' - Politiet måtte dog lukke en piratfest med 300 deltagere i København. (DR.dk, Sep. 13, 2020)
The police praise festive young people after after serious admonitions: ”People were acting more resposibly tonight”” – However, the police had to close down a pirate party in Copenhagen with 300 participants

Epidemien fødes lige nu af de unge - og det er svært at bryde smittekæderne (TV2.dk, Sep. 12, 2020)
The epidemic is currently being fed by young people – and it is difficult to break the chains of transmission

 

[dann]

The success story of the glorious Swedish strategy

"Om ett par veckor kan Sverige vara som Italien. Det går förfärande fort nu." skrev DN:s chefredaktör Peter Wolodarski på ledarplats och förespråkade att "stänga ned Sverige".
När man nu, med facit i hand, läser vad tidningarna skrev de där veckorna känns det som en annan värld. I Italien hann krematorierna inte med och SVT sände bilder på bästa sändningstid av dödskampen inifrån intensivvårdsavdelningarna.
Vi var ett land av väldigt rädda människor.
Vi lyssnade på våra ledare och gjorde som vi blev tillsagda. Alltid en farlig situation.
Men Sverige blev inte Italien. Intensivvårdsplatserna tog inte slut, varken i april eller senare. I stället genomförde vårt land en historisk civil mobilisering. Sjukvården ställde om, företag ändrade produktion till skyddsutrustning och stora folkrörelser organiserade stöd till äldre i hela landet för att människor skulle kunna isolera sig.
Anders Tegnell var nog inte så fel ute trots allt (Aftonbladet.se, Sep. 13, 2020)

”In a couple of weeks Sweden may be like Italy. It’s going awfully fast now.” DagensNyheter’s editor in chief Peter Wolodarski wrote this in an editorial and recommended to ”lock down Sweden.”
When you now read what the newspapers wrote back in those weeks, with the knowledge of what actually happened, it feels like a different world. In Italy, the crematoria couldn’t keep up and SVT showed photos in primetime of the death struggle in ICUs.
We were a country of very scared people.
We listened to our leaders and did what we were told to do. Always a dangerous situation.
But Sweden didn’t turn into Italy. The ICUs weren’t exhausted, in April or later on. Instead, our country carried out a historic mobilization. The health-care sector reorganized, companies changed their production lines to PPE, and big popular movements organized support for the elderly all over the country to enable people to self-isolate.
Anders Tegnell probably wasn’t so wrong after all

I am astonished that Swedes let him get away with the lie that the Swedish ICUs could actually keep up with the number of people sick from Covid-19 when we know for a fact that people were left to die in nursing homes, receiving palliative care only, because hospitals didn't have the capacity to take them in!
It is possible that the Swedish crematoria were able to keep up. I don't know, and I don't really consider it to be all that important. Considering the number of Covid-19 deaths in Sweden (578 per million) in comparison to Italy (589), it is revolting to consider the Swedish strategy a success and claim that the people who warned that conditions in Sweden didn't resemble those in Italy.
On the contrary, Sweden did turn into Italy in spite of the lesson that the country could have learned from Italy!

 

[Rolfe]

Since clearly you know everything and anyone that could possibly disagree with you are nothing short of complete idiots, how about you apply your expertise and save Scotland first then? Or are you looking forward to another round of quarantine?

I know enough. This was my job for many years. And there are a lot of complete idiots running the covid show in a number of countries, that's obvious.

Nobody is going to listen to me, a retired veterinary disease control expert. Nobody is even listening to the current top veterinary experts. All they're doing is grudgingly accepting the use of the high-volume PCR machines we have for mass livestock testing, and even there saying, the veterinary technicians are only allowed to do basic sample preparation because they don't have human-hospital paper qualifications, and never mind that they've been running tightly quality-controlled assays on these machines for years. There's a lot of snobbery about.

I think this is a mistake. There is a huge amount the veterinary experts could contribute to this problem. We have experience of large-scale population testing and of eliminating disease from populations systematically, a bit at a time. We have experience of using vaccines to eliminate disease and then discontinuing vaccination and using biosecurity and surveillance to keep the population disease-free.

It's not the same problem, if this was an animal disease we'd have it licked by now because it's easier to isolate livestock groups and control animal behaviour, but it's swings and roundabouts. You can't educate cattle to protect themselves for one thing.

There is absolutely no need for any developed first world country to put up with endemic coronavirus after a vaccine is available, and any epidemiologist who is trying to soften people up to accept that should be taken out and shot.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

WHO official praises Sweden’s COVID-19 response despite higher death rate

https://fortune.com/2020/08/31/sweden-covid-response-who-official-death-rate/

One day Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy "is questioned" ...... another day it's "praised" ..... another day still it will be be condemned again. It's the standard fare for a problem that no one seems to know enough about. I think we can sum it up as "guesswork" and "trial and error". It'll be solved someday but until then don't pin your hopes on anyone.

 

[jimbob]

That is what is so infuriating about this approach: You don't go to a bar to practice social distancing, obviously. If the problem is that the owners of bars can't pay their bills, then find a way to pay those bills for them to enable them to stay closed. Considering the disease that they help spread, I can't imagine that it won't be cheaper than paying the hospital bills.
Winter is coming ...

I don't know why the politicians don't see this.

I'm pretty much resigned to staying isolated until the vaccine is available. Which I always thought woud be spring or summer next year, based on my experiences with similar situations in veterinary disease control.

Exactly and mortality is the tip of the iceberg. Devi Sridhar has pointed out that for a man her age (30) the risk of long-term illness as a result of Covid is already 1%

 

[uke2se]

”In a couple of weeks Sweden may be like Italy. It’s going awfully fast now.” DagensNyheter’s editor in chief Peter Wolodarski wrote this in an editorial and recommended to ”lock down Sweden.”
When you now read what the newspapers wrote back in those weeks, with the knowledge of what actually happened, it feels like a different world. In Italy, the crematoria couldn’t keep up and SVT showed photos in primetime of the death struggle in ICUs.
We were a country of very scared people.
We listened to our leaders and did what we were told to do. Always a dangerous situation.
But Sweden didn’t turn into Italy. The ICUs weren’t exhausted, in April or later on. Instead, our country carried out a historic mobilization. The health-care sector reorganized, companies changed their production lines to PPE, and big popular movements organized support for the elderly all over the country to enable people to self-isolate.
Anders Tegnell probably wasn’t so wrong after all

I am astonished that Swedes let him get away with the lie that the Swedish ICUs could actually keep up with the number of people sick from Covid-19 when we know for a fact that people were left to die in nursing homes, receiving palliative care only, because hospitals didn't have the capacity to take them in!
It is possible that the Swedish crematoria were able to keep up. I don't know, and I don't really consider it to be all that important. Considering the number of Covid-19 deaths in Sweden (578 per million) in comparison to Italy (589), it is revolting to consider the Swedish strategy a success and claim that the people who warned that conditions in Sweden didn't resemble those in Italy.
On the contrary, Sweden did turn into Italy in spite of the lesson that the country could have learned from Italy!

It's not as simple as elderly people receiving palliative care because the hospitals didn't have capacity. The hospitals did have capacity, and the elderly still received palliative care.

 

[dann]

I am aware of that, and it was mentioned in some of the articles I have linked to in this thread:

The point seems to have been to reserve ICU units for (younger) people with better chances of surviving the ordeal than (older) people in nursing homes.

As I've said before, the principle seems to have been that everything was fine: the patients may have died, i.e. they weren't even allowed to become patients in the first place, but the hospital beds remained in mint condition.

 

[dann]

WHO official praises Sweden’s COVID-19 response despite higher death rate

Actual knowledge that you seem to be unaware of: Size 6 improves the quality of neither facts nor arguments.

https://fortune.com/2020/08/31/sweden-covid-response-who-official-death-rate/

One day Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy "is questioned" ...... another day it's "praised" ..... another day still it will be be condemned again. It's the standard fare for a problem that no one seems to know enough about. I think we can sum it up as "guesswork" and "trial and error". It'll be solved someday but until then don't pin your hopes on anyone.

No, it's not a question of one day and the next day. In this case, one WHO official agrees with one element of the Swedish strategy, the appeal to the solidarity of Swedish citizens, which didn't stop Swedes from spreading the virus and was never really intended to do so because the Public Health Agency in Sweden was betting on herd immunity from the very beginning, leading to a death toll several times higher than the rest of the Nordic countries combined.

If you ignore the deaths, if you ignore the conditions in the Swedish health-care system and nursing homes during the pandemic, if you ignore the fact that Sweden partied on during the pandemic, thus contributing to the spread of the virus in Sweden as well as to neighboring countries whose party-hungry upper-class members or irresponsible young people went to Sweden to party and then brought the infection back home, if you ignore all that, which the WHO official apparently does, then the Swedish strategy was a great success.

And it won't be any less great in this respect tomorrow or next year. Dead men tell no tales. And the long-haulers who may never fully recover are easily forgotten. You won't see them on the subway on their way to work if they are no longer able to work, but you'll have more of them in Sweden than in the other Nordic countries, nonetheless. Here's an article about the things we know about them - and the things we don't yet know:
Coronavirussen har mange, grimme ansigter - flere af dem kæmper eksperterne fortsat med at forstå (TV2.dk, Sep. 12, 2020)
The coronavirus has many ugly faces - the experts are still struggling to understand several of them


From the Fortune article:

In response to the envoy’s remarks, the director-general of Sweden’s public health agency, Johan Carlson, said in an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet: “We are one of the few countries with a limited spread of infection, unlike several countries in Europe where the infection is returning sharply.”
“I call it the champagne cork effect,” Carlson said.
But Sweden’s COVID strategy still has many critics, including from within the country. Fredrik Elgh, a professor of virology at Umea University, points to the high death toll as evidence the light-touch approach has failed.
“We have almost 6,000 dead. We have betrayed our elderly,” he said in the Svenska Dagbladet report. “We should test and trace infection much more. But the Public Health Agency does not want that.”WHO official praises Sweden’s COVID-19 response despite higher death rate (Fortune, Aug. 31, 2020)

 

[dann]

Exactly and mortality is the tip of the iceberg. Devi Sridhar has pointed out that for a man her age (30) the risk of long-term illness as a result of Covid is already 1%

Young peple must not gamble with Covid-19 (MSN.com/CNN, July 21, 2020)

The ZeroCovid debate: can the disease be eliminated? (Unherd.com, Aug. 25, 2020)