SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Hansa said:
Sweden's half-open society is where most similar countries will end up eventually, but it was definitely not the right place to start for them. As many have pointed out, their inability to shield the elderly, which was their main goal, is a direct consequence of three things:

1. Health care workers being exposed to a higher degree of potential infection in their daily lives.
2. The same health care workers bringing the disease into homes through a lack of PPE.
3. Lack of testing.

The authorities should have realized this, and put the brakes on. I have heard repeated calls in their daily briefings to shield the 70+, but I have yet to hear Tegnell & co explain exactly how they were going to take care of the at-risk citizens. The people have been loyal to the plan, but the plan had gaping holes to begin with.
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I swear some of you think it’s just business as normal here in Sweden, these were the scenes yesterday, on one of the biggest celebrations of the year, then and now:

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/sista-april-i-uppsala-nu-och-da-se-skillnaden

Now my question to you @Hansa, would full lockdown have prevented a couple of thousand people dying in Sweden? If so, why are Belgium’s stats so horrific? And their care home stats even worse?
Why didn’t full lockdown give them “the right place to start” and a better chance to shield the elderly? They have almost 4000 care home deaths.
Why then have Ireland had 1250ish deaths?

I could go on and on, but a lot of “lockdown” countries or cities (NYC) have absolutely horrific stats, which should tell you that the amount of virus in a country or city in mid-March was a much bigger factor than full lockdown or calmer/milder social distancing measures. Belgium was riddled with the virus, so lockdown has so far had little effect, same with Stockholm after week 9 half term.

My earlier comparison with Stockholm (1406 deaths) to Gothenburg (209) and Malmö (69) is testament to this. The other 2 big Swedish cities had an earlier half term and simply didn’t have much virus circulating in them mid-March.

Comparing Skåne county (Malmö) to say Oslo is an interesting one, 1.3 million in Skåne, 680,000 in Oslo county.
Yet Skåne has just 69 deaths and Oslo county, 58 deaths.
What was the key difference in the two counties compared to say Stockholm, was it lockdown? No.
Was it an early half term than Stockholm and therefore less virus mid-March.... bingo!

Another interesting variable is the amount of Iranians living in the Scandy countries, considering during that Stockholm half term, just how hard hit Iran already was. Sweden 87,703 Iranians, Norway 21,364, Denmark 20,397, Finland 8,427.

There are simply too many variables within Europe, within Scandania and as I've shown you above, within Sweden itself to make any bold claims at this stage. Countries/cities with a lot of virus in mid-March haven't been able to stop the tidal wave of deaths even with tough lockdown measures, so claiming Sweden "started wrong" is just a lot of hot air.
 
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Wibble said:
Australia had double the population but under 100 deaths. NZ is about half the size and has had 19 deaths. Surrounding countries, even Denmark who are connected to continental Europe and have a far higher population density are all doing much better than Sweden. Lock downs work if done well - which is why the UK and US have done so badly. We will all have to relax restrictions gradually at the right time but not doing from the start inevitably costs a significant number of people their lives.
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I'd be careful with a direct comparison of different countries. As the New York Times and the Economist have reported, Sweden is one of the countries that count Covid-related deaths correctly and their mortality has barely increased compared to the same period last year. Other places such as Lombardy and the Netherlands have a big gap between excess mortality and official Covid death tolls suggesting massive undercounting of the latter. Unfortunately that analysis didn't include data for the other Scandinavian countries.

On the other hand, Germany has actually had fewer deaths compared to last year. Not sure what to make of that. While we've had stricter measures than Sweden, we never went into lockdown either and could go outside as much and as often as we want.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
Very promising week of lower numbers in hospital terms. Tallied up, after tomorrow there's a good chance we're looking at around 500-600 fewer deaths this week than last. And last week was a bit lower than the one before.

Encouraging to hear Boris mention laying out plans next week. I'm still guessing it's gonna be end of May and we'll get a three-week rollout of sorts with mild lifting of restrictions each week until Monday June 1st which will be considered actual 'out of lockdown' time......but with social distancing etc still highly encouraged and followed.

We're on the way out of this, slowly but surely. Hoping for a good morale boosting number tomorrow to cap the week. I think it was 684 last Friday in hospital terms. Anything below 600 would be good.
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He will have to be mindful that there is a bank holiday at the end of May and it could bring the idiots out en masse.
 
DomesticTadpole said:
He will have to be mindful that there is a bank holiday at the end of May and it could bring the idiots out en masse.
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It's a public holiday here in Italy today, which is no doubt why the slight easing of restrictions isn't going to start until Monday. Some flexibility coupled with being off work is a potential disaster.
 
Penna said:
It's a public holiday here in Italy today, which is no doubt why the slight easing of restrictions isn't going to start until Monday. Some flexibility coupled with being off work is a potential disaster.
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It's May Day on Monday and I had completely forgotten it's a Bank Holiday weekend. :lol:
 
Pagh Wraith said:
Unfortunately that analysis didn't include data for the other Scandinavian countries.
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I know Norway use the same personal id number system as Sweden do, which from a centralized point of view makes it so much easier to keep track on every single death.
Finland and Denmark I’d imagine have something similar but I haven’t lived there so can’t say for sure.
The personal number in Norway and Sweden is everything, you can’t get a mobile contract without it, join a school or football team, open a bank or even a supermarket loyalty program, it’s even used for logging in to a tonne of online stuff together with a mobile ID app.
The personal number ID system is why Sweden comes with a large random number for Covid-19 deaths on certain days as they go through the SCB system and find deaths, then send an enquiry about them for possibility of Covid-19.

Here's the official SCB "increased mortality report": Preliminär statistik över döda (excelfil)

For 1st January 2020 - 22nd April 2020, Sweden had had 30976 deaths in total.
The previous 5 year average for that same period is: 30274 deaths.

So 6 extra deaths per day so far in 2020.
 
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DomesticTadpole said:
He will have to be mindful that there is a bank holiday at the end of May and it could bring the idiots out en masse.
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Next Friday too, right?

This could be influencing his decision to make some announcements next week. I do think they are feeling that the resolve of the nation is starting to wane in terms of people abiding by lockdown with no light at the end of the tunnel, even though our hospital figures are evidencing that there definitely is.

End of May will have been 9 weeks of lockdown, that's as far as this country will go in terms of obedience and I think he knows that. It would also give us another 3 weeks of driving down the numbers to an even better level, which is definitely achievable looking at the past 2 weeks or so.

Boris needs to drum home the fact that we will get (a lot of) our freedom back in X number of weeks, there's no need to try and take it back earlier.
 
Wibble said:
Lock downs work if done well - which is why the UK and US have done so badly.
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Hang on Wibs... why have Belgium done so poorly? They locked down early and their response was superb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Belgium#Government_response

Lockdowns had feck all effect for France, Belgium because they were riddled with the virus pre-lockdown. France locked down extremely "well" in anyone's eyes on 17th March, Belgium on the 18th, 5 days before Australia. Australia locked down on the same day as the UK ffs.

The alps seeded Europe in a huge way, and Australia & NZ fortunately are on the other side of the World.
 
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Alabaster Codify7 said:
Next Friday too, right?

This could be influencing his decision to make some announcements next week. I do think they are feeling that the resolve of the nation is starting to wane in terms of people abiding by lockdown with no light at the end of the tunnel, even though our hospital figures are evidencing that there definitely is.

End of May will have been 9 weeks of lockdown, that's as far as this country will go in terms of obedience and I think he knows that. It would also give us another 3 weeks of driving down the numbers to an even better level, which is definitely achievable looking at the past 2 weeks or so.

Boris needs to drum home the fact that we will get (a lot of) our freedom back in X number of weeks, there's no need to try and take it back earlier.
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There is no light at the end of the tunnel - that is the problem. The hospital figures are only coming down BECAUSE we are in lockdown - as soon as you start to lift it the numbers getting infected will shoot up again. People need to understand that the lockdown is going to be with us for probably a couple of years in one way or another.
 
balaks said:
There is no light at the end of the tunnel - that is the problem. The hospital figures are only coming down BECAUSE we are in lockdown - as soon as you start to lift it the numbers getting infected will shoot up again. People need to understand that the lockdown is going to be with us for probably a couple of years in one way or another.
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Tell that to the countries already out of lockdown. You're a fantasist mate, a grim, grim fantasist.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
Tell that to the countries already out of lockdown. You're a fantasist mate, a grim, grim fantasist.
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I'm an NHS worker and I know what's happening out there, it's really really grim I can assure you. Tell me what countries are completely out of lock down so far? Any of them have as high rate of infection as the UK did? Sorry to be a 'grim fantastist' but I'm dealing with the reality here and this is going to be with us for a very long time - we may not be in total lockdown for all of it but the measures to loosen the lockdown will be quite minor to avoid a second wave. If second wave happens then we will be in complete lockdown again from October probably for another 2-3 months. You can then repeat that over and over till we get a vaccine.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Hang on Wibs... why have Belgium done so poorly? They locked down early and their response was superb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Belgium#Government_response

Lockdowns had feck all effect for France, Belgium because they were riddled with the virus pre-lockdown. France locked down extremely "well" in anyone's eyes on 17th March, Belgium on the 18th, 5 days before Australia. Australia locked down on the same day as the UK ffs.

The alps seeded Europe in a huge way, and Australia & NZ fortunately are on the other side of the World.
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Excellent points. It has never ceased to amaze me how according to this forum the countries that got it wrong consists exclusively of the U.K. and the USA. Ah well never let reality Get in the way of a good narrative.
 
Virgil said:
Excellent points. It has never ceased to amaze me how according to this forum the countries that got it wrong consists exclusively of the U.K. and the USA. Ah well never let reality Get in the way of a good narrative.
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The UK and NY State were fecked regardless mate, when it kicked off in Italy they were already absolutely riddled with it, as was Belgium, France and a bunch of other countries.

The blame game is a daft one, some countries got a head start and did very well, but the majority were left with a false sense of security due to SARS and were utterly blindsided when Italy went to shit.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Hang on Wibs... why have Belgium done so poorly? They locked down early and their response was superb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Belgium#Government_response

Lockdowns had feck all effect for France, Belgium because they were riddled with the virus pre-lockdown. France locked down extremely "well" in anyone's eyes on 17th March, Belgium on the 18th, 5 days before Australia. Australia locked down on the same day as the UK ffs.

The alps seeded Europe in a huge way, and Australia & NZ fortunately are on the other side of the World.
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So they were riddled with it and got it under control but still according to you lockdown had feck all effect? Right
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
The UK and NY State were fecked regardless mate, when it kicked off in Italy they were already absolutely riddled with it, as was Belgium, France and a bunch of other countries.

The blame game is a daft one, some countries got a head start and did very well, but the majority were left with a false sense of security due to SARS and were utterly blindsided when Italy went to shit.
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Of course they were. Cannot really comment for USA but as I said above we were fecked with half term in the U.K. from 15th to 23rd Feb with the resultant world and his wife either seeking the sun in Spain, Italy or Southern France or going skiing. Result was we had no chance of limiting infection.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
Tell that to the countries already out of lockdown. You're a fantasist mate, a grim, grim fantasist.
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Which European country came out of lockdown two weeks or more ago - because that's how long in takes to start to see an impact?

By comparison with the UK with its current not-quite-a lockdown, which countries are actually out of lockdown? Spain has only just allowed kids to leave the house, France is similar. Most of them are only just now talking about exercise as being a reason to be outdoors.

I do think we have to get to something closer to a normal economic life in the UK, and we have to do it soon. Social lives and live entertainment, normal travel/tourism etc are going to take many months to restore. For some of the population, nothing will really change at all until there's a vaccine - except they'll feel more helpless and more forgotten.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
I swear some of you think it’s just business as normal here in Sweden, these were the scenes yesterday, on one of the biggest celebrations of the year, then and now:

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/sista-april-i-uppsala-nu-och-da-se-skillnaden

Now my question to you @Hansa, would full lockdown have prevented a couple of thousand people dying in Sweden? If so, why are Belgium’s stats so horrific? And their care home stats even worse?
Why didn’t full lockdown give them “the right place to start” and a better chance to shield the elderly? They have almost 4000 care home deaths.
Why then have Ireland had 1250ish deaths?

I could go on and on, but a lot of “lockdown” countries or cities (NYC) have absolutely horrific stats, which should tell you that the amount of virus in a country or city in mid-March was a much bigger factor than full lockdown or calmer/milder social distancing measures. Belgium was riddled with the virus, so lockdown has so far had little effect, same with Stockholm after week 9 half term.

My earlier comparison with Stockholm (1406 deaths) to Gothenburg (209) and Malmö (69) is testament to this. The other 2 big Swedish cities had an earlier half term and simply didn’t have much virus circulating in them mid-March.

Comparing Skåne county (Malmö) to say Oslo is an interesting one, 1.3 million in Skåne, 680,000 in Oslo county.
Yet Skåne has just 69 deaths and Oslo county, 58 deaths.
What was the key difference in the two counties compared to say Stockholm, was it lockdown? No.
Was it an early half term than Stockholm and therefore less virus mid-March.... bingo!
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The second word of my post was "half-open", so why I'm accused of pretending like it's "business as normal", I don't know. You did not address my points. How exactly was Sweden going to shield the elderly, considering the three factors I listed above? Yes, there is a bit of hindsight to this, as this virus has proved itself to be a lot more invisible and hard to track down, but erring on the side of caution is not wrong in these situations. Even Tegnell has now admitted they might have underestimated the virus.

Don't forget that the Norwegian FHI messed up, just like the Swedish one in their risk assessment this winter. "We'll probably have a maximum of 100 cases by Easter", according to an internal document dated as late as February 25th - week 9. In the following weeks, people returning from Italy were tested or told to self-quarantine (172 confirmed cases). Then, out of nowhere, the "Austrian" bunch began surfacing in March, totalling 696 people at the last count. Stockholm was definitely not unique in that aspect. Fortunately, the government pushed the red button just in time, as the growing number of cases in the succeeding 2-3 weeks showed.

I repeat once again: If Stockholm achieves herd immunity this month, I'll be delighted for them, and it will give many other countries or cities hope that this pandemic can be somewhat safely navigated through controlled exposure to the virus.
 
The infection rate in Denmark is estimated to have increased from 0.6 to 0.9 after a partial reopening of schools and some businesses, like hairdressers. It started just over two weeks ago so we should be seeing some of the effects already.
 
Hansa said:
The second word of my post was "half-open", so why I'm accused of pretending like it's "business as normal", I don't know. You did not address my points. How exactly was Sweden going to shield the elderly, considering the three factors I listed above?
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How was lockdown going to shield them if it didn't in Belgium?

Why are the elderly somehow “shielded” in Malmö, a miles bigger county than Oslo county?

Because Hansa, the virus was rampant in Stockholm in mid-March, and anywhere where the virus is rampant, it has gotten into care homes. Even in some non-rampant places, it's proving almost impossible pal. Hell, even in places with very little spread it gets in, case in point:

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks...hjemmet-har-15-beboere-doedd-av-coronaviruset

The answer is likely that the elderly in homes are not shielded anywhere, because we still don’t know how to. Hopefully as countries start opening up and more trustworthy antibody tests are available, everyone can get a grip on this.

As for “underestimating”, absolutely, almost every single country has done that. But the reality is that some obviously just got luckier than others (poor Belgium) and were no way near as hard hit when we realised what was going down in Italy in March. It's the one variable, and most important of all variables, that so many people want to completely discard when comparing how well countries responses have been. Everyone want to laud Germany, but they likely just had much less virus circulating mid-March than France, The UK and Belgium.

Malmö county has done as well, if not better than Oslo county, not because of lockdown, but because both Oslo and Malmö started a long way back from Stockholm. Not everyone started this race on the same start line, not even close. Belgium is clear evidence of that because their response has been excellent, yet they got fecked anyway.
 
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Pagh Wraith said:
I'd be careful with a direct comparison of different countries. As the New York Times and the Economist have reported, Sweden is one of the countries that count Covid-related deaths correctly and their mortality has barely increased compared to the same period last year. Other places such as Lombardy and the Netherlands have a big gap between excess mortality and official Covid death tolls suggesting massive undercounting of the latter. Unfortunately that analysis didn't include data for the other Scandinavian countries.

On the other hand, Germany has actually had fewer deaths compared to last year. Not sure what to make of that. While we've had stricter measures than Sweden, we never went into lockdown either and could go outside as much and as often as we want.
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Did Germany not lock their borders down pretty quickly?
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Hang on Wibs... why have Belgium done so poorly? They locked down early and their response was superb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Belgium#Government_response

Lockdowns had feck all effect for France, Belgium because they were riddled with the virus pre-lockdown. France locked down extremely "well" in anyone's eyes on 17th March, Belgium on the 18th, 5 days before Australia. Australia locked down on the same day as the UK ffs.

The alps seeded Europe in a huge way, and Australia & NZ fortunately are on the other side of the World.
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Re Belgium
Because they are an international hub of major Organizations with people flying in from everywhere, I’m guessing they got it pre-lockdown too.

Imho the best or most important part of lockdown is how quickly you lock down your borders over everything else. Then you can trace and test. So obviously the quicker your border is locked down the better.

UK fecked up in this area despite banging on for years about taking control of their own borders. They literally ran brexit on that policy. Here was their chance to show it and they fecked up
 
Smores said:
So they were riddled with it and got it under control but still according to you lockdown had feck all effect? Right
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Feck all effect with the death number so far or with them keeping it out of care homes so far.

Did you even read the conversation before responding?

I didn’t say they haven’t now managed to get deaths per day down, but so have non-lockdown Sweden. Which was the point, the poster was arguing that Sweden not locking down is the reason they have so many deaths now, and my response was that lockdown in Belgium and their brilliant response didn’t keep deaths so far down. Both countries responses have flattened the curve though and got the deaths per day on the slide.
 
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golden_blunder said:
UK fecked up in this area despite banging on for years about taking control of their own borders. They literally ran brexit on that policy. Here was their chance to show it and they fecked up
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Utter bollocks. So the millions of British nationals returning from their european Feburary holiday including god knows how many school trips should have been refused entry because of Brexit. What is your excuse then for Italy, Spain and France amongst others?
 
golden_blunder said:
Re Belgium
Because they are an international hub of major Organizations with people flying in from everywhere, I’m guessing they got it pre-lockdown too.

Imho the best or most important part of lockdown is how quickly you lock down your borders over everything else. Then you can trace and test. So obviously the quicker your border is locked down the better.

UK fecked up in this area despite banging on for years about taking control of their own borders. They literally ran brexit on that policy. Here was their chance to show it and they fecked up
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Locking borders sounds sensible in theory but just isn’t possible in practice. Especially in the EU, where so many fragile supply chains rely on freedom of movement. Not to mention the right of freedom of movement for citizens. You can’t just stop thousands of people coming home from holiday and ask other countries to look after our citizens instead. In Ireland school trips seems to be the source of a lot of cases. Should we not have allowed those kids return to their families?
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Malmö county has done as well, if not better than Oslo county, not because of lockdown, but because both Oslo and Malmö started a long way back from Stockholm. Not everyone started this race on the same start line, not even close. Belgium is clear evidence of that because their response has been excellent, yet they got fecked anyway.
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With all due respect, this is getting very, very tiresome. I've just laid out for you how Norway in general, just like Stockholm, (and unlike Malmö according to your holiday analysis), had the virus unexpectedly and silently imported from Austria, and you've chosen to blatantly ignore it. When Norway introduced the restrictions, Stockholm had just over 300 confirmed cases in their 2,3 million population. Oslo had 166 confirmed cases in their 700k population. In other words, Oslo had a worse starting point than Stockholm, with a recently estimated R0 of 3.47 in March before the restrictions (in other words; rampant), reduced to 0.88 a month later.

I'm really not here to pick a fight, but please refrain from making sh*t up.
 
Virgil said:
Utter bollocks. So the millions of British nationals returning from their european Feburary holiday including god knows how many school trips should have been refused entry because of Brexit. What is your excuse then for Italy, Spain and France amongst others?
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That’s ridiculous - off course you let your citizens back in, with tests and quarantine if necessary.
They literally had an opportunity to show how they could control the borders and did feck all. How is that bollocks?

So I take it you are saying then that airports should just have been open willy nilly?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Locking borders sounds sensible in theory but just isn’t possible in practice. Especially in the EU, where so many fragile supply chains rely on freedom of movement. Not to mention the right of freedom of movement for citizens. You can’t just stop thousands of people coming home from holiday and ask other countries to look after our citizens instead. In Ireland school trips seems to be the source of a lot of cases. Should we not have allowed those kids return to their families?
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I was listening to a podcast yesterday whereby they talking about the severe problems locked borders could cause unless relaxed soon, due to breaking down of supply chains for essential food etc. Apparently the UN have flagged that unless this is relaxed soon, millions of people could starve to death around the world - another example of lockdowns causing far more damage than the virus itself unless we're very careful. Which again, is why soon enough most countries will be using the 'lack of approach' Sweden have used - the alternative is the threat to the human race altogether.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Locking borders sounds sensible in theory but just isn’t possible in practice. Especially in the EU, where so many fragile supply chains rely on freedom of movement. Not to mention the right of freedom of movement for citizens. You can’t just stop thousands of people coming home from holiday and ask other countries to look after our citizens instead. In Ireland school trips seems to be the source of a lot of cases. Should we not have allowed those kids return to their families?
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Maybe my post wasn’t clear, as people are missing the point.

Off course let your citizens return home. Test, quarantine and keep track of them.

Close airports, land borders and sea borders to everyone else apart from essential supply chains. There was no need for Heathrow just letting thousands in every day (can’t be all people returning from short holidays!), for weeks, without ANY checks. Taking control of borders? Literally no control!
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Locking borders sounds sensible in theory but just isn’t possible in practice. Especially in the EU, where so many fragile supply chains rely on freedom of movement. Not to mention the right of freedom of movement for citizens. You can’t just stop thousands of people coming home from holiday and ask other countries to look after our citizens instead. In Ireland school trips seems to be the source of a lot of cases. Should we not have allowed those kids return to their families?
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the issue is more taking zero precautions when people come and go, see samsky earlier in this thread thinking it's fine for him to go about his life after international travel because there was nothing telling him otherwise

the supply chain is one thing, people travelling then immediately mingling with others is hella bad - the school trips kids and their families should have been in 2 weeks isolations soon as the kids got in for example
 
Silva said:
the issue is more taking zero precautions when people come and go, see samsky earlier in this thread thinking it's fine for him to go about his life after international travel because there was nothing telling him otherwise

the supply chain is one thing, people travelling then immediately mingling with others is hella bad - the school trips kids and their families should have been in 2 weeks isolations soon as the kids got in for example
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Exactly
 
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