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A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

sebastianrushworth.com

171–180 of 340 posts

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $100k per quality-adjusted life-year and 10 QALY lost per death, those 5k deaths are $5B, about 1% of Sweden's GDP. So by the same math used to determine if medical treatments are cost-effective, it's breakeven if that GDP difference persists for about four months. We should also account for QALY lost due to people who get severely ill but recover, but I'd guess the net result is surprisingly close to breakeven. P…

Plausible long-term damage to the brain of a significant percentage of COVID patients, in both severe and non-severe cases—-according to a Lancet paper—should change the QALY-based calculation by a great deal. https://mobile.twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1290916583137...

That is an incredibly bad paper. They have gone on a fishing expedition across dozens of algorithmically detected differences, barely adjusted their statistical significance thresholds to make up for the fact that they're searching for something that might be "significant", and even then, the best they can do is come up with...50% of people have something. A coin toss.

This is the medical literature version of the xkcd green M&M comic:

https://xkcd.com/882/

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#172
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…

Your numbers are way off. 25% percent of NYC was seropositive in May. So that works out to about 25k per 100k people. The reported cases have always been just the tip of the iceberg. And we never knew how big the underwater part was. We still down't. Take the current situation, is the disease penetration larger than that in March/April? Most likely not, not even close, yet the reported new cases are about 5x larger.

I don't care how big the underwater part is though. I am just using the case rate as a proxy for when states seem to hit their peak (yes, extremely handwavy).

As long at the confirmed cases is within some constant fraction of true number, it will be a decent proxy. This makes sense to me since some x% of the people who get infect will need hospitalization so they will get counted towards the statistics.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that recovery from coronaplague is lengthy and that a good amount of those discharged form hospital are looking at permanently reduced lung function. Death isn't the best metric here.

I hear this a lot, but I've never seen this claim put in context of a comparison to lung function following viral pneumonia from viruses other than SARS-CoV-2.

Yeah, I've only hear about it as a typical result of pneumonia

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#174
Would COVID have been a "pandemic" if we did not have the internet? The Swedish perspective is interesting. I wonder if Google trends can be broken down by nation to reflect what the concerns of different countries are. How many COVID searches in Sweden vs the US vs other nations ?

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#175

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…

This.

Have been taking hour walks in the sun since May.

Never have I gotten so much sun before! Feels great

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#176
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…

Louisiana was not aggressive about reopening; we have Democratic governor

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#177
post #3

Its baffling that lots of government still want to continue the lockdown.

Sweden has social programs where people can do their own lockdown and not be worried that they're whole life will fall apart.

Eg. They don't have to keep working or risk not having healthcare.

The US needs the big government sponsored lockdown because otherwise US companies will force people to go to work when it's not safe

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#178

"COVID is over in Sweden" is a pretty bold claim with ~400 daily infections, and increasing again as per https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6... Just like in other EU countries, it is now the younger population which seems mostly affected, and thus the mortality is lower - which is ultimately some good news. Summer holidays are now almost over though, so people are traveling home from vacation…

Average new cases per day has dropped from about 1200/day in late June to less than 300/day now. There's a slight uptick over the past week.

https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

Downtrend in average deaths per day continues, currently at 6/day.

https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countr...

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#179

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 ?

Not necessarily.

Lots of evidence now that aerosol covid is a major risk with prolonged exposure.

Scientist have found the virus in ventilation systems of hospitals supporting this.

This means the ‘aura’ of effect for an individual is quite large, especially in buildings with shared ventilation systems. This still requires much greater exposure time due to virion density decreases over distance from source, but that time would be available in a quarantine. Therefore, a steady trickle of infection is likely because not everyone lives in a house, and because there will never be enough N95 masks (we had to start prepping for this 10 years ago to make enough masks).

That, and the fact that people move between borders means it will not go away on a meaningful month time scale because there is no way to coordinate an entire world response. As you can see, the easiest geography to protect is islands...

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You win the prize for the understatement of the century. The ideological clarity of the covid regime is sublime. All sorts of debated matters are decided, by "science", and that is that. Whether by accident or design, the covid regime , the "new normal" that MSM has been educating us about from the very beginning, is a blueprint for a global authoritarian technocracy with its own internal logic, ethics, and mores.

I share your concerns about authoritarians using this occasion to bend things in a bad direction but are you asserting that the virus is not a real thing or that some group with authoritarian aims is behind its release? Because if the virus is a real thing then surely protesting by gathering into crowds and falling victim doesn’t harm the bad guys right? Help me understand if you don’t mind, serious questions it’s ha…

It's a perfectly reasonable set of questions.

Please note I stress that I am commenting on the virus "regime".

Is the virus real? I think we should assume it is real, regardless of the facts. Let's say it is real.

Should we concern ourselves with whether it is (a) natural phenomena, or (b) man-made;

and whether regardless of its provenance, the spread of the virus was due to (a) chance events, or (b) intentional release?

Again, I say, to seriously answer any of these questions is an unreasonable burden. So, let's call it an "act of god".

Now, we are at the point to discuss sensible response, rational response, reasonable response, to a collective health issue: a virus that has reached pandemic stage and posses certain risk probabilies across various demographics.

Does the above scenario mandate that governmental norms be bent if not broken? For example, is it acceptable that from now on society will be governed by executive decrees and not legislative bodies?

How long should we tolerate such encroachments on what we know to be the basis of free societies?

Should not a health care matter of such grave import and impact on our lives be subject to the input of a wide range of experts in related subject matters?

What "authority" has designated certain institutions, such as the Imperial College as an example, as fonts of indisputable claims regarding the gravity of the situation and required remedies?

Why are dissenting experts and workers in the "frontlines" subject to media blackout, de-platforming, and loss of income?

I could go on and practically write a little book here. But that should suffice as to "why" some of us are rather concerned, to say the least.

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