Swedish expert: why lockdowns are the wrong policy(unherd.com)
unherd.com
Swedish expert: why lockdowns are the wrong policy
https://unherd.com/thepost/coming-up-epidemiologist-prof-johan-giesecke-shares-lessons-from-sweden/
151 comments
That's not counterargument against Swedish strategy.
Year from now we will see the total number of deaths from different strategies and the thing is settled by then.
Year from now we will see the total number of deaths from different strategies and the thing is settled by then.
It also doesn't help that different countries count differently.
Ultimately you can just compare the total deaths to the averages from previous years, which works regardless of how they are counted (as long as the deaths are recorded at all, which I think is something that can generally be relied upon).
That sounds as if it would be a good worst case number, but that number will be all over the place. During the quarantine, we will see fewer deaths due to misadventure, especially I’m places where those numbers are high. After or toward the end, more deaths and health complications due to complications of a sedentary lifestyle, especially in places where those numbers are already high.
It's worse than that. Many countries publish sums of their regions' counts, and the regions count differently
Also lower than the UK, Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, i.e. a lot of their neighbors.
Counting spain, UK, italy, france as sweden's neighbor is a bit odd. why not compare it to their actual neighbors, rather than tourism hotspots with lots of transit?
Yeah Denmark is the closest to a baseline for comparison imo, Sweden has about 2-3x more deaths per capita at this point and new deaths every week is still growing.
Because it doesn't matter. Sweden is middle of the pack and not experiencing the massive hospital overloads that they 'should' be according to the projections that drove the lockdowns. Not even close.
It appears people are forgetting or retroactively changing the justifications already. The lockdowns were meant to reduce deaths by ensuring everyone who got infected could get healthcare. In Sweden that is the case despite having been much less severe than other countries. Thus, their approach is de facto more successful than elsewhere.
Comparing to their direct neighbours is thus irrelevant, because a total reduction in deaths was never the goal (it cannot be, because there's no vaccine). But if you want an explanation for why Sweden may differ, for whatever reason it appears the virus hits non-whites much harder. This is being observed in the USA and Sweden reports that non-whites from e.g. Iraq, Somalia etc are disproportionately affected. Why that would be so is unclear, but a higher death rate than Norway is likely to be at least partly due to the much higher rate of immigration Sweden has allowed than its neighbours.
It appears people are forgetting or retroactively changing the justifications already. The lockdowns were meant to reduce deaths by ensuring everyone who got infected could get healthcare. In Sweden that is the case despite having been much less severe than other countries. Thus, their approach is de facto more successful than elsewhere.
Comparing to their direct neighbours is thus irrelevant, because a total reduction in deaths was never the goal (it cannot be, because there's no vaccine). But if you want an explanation for why Sweden may differ, for whatever reason it appears the virus hits non-whites much harder. This is being observed in the USA and Sweden reports that non-whites from e.g. Iraq, Somalia etc are disproportionately affected. Why that would be so is unclear, but a higher death rate than Norway is likely to be at least partly due to the much higher rate of immigration Sweden has allowed than its neighbours.
“not experiencing the massive hospital overloads that they 'should' be according to the projections that drove the lockdowns.”
And yet very sick patients are already being placed in field hospitals with no running water, laying too close, poor air circulation and on old ventilators which have received criticism from the doctors there.
And yet very sick patients are already being placed in field hospitals with no running water, laying too close, poor air circulation and on old ventilators which have received criticism from the doctors there.
And yet that's not - even remotely - the kind of problem that was being projected and which justifies pushing the world towards a global depression of the sort that is known to kill lots of the poorest and most vulnerable.
You can find isolated reports of sub-optimal care in any hospital system in the world, at any time. Especially now when so many people are incentivised to paint Sweden in the most negative light possible.
Just a couple of weeks ago world leaders were fighting over every ventilator that existed. Now the biggest problem is that someone, somewhere was given an old one? When many doctors are already starting to argue that forced ventilation is the wrong therapy and switching to simple CPAP anyway? That is not a sign of a system in crisis.
You can find isolated reports of sub-optimal care in any hospital system in the world, at any time. Especially now when so many people are incentivised to paint Sweden in the most negative light possible.
Just a couple of weeks ago world leaders were fighting over every ventilator that existed. Now the biggest problem is that someone, somewhere was given an old one? When many doctors are already starting to argue that forced ventilation is the wrong therapy and switching to simple CPAP anyway? That is not a sign of a system in crisis.
You think it pushes the world towards a global recession. I think a hard lockdown and a co trolled opening is what gets it out of one faster. At least that is what we can see studying history in 1918. Eg Denver vs Philadelphia. Scared people are bad consumers. In reality we don’t really know which strategy is the best.
I understand that perspective but I'm not sure the experience from over a century ago has much relevance to today. Would the Spanish Flu have killed so many today, with such advanced hospitals and healthcare, and no massive troop movements? We see flu pretty regularly and no lockdown is even proposed, as it's obvious the costs would be stagggeringly out of proportion.
"Scared people are bad consumers"
People in Sweden are not scared compared to what they are in the UK for example. It's the rest of the world that is scared for the Swedes.
People in Sweden are not scared compared to what they are in the UK for example. It's the rest of the world that is scared for the Swedes.
Depends on who you ask. I’ve yet to see a study on this. I work as a consultant in a Swedish company and several of my colleagues stopped traveling to clients and insisted on working from home even before most countries shut down. This is now the policy for the entire company. Even if you don’t have an official lockdown many take their own precautions. Personally I’m not worried myself right now because of the precautions people take, but with more people relaxing and risk of more spread i do worry about the future and will probably have to do less of what I do now to reduce risk to people around me.
From what I read 13 less serious cases were placed in a field hospital at Sahlgrenska as a "trial run" to test the facilities, but since there is available room at in the actual hospital (and people complained) this has now stopped.
There is still available intensive care space at ordinary hospitals and it looks like the number of people needing intensive care has stabilized [1]. The latest numbers are 1072 total intensive care units (not counting field hospitals) and 528 people treated for covid-19 in intensive care [2].
[0] https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/MRrGxK/patientstopp-pa-...
[1] https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/corona.covid-daglig...
[2] https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/coronavirus-covid-19/socialst...
There is still available intensive care space at ordinary hospitals and it looks like the number of people needing intensive care has stabilized [1]. The latest numbers are 1072 total intensive care units (not counting field hospitals) and 528 people treated for covid-19 in intensive care [2].
[0] https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/MRrGxK/patientstopp-pa-...
[1] https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/corona.covid-daglig...
[2] https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/coronavirus-covid-19/socialst...
I don't really see why this suggests Sweden's approach should be emulated though. The reality is that we don't understand the conditions where COVID-19 thrives well enough yet to understand why some areas are hit so much harder than others.
We've seen hints that blood type, climate, average social distance, average obesity, average age, etc. But nothing definitive yet.
The costs to the economy from these lockdowns are trivial compared to the cost of a runaway and persistent viral hotspot like New York or Seattle, even if we pretend (as some folks here seem to insist we do) that the loss of life is not worth discussing.
What works in a given area population is great; but until you have some idea what your local R factors and hospitalization rates are, you really should play it safe.
We've seen hints that blood type, climate, average social distance, average obesity, average age, etc. But nothing definitive yet.
The costs to the economy from these lockdowns are trivial compared to the cost of a runaway and persistent viral hotspot like New York or Seattle, even if we pretend (as some folks here seem to insist we do) that the loss of life is not worth discussing.
What works in a given area population is great; but until you have some idea what your local R factors and hospitalization rates are, you really should play it safe.
I was not saying that. I was just disagreeing with the statement that Sweden is over its intensive care capacity.
On the other hand, as a Swede I feel that we ARE playing it pretty safe. Some of the measures other countries are taking seems extreme to me.
On the other hand, as a Swede I feel that we ARE playing it pretty safe. Some of the measures other countries are taking seems extreme to me.
worth remembering, Lombardy alone has about the same population as Sweden (10M) and density 20 times higher (420/km2 vs 23/km2).
A no-lockdown policy may be reasonable for Sweden, Norway or Finland, while being completely unfeasible elsewhere.
A no-lockdown policy may be reasonable for Sweden, Norway or Finland, while being completely unfeasible elsewhere.
Yeah close doesn't mean neighbors
I'm from Rome, Italy, and Stockholm is farther away from it than Cairo in Egypt
I'm from Rome, Italy, and Stockholm is farther away from it than Cairo in Egypt
Stockholm is more similar than Cairo regarding economy, health system and political system though. I suppose it depends on what's important for the comparison: geographical location/climate, or culture.
Palermo is closer to Rome than Stockholm and it's in the same country, but it's more similar to Cairo than Stockholm.
It's early in this marathon race.
It's not uninteresting who's in the lead now. But it's the goal line standings that matter.
It's not uninteresting who's in the lead now. But it's the goal line standings that matter.
Yes but we cannot function as a society like this, indefinitely on lockdown. The proposals to test, track, and isolate sound good but are preposterous in terms of logistics - funding, manufacturing, personnel, accountability. It will optimistically be 12-18 months till we “have a vaccine” - but I suspect it will be 4-5 years more realistically till we have applied it planet-wide sufficiently to eradicate the disease. So, I don’t think Sweden is totally crazy, we have to find some way to live with the disease, and that still means a lot of people are going to die.
People really haven’t really woken up to the reality that contact tracking, forced testing, and eventually vaccination will NEVER happen in the US, at least not in a consistent and effective way.
A significant portion of the population won’t stand for it, and given the current make up of the Supreme Court any mandatory citizen tracking, or job based discrimination based on mandatory testing will not pass muster. Nor will forced vaccinations. We can’t get people to vaccinate against measles and whooping cough, which spread faster and kill more people (including children).
Civil liberty practically ensures that in most places tracking and vaccination will have to be optional.
Whether we like it or not we are heading toward a herd immunity strategy.
If this were killing 30% of the general population, like smallpox could, people would fall in line. But I can’t see it happening for something as comparatively mild as COVID-19.
A significant portion of the population won’t stand for it, and given the current make up of the Supreme Court any mandatory citizen tracking, or job based discrimination based on mandatory testing will not pass muster. Nor will forced vaccinations. We can’t get people to vaccinate against measles and whooping cough, which spread faster and kill more people (including children).
Civil liberty practically ensures that in most places tracking and vaccination will have to be optional.
Whether we like it or not we are heading toward a herd immunity strategy.
If this were killing 30% of the general population, like smallpox could, people would fall in line. But I can’t see it happening for something as comparatively mild as COVID-19.
> A significant portion of the population won’t stand for it
Having worked as a US Census Enumerator, I can confirm this. A surprising number of Americans will call the cops or put a dog on you to avoid being asked how many bathrooms they have.
You can say this is foolish, but policy makers have to deal with what is, not what should be.
Having worked as a US Census Enumerator, I can confirm this. A surprising number of Americans will call the cops or put a dog on you to avoid being asked how many bathrooms they have.
You can say this is foolish, but policy makers have to deal with what is, not what should be.
I strongly suspect that attitudes to public health will change significantly in some places as a result of the current situation and our different experiences dealing with it.
One of the things I think will probably happen is that the US public will shift to be more favourable towards a primarily public health service such as many other countries have in one form or another. Unfortunately, I expect this to happen because the shortcomings of the current system are going to be painfully exposed and result in a lot of people dying unnecessarily in the US and in the coronavirus problem taking longer to deal with than it will in most developed nations.
I also think there is a small but non-zero chance of much of the world blocking travel for people who have recently been in the US until they get their house in order. Under normal circumstances, this might sound preposterous, but clearly these are not normal circumstances. The virus doesn't care about American exceptionalism, and if the anti-science agenda that starts right at the top of the US federal government today continues, nations that do follow the science and support their healthcare professionals and ultimately get it under control to a useful level are going to be very wary of undermining that progress even if it means a big economic cost due to isolating the US that would never be seriously considered without the public health threat.
One of the things I think will probably happen is that the US public will shift to be more favourable towards a primarily public health service such as many other countries have in one form or another. Unfortunately, I expect this to happen because the shortcomings of the current system are going to be painfully exposed and result in a lot of people dying unnecessarily in the US and in the coronavirus problem taking longer to deal with than it will in most developed nations.
I also think there is a small but non-zero chance of much of the world blocking travel for people who have recently been in the US until they get their house in order. Under normal circumstances, this might sound preposterous, but clearly these are not normal circumstances. The virus doesn't care about American exceptionalism, and if the anti-science agenda that starts right at the top of the US federal government today continues, nations that do follow the science and support their healthcare professionals and ultimately get it under control to a useful level are going to be very wary of undermining that progress even if it means a big economic cost due to isolating the US that would never be seriously considered without the public health threat.
I like your optimism, but I expect things to stay divided. Polling on COVID-19 is divided almost right down the middle like everything else in America with Democrats more afraid of COVID-19 and Republicans more likely to believe it’s like a flu.
Furthermore, the heavily impacted areas are all already Democrat strongholds. Densely populated urban centers.
The only country where socialized medicine appears to be outperforming is Germany.
Right wingers will point to Italy, Spain, and the UK as failures of socialized medicine. They will point out that the healthcare systems in Democrat cities failed.
All these points have good refutations, I’m just illustrating that I think this virus will divide us further, not bring us together.
I am highly educated, top tier private university, etc., I have the profile of someone who would support mandatory testing and contact tracking, but I do not as a matter of civil liberty.
Furthermore, the heavily impacted areas are all already Democrat strongholds. Densely populated urban centers.
The only country where socialized medicine appears to be outperforming is Germany.
Right wingers will point to Italy, Spain, and the UK as failures of socialized medicine. They will point out that the healthcare systems in Democrat cities failed.
All these points have good refutations, I’m just illustrating that I think this virus will divide us further, not bring us together.
I am highly educated, top tier private university, etc., I have the profile of someone who would support mandatory testing and contact tracking, but I do not as a matter of civil liberty.
I have the profile of someone who would support mandatory testing and contact tracking, but I do not as a matter of civil liberty.
As a fellow believer in civil liberties, I understand where you are coming from here, and I am extremely wary of governments using this situation to claim "emergency" powers that they may be reluctant to give up afterwards.
But as a believer in science, I'm not sure hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the near future in my country alone is a price worth paying for my concerns about what might happen to make lives worse later.
The brutal reality is that the virus doesn't care. Fools posing in close proximity to each other with assault rifles but no protection against the virus are simply more likely to get themselves and their friends and families killed. Students who went on Spring Break and then spread the virus all across the country are more likely to get themselves and their friends and families killed. People who listen to politicians like Donald Trump and Mike Pence instead of epidemiologists are more likely... well, you get the picture.
Right wingers will point to Italy, Spain, and the UK as failures of socialized medicine. They will point out that the healthcare systems in Democrat cities failed.
I'm curious to know in what way(s) the systems in these countries are seen to have failed by those outside. With hindsight they would probably all have instituted lockdown measures sooner, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.
As a fellow believer in civil liberties, I understand where you are coming from here, and I am extremely wary of governments using this situation to claim "emergency" powers that they may be reluctant to give up afterwards.
But as a believer in science, I'm not sure hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the near future in my country alone is a price worth paying for my concerns about what might happen to make lives worse later.
The brutal reality is that the virus doesn't care. Fools posing in close proximity to each other with assault rifles but no protection against the virus are simply more likely to get themselves and their friends and families killed. Students who went on Spring Break and then spread the virus all across the country are more likely to get themselves and their friends and families killed. People who listen to politicians like Donald Trump and Mike Pence instead of epidemiologists are more likely... well, you get the picture.
Right wingers will point to Italy, Spain, and the UK as failures of socialized medicine. They will point out that the healthcare systems in Democrat cities failed.
I'm curious to know in what way(s) the systems in these countries are seen to have failed by those outside. With hindsight they would probably all have instituted lockdown measures sooner, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.
The science, the actual hard number for mortality rate, is very low. It is the anecdotal evidence that is terrifying everyone (the terrible way in which it kills when it does kill, and the rate at which it spreads).
I am personally not afraid of it, I wear a mask out of courtesy and not wanting to spread it if I happen to be one of the silent carriers.
I've best seen it described by a mathametician as follows (wish I could find the link) - COVID-19 has comparable mortality to the flu, but you are 300 times more likely to contract it.
For something with such a low mortality rate I do not support mandatory contact tracking or testing. I certainly would if the number starts sharply going in the other direction.
I can't say for sure what will be pointed out specifically about socialized medicine in the UK, France, and Italy, but our numbers for the United States outside of NYC appear to be much better than those countries and I suspect that is where the right wing will come out and say our private system outperformed the public systems (i.e., cherry picking the countries with the highest mortalities for comparison with the US).
They will point out that Italy had to triage beds and favored treating younger patients with higher chances of survival, allowing some older patients to die. It was the rational thing to do, but also unimaginable here in the US where you would be sued to high heaven.
Can't you imagine the situation in Italy turned into a campaign add in Florida? "The Democrats want a health care system that lets seniors die" or some such with some pictures of overwhelmed Italian hospitals and a sad looking old man not being treated, but coughing and wheezing.
I never said these were good arguments, I just know that they will say it, I've been following politics for a very long time.
The only crises that bring both parties together are ones that hit everyone. Technically a virus hits everyone (does not discriminate as you say), but in fact it does discriminate. It spreads faster where population is denser and where there is mass transit.
So just like everything in the US, this crisis is divided between urban and fly over. The urban people are literally worried for their lives, and the fly over people are worried about their jobs. This is a super broad generalization, but I am trying to make the point that the virus is not affecting all people the same way and it happens to be right down party lines.
I am personally not afraid of it, I wear a mask out of courtesy and not wanting to spread it if I happen to be one of the silent carriers.
I've best seen it described by a mathametician as follows (wish I could find the link) - COVID-19 has comparable mortality to the flu, but you are 300 times more likely to contract it.
For something with such a low mortality rate I do not support mandatory contact tracking or testing. I certainly would if the number starts sharply going in the other direction.
I can't say for sure what will be pointed out specifically about socialized medicine in the UK, France, and Italy, but our numbers for the United States outside of NYC appear to be much better than those countries and I suspect that is where the right wing will come out and say our private system outperformed the public systems (i.e., cherry picking the countries with the highest mortalities for comparison with the US).
They will point out that Italy had to triage beds and favored treating younger patients with higher chances of survival, allowing some older patients to die. It was the rational thing to do, but also unimaginable here in the US where you would be sued to high heaven.
Can't you imagine the situation in Italy turned into a campaign add in Florida? "The Democrats want a health care system that lets seniors die" or some such with some pictures of overwhelmed Italian hospitals and a sad looking old man not being treated, but coughing and wheezing.
I never said these were good arguments, I just know that they will say it, I've been following politics for a very long time.
The only crises that bring both parties together are ones that hit everyone. Technically a virus hits everyone (does not discriminate as you say), but in fact it does discriminate. It spreads faster where population is denser and where there is mass transit.
So just like everything in the US, this crisis is divided between urban and fly over. The urban people are literally worried for their lives, and the fly over people are worried about their jobs. This is a super broad generalization, but I am trying to make the point that the virus is not affecting all people the same way and it happens to be right down party lines.
As far as I'm aware, no-one actually knows the true mortality rate yet, nor things like which demographics are more or less severely affected other than in a few clearly distinct cases.
Most of the US seems to be a bit behind Europe in where it is on the curve, so it also seems premature to compare statistics.
Until we know when and how different places have implemented lockdown conditions, track-and-trace programmes and other responses, possibly in several stages over an extended period, and how successful each place has been at limiting total excess deaths caused by the virus and at avoiding unwanted side effects from those responses, it will be difficult to draw any reliable conclusions.
That seems to be a big part of the problem we face: the data we have so far is still well short of what we'd like to know in order to accurately assess the threat and decide on a proportionate response. Consequently, everyone is basing policy largely on educated guesswork and hoping to avoid any catastrophic escalation happening too fast to react, with some increasing awareness that the more severe responses will probably have serious consequences of their own if maintained for more than a very short period and we don't necessarily fully understand those either.
Most of the US seems to be a bit behind Europe in where it is on the curve, so it also seems premature to compare statistics.
Until we know when and how different places have implemented lockdown conditions, track-and-trace programmes and other responses, possibly in several stages over an extended period, and how successful each place has been at limiting total excess deaths caused by the virus and at avoiding unwanted side effects from those responses, it will be difficult to draw any reliable conclusions.
That seems to be a big part of the problem we face: the data we have so far is still well short of what we'd like to know in order to accurately assess the threat and decide on a proportionate response. Consequently, everyone is basing policy largely on educated guesswork and hoping to avoid any catastrophic escalation happening too fast to react, with some increasing awareness that the more severe responses will probably have serious consequences of their own if maintained for more than a very short period and we don't necessarily fully understand those either.
We have excellent data now, which has caused all numbers to be revised down week after week from a ridiculous 3.4 million dead to 70K by July (the Flu killed 80K in the 2018-2019 season). There is enough data for me to decide it is not worth giving up any privacy or civil liberties for while numbers are going down. If the numbers start to go the other way, then I will reconsider. We should adapt to information as we receive it.
Of course it will be tenuous and disingenuous for any political ad to make statements about the success or failure of containment strategies. I was only pointing out what we will be said, and what people will believe, not what was rational. Irrationality is not a roadblock in politics, lol.
Of course it will be tenuous and disingenuous for any political ad to make statements about the success or failure of containment strategies. I was only pointing out what we will be said, and what people will believe, not what was rational. Irrationality is not a roadblock in politics, lol.
We have excellent data now? Please share the sources, because over here the lack of solid data seems to be the biggest obstacle to better policy making. We have official figures for COVID-19 deaths that only cover some cases and don't line up with the excess above seasonal rates. We have no idea how many people have already had it without major symptoms and estimates vary by an order of magnitude. We do not know the long term implications for those who have recovered in terms of immunity. Media sources are trying to work out fatality rates naively by dividing deaths so far by confirmed cases so far, ignoring the multi-week lag, so they are comparing incompatible figures and producing figures that may be very optimistic. Who is doing better than this right now?
One of the things I think will probably happen is that the US public will shift to be more favourable towards a primarily public health service such as many other countries have in one form or another.
As a Brit, I am very sceptical of that. In the UK this crisis is painfully exposing the deep structural flaws of the NHS. The UK is now at the bottom of the world leaderboard for testing, because its 100% centralised and government run healthcare system has totally failed at scaling up capacity. One reason - it's actually refused and ignored testing capacity in the private sector.
e.g. here's a firm saying they could run lots of tests but the government hasn't returned their calls
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/british-company-...
Here's another analysis that mentions private sector companies being baffled by lack of swabs being sent to them:
https://reaction.life/why-is-the-uk-so-slow-at-increasing-te...
Places like Germany have an apparently much lower death rate because they're testing far more aggressively. Why is that possible, well, because there's no ideological problem with involving the private sector in healthcare like there is in Britain. It's really hard to fail more severely than the UK has done. It's uniquely terrible at handling this crisis, and that's the fault of its unique healthcare system. Nobody rational in America will look at this performance and say, yep, that's what we need.
nations that do follow the science and support their healthcare professionals and ultimately get it under control to a useful level are going to be very wary of undermining that progress
So far the data says the epidemic is basically following the same path everywhere, regardless of what governments do. There appears to be no correlation between how governments reacted and outcomes, so no, nowhere is going to be blocking travel to the US because of coronavirus.
As for "follow the science", that phrase is being used mostly to mean "listen to epidemiologists". But their models are all being disproven in real time, over and over again. Nobody is going to have any respect that so-called science when this is over. It simply is incapable of making accurate predictions. It's no more a science than economics is.
As a Brit, I am very sceptical of that. In the UK this crisis is painfully exposing the deep structural flaws of the NHS. The UK is now at the bottom of the world leaderboard for testing, because its 100% centralised and government run healthcare system has totally failed at scaling up capacity. One reason - it's actually refused and ignored testing capacity in the private sector.
e.g. here's a firm saying they could run lots of tests but the government hasn't returned their calls
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/15/british-company-...
Here's another analysis that mentions private sector companies being baffled by lack of swabs being sent to them:
https://reaction.life/why-is-the-uk-so-slow-at-increasing-te...
Places like Germany have an apparently much lower death rate because they're testing far more aggressively. Why is that possible, well, because there's no ideological problem with involving the private sector in healthcare like there is in Britain. It's really hard to fail more severely than the UK has done. It's uniquely terrible at handling this crisis, and that's the fault of its unique healthcare system. Nobody rational in America will look at this performance and say, yep, that's what we need.
nations that do follow the science and support their healthcare professionals and ultimately get it under control to a useful level are going to be very wary of undermining that progress
So far the data says the epidemic is basically following the same path everywhere, regardless of what governments do. There appears to be no correlation between how governments reacted and outcomes, so no, nowhere is going to be blocking travel to the US because of coronavirus.
As for "follow the science", that phrase is being used mostly to mean "listen to epidemiologists". But their models are all being disproven in real time, over and over again. Nobody is going to have any respect that so-called science when this is over. It simply is incapable of making accurate predictions. It's no more a science than economics is.
There are some serious questions to be answered about the UK's response. However, those concerns mostly seem to originate with the political leadership (or, arguably, the lack of it) rather than the NHS itself.
It has never been the case that the NHS was the only provider of healthcare facilities in the UK or that it did everything "in house". We have biotech firms and medical equipment providers and direct clinical healthcare services in our private sector, too, and the NHS works with many of them routinely. Some of the big questions seem to be about why the government and NHS aren't making use of the capabilities those organisations might be able to provide in this particular situation.
I'm not sure the data we have so far does support your claim that everywhere is on the same path regardless of government response. Indeed, your own example of Germany suggests otherwise. There are also the (relative) success stories in Asia where they appear to have managed to avoid imposing the heavy restrictions we've seen in Europe without letting the virus get out of control. The widespread use of testing and the willingness to engage in population-scale track-and-trace programmes seem to be recurring themes in the places with better outcomes so far.
It looks like the thinking from governments in the UK and other locked down European nations is rapidly evolving to these heavy lockdowns being unsustainable for more than a few weeks, but possibly being a useful bridge to a time when we can adopt a track-and-trace strategy with a manageable number of cases. This brings us back to the same questions yet again about testing and engagement by the UK leadership with other facilities that might be available.
It has never been the case that the NHS was the only provider of healthcare facilities in the UK or that it did everything "in house". We have biotech firms and medical equipment providers and direct clinical healthcare services in our private sector, too, and the NHS works with many of them routinely. Some of the big questions seem to be about why the government and NHS aren't making use of the capabilities those organisations might be able to provide in this particular situation.
I'm not sure the data we have so far does support your claim that everywhere is on the same path regardless of government response. Indeed, your own example of Germany suggests otherwise. There are also the (relative) success stories in Asia where they appear to have managed to avoid imposing the heavy restrictions we've seen in Europe without letting the virus get out of control. The widespread use of testing and the willingness to engage in population-scale track-and-trace programmes seem to be recurring themes in the places with better outcomes so far.
It looks like the thinking from governments in the UK and other locked down European nations is rapidly evolving to these heavy lockdowns being unsustainable for more than a few weeks, but possibly being a useful bridge to a time when we can adopt a track-and-trace strategy with a manageable number of cases. This brings us back to the same questions yet again about testing and engagement by the UK leadership with other facilities that might be available.
The body you intend to complain about is not "the" NHS, but the government Department for Health and Social Care.
> The UK is now at the bottom of the world leaderboard for testing, because its 100% centralised and government run healthcare system has totally failed at scaling up capacity.
The NHS had capacity. The DH&SC decided that testing wasn't worthwhile. (I disagree with them, but they were saying that covid-19 is so contagious and testing doesn't affect the treatment someone gets so there's no point testing them, and when they made that decision we didn't have reliable antibody testing).
> One reason - it's actually refused and ignored testing capacity in the private sector.
That's not a decision for "the NHS" to make.
Testing the population for Covid-19 would be Public Health England, not the NHS. PHE has a central arm, but is mostly split out to local authorities.
But PHE can't make that decision if the minister has said not to test.
> because its 100% centralised and government run healthcare system
That's not at all how the NHS works in England. It's mostly not centralised. Most commissioning is done locally by Clinical Commissioning Groups. They buy services from NHS providers who, again, are mostly local organisations. There's some central commissioning, but that tends to be very specialised services. ("inpatient mental health treatment for deaf adults", for example.)
> The UK is now at the bottom of the world leaderboard for testing, because its 100% centralised and government run healthcare system has totally failed at scaling up capacity.
The NHS had capacity. The DH&SC decided that testing wasn't worthwhile. (I disagree with them, but they were saying that covid-19 is so contagious and testing doesn't affect the treatment someone gets so there's no point testing them, and when they made that decision we didn't have reliable antibody testing).
> One reason - it's actually refused and ignored testing capacity in the private sector.
That's not a decision for "the NHS" to make.
Testing the population for Covid-19 would be Public Health England, not the NHS. PHE has a central arm, but is mostly split out to local authorities.
But PHE can't make that decision if the minister has said not to test.
> because its 100% centralised and government run healthcare system
That's not at all how the NHS works in England. It's mostly not centralised. Most commissioning is done locally by Clinical Commissioning Groups. They buy services from NHS providers who, again, are mostly local organisations. There's some central commissioning, but that tends to be very specialised services. ("inpatient mental health treatment for deaf adults", for example.)
Ministers have been saying test for a long time now.
But if you want to play civil servant lawyer and argue "any failing part of the British healthcare system isn't really the NHS", go for it. From the international perspective nobody cares. Public Health England is the Department of Health is the NHS is the government. How the government divides up responsibility between variously branded bureaucracies doesn't alter the overall outcomes, nor the reasons for them. The UK centralised all CV testing in a bureaucracy that was quickly overwhelmed, didn't scale up, didn't involve the private sector and didn't react quickly to need. Privately run healthcare systems managed all these things.
But if you want to play civil servant lawyer and argue "any failing part of the British healthcare system isn't really the NHS", go for it. From the international perspective nobody cares. Public Health England is the Department of Health is the NHS is the government. How the government divides up responsibility between variously branded bureaucracies doesn't alter the overall outcomes, nor the reasons for them. The UK centralised all CV testing in a bureaucracy that was quickly overwhelmed, didn't scale up, didn't involve the private sector and didn't react quickly to need. Privately run healthcare systems managed all these things.
Here's a politician saying it's the fragmentation, not lumbering centralisation, that has caused problems for the English response to Covid-19. https://twitter.com/Debbie_abrahams/status/12528814744595374...
Newsnight have a good point when they say the Lansley reforms caused problems.
Newsnight have a good point when they say the Lansley reforms caused problems.
> Nor will forced vaccinations
I'm not even close to an anti-vaxxer, and a lot of that is because existing vaccines have been around for a long time and we know a lot about their safety. The US government forcing vaccines that were rushed to market scares me. This is the government that did the Tuskegee experiment.
I'm not even close to an anti-vaxxer, and a lot of that is because existing vaccines have been around for a long time and we know a lot about their safety. The US government forcing vaccines that were rushed to market scares me. This is the government that did the Tuskegee experiment.
> This is the government that did the Tuskegee experiment.
This is not even closed to comparable. So far off that I begin to suspect everything else you said.
The Tuskegee experiments were a limited horrible experiment undertaken by the US government fully aware of the fact that they were performing horrific experiments on the people in the study specifically to see how bad things would get.
The vaccines being rushed through trial are sourced from multiple labs in multiple countries with the hope they will help the entire population. The primarily role the US government plays is to ease the rules and to provide some funding. They are not pushing a particular vaccine, type of vaccine, the trial groups, or any of the other details.
This is not even closed to comparable. So far off that I begin to suspect everything else you said.
The Tuskegee experiments were a limited horrible experiment undertaken by the US government fully aware of the fact that they were performing horrific experiments on the people in the study specifically to see how bad things would get.
The vaccines being rushed through trial are sourced from multiple labs in multiple countries with the hope they will help the entire population. The primarily role the US government plays is to ease the rules and to provide some funding. They are not pushing a particular vaccine, type of vaccine, the trial groups, or any of the other details.
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These seem like made-up statistics:
1. "The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%"
2. "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
1. "The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%"
2. "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
The first one is trivially wrong. In NYC more than 0.1% of the _population_ (not the infected) has died already.
The second is less trivially wrong, but there's a lot of evidence against it: tests from Wuhan[0], Denmark[1], the Netherlands[2] all show very low infection rates, around 3-4%.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-starts-testing-to-determi...
[1]: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-04-17-stor-screening-vis...
[2]: https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/16/3-dutch-blood-donors-covid-19-...
The second is less trivially wrong, but there's a lot of evidence against it: tests from Wuhan[0], Denmark[1], the Netherlands[2] all show very low infection rates, around 3-4%.
[0]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-starts-testing-to-determi...
[1]: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/samfund/2020-04-17-stor-screening-vis...
[2]: https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/16/3-dutch-blood-donors-covid-19-...
There was a town in Italy that actually had 70% positive antibodies among blood donors. The only problem is 1.4% of the population of the town died in March.
So 1% death rate per unit population, or 1 person in 100.
I guess that means if New York's lock down didn't reduce that 70% of the population getting infected, with a population of 20M or so they can expect around 2M deaths.
I guess that means if New York's lock down didn't reduce that 70% of the population getting infected, with a population of 20M or so they can expect around 2M deaths.
Also bears pointing out that that the real number of deaths in NYC is higher since some have died in their homes or before they could be tested.
The second one is trivially wrong as well. The allegation is that 50% of Sweden has had it and recovered but this would require antibody tests to prove. On which date is it proposed that Sweden passed that halfway mark and had sufficient time to recover?
March 31st deaths from Covid-19 in Sweden: 180
April 17th deaths from Covid-19 in Sweden: 1400
It has been > 7x deaths just within April.
March 31st deaths from Covid-19 in Sweden: 180
April 17th deaths from Covid-19 in Sweden: 1400
It has been > 7x deaths just within April.
I think NYC is already at the "hospital collapse" level tho.
The quoted figure would be for a situation with hospitals in perfect operational state.
So the Sweden reasoning is: we will stay within normal capacity even at peak, and everything will be ok.
If infection rate is actually slow, that may work, but it's not obvious this is true.
The quoted figure would be for a situation with hospitals in perfect operational state.
So the Sweden reasoning is: we will stay within normal capacity even at peak, and everything will be ok.
If infection rate is actually slow, that may work, but it's not obvious this is true.
Have the hospitals in New York collapsed? Has anyone been denied treatment because the hospital couldn't handle it?
that's a good question, and I don't know the answer, I would presume nobody as been denied treatment as that never happened in Lombardy either, you can usually send people to other hospitals, and this has happened in NY too.
But you don't need to reach the level of people being denied treatment to be at an "overwhelming" level, where the hospitals are not operating at peak efficiency.
There have been many reports of hospitals not having masks, gowns and so on, or lacking ventilators or few people able to use them which need to be overworked. Many hospital workers have been infected, and hospitals had to switch to longer shifts.
It's just not business as usual.
But you don't need to reach the level of people being denied treatment to be at an "overwhelming" level, where the hospitals are not operating at peak efficiency.
There have been many reports of hospitals not having masks, gowns and so on, or lacking ventilators or few people able to use them which need to be overworked. Many hospital workers have been infected, and hospitals had to switch to longer shifts.
It's just not business as usual.
The second one is also trivially wrong - if Sweden had a majority of the population infected we would be seeing similar or higher death rates than NYC there (which we don't yet).
Yeah, I maintain that whenever you allow your mental model of the world to drift away from reality, there's a price to be paid. There's a cost to being wrong and people should put more effort into challenging their beliefs.
I can't believe someone disagreed with this. Some people have mental models so far disconnected from reality that I can't even fathom them.
17,671 deaths / 8,398,748 population * 100% = 0.21%
Your deaths figure seems to be for New York State, while your population figure is for New York City.
The correct figures (as of April 18, 2020) is:
New York State: 14,636 deaths / 19.45M population = 0.0752%
New York City: 8,893 deaths / 8.3M population = 0.1071%
The correct figures (as of April 18, 2020) is:
New York State: 14,636 deaths / 19.45M population = 0.0752%
New York City: 8,893 deaths / 8.3M population = 0.1071%
Worldometers is likely more accurate, it gives 17,671, not 14,636.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
New York State have a population closer to 20,000,000.
I'm not saying Giesecke is right, but he could possibly be much more right than the official WHO number.
I don't think you can compare the death count from place to place that easily either, you have to take the general health of the population and how the medical services have coped with it.
I think that’s a misleading denominator to use, because we don’t know how those that haven’t got it will react once they get it. Better to use actual infected or some mix of recovered and currently infected. You will get a 10x higher number at least.
I think it's that denominator just to demonstrate that the 0.1% figure is totally made up and ridiculous.
Antibody tests in Chicago show as high as 50%
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
I agree. I have several objections to this line of thought. Of course Sweden might want to risk its entire population on made up data but I don't think that's a prudent approach.
1. When we put in these lockdown measures, we basically had very little science behind the disease. Not locking down and hoping things generalize from very small sample sized studies coming out of Italy (which did enter lockdown at that point) is not prudent policy.
2. The only clean room evidence we have even now is the US Naval carrier that was exposed to COVID. It turned out that amongst those infected, 30% of the sailors were just asymptomatic. Previous modeling assumptions that US policy is driven off of were using 15-20% are asymptomatic. Okay, fine our initial assumptions were off a little, but not orders of magnitude off.
3. The other problem with the Swedish approach is that you can't simply isolate old people in isolation from younger people - healthcare workers, nursing home workers etc. are all fairly young and can be asymptomatic COVID carriers.
4. Even if the mortality for younger folks is ~0.1% the toll that COVID is taking on the lungs of even recovered patients is pretty brutal (anecdotal evidence, needs more study). Especially, if you're an athlete or want 100% lung capacity for the rest of your life, it's a bit iffy at this point if you'll actually get it. It also looks like it's hitting multiple organs and not just lungs, again we don't have much science here at this point.
5. I was hoping we could do antibody testing as a way to judge who can safely go out, but I was watching a Bill Gates interview yesterday and it looks like the testing is not good enough yet to make that call - it still has too high a false positive rate, people with antibodies still can get reinfected if their viral load the first time was enough to only trigger a mild infection.
1. When we put in these lockdown measures, we basically had very little science behind the disease. Not locking down and hoping things generalize from very small sample sized studies coming out of Italy (which did enter lockdown at that point) is not prudent policy.
2. The only clean room evidence we have even now is the US Naval carrier that was exposed to COVID. It turned out that amongst those infected, 30% of the sailors were just asymptomatic. Previous modeling assumptions that US policy is driven off of were using 15-20% are asymptomatic. Okay, fine our initial assumptions were off a little, but not orders of magnitude off.
3. The other problem with the Swedish approach is that you can't simply isolate old people in isolation from younger people - healthcare workers, nursing home workers etc. are all fairly young and can be asymptomatic COVID carriers.
4. Even if the mortality for younger folks is ~0.1% the toll that COVID is taking on the lungs of even recovered patients is pretty brutal (anecdotal evidence, needs more study). Especially, if you're an athlete or want 100% lung capacity for the rest of your life, it's a bit iffy at this point if you'll actually get it. It also looks like it's hitting multiple organs and not just lungs, again we don't have much science here at this point.
5. I was hoping we could do antibody testing as a way to judge who can safely go out, but I was watching a Bill Gates interview yesterday and it looks like the testing is not good enough yet to make that call - it still has too high a false positive rate, people with antibodies still can get reinfected if their viral load the first time was enough to only trigger a mild infection.
The recent study in Santa Clara County suggests it may be between 0.12 and 0.20 though it suggests only a couple percent have had it there: https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/Santa-Clara...
That isn't a random sample, so they had to massage the numbers.
Indeed, that is stated in the article. Do you have any specific concerns with their methodology that would cause the results to have an even larger error range than they account for?
Sampling uncertainties aside, this is super sensitive to mis-estimating the false positive rate. Which they seem fairly likely to have done, using an estimated test specificity of 100% (with error bars) in one branch of their analysis after getting 30/30 negatives against pre-COVID serum samples. Too small a sample to get that confident in an atypically high specificity, especially if that collection of samples was disproportionately low antibody (e.g. summer blood rather than post cold/flu season blood).
That's to my mind the most consequential misestimation of the test characteristics, but Balaji Srinivasan details more:
https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody...
That's to my mind the most consequential misestimation of the test characteristics, but Balaji Srinivasan details more:
https://medium.com/@balajis/peer-review-of-covid-19-antibody...
Is 0.1 when the ventilators/hospital treatments are used? If the spike happens and people that needs it but don’t have it, how would deaths look like?not sure if he took that into account with the 0.1, otherwise he is not much of an epidemiologist
1. It's about as made up as the WHO's 3.4% figure.
2. Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test.
(OK, 3.4% of reported cases, my point is they have thrown out death rates as well, all of them can be considered fantasy because we have zero clue what the denominator is)
2. Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test.
(OK, 3.4% of reported cases, my point is they have thrown out death rates as well, all of them can be considered fantasy because we have zero clue what the denominator is)
The WHO never said the infection fatality rate is 3.4%. Here's the actual transcript the number is taken from:
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...
> Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.
They said that 3.4% of REPORTED cases had died, which was true at that point.
> Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test.
0.015% of the Swedish population has died so far from the coronavirus. On the other hand ~0.15% of NYC has already died from the coronavirus. If the majority of the Swedish population is already infected, why is the death rate only 1/10th that of NYC? How does that pass the "common sense test"?
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...
> Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.
They said that 3.4% of REPORTED cases had died, which was true at that point.
> Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test.
0.015% of the Swedish population has died so far from the coronavirus. On the other hand ~0.15% of NYC has already died from the coronavirus. If the majority of the Swedish population is already infected, why is the death rate only 1/10th that of NYC? How does that pass the "common sense test"?
> Most thinkers I know
I hope that doesn't translate to "people in the same Facebook groups like me", i.e. the typical echo chamber effect.
It's amazing how there can be a hundred experts plus hard figures, studies, whatnot, which then get strictly ignored by those "just the flu" folks, which forward the same handful of interviews with some doctor or virologist on WhatsApp or Facebook claiming we're overreacting, it's just a slightly more aggressive kind of flu, mass panic, coming up with excuses why Wuhan, Italy and NY don't quite fit what they're saying, but no convincing counter argument yet.
Sure it would be the more convenient truth, or you just feel woke, but there are more and more places on this planet that simply show this is not true.
I hope that doesn't translate to "people in the same Facebook groups like me", i.e. the typical echo chamber effect.
It's amazing how there can be a hundred experts plus hard figures, studies, whatnot, which then get strictly ignored by those "just the flu" folks, which forward the same handful of interviews with some doctor or virologist on WhatsApp or Facebook claiming we're overreacting, it's just a slightly more aggressive kind of flu, mass panic, coming up with excuses why Wuhan, Italy and NY don't quite fit what they're saying, but no convincing counter argument yet.
Sure it would be the more convenient truth, or you just feel woke, but there are more and more places on this planet that simply show this is not true.
But they could argue the reverse: it's amazing how there can be so many experts plus hard figures, studies, papers all saying that this is hardly more dangerous than the flu, and all that is strictly ignored by those who insist that the situation in two or three places is the only data that should be used and everything else should be ignored.
there are more and more places on this planet that simply show this is not true.
But there are far more places that seem to show it is true. So whose data do you believe? At some point it boils down to the same way people make decisions in every other area of politics.
there are more and more places on this planet that simply show this is not true.
But there are far more places that seem to show it is true. So whose data do you believe? At some point it boils down to the same way people make decisions in every other area of politics.
But that's exactly the point. I haven't seen any of these things from those people. Just hand waving and statements like the ones I gave above, without serious further attempts to strengthen them by, you know, logic and arguments. Like saying it's caused by mass panics because of the fear of the unknown, now that it has a name that is not the flu.
When this thing started in China, it was initially assumed to be just that, then when evidence showed up it wouldn't be, there was the initial cover-up phase. Everybody involved at that point was pretty much doctors and other experts which aren't exactly the random dork that just panics, as well as government officials who's last desire is to have that go public. Yet they reached the point where they couldn't deny it anymore and started taking drastic measures.
No good explanation for this I've come across so far.
Then Europe, Italy first. Again the government and the people ignored this as much as possible. It's the China flu, it can't affect normal humans like us. Milan had the famous "let's keep going" campaign. There was absolutely no sort of panic, besides maybe the panic buying of toilet paper etc. People only really started to change when their hospitals got overloaded and you could actually see the effects of this in everyday life.
Yet those claiming this is just the flu like to change it around and say there was panic first which somehow lead to overcrowded hospitals. Even that part isn't very clear, given that testing was ramped up slowly, initially you couldn't just get the test if you didn't have any contact with an infected person, or were in China recently. Even if you were tested positive you were sent home if your symptoms were only mild. So even assuming there was some sort of panic, hospitals wouldn't suddenly have accepted people with mild symptoms (just like with the flu every year before). So how did the hospitals get so full?
Then I've heard a German virologist say that Italian hospitals have terrible hygiene, and people with covid19 who would have otherwise survived then got other infections in the hospital and died of those, so just died with covid19 but not of. Why didn't that happen the years before with regular flu patients? Again it's not like the hospitals accepted people with mild symptoms because they thought it would be funny to fill up the hospital beds. Also I guess by the same logic HIV is no biggie since you only die with it.
When this thing started in China, it was initially assumed to be just that, then when evidence showed up it wouldn't be, there was the initial cover-up phase. Everybody involved at that point was pretty much doctors and other experts which aren't exactly the random dork that just panics, as well as government officials who's last desire is to have that go public. Yet they reached the point where they couldn't deny it anymore and started taking drastic measures.
No good explanation for this I've come across so far.
Then Europe, Italy first. Again the government and the people ignored this as much as possible. It's the China flu, it can't affect normal humans like us. Milan had the famous "let's keep going" campaign. There was absolutely no sort of panic, besides maybe the panic buying of toilet paper etc. People only really started to change when their hospitals got overloaded and you could actually see the effects of this in everyday life.
Yet those claiming this is just the flu like to change it around and say there was panic first which somehow lead to overcrowded hospitals. Even that part isn't very clear, given that testing was ramped up slowly, initially you couldn't just get the test if you didn't have any contact with an infected person, or were in China recently. Even if you were tested positive you were sent home if your symptoms were only mild. So even assuming there was some sort of panic, hospitals wouldn't suddenly have accepted people with mild symptoms (just like with the flu every year before). So how did the hospitals get so full?
Then I've heard a German virologist say that Italian hospitals have terrible hygiene, and people with covid19 who would have otherwise survived then got other infections in the hospital and died of those, so just died with covid19 but not of. Why didn't that happen the years before with regular flu patients? Again it's not like the hospitals accepted people with mild symptoms because they thought it would be funny to fill up the hospital beds. Also I guess by the same logic HIV is no biggie since you only die with it.
Can you link to some of the studies and papers?
See my other comments. This is the best link collection I know of:
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
It's concise, dense and to the point.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
It's concise, dense and to the point.
It is scary how confident people are when discussing the unknown.
True, but it's probably not so important. After all, it's just more human centered talk. It might be useful now for everyone to take a step back, consider we share this planet with other living things, and maybe someone is brave enough to look at things from a perspective of non-human being. Who's the pandemic now? ;)
Besides, the planet doesn't care about our little problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgJKrmbYfg
Besides, the planet doesn't care about our little problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgJKrmbYfg
It the product of evolution. As a species we have to make decisions on imperfect and limited information all the time. If we were programmed to wait to figure everything out we would have died off ages ago.
indeed. here and elsewhere in the blagosphere people have taken this opportunity to opine at length on everything from epidemiology to virology to welfare economics. it's been the case for a long time that people online have had very little sense of humility about their opinions but somehow experiencing a pandemic has given them even less pause to consider what they're ignorant of.
I think the Internet makes it worse, but it's not as if it was hard to find someone who was too confident in their layman's opinion in the real world. Witness any sports event. How often do your friends say "favorite will definitely win" when it's been known that they lose now and again?
Same with the stock market, predictions about the house market, the weather, political events, and so on.
Overconfidence is the rule, not the exception.
I'm certain of it.
Same with the stock market, predictions about the house market, the weather, political events, and so on.
Overconfidence is the rule, not the exception.
I'm certain of it.
Consider how ill informed and criminally stupid the US administration is and I would suggest that people discussing things and coming to their own conclusions, while a messy process, is at least one that might reach the correct conclusion in the face of being lied to by authority figures.
EDIT: As a recent example, consider the lies we were told by the administration about the effectiveness of surgical masks in preventing spread. While this lie was told in service of keeping the supply prioritized for health care workers, it caused vulnerable people to not wear them and discouraged people from wearing home made masks that might help prevent asymptomatic spread. We have only overcome this lie through public discussion and eventual acknowledgement by the CDC.
EDIT: As a recent example, consider the lies we were told by the administration about the effectiveness of surgical masks in preventing spread. While this lie was told in service of keeping the supply prioritized for health care workers, it caused vulnerable people to not wear them and discouraged people from wearing home made masks that might help prevent asymptomatic spread. We have only overcome this lie through public discussion and eventual acknowledgement by the CDC.
I wasn't thinking about the internet. I meant the "experts", you can't be an expert on the unknown.
No it isn't! :-)
I live in Spain. It's about one month and 7 days of lockdown and the official data isn't realistic. Although we are having lower numbers, it will take many months of lockdown to stop having deaths. I don't think this strategy of full lockdown will help, to be honest, we should lockdown risk factor people.
It's not about stopping deaths completely, it's about not putting more strain on an already overworked health care system.
Once proper contact tracing is out, the lock down can ease. Otherwise the fire will spread uncontrollably and govt won’t take anymore risks
we will really only know when looking at yearly stats or even bigger stats, it's possible it may slightly increase yearly death toll but nothing close to those crazy numbers reported now when just cause of death shift towards virus from other causes
if your system is not overloaded or kills almost only the people who would die anyway soon
I feel pity for Spain, their economy was F up prior this virus, can't imagine what it's gonna be after virus
if your system is not overloaded or kills almost only the people who would die anyway soon
I feel pity for Spain, their economy was F up prior this virus, can't imagine what it's gonna be after virus
Thank goodness at least someone with credentials is saying what is obvious. The lockdown approach is not sustainable for much longer out of basic economic concerns and the virus will absoluteley start spreading again when the masses break and go back to work. Protecting the most vulnerable while the rest of the society works to support them is the only sensible approach and should have been the plan all along. I'm personally very sad that so many will sustain great economic damage on top of this reality, but this is what happens when people run scared. I just hope this reality is recognized and accepted before even more damage is done.
> start spreading again when the masses break and go back to work
I don't see why this must be true. R before the lockdown in northern CA and WA (heavy voluntary measures but people "working") was ~1.45. [source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.12.20062943v...]. SoCal was higher at R=2.1, possibly due to less voluntary restrictions.
Add on a functional testing and contact tracing (built up during the lockdown) and you should be at r < 1.
I don't see why this must be true. R before the lockdown in northern CA and WA (heavy voluntary measures but people "working") was ~1.45. [source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.12.20062943v...]. SoCal was higher at R=2.1, possibly due to less voluntary restrictions.
Add on a functional testing and contact tracing (built up during the lockdown) and you should be at r < 1.
You’re ignoring the possibility that the lockdown bought us time to prepare a more effective strategy we can implement as we open society again.
Also, there are still a lot of unknowns about this virus.
* It has been reported to cause long term organ damage. How common is that? How severe is it?
* It has killed lots of people who are not frail.
* We don’t have a good idea of how widespread it is, so we don’t know what the true death rate is. The Santa Clara serological study suggested that 48k residents have been infected. Santa Clara currently only has 73 deaths, which gives a death rate of .15%. We only had access to this serological data yesterday, so how would we have made decisions using it last month? And even if the death rate is low, that’s the death rate with a health care system that’s not at capacity thanks to social distancing and lockdown measures.
* We don’t know how effective a policy of “protect the old and frail” would be because it’s never been tried.
* etc etc
All of these unknowns together should give you pause. It’s tiring to hear people confidently promoting their unfounded opinions on the virus grounded in nothing more than a know-it-all attitude and a generous helping of Dunning-Kruger.
Also, there are still a lot of unknowns about this virus.
* It has been reported to cause long term organ damage. How common is that? How severe is it?
* It has killed lots of people who are not frail.
* We don’t have a good idea of how widespread it is, so we don’t know what the true death rate is. The Santa Clara serological study suggested that 48k residents have been infected. Santa Clara currently only has 73 deaths, which gives a death rate of .15%. We only had access to this serological data yesterday, so how would we have made decisions using it last month? And even if the death rate is low, that’s the death rate with a health care system that’s not at capacity thanks to social distancing and lockdown measures.
* We don’t know how effective a policy of “protect the old and frail” would be because it’s never been tried.
* etc etc
All of these unknowns together should give you pause. It’s tiring to hear people confidently promoting their unfounded opinions on the virus grounded in nothing more than a know-it-all attitude and a generous helping of Dunning-Kruger.
What have we accomplished in this time? We know basically what we knew a month ago, we have no vaccine or treatment, and we know very well that the old and compromised are at much higher risk than the young. We also know that every passing day gives those with capital to withstand this more leverage within the society as more businesses go under and more people are thrown to the dole. This we can be certain of, especially in the US, where it seems to be repugnant to provide serious assistance to the poor. Maybe you are one of those with great wealth, but the rest of us would be happy to put grandma in an empty house somewhere and get back to work, before there is no work to be had. I personally feel this way and am happy to take my chances with the virus rather than the "goodwill" of the rich. I suspect mine is rapidly becoming a majority opinion as savings dwindle and businesses go under.
[deleted]
In the UK, week ending April 3rd, rather than the expected 10k deaths there were a (preliminary) 16k deaths. 60% above background level
Stats for week ending April 10th aren't out yet, however they are alluded to in https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... at being over 20k deaths, twice the number.
(The week 15 report predicted 5k excess deaths for week ending apr3, more concrete figures had it at 6k. Week 16 predicts about 12k excess deaths for w/e april 10.
60% extra deaths isn't "slightly above background level"
If covid is burning itself out then that's great, we'd be looking at a total 100k excess deaths, or 20% above background level for the year.
However there is no evidence that we're anywhere near 20% of the country having had it, let alone 70%.
Those dying in week ending april 10th will likely have contracted covid before lockdown
Tobacco kills an average 2k per week in the UK, covid is killing 5 times as many, and that's with all the controls.
Cars kill an average 30 per week
Stats for week ending April 10th aren't out yet, however they are alluded to in https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... at being over 20k deaths, twice the number.
(The week 15 report predicted 5k excess deaths for week ending apr3, more concrete figures had it at 6k. Week 16 predicts about 12k excess deaths for w/e april 10.
60% extra deaths isn't "slightly above background level"
If covid is burning itself out then that's great, we'd be looking at a total 100k excess deaths, or 20% above background level for the year.
However there is no evidence that we're anywhere near 20% of the country having had it, let alone 70%.
Those dying in week ending april 10th will likely have contracted covid before lockdown
w/e | reported covid deaths | actual excess deaths
w/e mar 27 | 842 | 1.5k
w/e apr 3 | 3294 | 6k
w/e apr 10 | 5562 | 10-15k
w/e apr 17 | 5589 |
Tobacco kills an average 2k per week in the UK, covid is killing 5 times as many, and that's with all the controls.
Cars kill an average 30 per week
This is a stunning difference. In the US we had no excess mortality in March, in fact total deaths from all causes were down year over year.
Cases didn’t peak in NY until April so we may see some increase after this month.
I realize the U.K. locked down later than many countries, but there must be other factors driving mortality as there are other countries that did not lock down and aren’t being ravaged quite the same.
What is it? Level of care in the NHS? Higher prevalence of secondary conditions like diabetes? Hygiene? Crowding?
Cases didn’t peak in NY until April so we may see some increase after this month.
I realize the U.K. locked down later than many countries, but there must be other factors driving mortality as there are other countries that did not lock down and aren’t being ravaged quite the same.
What is it? Level of care in the NHS? Higher prevalence of secondary conditions like diabetes? Hygiene? Crowding?
We didn't really have any excess mortality in March either - total deaths in 4 weeks upto 27th march was 43,406. 5 year average for that 4 week period is 43,700.
We're slightly ahead of New York state in covid breakout too (about 4-5 days at the occurrence of both 10th and 100th death)
I suspect that the excess numbers are undiagnosed covid cases - especially those dying in care homes.
In w/e 3rd april compared with the week before
Where are the stats for deaths in New York? UK (Or rather England and Wales, but that's 90% of the population of the UK) are at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
We're slightly ahead of New York state in covid breakout too (about 4-5 days at the occurrence of both 10th and 100th death)
I suspect that the excess numbers are undiagnosed covid cases - especially those dying in care homes.
In w/e 3rd april compared with the week before
Place | Excess Deaths | Excess covid deaths
Home | 1079 | 105
Care Home | 1280 | 175
Hospital | 2779 | 2609
Where are the stats for deaths in New York? UK (Or rather England and Wales, but that's 90% of the population of the UK) are at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
Google has made the statistics query-able. Google “Covid NYC deaths,” etc. and they graph it for you in the search results.
We are at about 8800 COVID deaths for all of NYC (this includes the city boroughs) so out of a total population of about 8.5 million. We will have a more accurate population after this year’s census.
Public transit appears to be a big spreader with outbreaks tracking closely to subway stops. Unfortunately we keep it going because it is essential some people couldn’t get food without subway access. This is also probably why suburban America has a far lower number of cases, outside of nursing homes.
Even in states like NJ all the counties in trouble have rail lines to and from NYC and are densely populated.
We are at about 8800 COVID deaths for all of NYC (this includes the city boroughs) so out of a total population of about 8.5 million. We will have a more accurate population after this year’s census.
Public transit appears to be a big spreader with outbreaks tracking closely to subway stops. Unfortunately we keep it going because it is essential some people couldn’t get food without subway access. This is also probably why suburban America has a far lower number of cases, outside of nursing homes.
Even in states like NJ all the counties in trouble have rail lines to and from NYC and are densely populated.
That's not total deaths registered, that's just deaths that are released as covid related.
In the UK all deaths must be registered with the date of death. Normally we expect X deaths per week, we're seeing far more excess deaths than covid deaths in homes and care homes.
Two possibilities
1) Non covid deaths are happening at home rather than hospital because people aren't being taken to hospital. I'm sure this is happening in some cases (people being frightened of going to hospital when they have tell-tale signs of strokes etc), but if it was happening a lot then non-covid deaths in hospitals would be down. They aren't.
2) Much more likely, people are dying at home/care home frmo covid but it's not being reported on the death certificate because they haven't been tested for covid.
In the UK all deaths must be registered with the date of death. Normally we expect X deaths per week, we're seeing far more excess deaths than covid deaths in homes and care homes.
Two possibilities
1) Non covid deaths are happening at home rather than hospital because people aren't being taken to hospital. I'm sure this is happening in some cases (people being frightened of going to hospital when they have tell-tale signs of strokes etc), but if it was happening a lot then non-covid deaths in hospitals would be down. They aren't.
2) Much more likely, people are dying at home/care home frmo covid but it's not being reported on the death certificate because they haven't been tested for covid.
Sorry that information used to be available here but is no longer maintained:
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/data/data-sets/vital-statistic...
I do not think Covid deaths are being under-counted in NYC they recently changed to a very liberal policy for labeling Covid-related deaths. No test is required and all deaths not clearly from another cause are now being counted as Covid. This has conspiracy theorists crying foul, but it’s probably prudent.
You piqued my curiosity and this change in death classification added 3500 deaths to the count on top of the 8800 confirmed/tested mortalities that Google publishes, and so far NYC is on track to double their monthly deaths from all causes for the month of April :-(
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/data/data-sets/vital-statistic...
I do not think Covid deaths are being under-counted in NYC they recently changed to a very liberal policy for labeling Covid-related deaths. No test is required and all deaths not clearly from another cause are now being counted as Covid. This has conspiracy theorists crying foul, but it’s probably prudent.
You piqued my curiosity and this change in death classification added 3500 deaths to the count on top of the 8800 confirmed/tested mortalities that Google publishes, and so far NYC is on track to double their monthly deaths from all causes for the month of April :-(
The death rate in care homes is already pretty high without covid. Ultimately what we really care about is how many years of life the virus is taking away from us.
Death rate in care homes is normally 2,400 a week. W/e 3rd of april was 3,769.
Same at home.
W/e 3rd april had no change in death rates for people upto the age of 45
45-50 was 34% higher
50-65 about 40% higher
65-85 about 50% higher
Then drops back down over 85
Based on life expectency from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... at each given age, about 60,000 excess years were removed week ending april 3rd. That's likely twice as much the next week.
Same at home.
W/e 3rd april had no change in death rates for people upto the age of 45
45-50 was 34% higher
50-65 about 40% higher
65-85 about 50% higher
Then drops back down over 85
Based on life expectency from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... at each given age, about 60,000 excess years were removed week ending april 3rd. That's likely twice as much the next week.
that's not contradicting what the Swede says, the weak will die first, you might as well have lower than average death rate in latter months when ask the weak will die out, we just dunno by how many weeks/months you shortened their life expectancy, it's gonna be hardly years
for all these stats we need to wait years and by then nobody will be interested anymore because people will be dealing with ruined economy from hysterical response
for all these stats we need to wait years and by then nobody will be interested anymore because people will be dealing with ruined economy from hysterical response
It's unknown how long symptoms typically last. I am pushing 4+ weeks with mild symptoms I have never experienced with the flu. My doctor indicates 4+ weeks until ~mostly recovered based on her patients. How does this deplete nutrients necessary for continued immune function relative to the flu? We need more data and that Swede doesn't have it.
Why is this flagged? The interview is intellectually interesting. Prof. Johan Giesecke literally wrote the book on infectious disease epidemiology, and works as a senior advisor to the WHO and Swedish government.
Agree, he is not some crank. I don't understand the flagging system on this site at all
"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%"
"At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
"The results will eventually be similar for all countries"
"Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people."
"At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
"The results will eventually be similar for all countries"
"Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people."
"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%"
Fatality rate is meaningless. Even if you don't die, you can't work when you're sick for 2 to 5 weeks. Sickness duration is relevant.
Hospital bed occupancy rate and impact on hospital treating other pathologies and injuries is relevant.
> "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
It's just pure speculation at the moment. You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible.
> "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
It's just pure speculation at the moment. You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible.
Actually he claimed it was based on data they had collected in the last week, but was careful to say that it may change as they collect more data. I assume it is because they are now testing all care workers and finding a large percentage of them have antibodies.
> You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible.
Not more or less irresponsible than large-scale lockdowns. Don't kid yourself and think the lockdowns were evidence-driven and accounted for knock-on effects. They were desperation moves.
Not more or less irresponsible than large-scale lockdowns. Don't kid yourself and think the lockdowns were evidence-driven and accounted for knock-on effects. They were desperation moves.
Most state waited for at least one city hospitals, if not a region's hospitals, to be overwhelmed before acting. Despite hard medical evidence of high contagiousness.
Lockdowns were not irrational, just the fruit on not having enough masks ans test ready on time for selective quarantine.
Lockdowns were not irrational, just the fruit on not having enough masks ans test ready on time for selective quarantine.
Mild disease that caused of rationing of care in multiple countries. Filled up all the hospitals and stopped elective surgeries through out the world. Killed more people in the US in 1 month that the flu kills in a year even with the largest states going into full lock down to prevent spreading. What disease besides Spanish flu has caused this must disruption to our medical infrastructure?
Not even close. Flu killed 80K in the 2018-2019 season.
https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter...
Projected deaths for COVID-19 are 70K through July.
https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter...
Projected deaths for COVID-19 are 70K through July.
That's for the 2017-2018 season and it was the worst flu season in quite some time. The article even says it's the worst flu season in at least 4 decades and way outside the normal range:
"In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC."
This is not to mention that these estimates include non flu deaths to compensate for the fact that not every dead person gets tested for the flu and even those that are, often wouldn't be documented as flu deaths. For example, if COVID-19 was merely a minor outbreak, COVID-19 deaths would be counted towards flu deaths, as the cause of the death would be viral pneumonia and viral pneumonia is statistically likely to be caused by the flu.
The reverse isn't close to true - we're for the most part only attributing deaths to COVID-19 when it's either a confirmed case or otherwise overwhelmingly likely to be caused by it. It's a certainty that COVID-19 will end up killing more people in the month of April than the flu kills most years.
"In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC."
This is not to mention that these estimates include non flu deaths to compensate for the fact that not every dead person gets tested for the flu and even those that are, often wouldn't be documented as flu deaths. For example, if COVID-19 was merely a minor outbreak, COVID-19 deaths would be counted towards flu deaths, as the cause of the death would be viral pneumonia and viral pneumonia is statistically likely to be caused by the flu.
The reverse isn't close to true - we're for the most part only attributing deaths to COVID-19 when it's either a confirmed case or otherwise overwhelmingly likely to be caused by it. It's a certainty that COVID-19 will end up killing more people in the month of April than the flu kills most years.
Conversely if 80% of COVID carriers are asymptomatic and therefore untested as is currently theorized (the US aircraft carrier that became infected is the most recent example) then we should be multiplying the denominator by 5 for the mortality rate, because right now we are just putting tested cases in the denominator for COVID. This dramatically reduces the mortality rate for the disease.
So the contagiousness of the disease actually reduces the mortality rate quite a lot, more so than uncounted deaths in the numerator.
Secondly if you do the same thing for the flu, put confirmed flu deaths over confirmed flu cases (tested) the mortality for flu is 4%. This would be the apples to apples comparison.
So the contagiousness of the disease actually reduces the mortality rate quite a lot, more so than uncounted deaths in the numerator.
Secondly if you do the same thing for the flu, put confirmed flu deaths over confirmed flu cases (tested) the mortality for flu is 4%. This would be the apples to apples comparison.
Flu has a vaccine reducing the r0 number. We didn’t shut down the nation for last years flu and we didn’t have to build field hospitals to deal with sick peoples. Hospitals didn’t cancel elective surgeries because they had space and resources. Fatality rate would be higher if we had to ration care but used social distancing and shutdowns to flatten the curve.
All the hospitals? Most US hospitals outside a few hot spots have fewer patients right now than normal. Elective surgeries were stopped to conserve limited stocks of PPE, and prevent nosocomial infections.
> "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
They're already doing antibody testing in other countries and the numbers are much lower than 50%.
In Santa Clara county, California, the estimate is only 2.49% to 4.16%
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/heal...
They're already doing antibody testing in other countries and the numbers are much lower than 50%.
In Santa Clara county, California, the estimate is only 2.49% to 4.16%
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/heal...
But much higher in a Chicago, as high as 50%
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
Sweden already has 1 death per 10,000 population (0.01% per capita, not per case) and rate is increasing. Spain is 1 per 2,500 (0.04%). NY state is 1 per 1,200, soon to be 1 per 1,000 (0.1% per capita). This is with lockdown [0]
[0] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
[0] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
According to Giesecke projection, the total number of deaths will be around 6000, 2-3 times the deaths from annual influenza. (currently 1,511 have died from COVID-19 in Sweden)
right or wrong, he'll be proven so relatively shortly, after all the rate will either rise exponentially as the alarmist say, or stays the same and slowly drops as he claims
the whole point of the argument is that it does not matter what you do everyone will end up in the same situation
"Hiding infections in the future is not the same as avoiding them":
https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo...
https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo...
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Which is obviously wrong because it's been demonstrated that if infections get out of control and hospitals are overwhelmed, a higher percentage of infections before fatal.
This was shown in the difference in death rates in Wuhan vs other cities in China. ...as well as northern Italy vs other provinces in Italy.
This was shown in the difference in death rates in Wuhan vs other cities in China. ...as well as northern Italy vs other provinces in Italy.
The rate of deaths in Sweden is not increasing. Even accounting for reporting delays, the peak was weeks ago: https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
Um, no, the deaths-per-capita can't decrease unless people are being resurrected. The rate of increase can slow, but the Johns Hopkins data doesn't even show that happening (looking at new deaths/wk). Although it does show the acceleration declining, and it's possible the rate of increase is flattening out this week. If so, then Sweden's per-capita death rate will be increasing by 6%/day.
The chart you linked to bears that out. As itself says, it's excluding estimated delays from the last 7 days, so the last really solid numbers are up to April 10th. Everything before that is increasing exponentially. Even if we assume the backlog has stopped increasing (blue bars getting bigger), which is what the grey estimates are based upon, then Sweden is still getting another 70 or so deaths per day, which means the per-capita death rate is going up by 7/million every day.
The chart you linked to bears that out. As itself says, it's excluding estimated delays from the last 7 days, so the last really solid numbers are up to April 10th. Everything before that is increasing exponentially. Even if we assume the backlog has stopped increasing (blue bars getting bigger), which is what the grey estimates are based upon, then Sweden is still getting another 70 or so deaths per day, which means the per-capita death rate is going up by 7/million every day.
You said the "rate is increasing." Rate indicates deaths per time. Deaths per time is not increasing.
What is the conclusion that you make from these select quotes? Or are you just summarizing what you consider to be the most important information?
Just summarizing. That's what we do on HN for those who dont want to read the whole article/interview.
Yes, those are things from the article. Did you have some comment on them?
Are those the things you agree with most or are those things you disagree with?
Are those the things you agree with most or are those things you disagree with?
I agree with most of the things besides 50% of infected population, in Czech 250+ branches (that's at least 5000 people) of Lidl they had only 4 confirmed infected until now, in Globus supermarket chain out of 5000 workers only 2. yes, Czechia is enforcing mandatory masks (although like 90% of population wear only cloth masks due to lack of access to medical masks and respirators) but still you would expect, if it would be that contagious through surfaces and other ways as some scare, there would be much more infected in these busiest businesses right now
“The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only.”
How is it working out with that. Last I heard old people in Sweden don’t go to the ICU but is left to die and they have a large spread in care homes for elderly. And as if their economy is in a vacuum they think they won’t be struggling with the same recession as the rest of us
How is it working out with that. Last I heard old people in Sweden don’t go to the ICU but is left to die and they have a large spread in care homes for elderly. And as if their economy is in a vacuum they think they won’t be struggling with the same recession as the rest of us
The old and frail will die eventually. It’s reasonable to discuss how much we’re willing to sacrifice for the additional time afforded them in aggregate.
This is not to sound cold or callus. I’ll be old one day (but am also not going to expect extraordinary resources to live a few extra months). These are necessary discussions in a finite world.
This is not to sound cold or callus. I’ll be old one day (but am also not going to expect extraordinary resources to live a few extra months). These are necessary discussions in a finite world.
It's likely enough that lockdowns are the better strategy for the economy. If that is the case, it's not even a sacrifice.
Severe infection and death rates are still quite high among people that are not especially old or frail; and then it sort of depends a lot of whether 'frail' is an apt description of the people that are more susceptible.
Severe infection and death rates are still quite high among people that are not especially old or frail; and then it sort of depends a lot of whether 'frail' is an apt description of the people that are more susceptible.
> It's likely enough that lockdowns are the better strategy for the economy.
I would like to see data supporting this. Because at the moment, things are pretty bleak.
I would like to see data supporting this. Because at the moment, things are pretty bleak.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/upshot/corona...
I think everyone would like better data but one point I can follow is that scared people are bad consumers. I can’t find the exact story but I recall some research on Denver vs Philadelphia where the hard lockdown came out ahead later and the psychology of dealing with the disease contributed to this.
I think everyone would like better data but one point I can follow is that scared people are bad consumers. I can’t find the exact story but I recall some research on Denver vs Philadelphia where the hard lockdown came out ahead later and the psychology of dealing with the disease contributed to this.
There's not data about the impact of either policy choice.
For example, bar and restaurant traffic would probably be down quite a lot regardless of lockdowns.
For reopening, a potential downside of doing it too early is that the spread rapidly spirals out of control again, with greater death and real panic ensuing.
For example, bar and restaurant traffic would probably be down quite a lot regardless of lockdowns.
For reopening, a potential downside of doing it too early is that the spread rapidly spirals out of control again, with greater death and real panic ensuing.
I wouldn't want to take people's freedoms away to protect me a little bit. Why live longer anyway without freedoms.
There is a balance to be struck. I put forth it is reasonable to curtail some freedoms, temporarily, for public health and safety. Such curtailments should not be extended indefinitely though.
He is of course inclined to say what he thinks is right because he suggested such a plan.
Sweden is the only country that has a scientist in charge of covid response? All other countries have politicians in charge? I'm not sure that they're definitely wrong?
Good that Sweden is using the same rational inside that they applied to other countries during WWII, cruelly neutral wrt w/death toll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_neutrality
It also has one of the lowest testing rates in the Western world at 0.7%, compared to around 2% in Spain, Italy and Germany.