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At the same press conference where they announced that the number of infections per day in Stockholm had been doubling every week for the past few weeks, they a

by ptx 6y ago

At the same press conference where they announced that the number of infections per day in Stockholm had been doubling every week for the past few weeks, they also announced that they would start to loosen the restrictions and start allowing visits to nursing homes again. How did they expect that this was going to turn out?

core-questions 6y ago
Maybe they're just not worried about it anymore, much as we never worried at this level about the flu, common cold, or really anything else? > How did they expect that this was going to turn out? Maybe exactly like it is, and maybe it's not a real problem? There's no nuance in a graph that simply shows "infections" - there's no discussion of it being relative to the number of tests, no error bars for false positives/negatives, nothing to show how severe it is.
- oblio 6y ago
  I can't believe that people are still parroting the "common flu, common cold" talking points from 6-8 months ago. Covid has a much higher mortality rate.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    > Covid has a much higher mortality rate. Only if you're high-risk. If you're not, its mortality rate is much lower than the flu. The problem that most people have with the lockdowns is that we know who's high-risk and who's not, but we lock everyone down anyway.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category? Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus? Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations?
      - p49k 6y ago
        Not to mention the unknown long-term effects of having it, even asymptotically.
        sharken 6y ago
        Fear or concern for the unknown can be a good thing, there just isn’t any studies saying conclusively that a large number of people are seriously affected. What are the long-term effects of not being able to have a normal life due to restrictions ?
      - josephcsible 6y ago
        > Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category? If I'm looking at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... right, out of 15,230 coronavirus deaths in New York, 14,540 of them were people over 65 or confirmed to have underlying conditions, and only 92 of them were people under 65 and confirmed not to have underlying conditions. About 15% of their population is over 65. I'm not sure what the population base rate is for underlying conditions, though. > Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus? No. We quarantine just them to keep them safe, and give them all free grocery delivery, etc. too. > Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations? I agree that's bad. I'm just saying that a lockdown that looks like it's going to last over a year is worse.
        oblio 6y ago
        I want the numbers for the flu. You claimed that the flu is worse for non high risk individuals.
        sharken 6y ago
        Below are data for the flu in the US for 2017-18 vs. the Corona virus in 2020. Out of 120.000 deaths in both data sets, in the age group 0-4 years there were 115 deaths to flu vs. 9 to Corona for the age group 0-17. Flu 2017-18 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm Corona 2020 (up to May) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
  - core-questions 6y ago
    What if I have made the personal moral choice, after extreme introspection over months, to believe that the risk equation is better served by mostly trying to continue normal economic life, albeit modified for better hygiene, instead of huddling in my basement until the heat death of the universe? Yes, some people are going to die. Yes, they could be people I know and love. It is what it is - I'll accept that risk before I accept the greater risk of watching a free society decay into totalitarian liberalism.
cjblomqvist 6y ago
I'm a swede. From what I understand, they didn't want to have a general rule but local ones instead (which are now in place in certain locations instead). Basically, they thought that they had to loosen it up (and could do so without significant issues - they probably decided right before it went up again) since so many people hadn't been able to see their dearest in so long (a lot of these people are also in the very end of life, so time is even more valuable). I honestly doubt it has anything to do with what's happening right now. I honestly think this is more a consequence of it going bad in Europe again (many other EU countries started to see a big increase before Sweden this time around). Some of the reasoning seems to go "if there's enough viruses going around at large in society it will enter our nursing homes anyway", so maybe it actually doesn't really matter that much? I guess nobody really knows. Lots of guessing going around these days...
- ptx 6y ago
  > they probably decided right before it went up again They literally announced this in the same press conference where they mentioned that there had been an exponentially growing rate of infection in Stockholm for the past few weeks. If it had already been decided but not yet announced or implemented, that would have been a good time to change the decision. Anyway, you could argue that they would have failed no matter what so there was no point in trying - but Taiwan, Korea and China have shown that it's actually possible to get things under control if you try.
  - lazylizard 6y ago
    and vietnam thailand singapore australia new zealand..
gerikson 6y ago
When was this press conference?
stareatgoats 6y ago
During late summer a widespread hope bordering on complacency occurred among the Swedish health officials as the number of cases and deaths receded: there was a chance that the (non-mentionable) herd immunity strategy was going to pay off. Various mathematical models were proposed to show that only a fraction of the normal > 60-70% immunity should be enough to suppress the virus. No second wave was probable. That hope spilled over into conviction among various sectors that demanded restrictions be lifted. The need to be right was greater than attention to the numbers coming in. What is happening right now is that the number of deaths are rising rapidly, the number of people in intensive care have exploded over the last two weeks [0], which means the number of deaths will also explode over the next few weeks. The Swedish experiment that chose not to aggressively push back the virus but instead to let it wash through the community while protecting the elderly is starting to look like a failure, and the people responsible are starting to look markedly stressed. The economy is healthy though, comparatively (and for the time being). [0] https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/corona.covid-dagligen https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/corona.covid-daglig...

by ptx 6y ago

core-questions 6y ago

Maybe they're just not worried about it anymore, much as we never worried at this level about the flu, common cold, or really anything else? > How did they expect that this was going to turn out? Maybe exactly like it is, and maybe it's not a real problem? There's no nuance in a graph that simply shows "infections" - there's no discussion of it being relative to the number of tests, no error bars for false positives/negatives, nothing to show how severe it is.

oblio 6y ago
I can't believe that people are still parroting the "common flu, common cold" talking points from 6-8 months ago. Covid has a much higher mortality rate.
- josephcsible 6y ago
  > Covid has a much higher mortality rate. Only if you're high-risk. If you're not, its mortality rate is much lower than the flu. The problem that most people have with the lockdowns is that we know who's high-risk and who's not, but we lock everyone down anyway.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category? Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus? Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations?
    - p49k 6y ago
      Not to mention the unknown long-term effects of having it, even asymptotically.
      - sharken 6y ago
        Fear or concern for the unknown can be a good thing, there just isn’t any studies saying conclusively that a large number of people are seriously affected. What are the long-term effects of not being able to have a normal life due to restrictions ?
    - josephcsible 6y ago
      > Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category? If I'm looking at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... right, out of 15,230 coronavirus deaths in New York, 14,540 of them were people over 65 or confirmed to have underlying conditions, and only 92 of them were people under 65 and confirmed not to have underlying conditions. About 15% of their population is over 65. I'm not sure what the population base rate is for underlying conditions, though. > Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus? No. We quarantine just them to keep them safe, and give them all free grocery delivery, etc. too. > Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations? I agree that's bad. I'm just saying that a lockdown that looks like it's going to last over a year is worse.
      - oblio 6y ago
        I want the numbers for the flu. You claimed that the flu is worse for non high risk individuals.
        sharken 6y ago
        Below are data for the flu in the US for 2017-18 vs. the Corona virus in 2020. Out of 120.000 deaths in both data sets, in the age group 0-4 years there were 115 deaths to flu vs. 9 to Corona for the age group 0-17. Flu 2017-18 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm Corona 2020 (up to May) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
- core-questions 6y ago
  What if I have made the personal moral choice, after extreme introspection over months, to believe that the risk equation is better served by mostly trying to continue normal economic life, albeit modified for better hygiene, instead of huddling in my basement until the heat death of the universe? Yes, some people are going to die. Yes, they could be people I know and love. It is what it is - I'll accept that risk before I accept the greater risk of watching a free society decay into totalitarian liberalism.

cjblomqvist 6y ago

I'm a swede. From what I understand, they didn't want to have a general rule but local ones instead (which are now in place in certain locations instead). Basically, they thought that they had to loosen it up (and could do so without significant issues - they probably decided right before it went up again) since so many people hadn't been able to see their dearest in so long (a lot of these people are also in the very end of life, so time is even more valuable). I honestly doubt it has anything to do with what's happening right now. I honestly think this is more a consequence of it going bad in Europe again (many other EU countries started to see a big increase before Sweden this time around). Some of the reasoning seems to go "if there's enough viruses going around at large in society it will enter our nursing homes anyway", so maybe it actually doesn't really matter that much? I guess nobody really knows. Lots of guessing going around these days...

ptx 6y ago
> they probably decided right before it went up again They literally announced this in the same press conference where they mentioned that there had been an exponentially growing rate of infection in Stockholm for the past few weeks. If it had already been decided but not yet announced or implemented, that would have been a good time to change the decision. Anyway, you could argue that they would have failed no matter what so there was no point in trying - but Taiwan, Korea and China have shown that it's actually possible to get things under control if you try.
- lazylizard 6y ago
  and vietnam thailand singapore australia new zealand..

gerikson 6y ago

When was this press conference?

stareatgoats 6y ago

During late summer a widespread hope bordering on complacency occurred among the Swedish health officials as the number of cases and deaths receded: there was a chance that the (non-mentionable) herd immunity strategy was going to pay off. Various mathematical models were proposed to show that only a fraction of the normal > 60-70% immunity should be enough to suppress the virus. No second wave was probable. That hope spilled over into conviction among various sectors that demanded restrictions be lifted. The need to be right was greater than attention to the numbers coming in. What is happening right now is that the number of deaths are rising rapidly, the number of people in intensive care have exploded over the last two weeks [0], which means the number of deaths will also explode over the next few weeks. The Swedish experiment that chose not to aggressively push back the virus but instead to let it wash through the community while protecting the elderly is starting to look like a failure, and the people responsible are starting to look markedly stressed. The economy is healthy though, comparatively (and for the time being). [0] https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/corona.covid-dagligen https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/corona.covid-daglig...