> we'll have herd immunity (which is where Sweden is at now).

No, even Sweden's epidemiologists say that up to 30% of their population could be immune.[1] They tried to shoot the moon but missed. They are in a similar place to nearby countries now but got there with a much higher death toll

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uk-abandoned-herd-immunity...

Herd immunity isn't possible when antibodies are as transient as those seen for COVID-19. Only a massive public push with an actually effective vaccine will control this pandemic.

That's just flat out wrong. If that were the case, than the Spanish Flu would still be killing millions of people per year.

SARS-CoV-2 and A/H1N1 aren't even in the same phylum. It would be silly to expect them to have precisely the same effect. Besides, when people gush about "herd immunity" they don't usually include the caveat "of course it's going to kill fifty million people first!"

There have been what, three cases of people being infected twice? And they barely got sick?

The antibodies from infected people are being shown to last somewhere on an average of 3 months.

Kinda hard to be immune if you have nothing to protect you.

How sick you get from the disease is irrelevant in this context.

Your understanding of the immune system is not quite correct. Just because you can't detect antibodies doesn't mean you lack immunity.

B-cells can stop producing antibodies and reactivate production in response to an antigen. T-cell memory appears to be quite robust for coronaviruses (and this one in particular)

To establish a lack of durable antibody response, challenge trials would need to be done, where the host is challenged by the virus (or something that looks like the virus like it's spike protein). These trials have not been run.

We can only guess without data specific to SARS-COV-2, but for seasonal coronaviruses, antibodies disappear after ~6 months and reinfection with the same strain can occur after 1 year.

It isn't entirely irrelevant. If you can get reinfected but not get sick twice, it's as if we reached herd immunity at 100%.

And it's perfectly normal that antibodies don't stay in the bloodstream forever. The immune system remembers how to make them and can produce new ones when needed.

Reinfection is problematic for herd immunity strategy as it keeps the transmission rate , R high. This keeps the less healthy vulnerable.

This community refuses to acknowledge that Sweden’s strategy has merit.

Something recent that's been under-reported. The US, the country pulling an accidental Sweden, has seen a 33% decline in new cases since mid-July. The narrative is still that the US has done worse than any other developed country, but look at Spain and France. Both have surpassed their ~April peaks, have per capita new infection rates above the US.

How's Sweden's new case rates? Stable, and 1/4 of the US's.

The list of countries that have been able to maintain their low case counts is getting shorter, and the US is looking less exceptional in its response.

"Listen to the epidemiologists" only works for a bit. It turns out psychology was just as important.

France sent students back to school, and re-opened its universities, and allowed gatherings of 5,000 or more people, and did not require masks in public, or in workplaces, with predictable results.

Their response, and the results mirror that of the worst-performing US states.

In what sense? Lots of elderly people have died. Is that ethical?

Ten times the cases, and ten times the deaths of its neighbors, and a 8.6% drop in GDP in Q2.

Meanwhile, Norway lost 5.3% of its GDP, and Finland lost 4.9%.

Exactly which part of this strategy has merit?

Not to mention Sweden is more locked down than the US - _0_ gatherings over 50 people allowed. 0.

I'm astounded there's still people doing the 'debate me!' act about it, most gave up by July in the US, we had already clearly chose a more intense version of the Swedish 'strategy'

I'm amazed that smart people have been advocating Sweden's strategy. Sweden has a population of 10 million. New York alone has more people than that.

It's as if population size, distribution and density aren't even a consideration, let alone local practices.

It was also the strategy of South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Utah, and they seem to be doing a lot better in terms of both GDP hit and caseload than places like California and New York with heavy lockdowns.

Iowa has a projected 9.5% GDP hit. New York has a projected ~14% GDP hit, and due to its density and reliance on elevators and public transit, will of course have a higher case load, and require harsher measures to control the spread.

Half of the population of Iowa can fit in the 22 square miles of Manhattan. Oh, and infection rates in Iowa are climbing, whereas infection rates in New York peaked five months ago... And they are currently neck-and-neck in per-capita cases.

So, how did a mostly rural state get a case rate that's as bad as a state that packs half of its population into a single sardine-can of a city? Is their strategy actually working, if they are getting the same outcome, despite having a much easier set of starting conditions to deal with?

Meanwhile, in Canada, BC is projected to take a ~6% GDP hit... While having 1/10th the per-capita case load of Iowa, and higher population densities.

10M is a lot. It’s a population larger than the majority of US states and by far enough to draw conclusions from.

Sweden allows gatherings above 500 now (https://www.thelocal.se/20200827/breaking-sweden-to-allow-pu...). And it never forced business closures, which is way more open than most US states.

Because the virus isn't coming back in Sweden, whereas its neighbours are already experiencing a second wave. Sweden's argument was always that it was "front-loading" the infections, so over the long-term other countries would see a similar number of infections as they experienced multiple waves.

Plus they avoided the rise in depression and domestic violence that countries with lockdowns endured. As well as avoiding massive violations of human rights, although you leftists seem to care nothing about that.

  Because the virus isn't coming back in Sweden, whereas its neighbours are already experiencing a second wave. Sweden's argument was always that it was "front-loading" the infections, so over the long-term other countries would see a similar number of infections as they experienced multiple waves.

That doesn't appear to be what's happening.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

Also, Sweden didn't avoid an uptick in domestic violence.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iuGdja...

Even most 'high spread' countries have less than 10% of the population that have contracted the virus.

To get to herd immunity levels, millions of people would likely die.

Are you talking about antibodies? There are papers on T-cell immunity and clicks who've tested staff a month apart with no increase in antibody positive tests.

It's probably WELL over 10%. There are more ways our immune system can develop memory than just antibodies and a number of studies are showing that.

Sweden is nowhere close to achieving herd immunity (as everyone knows).

Then home come their case rate just keeps falling? And their death rate. And unlike the countries that locked down, they're not experiencing a second wave of cases.

Even in countries where a second wave is happening, it’s a wave of infection only, not deaths. There is not reason to be scared of a disease that don’t kill. International travel restrictions should be lifted. We don’t need to wait for a vaccine that might be more a dangerous than to virus it’s supposed to fight. Current practices in East-Asia have shown to be enough to handle the thing.

This is not universally true. In parts of California there was a jump in death rate reasonably close to a partial reopening. And has very slowly been trending downwards since they re-closed everything.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/

  There is not reason to be scared of a disease that don’t kill.

What about one that causes permanent lung and/or heart damage?

You mean like other viral infections, or bacterial pneumonia? As grave as the effects are, they are absolutely not unique to SARS-CoV-2.

Sure, and those grave effects are a 'reason'

The incidence of these effects can be a reason. Unfortunately there are no reliable data on how they are prevalent.

My point is insofar as one would/should fear death, they would/should fear a decent probability long term nonfatal consequences to some degree. Incomplete information doesn't obviate that.

Nonfatal=/=nothing to fear