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

[jimbob]

If we were talking about extinct birds (for example) then I'd have to agree. But we're not. We are talking about a virus that LIVES. It has not been eliminated. Not twice, not even once.

Normally I wouldn't play pedant. But in this case - technically the virus isn't alive.

And New Zealand has form for example in eliminating rats from islands. Of course there's a risk they might be reintroduced, but reintroduction and subsequent re-elimination makes perfect sense.

 

[Pixel42]

NZ did succeed in eliminating the virus from their country once, and are now having to do it again because it was reintroduced from outside. The words eliminate and eradicate have been used clearly and consistently throughout the thread. Only one contributor to the thread seems to still need any of this to be explained to them.

 

[dann]

CC desperately needs to be right about something, since he has so far been proven wrong about the coronavirus and Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy, but he only manages to make it apparent that he doesn't know that it is a good idea to look a word up in a dictionary before beginning to pontificate about its meaning.

verb
verb: eliminate; 3rd person present: eliminates; past tense: eliminated; past participle: eliminated; gerund or present participle: eliminating
1.
completely remove or get rid of (something).
"a policy that would eliminate inflation"Similar: remove, get rid of, abolish, put an end to, do away with, banish, end, stop, terminate, eradicate, destroy, annihilate, stamp out, obliterate, wipe out, extinguish, quash, finish off, give something the chop, knock something on the head
2.
expel (waste matter) from the body.
"this diet claims to eliminate toxins from the body"

I guess, Google will have to correct its dictionary to satisfy CC since "a policy that would eliminate inflation" obviously wouldn't eliminate it for all eternity and in every country in the world. If it had been entirely eliminated only to reappear five years later, CC would be telling the people responsible for the first elimination that they never eliminated it at all.

 

[Rolfe]

Natural selection? You do realise that population adaptation to a disease organism in that way takes about 400 years?

 

[Clutch Cargo]

So …. New Zealand "eliminated" coronavirus by its own superior methods BUT now needs to "eliminate" the virus again despite those same superior methods. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Not. Of course, now I read that the second bout was caused from infection that “was reintroduced from outside.” Hmmmm. Let me see if I really understand this. The first time that New Zealand “eliminated" the virus they managed to do that without control of immigrating factors and they just ‘got lucky’. Is that it? Uhhh, someone is pulling the merino.


There are three thoughts on the Coronavirus

1). The whole thing is a hoax. I doubt this can be motivated, but maybe it can.
2). The corona virus is real but the statistics and “the scare” are being politically exaggerated and manipulated. Most likely.
3). The corona virus is real and there is no political chicanery going on. I’d say (spontaneously, of course) this is almost certain to be untrue.

The fact that these three thoughts even exist is proof - PROOF- that we don’t know very much about Coronavirus …. and politicians & so-called experts are giving us a spin. We can only wonder is this “spin” is for everyone’s benefit or strictly for their own careers and financial gain.

 

[dann]

So …. New Zealand "eliminated" coronavirus by its own superior methods BUT now needs to "eliminate" the virus again despite those same superior methods. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Not. Of course, now I read that the second bout was caused from infection that “was reintroduced from outside.” Hmmmm. Let me see if I really understand this. The first time that New Zealand “eliminated" the virus they managed to do that without control of immigrating factors and they just ‘got lucky’. Is that it? Uhhh, someone is pulling the merino.


There are three thoughts on the Coronavirus

1). The whole thing is a hoax. I doubt this can be motivated, but maybe it can.
2). The corona virus is real but the statistics and “the scare” are being politically exaggerated and manipulated. Most likely.
3). The corona virus is real and there is no political chicanery going on. I’d say (spontaneously, of course) this is almost certain to be untrue.

The fact that these three thoughts even exist is proof - PROOF- that we don’t know very much about Coronavirus …. and politicians & so-called experts are giving us a spin. We can only wonder is this “spin” is for everyone’s benefit or strictly for their own careers and financial gain.

Your three thoughts are proof that those are the only three thoughts you could think of.
Your idea that New Zealand "just ‘got lucky’" isn't any better. Unlike Sweden, New Zealand knew what they were doing, and they also didn't try to con the New Zealanders.

Apart from that, your 'thoughts' prove absolutely nothing about what the rest of humanity knows about the pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 is a virus. It makes some people sick and kills others. It doesn't give us any spin. Some politicians and experts do their utmost to provide people with correct information about the virus, and some of them are very good at it. Others spin it for political or personal reasons.

It is not particularly difficult to distinguish between the two different kinds of politicians and scientists.

 

[dann]

Some countries are eying Sweden's 'light-touch' Covid response. It's a gamble that could backfire (CNN, Sep. 28, 2020)

 

[Clutch Cargo]

Interesting that in the past 24 hours the U.S. has had 50,000 newly reported cases of the virus, Australia had 24, Denmark had 424, NZ & Sweden had ...... wait for it ...... none.

 

[dann]

Interesting that in the past 24 hours the U.S. has had 50,000 newly reported cases of the virus, Australia had 24, Denmark had 424, NZ & Sweden had ...... wait for it ...... none.

New Zealand had two new cases yesterday and two new cases the day before yesterday, so it is not surprising that they would have zero new cases today. We have already pointed it out to you: They know what they're doing in New Zealand. They appear to be close to having eliminated the virus - again.
Sweden not so much, unfortunately, but It is also no surprise that Sweden reported (!) no new cases today. Sweden only reports its new numbers Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Sweden's new cases since Friday won't be reported till ...... wait for it ..... tomorrow afternoon, at 2 p.m.
You can rest assured that there'll be many more new cases since Stockholm's number of new cases doubles every week at this point:

Antalet nya fall av covid-19 minskade under sommaren men under de senaste veckorna har antalet smittade i Stockholms län fördubblats per vecka. Totalt har 24 594 personer konstaterats smittade av covid-19 i regionen.
Corona ökar i Stockholms län – hur allvarligt är läget? (SVT.se, Sep. 28, 2020)

The number of new Covid-19 cases dropped this summer, but in recent weeks the number of new cases in the Stockholm area has doubled every week. In the region, 24,594 persons have been tested positive for Covid-19 so far.
Corona on the increase in the Stockholm area - how serious is the situation?

Coronautbrott på Mälardalens högskola – efter studentfest (SVT.se, Sep. 28, 2020)
Corona outbreak at Mälardalen's college - after student party 31 students tested positive. I assume the number will be included in the report about new cases tomorrow afternoon.

Svenonius (M): ”Ska förse vårdpersonalen med psykologiskt stöd” (SVT.se, Sep. 28, 2020)
Svenonius (Moderaterna): "Will give hospital staff psychological support"

Björn Olsen varnar för ”spanska mönstret” (Expressen.se, Sep. 28, 2020)
Björn Olsen warns against the ”Spanish pattern”

 

[dann]

Monday:
Coronavirus - countries (Worldometers, Sep. 28, 2020)
Deaths per million (Total deaths) New cases Serious/Critical
Sweden: 581 (5,880) * 15 *according to SVT.se No new Swedish numbers till Tuesday.
Denmark: 112 (649) 435 28* *There has been some confusion about the number, and I probably got it wrong yesterday, where it should also have been 28: 17 in ICUs but not on ventilators + 11 on ventilators.
Finland: 62 (343) 61 2
Norway: 50 (274) 43 3
Iceland: 29 (10) 40 1
Iceland has 492 active cases, Faroe Islands 37, New Zealand 55.
The Faroe Islands have 228 in quarantine, 0 hospitalized, all tests analyzed.


Byrådet i Oslo innförer påbud om bruk av munnbind i kolletivtrafikken (NRK.no, Sep. 28, 2020)
The city council in Oslo makes face masks mandatory on public transport

 

[Clutch Cargo]

UPDATE.
As of this moment:

U.S.A. - 14,000 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
Denmark – 28 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
Australia – 8 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
Sweden – 15 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
New Zealand – 1 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.

Considering its tiny population Denmark must be doing something terribly wrong.

 

[banquetbear]

So …. New Zealand "eliminated" coronavirus by its own superior methods BUT

...yep.

now needs to "eliminate" the virus again despite those same superior methods.

Yep.

You use the quotes around the word eliminate. (And bold and italics for emphasis as well) But why are you doing that? You stated you understood the epidemiological definition of elimination. But I'm still not sure that you do. Why the quote marks? Did you read the articles I cited for you?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, it does actually make sense.

Not.

It still makes sense.

Of course, now I read that the second bout was caused from infection that “was reintroduced from outside.”

If you had read my post you would understand that we don't know where it was reintroduced from. It was probably almost certainly reintroduced from the outside, but we cannot know for sure.

Hmmmm. Let me see if I really understand this.

I'm gonna be guessing "probably not."

The first time that New Zealand “eliminated" the virus they managed to do that without control of immigrating factors and they just ‘got lucky’. Is that it? Uhhh, someone is pulling the merino.

I'm not going to pretend that luck didn't play a part. But sometimes you make your own luck.

New Zealand followed WHO guidance and recommended best practice at the time. When we went to Alert Level 4 the caseload was rising at a dangerous rate. At level 4 people had to stay home in their bubble. Everything except essential businesses closed. We did this for two quarantine periods of the virus. At the end of the two quarantine periods we remained at Level 4 for another quarantine period just in case: because we had observed other countries opening up early and seeing big resurgences.

NZ spent another month dropping down the alert levels. No silly curfews. No restrictions on going to the local park. And most of the country is at Alert Level 1 now which means (apart from the borders) life is back to the way it was pre-covid.

When we had the resurgence in August the resurgence plan went into action. We went from a few hundred covid tests a day to over 20,000 tests per day. The labs worked day and night. The contact tracing team contacted literally everybody they needed too. Today the MOH release the figures: the contact tracing team identified 4079 close contacts: they contacted 4079 close contacts.

https://twitter.com/radionz/status/1310757097219399680

None of that can be put down to luck. Its all part of a strategic decision to eliminate Covid from New Zealand.

2). The corona virus is real but the statistics and “the scare” are being politically exaggerated and manipulated. Most likely.

Why is this most likely? Who is politically exaggerating and manipulating and for what reason would they be doing so?

3). The corona virus is real and there is no political chicanery going on. I’d say (spontaneously, of course) this is almost certain to be untrue.

Why do you think this is untrue?

The fact that these three thoughts even exist is proof - PROOF- that we don’t know very much about Coronavirus ….

The fact that three independent thoughts exist independently is proof of nothing else but the independence of thought. It doesn't prove that we don't know very much about coronavirus.

and politicians & so-called experts are giving us a spin.

There are plenty of politicians giving everyone a spin. But most of the experts are not.

We can only wonder is this “spin” is for everyone’s benefit or strictly for their own careers and financial gain.

What do you think?

New Zealand – 1 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.

There is one person in hospital in New Zealand but they aren't serious/critical: they are in isolation in a general ward.

 

[zooterkin]

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...covid-fantasy-land-thats-sweden-to-you-and-me

The fantasy land of Sweden where sickness never comes is a fairytale. By not locking down in the spring, Sweden had a more protracted outbreak with far more deaths per capita than its neighbours. Admittedly, its death rate was not as bad as Britain’s. But then no European country had a death rate as bad as Britain’s because no other European country put the village idiot in charge. Nor did the “mastermind” Tegnell save the Swedish economy. Spending fell by nearly as much in Sweden, which did not lock down, as in Denmark, which did. As for the claim that Sweden would avoid a second wave, Swedish health officials are now proposing local lockdowns of a type we know too well. Sweden may not have been spared the storm but it has lessons on how to shelter society until the storm passes. However deeply it claims to love Scandinavia, the Conservative party is the last organisation on Earth willing to learn from it.

 

[lionking]

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...covid-fantasy-land-thats-sweden-to-you-and-me

The only part of that quote not fully accurate is that there would be a large number of village idiots who would have handled things far better than Boris........

 

[dann]

UPDATE.
As of this moment:

You don't seem to understand this at all. In the case of Sweden, it is as of Friday, Sep. 25. Sweden doesn't update its numbers till 2 p.m. today. It usually takes a little longer before they are updated on Worldometers.

U.S.A. - 14,000 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
Denmark – 28 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
Australia – 8 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
Sweden – 15 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.
New Zealand – 1 Serious critical cases of coronavirus.

Considering its tiny population Denmark must be doing something terribly wrong.

Considering the population size, Sweden: 10,114,699, Denmark: 5,797,225, it is obvious that Denmark has let the virus get out of hand. But unlike Sweden, Denmark never let the virus rip, and it still remains to be seen if the restrictions that were introduced last week will be enough to get the numbers down again. At least one Danish virologist thinks that more should be done:
Virolog foreslår forsamlingsforbud på 10 personer (TV2.dk, Sep. 28)
Virologist suggests banning gatherings of more than 10 She also recommends closing down schools for a couple of weeks

I am with her on that one. Like I said, it remains to be seen if the current restrictions are enough to lower the numbers, but even if they are, there is no doubt that her recommendations would make them go down faster.

So as to your conclusion, yes, Denmark has done something wrong. I thought so, and I have mentioned it here from the very beginning. The first thing Denmark did wrong was to let people go to Tyrol after it came out that the virus was spreading in Ischgl and Northern Italy. At that stage, Denmark should have followed Iceland's example - and warnings. The second thing was one month ago when the number of new cases began to rise massively. This time, again, Denmark's pandemic response was long overdue when it finally happened.

When you say that Denmark must be doing something "terribly wrong", I am not sure about your criteria. I guess you can't be thinking of the death toll because the deaths-per-million numbers look like this:
U.S.A. - 633
Denmark – 112
Australia – 34
Sweden – 581
New Zealand – 5*
(The numbers from the USA and Denmark are from yesterday, those from Australia and New Zealand from today, and Sweden's are from Sep. 25, as mentioned above.)

I think the 649 Danish Covid-19 deaths are terrible, but I wonder how you would describe Sweden's 5,880+ deaths. On that background, l find it despicable that the two morons behind the Sweden's strategy go to London and Dublin to recommend the Swedish herd-immunity strategy. And so do the vast majority of epidemiologists.

But of the five countries on your list, it is quite obvious that New Zealand has tackled the virus much better than the four others. But some countries have done even better than that:
Ingen er døde med covid-19 - sådan har Færøerne tacklet epidemien (TV2.dk, Sep. 18, 2020)
Nobody has died with Covid-19 - how the Faroe Islands tackled the epidemic

*You appear to be unaware that the category Serious, Critical on Worldometers depends on the reporting. In the case of Denmark and Sweden, it means Covid-19 patients in ICUs. In New Zealand and the Faroe Islands, it means all hospitalized Covid-19 patients, and in New Zealand, there appears to be only one hospitalized Covid-19 patient today: https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work...rent-situation/covid-19-current-cases#dhbhosp
In the Faroe Islands, there aren't any: https://corona.fo/?_l=en

 

[dann]

The only part of that quote not fully accurate is that there would be a large number of village idiots who would have handled things far better than Boris........

Yes, very few village idiots would have been able to do worse that BJ, but they do exist.
That is why I love the way the recommendations from one of them were received in Dublin.

 

[dann]

There are plenty of politicians giving everyone a spin. But most of the experts are not.

In Sweden, it seems that most of them are, so maybe CC can be forgiven for making the mistake of generalizing based on the Swedish experience.

 

[dann]

Interesting that in the past 24 hours the U.S. has had 50,000 newly reported cases of the virus, Australia had 24, Denmark had 424, NZ & Sweden had ...... wait for it ...... none.

Monday:
Coronavirus - countries (Worldometers, Sep. 29, 2020)
Deaths per million (Total deaths) New cases Serious/Critical
Sweden: 582 (5,890) 1,543 20 *since Friday, according to SVT.se
Denmark: 112 (650) 392 24
Finland: 62 (345) 149 4
Norway: 50 (274) 73 3
Iceland: 29 (10) 32 1
Iceland has 524 active cases, Faroe Islands 35, New Zealand 55.
The Faroe Islands have 228 in quarantine, 0 hospitalized, all tests analyzed.

Faroe Islands:
Three new Covid-19 cases (KVF.fo, Sep. 29, 2020)

Denmark:

Kontakttallet er nemlig faldet fra 1,3 til 1,1.
Seneste nyt om coronavirus (DR.dk, Sep. 29, 13:28)

The R₀ has dropped from 1.3 to 1.1 - Which is an improvement compared to last week but still too high.

Sweden:
64 studenter smittade i Västerås – spåras till insparksfest (SVT.se, Sep. 29, 2020)
64 students infected in Västerås traced back to school-start party - Mälardalens högskola was mentioned yesterday when the number was 31

Norway:
FHI varnar i ny rappport: Hela Norge kan rödlistas (DagensNyheter.se, Sep. 29, 2020)
The Norwegian Public Health Instutute warns in a new report that the whole country may become ’red’ listed
Norwegian article about the same thing:
FHI-rapport: Stor sjanse for at en rekke fylker blir røde - Rogaland på toppen av lista (Aftenposten.no, Sep. 29, 2020)
National Corona Report: Situational awareness and forecasting. FHI COVID-19 modelling team (FHI.no, Sep. 21, 2020)

 

[Clutch Cargo]

LATEST UPDATE. according to WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19),
Data last updated: 2020/9/29, 5:08pm CEST


Newly reported cases in the last 24 hours:

U.S. 35,217
Australia 4
Sweden 0
Denmark 435
New Zealand 2

Hmmmmm.

 

[lionking]

LATEST UPDATE. according to WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19),
Data last updated: 2020/9/29, 5:08pm CEST


Newly reported cases in the last 24 hours:

U.S. 35,217
Australia 4
Sweden 0
Denmark 435
New Zealand 2

Hmmmmm.

This is clearly a lie, but never mind. Care to comment on Sweden's 6000 deaths at a rate of 600 per million population?