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Basically, the article is saying that they've achieved herd immunity. Is that correct? As soon as a month ago I believe the consensus was that they were far awa

Basically, the article is saying that they've achieved herd immunity. Is that correct? As soon as a month ago I believe the consensus was that they were far away from it, with the total percentage that have antibodies somewhere around 15%. They also have significantly more deaths per capita than all but 3 EU countries (Italy, Spain and Belgium.) That said, I definitely don't think a country's deaths per capita necessarily indicate doing something totally wrong. Belgium, for example, has the 2nd worst number of deaths per capita - literally ten times more than many other EU countries - but they weren't materially different than their neighbors in their strategy, and indeed seemed to lock down harder...

Svip 6y ago
Belgium is also reporting any potential death linked to COVID-19 as that. Effectively, almost all excess death in Belgium is reported as COVID-19, leading to a far higher death per capita reporting from Belgium. Other countries usually require a proof that it was COVID-19 before reporting it as such.
- owenversteeg 6y ago
  Right, but there's other evidence that even with that, their situation was particularly bad. If you go by the excess-death numbers, Belgium is still the 2nd worst in the world. Why them, and not their neighbors?
  - raphaelj 6y ago
    Bad luck. A small country or state has an higher chance of being an outlier. 11M people live in Belgium, and a lot of +/- 10M inhabitant regions in larger countries have an higher death rate (Paris, NYC, Lombardy, Madrid ...). If you live in a large country, some highly impacted regions will be offset by less affected regions.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
The problem with antibodies is they don't seem to last that long. I remember reading about nurses who caught it multiple times. That's really bad news regarding herd immunity IMHO.
tpmx 6y ago
There's a medium level of herd immunity in perhaps 30-40% of the country (Stockholm, Göteborg and immediately surrounding areas mostly). The other 60-70% of the country is dry as tinder.

Svip 6y ago

Belgium is also reporting any potential death linked to COVID-19 as that. Effectively, almost all excess death in Belgium is reported as COVID-19, leading to a far higher death per capita reporting from Belgium. Other countries usually require a proof that it was COVID-19 before reporting it as such.

owenversteeg 6y ago
Right, but there's other evidence that even with that, their situation was particularly bad. If you go by the excess-death numbers, Belgium is still the 2nd worst in the world. Why them, and not their neighbors?
- raphaelj 6y ago
  Bad luck. A small country or state has an higher chance of being an outlier. 11M people live in Belgium, and a lot of +/- 10M inhabitant regions in larger countries have an higher death rate (Paris, NYC, Lombardy, Madrid ...). If you live in a large country, some highly impacted regions will be offset by less affected regions.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

The problem with antibodies is they don't seem to last that long. I remember reading about nurses who caught it multiple times. That's really bad news regarding herd immunity IMHO.

tpmx 6y ago

There's a medium level of herd immunity in perhaps 30-40% of the country (Stockholm, Göteborg and immediately surrounding areas mostly). The other 60-70% of the country is dry as tinder.