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The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

telegraph.co.uk

401–410 of 442 posts

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#401
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I used this time to improve my relationship with my wife and improve myself. The loss this year isn't the loss of socialization or income it is the literal loss of our family members and friends who died and the loss with lesser measures could only be greater. I think attempts to quantify value of life are fraught with problems and absurdities. Consider an 80 year old whose average life expectancy based on…

> The problem lies not merely with the incorrect assignment of the value time during lockdown as having zero value itself I didn't assign zero value - I assigned it as 90% value compared to a year with no restrictions. It's nice you used the time to improve your relationship with your wife, but I'm single and wasn't able to see my friends or family for 6 months. I like that you managed to make the most of it - but my…

There isn't much difference between active and passive harm. The most notable thing about the trolley problem is our inate resistance to thinking rationally about that.

People in their 30s and 40s are dying and losing decades of life. Kids Even. Slowing down the spread and then vaccination has saved so many millions from rolling that die.

For myself and my wife for example my wife would virtually certainly be dead if she had contracted it and I wouldn't have great odds either. My lungs don't work that well now without benefit of covid

Then there is the damage done by the disease how do you properly value ravaged lungs and damaged bodies that decrease quality of life for the remainder of a life and end it prematurely? Better than half of asymptomatic survivors have lung damage even!

Then every case as a trillion chances at a better covid. How do you value THAT in your equation? Do you try to assign probability to various future death rates and multiply by probability of being realized?

> but actually it's probably more like 100 people being inside for a year stops 1 person being suffocated.

Plus 12 from being hospitalized and having substantial damage done to their bodies that decreases their lifespan by 5 years. Plus 20 more who didn't feel serious symptoms but still sustained substantial lung or cardiovascular damage and lost a year.

Even playing the same game I think you are behind the 8 ball.

We are all selfish. It's true but it's a vice not a justification. We ought to strive for better. The life you save may be your own.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument does not make sense. 1) +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area. ( https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje... ) 2) Switzerland which is higher density has almost the same excess death rate (on your image) 3) France which had very strict and long lockdown (and killed/subsidized heavily its economy) has also almost the same figures. As many have said, one of the major factor…

While I don't doubt you have Swedish family, I would like to see your data for the French economy being "killed". Certainly the economy contracted somewhat, but they seem to be doing just fine now.

France has increased its public debt enormously (100% to 120% of its GDP). Maintaining the economy had a cost which may have serious consequences.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#403
post #355
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swede here: It's complex. I'm extremely unhappy with the way the Swedish gov handled this. I see two main failures: 1. Not reacting quickly enough. Denmark and Norway reacted quickly and strongly back in early March 2020. At this critical point, Sweden's "CDC" dropped the ball in a monumental manner, and the government didn't pick it up. 2. Not protecting municipal elderly homes in a competent way, early on. This is…

I think you are forgetting two important facts that counter your arguments: 1. A significant number of Swedes were in Lombardy (northern Italy) at the time the European outbreak started there. Furthermore Sweden has at least two major companies with presence around Wuhan. So by the time government noticed the issue it was too late. 2. Elderly care employees in Sweden are basically gig workers, resulting in a huge rot…

There are counter arguments to your counter arguments: 1. If you are mentioning large amount of people over in outbreak territory, Taiwan had 700K white collars working in China and 150K passengers travel between China and Taiwan weekly. Taiwan took action fast enough to avoid any major outbreak. Flight screening started on the last day of 2019.

2. Huge employee rotation may be exactly why govt should step in?

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really? https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/

(This should be a submission in its own right.) Really interesting data.

Looks like a very unbiased source

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#405
post #110
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I think that fucking up the education of children, especially those from low socio-economic status backgrounds, is worse than the deaths not doing it causes. It is not that lockdown is bad or wrong. It is that I do not agree with all the things which were hit. I acknowledge there is a price to keeping education open but I believe it would have been worthwhile. Perhaps you missed my point? Governing is about more…

> Perhaps you missed my point? Governing is about more than keeping the most people alive. Actually I believe that’s table stakes for good governance. Trading known deaths for possible impact to development of children isn’t even in the realm of equal, which is why most places didn’t do it.

How has their development been impacted? I mean apart from the ones who died.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#406
post #66
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're pro having 30 people breathing in a small room with bad airflow for multiple hours when there's a pandemic? If you don't know how it's transmitted, then try various things and see if they help. We tried lockdown, and it worked. So we kept doing it, if it didn't change the situation we would have tried other things instead.

Yup. I think that fucking up the education of children, especially those from low socio-economic status backgrounds, is worse than the deaths not doing it causes. It is not that lockdown is bad or wrong. It is that I do not agree with all the things which were hit. I acknowledge there is a price to keeping education open but I believe it would have been worthwhile. Perhaps you missed my point? Governing is about more…

Why is their education fucked up?

What about the children who infected their parents and now they're orphans?

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#407
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But 50/50 would be effectively the same meaning as 20/20. (20/20 means "person being tested sees as well at 20 feet as standard vision at 20 feet.")

> But 50/50 would be effectively the same meaning as 20/20. This isn't obvious; consider that having 3,000/3,000 vision ("I can't read text all that well when it's half a mile away") says pretty much nothing about how clearly you can see things that are 20 feet away. Nearsightedness and farsightedness are both characterized by "normal vision" at certain distances which becomes markedly worse at certain other distance…

20 and 50 feet are both far beyond "nearsighted" range and into "normal distance," without being all that different from one another.

3,000 feet is quite different (for one thing, atmospheric effects start becoming relevant).

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#409
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're pro having 30 people breathing in a small room with bad airflow for multiple hours when there's a pandemic? If you don't know how it's transmitted, then try various things and see if they help. We tried lockdown, and it worked. So we kept doing it, if it didn't change the situation we would have tried other things instead.

There is very little proof that lockdowns worked. We had no clue if they worked going in and we still can’t prove they worked, let alone well enough to justify their immense societal costs.

I mean, I made a chart, seems pretty obvious https://imgur.com/a/mI8OdpW

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#410

While many people might point out that Sweden did in fact have more deaths, the verdict on that is still out. They are getting far fewer cases and deaths than many other areas now, and have been for many weeks. Couple that with the not-lost social interactions and economy etc, and the fact that this was always (more or less) every country’s pandemic plan before we changed our mind for covid, and it becomes a troublin…

When Sweden decided for no lock-downs, we knew very little about the virus. It was effectively a jump into the unknown. Even if the decision proves beneficial, it was an error, in the knowledge context of March 2020.

Lockdowns are a jump into the unknown. They have never been done in the history of humanity before. Not just cities, not just nations, but entire civilizations locking down has never been done before. The risk groups were already well known by then end of March 2020. People at the end of their life with an average of 2.7 comorbidities.

Please make no mistake, lockdowns will go down in history as the biggest mistake of the modern human history. The only reason why we're still arguing in here is because it's damn near impossible to admit one made the biggest mistake in modern human history.

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