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A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

sebastianrushworth.com

231–240 of 340 posts

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we're going to know in just 10 years. Maybe 50, or 100. For myself, I definitely sense that we (collectively, or nation by nation) could have followed various pathways (and to some extent, we did). The "right" answer was (and is) not known, and we had a choice between erring on the side of caution over the damage caused by the disease versus that caused by economic disruption. For now, I'm still in favo…

Even though recessions cause loss of lives(as they always do), I'm not arguing we value the economy over lives. The economy will bounce back as it always does. I'm arguing that we should value all lives. We're only valuing covid lives over other lives right now. Meaning we're valuing our grandmother and great grandmothers lives over our brothers, sister, mothers, fathers even children. To be frank we have to look at…

Economies do not always "bounce back". In fact, after the major economic impacts of the 20th century, most economies worldwide required gigantic public policies targetting their rebuilding to reemerge, and even that tended to take many, many years.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#232

Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot. In the grocery store the cashiers are in a plastic bubble. Wherever there is a line there are marks on the floor to show where to wait to keep distance. Nobody shakes hands for quite some time. Yes, people go to Cafes/restaurants but restaurants have been assessed and assigned covid-friendly seating layouts. There are many more things that clearly separate tod…

> Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot. Indeed; both Sweden ( https://ycharts.com/indicators/sweden_unemployment_rate ) and Norway ( https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_unemployment_rate ) have experienced anomalous increases in their unemployment rates that seem clearly linked to the pandemic. If the article's thesis is correct that Sweden minimally-disrupted the status quo, then we would have…

That would assume Sweden's economy is completely independent of its European neighbors and even the rest of the world. In 2020, that's not true at all. Even without Covid, recessions in the US or Germany or other large economic partners will cause problems for small countries like Sweden.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#233

Is this guy an undertaker or a urologist? His tag seems to have both words but I do not speak Swedish. Anyway it may not be a perfect extrapolation or comparison but if you take his numbers, 6000 dead in a country of 100 million people and you adjust that to the US population don't you come out with 330 million people and 198000 dead? We are not far from that now and if the trend continues we will blow past that in a…

> Is this guy an undertaker or a urologist? His tag seems to have both words but I do not speak Swedish.

His name tag says "Underläkare", which is a title meaning "assistant physician". The term is defined in this Swedish Wikipedia article:

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underl%C3%A4kare

Google translates it as follows:

"Assistant physician in Sweden is a title for all the doctors on duty who do not have specialist competence..."

Underneath that it says "VO kirurgi och urologi" which translates as "Acting supervisor[1] - surgery and urology".

The red tag says "Läkare", which is just "Doctor".

[1] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO (literally "officer on duty")

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#234
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…

Testing has been off in FL due to the hurricane closing sites.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#235
post #134

Wouldn't this article be considered "misinformation" on most social media sites? It's important information that I don't think should be censored, but it goes contrary to WHO.

"Sebastian Rushworth M.D." clearly states at the beginning of his internet post that it's anecdotal, even though his bio suggests he's trying to correct internet misinformation with "science". It absolutely shouldn't be censored. I mean, if I was considering taking this guy's medical advice - I'd want to know about this.

I agree with most of the things in this article, but it smells an awful lot like a planted piece.

The name is very unusual for a Swedish person, I can only find three people with that last name in Sweden, and none of them has the first name Sebastian.

The image of him in a gas mask is vague enough that you can't identify the person based on that.

The blog is a hosted wordpress that only has a couple of articles going back a few days.

The English is very good, I didn't see a single Swedishism, which makes it less likely the writer is actually Swedish.

The article talks about other kinds of deaths that are also bad, and mentions opioid deaths. That is a cause of death that is extremely rare in Sweden, but which would be familiar to an American audience. Using that as an example while talking about Swedish deaths is very odd.

So all in all this piece smells off.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#236
post #191

Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot. In the grocery store the cashiers are in a plastic bubble. Wherever there is a line there are marks on the floor to show where to wait to keep distance. Nobody shakes hands for quite some time. Yes, people go to Cafes/restaurants but restaurants have been assessed and assigned covid-friendly seating layouts. There are many more things that clearly separate tod…

That's helpful as we Americans don't have much visibility into what it's actually like in Sweden. I think the big differentiator is that for California at least, people have been staying at home since late March, with the exception of essential workers (~20%?). Many are working from home, but many are unemployed too. So while Sweden still did a lot, the distinction is pretty large with regards to disruption to "norma…

In Stockholm (where I lived), the recommendation was to work from home if possible. My workplace had had >95% of staff working from home from the beginning of march. Most of my friends here, except for those in healthcare or education, faced the exact same situation. So, institutions did keep people at home if possible, and companies did too.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#238

Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot. In the grocery store the cashiers are in a plastic bubble. Wherever there is a line there are marks on the floor to show where to wait to keep distance. Nobody shakes hands for quite some time. Yes, people go to Cafes/restaurants but restaurants have been assessed and assigned covid-friendly seating layouts. There are many more things that clearly separate tod…

Also Stockholm in summer is empty. People leave the town and go on holiday, retract to the country side.

I also don't understand when he says there is/was no social distancing. That is totally not my experience here, a lot of people were working from home and commuter trains were quite empty.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#239
post #155

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 ?

The UK, France, Spain, India and Australia who all shutdown (to varying degrees) are now experiencing significant upticks in cases. Even Vietnam is now fighting hard to tamp down a resurgence of C19 despite impressive initial measures to try to stop it. You'd have to be completely sure that during your lockdown, the virus burned itself out inside each household. You'd have to have a really strict lockdown (e.g. troop…

Have not heard about India’s shut down

I know the UK was going for herd immunity at first and then switched

Spain did lockdown drastically once things got pretty bad

My next question would be on Sweden’s case: is herd immunity real? Or as the virus spreads it reinfects ?

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#240
post #26
post #7

There are a lot of highly problematic claims in the article. This one stood out to me: >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. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long. Actually it might very well just be half a year until we have a vaccine. Multiple candidate vaccines are in pha…

If Covid has taught me anything, it's to stop assuming a best case scenario. Even if a vaccine is approved in Q'21, due to manufacturing, supply chain and just general operations issues, it's going to be a while before a large part of the population is vaccinated. I assume they'll prioritize medical workers and the elderly, then start working through the rest of the population. It wouldn't surprise me if it takes ano…

i am in the pessimists camp who believes there wont be a COVID vaccine for decades. SARS is a corona virus and no vaccine has been found in 13 years. the common cold is a corona virus and no vaccine has been found since vaccination was invented.

the new normal is going to be with us for a very long time, so adjust and plan accordingly.

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