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Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

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Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#111
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Government is playing god in protecting it citizens from death? Not sure if I understand this reasoning, the government has to protect its citizens, that is the number one task.

It depends on how expansive we take the whole "government as protector" role. It is a perfectly reasonable position to believe our government overstepped their responsibility if you take a more narrow view of this idea. In the last 2-3 decades in the US we've seen a consistent erosion of our civil liberties, because people want more "protection" from an ever increasing list of harms.

Shoes off at the airport for 20 YEARS NOW.

The assholes that inhabit this forum want us all to be taking booster shots and showing our vax papers for the next 20 years.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#112
post #3

There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Here are the results versus their similar neighbors in deaths per million people[1]: Sweden 1478 Denmark 474 Finland 219 Norway 173 They're 3 to 8 times worse. They now do compare favorably to Portugal for example at 1796. When did Portugal have the huge spike in deaths that propelled it in front of Sweden? When it decided not to do lockdowns, eve…

If we compare Sweden with Denmark it indeed looks bad with 3 times higher rate in Sweden. If we however compare region vs region, the numbers look different. Skåne, being the region next to Denmark with only a bridge separating the two, had similar deaths per million people as Denmark. If we look even closer, Malmö as the city on one side had lower rates than Copenhagen on the other side.

We need to answer three major question. 1: Malmö has the same lock down rules as the rest of Sweden, so why are the numbers so low compared to Copenhagen. 2: Why does Stockholm and the surrounding area have so high rate that it brings up the national average to be 3 times higher then Denmark? Finally 3: How does the lock downs relate to those two questions.

Finland made a smart move in the beginning of the pandemic. They locked down the capital with restricted movement in and out, keeping the initial spread low.

As I see it, Sweden made three mistakes. They should have locked down Stockholm. They should also have closed down the only subway Sweden has, located in Stockholm. They should have isolated the elder care workers who lived in Stockholm, many who used the subway system to reach the elder care homes going from elder care homes to elder care homes. Last they should have injected funds and medical supplies to the privatized elder care system, as many workers didn't even get enough time to wash their hands between patients.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#113
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To destroy US, they want to create a one government rule.

Oh boy. I'll bite. Who is they? What is the one government rule?

Democrats most definitely want a one-party rule as they have in California.

California is total shit. Liberals preach all day about how they can solve world hunger, make free energy, and deal with drug addicted 'homeless' people.

They are full of shit. San Francisco is a total third world piece of shit. Drug addicts lying dead in the street everywhere. Gas prices are FUCKING INSANE and this is after the hair-gel nazi has banned a lot of gas-powered devices. Yes, let's electrify the fucking highways when we have rolling blackouts every FUCKING YEAR.

FUCK YOUR ONE PARTY GOVERNMENT. One world government is just a hop-skip-jump from this.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if we could get such clear-cut results from the numbers, and just be able to say “this strategy is good, if we do that everything will be fine” (not saying you're saying that), but I really don't think that's the case. Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million. The UK has shifted strategies around a bunch, but they h…

UK is a bad example to choose. They used the highest possible sensitivity setting on the PCR test, to the degree that no meaningful information could be extracted from them. In addition, anyone who died, for any reason, at any time after a positive test, was recorded as a covid death. Even if they died in a car accident months after they had the test. Sources: Covid-19: The problems with case counting: "What is a cas…

These sort of “over sensitive PCR tests”, “died with not of” claims are silly. You start peeling away at them even a little - why are hospitals overwhelmed? Why are there so many excess deaths? - and any explanations start becoming conspiratorial (“there’s no actual overwhelmed hospital, it’s all fearmongering from the media”) or completely implausible (“hundreds of thousands of excess deaths, in numbers that line up with positive PCR tests, were actually caused by lockdowns”).

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no. but at least you have a framework to reason about the tradeoffs. with covid its all been a bunch of speculation and shouting

Even then it's not an issue-free baseline. How many people died because they couldn't use the roads, either directly (get to help) or indirectly (delivery of inputs that prevented a death)? Covid is even harder to measure. One Example: You shut down elementary schools to prevent kids from getting infected; how many were pushed back into broken homes from the only safe space they had? How many will have long-term pain…

> How many will have long-term pain from learning , nutrition, physical abuse, mental health?

We know that. Not exact numbers, but at least there are rough estimates. It's been an active area of research for quite some time, so there's a lot of data. Statistically speaking, we know how childhood poverty or a missed school year means for average lifespan.

It's been theoreticized that a reason for the differences in pandemic response when it comes to Sweden are down to the fact that they recently unified all their people health issues, that is not only medical issues but also social ones, under one government agency. That broader mandate is generally more data driven and needs to take longer term effects of missing school into account.

> Most policy can be reduced to "Better safe than sorry"

That's not all there is to it. Strictly following that reasoning would emphasize known risks against unknown risks. That does not explain the policy making that dominated during the pandemic.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#116
post #85
post #17

Netherlands has just imposed lockdown measures even though they're more than 80% vaccinated, I wonder at what point are we going to call this bluff, and I say this as a vaccinated person (including the booster shot).

Are most of the ones that end up in your hospitals and die unvaccinated? If so, vaccination is worth it.

Now that you mention it, they post a lot of covid statistics daily in the media here, but none of them are 'How many of new infections are vaccinated people'.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#117

"We killed all of the vulnerable people by doing nothing, so now we're looking pretty spiffy!"

"We shut down everything to temporarily protect the weak, and now we'll let them die since we're tired of lockdowns".

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#118
post #57
post #3

There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Here are the results versus their similar neighbors in deaths per million people[1]: Sweden 1478 Denmark 474 Finland 219 Norway 173 They're 3 to 8 times worse. They now do compare favorably to Portugal for example at 1796. When did Portugal have the huge spike in deaths that propelled it in front of Sweden? When it decided not to do lockdowns, eve…

Expected lifespan under covid was still higher in Sweden than Denmark or Finland. So to me it seems like other healthcare or national policies matters much more than the covid response, overall covid had a very minor effect on healthspan compared to laws regulating alcohol or tobacco or similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... I don't really see why people talk so much about covid when…

How would limiting the hours you can buy >3.5% alcohol have a big impact on lifespan. What data exists that supports your thesis? All the alcoholics seem to either buy <=3.5% or hang around in pubs all day?

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#120
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if we could get such clear-cut results from the numbers, and just be able to say “this strategy is good, if we do that everything will be fine” (not saying you're saying that), but I really don't think that's the case. Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million. The UK has shifted strategies around a bunch, but they h…

> Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million. You can compare the number of days of lockdown to deaths per million. You should also compare at what point of time the lockdowns were undertaken. There's plenty of research that shows Non Pharmaceutical Initiatives are very effective in stopping the spread of virus.

You really would not be able to tell this by looking at a state-by-state map of deaths in the USA, which have had various (sometimes opposing) views of “Non Pharmaceutical initiatives”

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

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