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A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

sebastianrushworth.com

141–150 of 340 posts

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear anything is saving lives. Once everything opens up we could be right where we started. Also we've said basically that people with coronavirus matter more than other illnesses. There will be millions of deaths around the world because of shutdown. Things like AIDs medicine. Then thousands due to lack of treatment of cancers and people not going to doctor(England did a study on this). Then you'll have th…

Why are you counting the increased ill effects of staying home but not the decreased ill effects of leaving home? No more car accidents, for example.

I know you live in a tech bubble, but people still have to physically go to a thing called work. You're telling me that some car accidents go down that will offset aids, tuberculosis, malaria. Not to mention cancer treatments, cancer not getting caught early, etc. You really do live in a bubble. While we cry about not having internet or that a face mask isn't covering someones nose completely, millions of people die around the world due to very preventable or treatable diseases.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/health/coronavirus-tuberc...

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it appears that a significant chunk of people are not interested in taking the vaccine. [1] If only half of Americans are going to get the vaccine (that figure is from May polling, referenced below), we can't pin all of our hopes on it. I should note that I'm not saying it's unreasonable of people to be hesitant to take this particular vaccine, given how it is being rushed. Even scientists have said th…

Those that don’t take the vaccine will get the virus and, if they survive, similar immunity.

Clarification: You can still get infected by viruses after you receive vaccines for them. Your severity of infection will be lower, but it's still possible to get sick even with a vaccine, just less sick than you would've.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#144
I've seen some other comments echo this sentiment. I was never "stunned" by how lethal this virus is. Though I have read plenty of stories to realize it can be (and in a lot of instances) was brutal for people who had it. I did, however, have a breakthrough in my understanding as to why they shut everything down.

Everyone, as far as I'm concerned, has a right to proper healthcare. The medical professionals realized early on that based on how easily the virus spreads and how it is plenty more lethal than a common cold, they knew letting everyone catch it at the same time would've overwhelmed the healthcare system. There is no chance most people would've gotten proper care, thus more people would've died than had to.

I'm still not fully convinced of what the doctor had to say. Let's give it a full-year where we've gone through all the seasons to see if he really is right about the fact that Sweden did it the right way.

EDIT: Also, during those first months medical professionals learned more about how to handle it. They took those learnings and applied them to the next group of patients. That knowledge would've never been put to use (in theory) if everyone had the virus at the same time.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#145
post #74

NYC is a good case study since it's one of the first place hit and is now more or less "done" with covid in the same sense used in this article (it had a peak and is now on the right tail). NYC is at 2716 cases per 100k and 281 deaths per 100k: https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases States with aggressive reopening policies like Florida/Louisana/Arizona etc had spikes recently but are also coming back down. Th…

I think we really are losing sight of the before versus now comparison. NYC is an absolutely ghost town compared to how it was. Everyone stays remarkably limited in their social contact. Professional sports are a ghost of what they were, running in an incredibly limited fashion. Travel is rare. The same is true of Sweden as well, of course. Social interaction has collapsed to very close to nil, and any article that c…

How are sports teams a ghost of what they were? NHL playoffs are incredible right now. European soccer is wrapping up and play is great. NBA is just getting started. Most of them just canceled games or took a break, which, for example, the NHL used to do every 4 years for the Olympics. The only sport that seems to be having real trouble is the MLB, who just had a terrible plan. I admit, I have no belief the NFL has any chance due to team and personal size but that is just life. Not to mention esports which has barely slowed down after the first few months where they had to cancel in person events.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#146
Confused by this:

> Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available.

Wouldn’t shutting down completely for a month or two effectively end covid ?

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would indeed, as it posits spurious claims and is factually inaccurate, ER doctor or not. The fact is, over 150k have died in the US due to COVID, and this exceeds the US death toll from any known war, so there's no real minimizing such a figure. It's likely precisely due to a failure to contain the spread of the causative virus, precisely due to waffling around lockdown.

80k died in 2017-2018 US flu season. I'm sorry but where was the shutdown? Luckily this whole thing is going to be gone November 4th.

"Only" 80k died from flu, without needing a shutdown, but 150k have died from covid-19 even with a shutdown, so how is that an argument against the covid-19 shutdown?

At best it's an argument that we should do more to stop flu deaths, but at worst it amounts to "If someone ever dies of any preventable cause then we should never take any measures to prevent any other death".

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#148

Confused by this: > Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. Wouldn’t shutting down completely for a month or two effectively end covid ?

Granted most countries are probably far more well-behaved than the US, but I don't know if you read any of the articles that clearly showed people weren't even happy with the kinds of restrictions they were asked to practice. Let alone locking down fully for an entire month all at once?

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#149

Only thing anyone can do is go to a shoe store, buy some running shoes and start running like 5 to 10 miles a week. Lay out in the sun and start eating healthier. If you can't run just walk. Play basketball, play soccer whatever. Why do people worry so much about things they can't control, when there are things they actually can control. If some of my facebook friends were more worried about walking everyday instead…

I wish I could play soccer but that'd be incredibly stupid during a pandemic and everything is shut down anyway. Running yes. Contact sports hell no.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delusional. For that, ~2700 more people would need to die in Finland. 14 people have died in Finland since June 1st and they're typically reporting 0 now. In Sweden, 40 people died ON June 1st. Both countries have it under control now. But it's clear Finland's shutdown saved lives.

It's not clear anything is saving lives. Once everything opens up we could be right where we started. Also we've said basically that people with coronavirus matter more than other illnesses. There will be millions of deaths around the world because of shutdown. Things like AIDs medicine. Then thousands due to lack of treatment of cancers and people not going to doctor(England did a study on this). Then you'll have th…

This is one reason you need to look at all cause mortality. Another is that COVID specific counts don't catch all related deaths and include possible unrelated deaths.
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