People are quick to forget that the Swedish strategy was everyone's strategy in February. It was (most) other countries that changed strategy from "we must prevent healthcare from being overwhelmed" into "we must eradicate the outbreak at all cost".
It was different to stay on the first strategy, but just because other countries changed doesn't make the first strategy any more an "experiment".
Add to this an existing culture of using face masks and gloves in public (i.e. supplies of those things were already in place), and you've got a very different scenario compared to most of Europe for example.
Hard to make the argument that testing is of primary importance considering Japan did almost none and still didn't see a significant outbreak.
This is a big one. Around these parts wearing a mask means people assume you're sick or immunocompromised.
Obviously Sweden couldn’t scale to the same testing as e.g South Korea, but few countries could. Perhaps one lesson would be that if you can’t scale testing then locking down until you can would be good?
Japan did 90%+ mask coverage.
I was surprised to learn that the aggressive approach has become more the rule than the exception. This is great for the world but sad for my country.
Here in the US we are still taking the weaker “we must prevent healthcare from being overwhelmed” strategy. Having (mostly) succeeded at that (so far) we’re already looking to ease the lockdowns.
I tabbed through the statistics [1] and confirmed that much of the world is indeed on the path of “we must eradicate the outbreak at all cost”. Whereas in America the total cases are still climbing linearly (new cases roughly constant) in many other countries the total cases have decelerated (new cases decreasing or even approaching zero).
Hospitalizations and deaths are much better metrics.
Sweden probably finds about the same or more infected people every day now, than at their peak of deaths/hospitalizations (which lags the peak of infections!) in the last week of April, for example.
Simply not true. Taiwan (with a population 2.5 times that of Sweden) adopted a strict containment and suppression policy as soon as they detected the epidemic risk, which was at the end of December 2019. And of course China had moved to containment and suppression by then too.
have you been paying attention to what's going on? I would not describe it as "relatively little pain"...
Staying at home for a couple of weeks is easy least in comparison. All it takes is a dash of political leadership.
So yeah, op is right on the money.
https://www.wbal.com/article/449453/124/state-opens-temporar...
It's far better to store piles of dead bodies on ice than leaving them piling up on morgues or crematoriums, as it was shown in Brazil or Mexico.
The only thing that ice rink morgues represent is the extent of the death wave, and how a nation has to cope with the sudden increase in mortality.
I'd call 3 weeks "only a couple of weeks".
Here in Norway we haven't had one, if by that you mean being forbidden to leave our houses except for essential purposes.
We have been free to travel, to meet people, to go to bars, restaurants, cafés. My grown children have not had a single day off work.
The only people forbidden from leaving home are those who have tested positive for COVID-19.
Of course a lot of shops, bars, cafés, etc. have closed but that was for a combination of lack of customers and a desire to protect their staff together with, in some case,an inability or unwillingness to comply with distancing rules.
Schools were closed but that was a bit of an overreaction on the part of the government and against the advice of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, https://www.fhi.no/en/ and they have been open again now for several weeks.
Here a page in English summarizing the rules: https://www.fhi.no/en/op/novel-coronavirus-facts-advice/fact...
Effective leadership early on is effective.
Under the theory that NZ citizens can’t go anywhere else, supposedly if all the people who would have gone overseas instead travel internally then it should recover up to 60%. If Australia can get thier shit together then it’s apparently 95%.
I guess it’s just a question of priorities. Most of the NZ population is feeling pretty good about life being normal and are willing to pitch the tourism sector into the fire to that end.
But hopefully we have bought time to make measured decisions, and now we do have options, including skulking away until there's a vaccine available.
Im fascinated to see how it plays out myself.
The plan for the next couple of months at least seems to be to require a 2-3 week quarantine for people coming into the country, which is definitely going to cause continued harm to the tourism sector.
I think the hope from the govt right now is that a vaccine becomes an option sooner rather than later...there is no guarantee of that even being possible of course, but its looking more hopeful as the data comes in.
OTOH within the country itself, as of right now, we are one of the least-shutdown economies in the world and have lost only 21 people to covid, which is a pretty solid place to be.
The longer we can keep covid out, the better the virus is understood and the more effective the treatments that are available, even without a vaccine.
It seems likely to be true that eventually we will need to shrug and let the virus have its way with our people, with or without a vaccine, but everyone with vulnerable dependents is grateful to have had more time with them, and already the treatment outcomes for covid have improved from 6 weeks ago.
Lives sacrificed by opening up too soon (or never closing) would be lost forever, while the economy is driven by people, and people are endlessly resilient, so the economy will recover.
Was it worth it for the lives saved? Clearly opinions are going to vary, but Im comfortable with the choices our govt has made so far.
We are already admitting film crews for certain TV and film productions, with a 14-day quarantine.
If we can sustain being COVID-free, that makes NZ pretty attractive for those activities.
I don't think we'll be admitting tourists unconditionally until we have vaccinated most of our population. But our tourism sector will probably limp along OK with outbound tourism switching to domestic. Also we will hopefully be opening a "travel bubble" with other countries that have beaten COVID19, probably Australia first.
Political leadership matters.
We had 1.5 months of partly lockdown. We were blocked from leaving our cities of residence except for work for two weekends. We closed pretty much everything until a few weeks ago.
And with all that, we had almost 1/2 the deaths of Sweden. Not 5% or 10%, but close to half (3800 vs 1450).
And we 'reopened' the country and right now have more cases per day (yesterday 350) as at the beginning when gov. decided to shut down everything. (State of emergency was declared on 18 of March where our cases were around 200 per day)
No, we did not.
Portugal's state of emergency consisted of imposing the duty of home confinement only to risk cohorts, comprised of sick and actively monitored patients. Everyone else was only subjected to "social duty to home confinement" and was obligated to wear protective masks on public transportation, customer service, and services open to the public.
> We closed pretty much everything until a few weeks ago.
That assertion is somewhere between disingenuous and confused. There was a healthy general attitude towards the civic duty of home confinement, but it was primary self-imposed restrictions. The Portuguese government ceased to impose general confinement restrictions after they revised the first declaration of state of emergency, which were downgraded to mandatory facemasks in public transportation and public services.
The state of Emergency (we had 3) lasted 6 weeks and during this time, bars, restaurants, car stands and a bunch of other stores were closed. They closed lojas do cidadao (?still many aren't open) and essential services were by appointment only.
Not by the owners but by the government: https://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/economia/coronavirus/detalhe...
'Que estabelecimentos encerram obrigatoriamente? Todos os estabelecimentos que não prestem serviços essenciais ou forneçam bens de primeira necessidade são obrigados a fechar portas. O diploma do Governo é exaustivo na lista que inclui: todos os locais de atividades de lazer e diversão, como bares, discotecas, zoos ou parques de diversões; locais de atividades culturais, como auditórios, cinemas, teatros, bibliotecas, galerias ou praças de touros; locais de atividades desportivas, como campos de futebol, courts de ténis, ringues de patinagem ou ginásios e academias; termas, casinos, salões de jogos, bares, esplanadas e restauração em geral.'
Layoff (furlough for other countries) was used to around one million people. 10% of the population and about 25% of the active population, and you are telling me that people just decided to stay at home and gov didn't ordered anything?
Basically, if it didn't sell food or medicine, chances it was closed, and not by choice. There were 117 people arrested and 311 stores/businesses where police/asa forcibly closed them: https://www.cmjornal.pt/portugal/detalhe/estado-de-emergenci...
Please, I don't know where the fuck you lived during the State of Emergency, but saying it was just 'social duty to home confinement' is a joke to what really happened here. The economic and social damage done was huge.
That's probably the bigger problem for your country than the absolute number of deaths: the "reopening" happened too early compared to some countries of equivalent size where the cases per day became lower before the "reopening."
Even after the "reopening" the war is not won.
Also, looking at the graphs of daily cases and comparing it with some other European countries, the measures were obviously less effective than in these other countries. Given that 10 million of people are involved, it's much more nuanced than "we had X for Y days."
Edit: To answer: "I don't know how we got the good press": deaths per million: Portugal: 142, Switzerland: 222, Sweden: 450, Spain: 580. It's easy to see that's how Portugal looks obviously better, statically. What I point to with "probably the bigger problem" (that it's not over) is that e.g. new daily cases in Switzerland are now 19, v.s. Portugal's 350.
I'll also edit ;):
Austria(75.73), Slovenia(52.72) Estonia(52.24) Lithuania(25.4) Croatia(25.19)
So it doesn't seem so good, but for some reason, we are called a miracle: https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/27/the-coronavirus-crisis-th...
(first result in google, there are more)
Seems either people had very low expectations of Portugal, or are just using the Portugal is almost the same as Spain idea and expected the same results (even though we were affected later, if we were first, we would probably see something similar)
But I do think it is dangerous to try to play the two roles at the same time. Science demands an honesty that few politicians can afford, which the current discussion about Anders Tegnell so well demonstrates.
This varies across cultures though. Scandinavian countries have a bit of a different approach to many thing, the most recent example I stumbled across was Danish zoos honestly and explicitly saying that they can't keep all the animals, that they will kill some, and that they will feed them to e.g. the lions. They even make it a public thing where somebody will chop up the animal and explain stuff.
Those things generate outcries - in other countries. We're very used to hide "how the meat is made" from the general population, but that's not necessarily the same in all countries. I find it very refreshing for politicians to not have "a public and a private opinion", and I wish it was more common.
Sweden has a long and revolting involvement of medical experimentation and eugenics on its own citizens, such as unconsented sterilisations, or feeding mental health patients diets designed to induce tooth decay so they could study the teeth rotting in the victims (I will not describe those so afflicted as patients).
In this context, the decision of a prominent Swedish scientist to "go it alone" and experiment on the population who have entrusted themselves to his care is unsurprising as well as tragic.
(And an actual brilliant scientist learns from their results and modifies their hypothesis. He seems to have done very little of either.)
In case you haven't noticed, billions still get cavities.
As a Swede I‘m appalled at their handling of the matter, particularly when it comes to protecting the elderly. (Which is to say they didn’t.)
Saying that Tegnell "goes at it alone" is completely misinformed and comparing the situation to eugenics research is just going to show everyone how little you know about this situation. Stop wasting everyones time...
For example the argument that the high death in Sweden would not have been any different had we shut down completely because most deaths happened at old age care where the same people travel around the whole city thanks to state trying to cut down on costs. Tegnell did say that they expected the old age care to take steps to limit this travel when they set up the guidelines but this never happened in Stockholm apparently. I know that in my home-town they compartmentalized the care a lot after the outbreak, every person only sees the same two to three faces and the personell groups don't meet any more. And the death rate is no different to last years average in our state.
We do not experiment on people without asking for permission in Sweden. We do expect people to treat us with some respect.
Eugenics went on for considerably longer. Eg. compulsory sterilization, sterilization without consent, persisted well until 1970s.
It was similar with lobotomy (carried out until mid- or late 1960s, I think).
See https://www.umu.se/en/news/swedish-big-brother-behind-loboto... for an interesting take on the Swedish case:
> Sweden was more accepting than the US in its attitude toward lobotomy in the 1940s and 1950s. A possible explanation for this may be the strength of paternalism in Sweden, that is, a greater tendency to make decisions on behalf of the patient in Swedish medical culture than in its American counterpart. This is according to Kenneth Ögren from Umeå University in Sweden.
Whether a legitimate parallel can be drawn with their approach regarding the pandemics, is another matter I'm not really commenting on here.
This may not be the best comparison to make if you want to argue that everything is fine now.
Those over retirement age by definition can choose where to go during the day.
Quite a lot of this argument boils down to political philosophy: Personal Choice vs Nanny Knows Best.
[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-mortality-over-time-o...
You somehow left out the fact that people can't see where the virus is or who carries it. Thus if you are, say, in a retirement home operated and visited freely by those you claim that have nothing to worry about then what chance do they have to avoid being exposed to the virus?
And all it takes is one exposure to get the virus to spread like wildfire within the retirement home. That's been observed in Italy and Spain.
The problem is even more serious if elderly live with family.
Additionally, you also left out the fact that your reference shows signifixant excess deaths in the cohort 46-64yo representing an increase of about 18% wrt the baseline.
Similarly the denominator game won't save you because I can do maths. Do the numbers again with the population total in that age range.
Then compare that to the chance of dying on the operating table if you opt to have surgery.
Then remember I'm in that age range and have assessed the risk.
Now tell me again why you think you have the right to tell me what I can and can't do?
I'd love to hear some of them.
> Now tell me again why you think you have the right to tell me what I can and can't do?
Same reason it's Ok to tell you can't drive drunk.
Care to tell us about these easy solutions?
Framing the argument in this way is the source of the problem every time this comes up.
Solutions don't adhere to philosophies. Some situations call us to work together, and sometimes the best way to work together is for everybody to cede a little control and defer to somebody doing the coordination.
That's all there is too it. We should agree to let everyone live their lives without unnecessary limits, but we should also agree that when collective action is needed, we are also prepared to accept that and to make it work.
Unless they are not able to. Or require basic resources. Or require medical attention they can't get at home. Or...
It's not a great generalisation.
Have you asked them whether they want to spend the few years and months they have left caged? If you did you may be surprised by the answer.
This virus doesn't just kill or leave people unscathed, it also leaves people with long term damage or knocks them out for a couple of weeks. Sitting in bed for weeks is not appealing at all to most people.
That is merely a possibility and if it's actually the case, it happens rarely.
> Sitting in bed for weeks is not appealing at all to most people.
It beats social distancing for months.
So far we've only seen individual reports about lung damage (including potentially life long) in e.g. divers (including for non-stationary disease courses!), reports about kidney damage, mid-term loss of smell, etc.
We're going to get a clear picture in years, so it's irresponsible to say it happens rarely.
The people for which social distancing is a major problem will also have a huge issue with becoming bedridden for weeks on end. Think single-income earners, single parents, etc. Even for a couple with kids this could be a nightmare with one partner taking care of the kids and their sick significant other. Remember that the sick person has to isolate too!
Scientists (which Tegnell is, effectively) are not meant to be politicians, and them getting into political matters is an excellent way to corrupt science. Although Sweden is not a place where one would look to think of corruption, there are still serious ethical issues with this. This is also a form of experimentation in COVID-19 that is among the riskiest and most dangerous in the world.
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the significant differences in death rates in developed countries for COVID-19 were attributed mostly to whether COVID-19 severely penetrated care homes, mostly designed for the elderly. We know that Sweden did not have proper PPE protection in these care homes to protect their most vulnerable, and it still does not. Sure, the death rates worldwide have been going down, at least in developed countries, because, perhaps we have become smarter at treating it, despite having no effective treatment for it.
Still, it is not prudent to expose people needlessly to a virus that we know is deadly--and we know little about. A lot of these deaths could have been prevented, with relatively little pain, although it takes a lot of sacrifice.
One of the countries I am sovereign to, Croatia, (the other being the USA) has not had any COVID-19 cases for 3 days in a row [1]. You know, a former war-torn Yugoslav country that is up and rising and just became part of the EU in 2013. This kind of stuff is not rocket science. Even war-torn, economically suffering countries can be successful at these sorts of endeavors. It just requires brave political leaders (along with a strong emphasis on public health--which a lot of ex-Yugoslav countries actually have) who can deal with crises (which Croatia has legitimately dealt with before).
[1] https://koronavirus.hr/en