451–460 of 720 posts
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Vietnam came out right at the start with a significant fine for not wearing a mask in public.
"significant" is relative. "Up to $13" https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/...
The jury is still out on "economic failure." The evidence cited on the economy is thin at best. The main piece of evidence is that "Sweden’s central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent." Economic forecasts are ridiculously unreliable. In the US, economists forecast (on average) that 8 million jobs would be lost in May. Instead there…
I also remember that the government made it easier for people to join the A-Kassa, the state unemployment insurance. Normally you have to have been paying the insurance fee for half a year or something before you're eligible for payout but I believe that requirement was scrapped.
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In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway . Considering COVID has closed many of life's fun things, there will be an entire generation of people who have effectively "lost" a year of the things they hoped they would do in their lifetime. By stating open, Sweden might decrease life expectancy in years, but increase it in terms of 'things achieved in a lifetime'
> In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway. Yes, people die. That's true of all countries and all times. What we might call civilized societies have however strived to reduce those numbers as much as possible. This was done by trying to avoid violence, improving lifestyles and developing better medical techniques in order to prevent or repair diseases and injuries. Containing and minimizing the effects of a pand…
You have to look at the excess deaths figures. That is, how many usually dies from January to June in a normal year and compare that to how many extra that died in 2020. For Sweden the excess deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or take 10%. That is not the case for many other countries. For example, the UK had almost twice the number of excess deaths as Covid deaths in a few weeks in April.…
How can you attribute every excess death to covid alone, at least directly? There are many countries where family violence has increased, alcohol consumption, suicide, etc. I don’t think every excessive death can be attributed to covid.
Honest question. I don't know the answer. I assume it's left up the physician's judgement?
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Taiwan and Germany have the advantage that they have strong domestic medical testing industries. This allowed Germany to do 5x to 10x as many tests as France, Italy and Spain. In turn this enabled them to accurately map the spread of the disease and use targeted tactical lockdowns to eliminate outbreaks at the local level. Korea did the same. Without the same testing capacity, this strategy simply wasn’t available in…
Now explain New Zealand. Lots of very different countries have beaten the virus in different ways. Apologists for the failed US response have to resort to special pleading: "it's not fair to compare the USA to South Korea ... or Taiwan ... or Germany ... or Australia ... or New Zealand ... or Japan ... or Vietnam ... or China ..." American exceptionalism at its least fine.
For New Zealand they have an extremely widely geographically dispersed population, which you can think of as built-in demographic social distancing. They also locked down early and there was strong popular support for the lockdown.
It's really pretty ridiculous to expect radically different countries with completely different geography, demographics, medical systems and lockdown policies as though they're all assumed to be equivalent as a default. Specific local conditions can have a massive effect. But anyway I'm not even sure I understand what your point is Why do you think these countries outcomes were so radically different from, say, that in New York, or Lombardy? Or what's happening right now in Texas?
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> In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway. Yes, people die. That's true of all countries and all times. What we might call civilized societies have however strived to reduce those numbers as much as possible. This was done by trying to avoid violence, improving lifestyles and developing better medical techniques in order to prevent or repair diseases and injuries. Containing and minimizing the effects of a pand…
> Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is just one aspect of what we might call a civilized attitude towards human life. Conversely, not doing so is uncivilized and I might add immoral and irresponsible. The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others to die for their own convenience. I intentionally phrased that harshly, but it is indisputably true. In the US, 70,000 people died from the infl…
Anyway, your point stands, but there are people who think covid deaths are no higher than a bad flu, and your numbers seem to mislead in that direction.
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So basically focus on isolating all people above 60, all people with comorbidities, and any with genetic sequences that are ill-defined, likely many of them that we haven’t uncovered, and more expensive to test for than Covid screening? Easy. Or lockdowns, easy accessibility to testing and good contract tracing. Which has worked well in lots of countries
> Which has worked well in lots of countries Has it really? Lots of people in LTC facilities have died, no?
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It's not possible to calculate that exchange rate, because you don't have access to the counterfactual. You're not taking the ratio of lockdown years to years lost to deaths, right? Both of those belong in the expenses side...
Sweden didn't lock down, that is the typical worst case you would get. So lives saved is the deaths per pop in Sweden compared to deaths per pop where you are.
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You are referring, I think, to years with pandemics that were not caused by what can be called the 'regular' flu. It's especially comical that you have included the 1918 flu pandemic among your counter-examples.
What is "regular" flu? There are many strains in circulation, including those that caused past pandemics. We have vaccines and acquired immunity, so it's been some time since the last truly deadly flu epidemic, but the flu should not be dismissed so lightly. And why wouldn't I include 1918 in a list of flu pandemics that killed over a million people?
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Don't forget that deaths are just one measure of the damage covid brings. My wife is/was a fit and healthy 40yo no underlying conditions - she had covid 4 months ago and has barely been able to climb the stairs some days. The 'crazy' thing is that her actual covid infection wasn't hat bad and she had no shortness of breath etc at the time. But here she is with symptoms very like ME some 100+ days later. Obviously tha…
Sorry :( Maybe she carries that susceptibility sequence from Neanderthals. It'd also be good to focus on isolating people with that and other relevant genetic markers.
It will be very interesting to see what we learn in a year or more, but it does appear that there is the possibility of physical for healthy people - on her slack group (with over 7000 'long haulers') some people are showing heart scaring, some lung damage, some kidney issues. The only commonalities for most is that while they felt ill with covid, most were not dangerously ill. And many are resting negative to the antibody tests as it appears their T cells fought the virus. The research can come too soon for us.