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

[banquetbear]

so what’s the harm in New Zealand fiddling with the statistics a bit if it gives us hope and optimism?

You don't get only 25 deaths from Covid-19 by "fiddling with the statistics." Its okay that you don't understand what the word "elimination" means in the context of this discussion. But it isn't okay to make claims that are obviously untrue. The elimination strategy isn't about "hope and optimism." I'm not imagining living in a world where I have the exact same freedom to do what I want that I had this time a year ago. I'm not hoping to live in a world where I don't have to socially distance or wear a mask. Thats the world I live in now.

 

[Tippit]

You don't get only 25 deaths from Covid-19 by "fiddling with the statistics." Its okay that you don't understand what the word "elimination" means in the context of this discussion. But it isn't okay to make claims that are obviously untrue. The elimination strategy isn't about "hope and optimism." I'm not imagining living in a world where I have the exact same freedom to do what I want that I had this time a year ago. I'm not hoping to live in a world where I don't have to socially distance or wear a mask. Thats the world I live in now.

Does new zealands “elimination” strategy even make sense? Do they plan on keeping the border closed in perpetuity for a disease with a mortality rate of only .6%?

And for all the people who question the Swedish strategy, what would be proof that you were wrong?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[banquetbear]

Does new zealands “elimination” strategy even make sense? Do they plan on keeping the border closed in perpetuity for a disease with a mortality rate of only .6%?

....6% of the New Zealand population is 30,000 people. Are we prepared to sacrifice our mothers and fathers, our loved ones, our whanau, because somebody on the internet wants to re contextualize 30,000 people as only .6%? No we are not.

And for all the people who question the Swedish strategy, what would be proof that you were wrong?

The goal of the New Zealand Elimination Strategy is to stop as many people dying from Covid-19 as we can. If we get close to 30,000 people dying then I would concede that our strategy was wrong. But at the moment it appears to be working exactly as expected.

 

[lionking]

And for all the people who question the Swedish strategy, what would be proof that you were wrong?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That Sweden's infection rate is still high? What else?

 

[dann]

And for all the people who question the Swedish strategy, what would be proof that you were wrong?

Wrong about what?

It is very obvious that the Swedish strategy was wrong. You just need to compare what it was supposed to do, i.e. 1) flatten the curve so the health-care system was not overwhelmed and 2) protect the elderly and the weak while the younger generations were spreading the virus until herd immunity was achieved. It usually wasn't explicitly stated, but the Swedish strategy was also supposed to protect the economy and people's mental health.
It managed to fail on all counts.

In spite of this, the guys in charge of the strategy are still trying to spread it to other countries, Tegnell to England and Giesecke to Ireland, where the Swedish strategy will probably work out even worse because they don't have some of Sweden's advantages in a pandemic: a population density (Remember?!) far below that of most European countries, the lowest number of people per household and social distancing built into their national character: 11 Of The Best Examples Of Nordic People Social Distancing Way Before Quarantine (humour, but stilll... Very funny illustrations!)

So I think it's up to you to answer your own question:

What would be proof to you that you are wrong about the Swedish strategy?

 

[dann]

That Sweden's infection rate is still high? What else?

... and rising.

 

[dann]

Saturday:
Coronavirus - countries (Worldometers, Oct. 3, 2020)
Deaths per million (Total deaths) New cases Serious/Critical
Sweden: 583 (5,895) 752* 22** *according to SVT.se ** according to SVT.se No new numbers till Tuesday.
Denmark: 113 (654) 370 31
Finland: 62 (345) 147 4
Norway: 51 (275) 78* 3 *Some of the previous numbers may have been too low. Norway seems to update the number of new cases more than once a day.
Iceland: 29 (10) 63 3
Iceland has 650 active cases, Faroe Islands 41, New Zealand 41.
The Faroe Islands have 198 in quarantine, 0 hospitalized.

 

[Clutch Cargo]

LATEST UPDATE. according to WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19),
Data last updated: 2020/10/3, 3:12pm CEST

Newly reported cases in the last 24 hours:

U.S.A. - 46,293
Australia - 17
Sweden - 0
Denmark - 536
New Zealand – 1

As you can see Sweden has “eliminated” the virus once again while disadvantaged New Zealand will have to endeavour to “eliminate” the virus for a 5th time.

But there is much discontent and I have discussed this problem with many people inside Sweden, Denmark, and Germany not to mention the various web-based international discussion forums where I am a contributing member. The general consensus in all of them is really the same: “A political fiddle”. That’s what the vast majority of people are saying. That is what they believe. Mind you, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany represent the three major schools of official opinion, that being lazed (Sweden), stringent (Germany), and wishy-washy (Denmark). So it isn’t the individual discomforts of dealing with the virus that is the root of their shared belief.

The truth – without the slightest doubt - is that everyone (including the readers here) knows there is a fiddle being played out. Either you think the virus is a straight-forward hoax or that the virus is poised to cleanse the earth of all humanity …. or everything between the two. One does wonder about the statistics coming out of one nation or another and the most dazzling of all is this claim of “having eliminated” the virus. It’s just plain silly. If in doubt one needs only read that the virus has been “eliminated” more than once!!! The idea of “elimination” in this context is as ridiculous as equating cowardice with suicide bombers but even that idea has made the rounds with some success! Perhaps we all need to learn to speak Esperanto where (if any justice is to be found) the translations for “elimination” and “cowardice” have yet to be tainted by political chicanery.

The bottom line, as it has always been, is that we know very little about the virus. Researchers are playing catch-up and discovering that they are a day late and a dollar short at every turn. What each individual nation is doing is:

1). Earnestly doing what they can to keep us calm, but at the same time …
2). Manipulating and nurturing our anxiety for political-pecuniary gain.

There it is.

 

[lionking]

LATEST UPDATE. according to WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19),
Data last updated: 2020/10/3, 3:12pm CEST

Newly reported cases in the last 24 hours:

U.S.A. - 46,293
Australia - 17
Sweden - 0
Denmark - 536
New Zealand – 1

As you can see Sweden has “eliminated” the virus once again while disadvantaged New Zealand will have to endeavour to “eliminate” the virus for a 5th time.

But there is much discontent and I have discussed this problem with many people inside Sweden, Denmark, and Germany not to mention the various web-based international discussion forums where I am a contributing member. The general consensus in all of them is really the same: “A political fiddle”. That’s what the vast majority of people are saying. That is what they believe. Mind you, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany represent the three major schools of official opinion, that being lazed (Sweden), stringent (Germany), and wishy-washy (Denmark). So it isn’t the individual discomforts of dealing with the virus that is the root of their shared belief.

The truth – without the slightest doubt - is that everyone (including the readers here) knows there is a fiddle being played out. Either you think the virus is a straight-forward hoax or that the virus is poised to cleanse the earth of all humanity …. or everything between the two. One does wonder about the statistics coming out of one nation or another and the most dazzling of all is this claim of “having eliminated” the virus. It’s just plain silly. If in doubt one needs only read that the virus has been “eliminated” more than once!!! The idea of “elimination” in this context is as ridiculous as equating cowardice with suicide bombers but even that idea has made the rounds with some success! Perhaps we all need to learn to speak Esperanto where (if any justice is to be found) the translations for “elimination” and “cowardice” have yet to be tainted by political chicanery.

The bottom line, as it has always been, is that we know very little about the virus. Researchers are playing catch-up and discovering that they are a day late and a dollar short at every turn. What each individual nation is doing is:

1). Earnestly doing what they can to keep us calm, but at the same time …
2). Manipulating and nurturing our anxiety for political-pecuniary gain.

There it is.

Unbelievable

 

[banquetbear]

LATEST UPDATE. according to WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19),
Data last updated: 2020/10/3, 3:12pm CEST

Newly reported cases in the last 24 hours:

U.S.A. - 46,293
Australia - 17
Sweden - 0
Denmark - 536
New Zealand – 1

As you can see Sweden has “eliminated” the virus once again while disadvantaged New Zealand will have to endeavour to “eliminate” the virus for a 5th time.

But there is much discontent and I have discussed this problem with many people inside Sweden, Denmark, and Germany not to mention the various web-based international discussion forums where I am a contributing member. The general consensus in all of them is really the same: “A political fiddle”. That’s what the vast majority of people are saying. That is what they believe. Mind you, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany represent the three major schools of official opinion, that being lazed (Sweden), stringent (Germany), and wishy-washy (Denmark). So it isn’t the individual discomforts of dealing with the virus that is the root of their shared belief.

The truth – without the slightest doubt - is that everyone (including the readers here) knows there is a fiddle being played out. Either you think the virus is a straight-forward hoax or that the virus is poised to cleanse the earth of all humanity …. or everything between the two. One does wonder about the statistics coming out of one nation or another and the most dazzling of all is this claim of “having eliminated” the virus. It’s just plain silly. If in doubt one needs only read that the virus has been “eliminated” more than once!!! The idea of “elimination” in this context is as ridiculous as equating cowardice with suicide bombers but even that idea has made the rounds with some success! Perhaps we all need to learn to speak Esperanto where (if any justice is to be found) the translations for “elimination” and “cowardice” have yet to be tainted by political chicanery.

The bottom line, as it has always been, is that we know very little about the virus. Researchers are playing catch-up and discovering that they are a day late and a dollar short at every turn. What each individual nation is doing is:

1). Earnestly doing what they can to keep us calm, but at the same time …
2). Manipulating and nurturing our anxiety for political-pecuniary gain.

There it is.

...can somebody translate this for me? It doesn't appear to be english (just a bunch of words mish-mashed together), and it doesn't appear to make any sense, and it doesn't seem to relate to anything we've said in this thread. Thanks in advance.

 

[dann]

It is amazing how fast he he has gone from:
"nobody really knows much about the virus. It's all guess-work from one day to the next"
to
"The truth – without the slightest doubt - is that everyone (including the readers here) knows there is a fiddle being played out. Either you think the virus is a straight-forward hoax or that the virus is poised to cleanse the earth of all humanity …. or everything between the two."

I wonder which one of the two Trump believes in now ....

And still nobody really knows much about the virus. It's all guess-work from one day to the next. "Experts" running around like chickens with their heads cut off and starting each sentence with, "Well, basically ......" even though their basis shifts from one end to the other - isolation or exposure? They don't know for sure but they pretend to have the situation well in hand.

The truth – without the slightest doubt - is that everyone (including the readers here) knows there is a fiddle being played out. Either you think the virus is a straight-forward hoax or that the virus is poised to cleanse the earth of all humanity …. or everything between the two.

 

[dann]

Coronasmittan är på uppgång och antalet bekräftade smittade är på samma nivå som i april. Hösten ser ut att gå i samma spår som våren, eller?
– Nej, det kan man inte säga, vi testar så många fler nu, säger Tom Britton, professor i matematik vid Stockholms universitet.
I våras testades uppemot 20.000 personer för aktiv covid-19. Under hösten har den siffran ökat till runt 140.000 testade.
– Testar man fler kommer man hitta fler fall, säger Tom Britton.
Matematikern: Så förstår du de ökade smittotalen (SVT.se, Sep. 30, 2020)

The spread of the corona infection is on the rise and the number of confirmed cases is at the same level as in April. Autumn seems to go the same way as spring, or what?
– No, you can’t say that, we are testing so many more now, says Tom Britton, professor of mathematics at the University of Stockholm.
This spring, almost 20,000 people were tested for active Covid-19. This autumn, the number has increased to about 140,000 tests [a week].
– When you test more people, you will find more cases, says Tom Britton.
The mathematician: How to understand the increased number of new cases

Swedish nationalists tend to leave out this bit of truth whenever they compare the Swedish numbers to the numbers in the other Nordic countries:
Tests per million
Faroe Islands: 2,725,481
Iceland: 834,703
Denmark: 691,062
Norway: 198,043
Finland: 195,089
Sweden: 164,250

For some reason, the interview with Tom Britton was placed on SVT's front page today.

 

[dann]

A Swedish doctor disagrees with the mathematician Tom Britton:

Coronasiffrorna för Stockholmsregionen bottnar troligen i en ”rejäl ökning” av fall, säger smittskyddsläkaren Maria Rotzén Östlund.
– Det är lite trångt ute på stan, det skulle jag säga. Det hålls inte två meters avstånd, säger hon till SvD.
Smittskyddsläkare: En ”rejäl ökning” (SvenskaDagbladet.se, Oct. 4, 2020)

The corona numbers for the Stockholm Region are probably due to an ”actual increase” in the number of cases, says the doctor of infectious disease prevention Maria Rotzén Östlund.
– It’s a little crowded in the city, I can tell you. People don’t keep a distance of two meters, she tells Svenska Dagbladet.
Doctor of infectious disease prevention: An ”actual increase”

She doesn't say that the number of actual cases is as high as in April, May and June, but she does say that the number of new cases is rising.

 

[zooterkin]

LATEST UPDATE. according to WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19),
Data last updated: 2020/10/3, 3:12pm CEST

Newly reported cases in the last 24 hours:

U.S.A. - 46,293
Australia - 17
Sweden - 0
Denmark - 536
New Zealand – 1

As you can see Sweden has “eliminated” the virus once again while disadvantaged New Zealand will have to endeavour to “eliminate” the virus for a 5th time.

But there is much discontent and I have discussed this problem with many people inside Sweden, Denmark, and Germany not to mention the various web-based international discussion forums where I am a contributing member. The general consensus in all of them is really the same: “A political fiddle”. That’s what the vast majority of people are saying. That is what they believe. Mind you, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany represent the three major schools of official opinion, that being lazed (Sweden), stringent (Germany), and wishy-washy (Denmark). So it isn’t the individual discomforts of dealing with the virus that is the root of their shared belief.

The truth – without the slightest doubt - is that everyone (including the readers here) knows there is a fiddle being played out. Either you think the virus is a straight-forward hoax or that the virus is poised to cleanse the earth of all humanity …. or everything between the two. One does wonder about the statistics coming out of one nation or another and the most dazzling of all is this claim of “having eliminated” the virus. It’s just plain silly. If in doubt one needs only read that the virus has been “eliminated” more than once!!! The idea of “elimination” in this context is as ridiculous as equating cowardice with suicide bombers but even that idea has made the rounds with some success! Perhaps we all need to learn to speak Esperanto where (if any justice is to be found) the translations for “elimination” and “cowardice” have yet to be tainted by political chicanery.

The bottom line, as it has always been, is that we know very little about the virus. Researchers are playing catch-up and discovering that they are a day late and a dollar short at every turn. What each individual nation is doing is:

1). Earnestly doing what they can to keep us calm, but at the same time …
2). Manipulating and nurturing our anxiety for political-pecuniary gain.

There it is.

 

[Tippit]

....6% of the New Zealand population is 30,000 people. Are we prepared to sacrifice our mothers and fathers, our loved ones, our whanau, because somebody on the internet wants to re contextualize 30,000 people as only .6%? No we are not.

It's closer to 29,000, as NZ pop isn't quite 5 million. But what about the quality of life for the other 4,680,000 people (excluding, of course, the people who suffer from, but do not succumb to the virus)? What about the ability to travel freely to and from NZ? What about the jobs that were and are being lost due to the hysteria about a virus that is only about 6x worse than Influenza? Is it rational to completely remove the hopes and desires of 4.6 million other people from your calculus, into the foreseeable future?

The goal of the New Zealand Elimination Strategy is to stop as many people dying from Covid-19 as we can. If we get close to 30,000 people dying then I would concede that our strategy was wrong. But at the moment it appears to be working exactly as expected.

Yes, that seems to be the goal almost everywhere, although possibly at its most extreme in places like New Zealand and Australia which have had the most tyrannical response to the hysteria. Are there any other metrics that we might be concerned about besides death tolls? What extreme are you not willing to endure in order to save those 29,000 lives, many of whom are probably on death's door anyway?

 

[Tippit]

Wrong about what?

It is very obvious that the Swedish strategy was wrong. You just need to compare what it was supposed to do, i.e. 1) flatten the curve so the health-care system was not overwhelmed and 2) protect the elderly and the weak while the younger generations were spreading the virus until herd immunity was achieved. It usually wasn't explicitly stated, but the Swedish strategy was also supposed to protect the economy and people's mental health.
It managed to fail on all counts.

The title of this thread is "Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy questioned as Stockholm death toll mounts". That implies the hypothesis that their "herd immunity" strategy has failed, which you and others here are all too keen to point out. But I'm not sure you've provided enough evidence, choosing instead to focus myopically on deaths per million. Given their strategy, I think we can both agree that they are willfully condemning some people to their deaths, and others to sickness, which each have their own costs and consequences. I think we would also agree that these casualties would be frontloaded into the global mortality statistics. Is this really evidence that the strategy has failed, or is it possibly just evidence that the ultimate consequences of the virus not just in terms of mortality, but economic, and quality of life haven't been fully realized in the rest of the world yet? I do not think you're accounting for the possibility (in my opinion, the inevitability) that a highly contagious and endemic virus is ultimately going to take its toll everywhere around the world, with the possible exceptions of the most extremely isolated and bubbled groups of humans. It will either take its toll directly, or indirectly as a result of the prolonged economic and social consequences of the hysterical response. At what point and under what conditions would we concede that Sweden's approach has been a success, that is when the mythical 60% herd immunity that I've read about has been reached, and that a large amount of the Swedish population has antibodies and is going about their day-to-day lives in a more or less normal fashion, while the rest of the world is still struggling with crippling economic and social sanctions, only to inevitably be ravaged by an endemic virus?

In spite of this, the guys in charge of the strategy are still trying to spread it to other countries, Tegnell to England and Giesecke to Ireland, where the Swedish strategy will probably work out even worse because they don't have some of Sweden's advantages in a pandemic: a population density (Remember?!) far below that of most European countries, the lowest number of people per household and social distancing built into their national character: 11 Of The Best Examples Of Nordic People Social Distancing Way Before Quarantine (humour, but stilll... Very funny illustrations!)

That's quite an accusation. Do you have any direct evidence that they're trying to willfully spread the virus to other countries, or is that just inferred from their own approach and their border policy?

So I think it's up to you to answer your own question:

What would be proof to you that you are wrong about the Swedish strategy?

It's a fair question, I'm not exactly smart enough to answer it. I suppose it would have definitely failed if, when the rest of the world decided it was ok to go back to normal life (successfully, with a managed virus), that Sweden's total cost of the virus, including deaths, sickness, and all of the social and economic costs associated with the virus were accounted for, and it was last. Obviously, those conditions aren't even close to being met, as the "pandemic" rages on.

 

[Tippit]

Unbelievable

It's not so unbelievable. How much sense does it make to declare a highly contagious and globally endemic virus "eliminated", in the context of a tyrannical closed-border strategy that is utterly unsustainable in perpetuity? It makes zero sense. Because the moment the borders open, the virus will ravage New Zealand, and they will, having resided in an "island bubble", have no antibodies. The virus will rage on there like it has in Sweden, with more or less the same direct consequences, while NZ has suffered from all of the indirect economic/social consequences from the hysterical (and tyrannical) response from the beginning and until the end. At some point the hapless NZ politicians will have to make the Hobson's choice and "let it rip", when it becomes clear to all that the costs of total quarantine for a virus with a .6% kill rate is asinine.

 

[dann]

It's closer to 29,000, as NZ pop isn't quite 5 million. But what about the quality of life for the other 4,680,000 people (excluding, of course, the people who suffer from, but do not succumb to the virus)?

What about their quality of life? You are talking about the people who don't get infected because they are protected by NZ's very effective pandemic strategy, aren't you?

What about the ability to travel freely to and from NZ?

It seems to be pretty free, doesn't it? As long as you get tested at the airport and follow the regulations about quarantines etc. Did you know that Sweden had domestic travel bans? And Denmark, for instance, didn't? (I don't know about NZ in this respect.)

What about the jobs that were and are being lost due to the hysteria about a virus that is only about 6x worse than Influenza?

Did more people in NZ lose their jobs than in Sweden? (I'm asking because I don't actually know!)

Is it rational to completely remove the hopes and desires of 4.6 million other people from your calculus, into the foreseeable future?

What hopes and desires exactly? And how was it possible to remove them completely? What is the "foreseeable future"?

Yes, that seems to be the goal almost everywhere, although possibly at its most extreme in places like New Zealand and Australia which have had the most tyrannical response to the hysteria.

The only hysteria seems to be what you hear from the anti-maskers and virus deniers, who are also the ones who talk about tyranny.

Are there any other metrics that we might be concerned about besides death tolls?

You cannot possibly be talking about the ruined health of the long-haulers, can you? Or of the people who feel let down by governments and employers who did nothing to protect them?

What extreme are you not willing to endure in order to save those 29,000 lives, many of whom are probably on death's door anyway?

Speaking for myself in Denmark, the measures taken against the spread of the virus didn't and don't seem particularly extreme to me. The things that the lockdown of nightclubs and discoteques prevent me from doing are things that I wouldn't do anyway in this situation. It's too bad for the owners of those places, but they get compensated for their losses, so it's no big deal.

Once again, you pretend that all the bad and annoying things that happen due the virus wouldn't have happened if only the government pretended that the virus wasn't there and did nothing to prevent it from spreading. People only lose their jobs because of the restrictions, never because of the virus, in your fantasy. People only isolate because of the restrictions, never because of the virus.

 

[banquetbear]

It's closer to 29,000, as NZ pop isn't quite 5 million.

...LOL.

But what about the quality of life for the other 4,680,000 people (excluding, of course, the people who suffer from, but do not succumb to the virus)?

The quality of life here is ******* great. You wouldn't believe how ******* great it is. I'm self-employed. And when we went into lockdown the government I qualified for the (self-employed version of) the wage subsidy. That meant my business was able to stay alive while the country came to a halt. We've been out of Level 4 since April. No social distancing, no masks required now, no limits on crowd sizes, life is back to pre-covid normal for me and most other New Zealanders. And business is booming.

So don't worry about my quality of life. How is yours right now?

What about the ability to travel freely to and from NZ?

What about it?

The only thing stopping me leaving New Zealand is the fact that most of the rest of the world haven't really got a handle on Covid-19. The thought of leaving here and travelling to a Covid-infested hellhole like the United States of America hold little appeal. There are more people with Covid from the Whitehouse Cluster than the entirety of New Zealand.

And as a New Zealand citizen I have the right of return to New Zealand as well. I would have to go through 14 days in Managed Isolation: but our Managed Isolation Facilities are all high-end hotels, so that wouldn't be the worst thing. And staying in Managed Isolation would be doing my part to keep the country safe. So not a problem at all.

What about the jobs that were and are being lost due to the hysteria about a virus that is only about 6x worse than Influenza?

Fortunately New Zealand has lost zero jobs to hysteria.

We have lost jobs due to the fact that the world is currently at the start of a global pandemic: but New Zealand isn't alone with that. And the last quarterly unemployment figures were much better than expected.

https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/unemployment-rate

4.0%: down .2% from the last quarter, much lower than forecast (6-8%) and pretty much matched the figure from the same time last year. Compared to Australia (7.4) and the US (11.1) I think we have much less to worry about than much of the rest of the world.

Is it rational to completely remove the hopes and desires of 4.6 million other people from your calculus, into the foreseeable future?

LOL.

Jacinda Ardern is going to win the next election in a landslide. Because the thing that the elimination strategy has given us is hope. We haven't lost thousands of people to the virus. We don't have thousands more that will have to live with debilitating illness for the rest of their lives. Where do you get this idea that we have no hope here?

Yes, that seems to be the goal almost everywhere, although possibly at its most extreme in places like New Zealand and Australia which have had the most tyrannical response to the hysteria.

LOL.

https://twitter.com/search?q=#nzhellhole&src=typed_query

New Zealand is quite the tyrannical hell hole LOL.

Here is the Covid-19 Stringency Index. It measure the degree of school closures,
workplace closures, and travel bans in place, I've compared New Zealand to Australia, India, the UK, the US and Sweden.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/...01-22..latest&country=IND~NZL~GBR~USA~AUS~SWE

Can you see where we currently measure on the index? We are significantly lower than "the land of the free and the home of the brave" the United States of America. We are lower than the UK. We are even lower than the "bastion' of freedom that inspired this thread, Sweden.

There seems to be a hysteria that New Zealand is a tyrannical hellhole. The reality couldn't be further from this.

Are there any other metrics that we might be concerned about besides death tolls?

Which ones do you think we should be using?

What extreme are you not willing to endure in order to save those 29,000 lives, many of whom are probably on death's door anyway?

Well that's the thing. I'm not really a fan of genocide.

Many of them aren't knocking on death's door. And even if they were it would be criminal to expose them to a global pandemic for almost zero material gain. 1 in 5 Maori and Pacific people (among 45-64 year olds) have diabetes compared to 1 in 20 NZ Europeans. If Covid were to be let loose here it would disproportionately target those communities, almost all of them of working age and almost none of them "at death's door."

We are perfectly capable of keeping our economy running, maintaining our freedoms and keeping those 30,000 people alive. We don't need to compromise our strategy because some random person on the internet doesn't actually understand what is going on in the world.

If you want to know more about the science of our elimination strategy and how alternative strategies wouldn't be a great fit, read this twitter thread by Dr Jin Russell, who lays out the case for staying the course.

https://twitter.com/DrJinRussell/status/1311142907554873346

It's not so unbelievable. How much sense does it make to declare a highly contagious and globally endemic virus "eliminated", in the context of a tyrannical closed-border strategy that is utterly unsustainable in perpetuity?

LOL.

It makes zero sense.

It makes perfect sense.

Because the moment the borders open, the virus will ravage New Zealand, and they will, having resided in an "island bubble", have no antibodies.

We can actually test this. As we've already discussed: the virus did manage to get in again recently. It spread in the community for a number of days before it was detected.

What didn't happen was the virus ravaged the country. Because that isn't how any of this works. There isn't a country in the world that is close to herd immunity. We've just witnessed the Whitehouse Cluster and we can see how fast it has spread and its spreading not for a lack of antibodies, but because the Whitehouse has not instituted any pandemic controls. Not enough testing and the wrong type of testing. No masks. No mandatory self-isolation for 14 days. No contact tracing. No deep cleaning. The Whitehouse Cluster is a cluster-****.

The virus will ravage a country that doesn't have an appropriate pandemic response. "Hoping for enough antibodies" is not an appropriate pandemic response. In New Zealand we had the ability to substantially ramp up testing, tracing and isolation overnight and I'd take that response over "antibodies" any day to keep New Zealand safe.

The virus will rage on there like it has in Sweden, with more or less the same direct consequences, while NZ has suffered from all of the indirect economic/social consequences from the hysterical (and tyrannical) response from the beginning and until the end.

LOL.

At some point the hapless NZ politicians will have to make the Hobson's choice and "let it rip", when it becomes clear to all that the costs of total quarantine for a virus with a .6% kill rate is asinine.

For the record: Tippit appears to be in favour of killing 29,000 New Zealanders for no apparent material benefit. Is that because you enjoy watching people die, or is there another reason you would like to share with us?

 

[dann]

The title of this thread is "Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy questioned as Stockholm death toll mounts". That implies the hypothesis that their "herd immunity" strategy has failed, which you and others here are all too keen to point out. But I'm not sure you've provided enough evidence, choosing instead to focus myopically on deaths per million. Given their strategy, I think we can both agree that they are willfully condemning some people to their deaths, and others to sickness, which each have their own costs and consequences. I think we would also agree that these casualties would be frontloaded into the global mortality statistics. Is this really evidence that the strategy has failed, or is it possibly just evidence that the ultimate consequences of the virus not just in terms of mortality, but economic, and quality of life haven't been fully realized in the rest of the world yet? I do not think you're accounting for the possibility (in my opinion, the inevitability) that a highly contagious and endemic virus is ultimately going to take its toll everywhere around the world, with the possible exceptions of the most extremely isolated and bubbled groups of humans. It will either take its toll directly, or indirectly as a result of the prolonged economic and social consequences of the hysterical response. At what point and under what conditions would we concede that Sweden's approach has been a success, that is when the mythical 60% herd immunity that I've read about has been reached, and that a large amount of the Swedish population has antibodies and is going about their day-to-day lives in a more or less normal fashion, while the rest of the world is still struggling with crippling economic and social sanctions, only to inevitably be ravaged by an endemic virus?

I told you about the declared intentions of the Swedish strategy, and I showed you that the strategy failed to deliver:

1) flatten the curve so the health-care system was not overwhelmed and 2) protect the elderly and the weak while the younger generations were spreading the virus until herd immunity was achieved. It usually wasn't explicitly stated, but the Swedish strategy was also supposed to protect the economy and people's mental health.
It managed to fail on all counts.

And there is nothing "mythical" about the herd-immunity strategy. What you fail to show is that other countries have been more economically crippled with their sanctions than Sweden has been (allegedly) without sanctions. You appear to be obsessed with hardships that many countries haven't really noticed that they had. Ask people in Finland, Denmark and Norway how hard it has been or how crippled by tyrannical restrictions we have been. And tell us more about the conditions in Sweden in your utopian future when 60 percent of them have had the virus. Tell us about how many more of them have died, how many more of them have become long-haulers and how many of them have come down with Covid-19 a second or a third time because that appears to be what is happening to some people: The alleged herd immunity doesn't really seem to work, does it?

It is bloody obvious that the herd-immunity strategy didn't accomplish what it explicitly set out to accomplish, so you now invent a scenario where it might still be preferable to the Hammer & the Dance or to the Elimination strategy, and you don't even notice that this scenario is entirely imaginary!

If you want to see people "going about their day-to-day lives in a more or less normal fashion," you should go to NZ, Finland or Norway. And, I hope, Denmark in a couple of weeks when the virus has been hammered down again. In the meantime, it is still "more or less normal" except for the masks and the lack of rave parties.

That's quite an accusation. Do you have any direct evidence that they're trying to willfully spread the virus to other countries, or is that just inferred from their own approach and their border policy?

Read my posts about Giesecke's failed attempt to sell the Swedish herd-immunity strategy to the Irish and about Tegnell's (maybe more successful) attempt to sell it to UK politicians. Sweden has been adamant throughout the pandemic that the other Nordic countries should keep their borders open to Swedes even their Public Health Agency had no ******* idea how many cases they had and their hospital workers were so overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients that they prescribed palliative care for them without even examining them.

It's a fair question, I'm not exactly smart enough to answer it. I suppose it would have definitely failed if, when the rest of the world decided it was ok to go back to normal life (successfully, with a managed virus), that Sweden's total cost of the virus, including deaths, sickness, and all of the social and economic costs associated with the virus were accounted for, and it was last. Obviously, those conditions aren't even close to being met, as the "pandemic" rages on.

No, the pandemic is on as long as we don't have the vaccines to eradicate it, but it only "rages" if we let it, which is what you advocate. NZ seems to be on top of it, Norway and Finland are watching it carefully and considering stricter measures, and I hope that Denmark will have managed to hammer it down again in a couple of weeks.
The Swedes have got the tools (primarily TeTrIs) that they failed to get hold of in March, April, May and June, so I hope that they will know how to use them now that their numbers are rising again. The herd immunity that they imagined they had achieved a month or two ago seems to have been nothing but wishful thinking.