Covid-19 Round 2 is Here
jacquesmattheij.com
jacquesmattheij.com
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
EDIT: Before I start a flamewar, I guess I have to comment on whether I think Sweden's strategy was effective, so...
1. They might get a second wave in the future. But so far they seem to have avoided it.
2. It's too early to tell whether the cumulative loss in life and the cumulative economic damages will be better than those of other countries. So far, they do seem to have had more loss in life with less economic damage than their neighbors, but if they don't get a second wave, they might end up in a much better spot economically.
So yeah, in conclusion, we should keep watching them to see how things play out but not draw conclusions like "they had more loss in life" or "they had less damage to the economy", because it's still too early.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man-behin...
It’s really just too early to say. There’s a strong tradition of spending summers in a country cottage in Sweden. These are naturally very socially distanced (often alone in the forest), and they go together with spending all day, every day out in the sunshine - and thereby getting a massive vitamin D boost.
Furthermore, the weather is still mild, and a lot of people who’d normally be back in town, are choosing to work from their country cottage instead. This is especially true of the older, vulnerable generation.
Finally there’s also been a few days when deaths have crept up. But counting has continually been hampered by chronic delays - so I’d say wait a few weeks before assuming Sweden is in the clear.
So it’s way too early to make any conclusion about what will happen next there. If they do end up following the same trend as the UK, it won’t be clear in graphs until November.
it looks like Sweden is fairing the same as far as new infections as most of the other European countries. So the fact is that its population didn't develop herd immunity (or at least it didn't in any measure better than other countries who did lock down) and its economy was still hit quite hard comparatively (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53664354)
Would we have had less deaths without lockdowns?
I've been very strict about social distancing EXCEPT the day(the first in 6 months) I went out for beers with two friends at and outdoor space.
What I want to say is: that one time you let your guard down is when you will get infected and the horrors begin, especially if you don't live alone and care for the people you live with!
Here something for comparison :
"Shopping in Sweden during Coronavirus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQat0vX-wjM&feature=emb_titl...
Hardly any mask and businesses seems normal
Question is who is around you that might have a harder go of it.
The funny thing is the other patients had higher strength shots or for much longer -- and they had massive blood shot bruises on their arms/bellies and the nurses had to use some special cream, otherwise those bruises could clot and lead to stroke or heart attacks.
So it was like, even the anti-cloting medicine was somehow trying to kill you in some perverse way.
Day 7 of mild symptoms and my relatives starting to get sick one by one -- NO!
Day 20 -- still no!
For 2-4 weeks after my daughter's symptoms I'll stress about kawasaki signs in her.
Perhaps I'll change my time later, but I don't see the risks worth the rewards.
Yes it could happen, but the likelihood of your child hurting themselves with something sharp and pointy in your house is several orders of magnitude higher. This is why I hate the way the media is reporting on these literal one-off symptoms as though everyone who catches Covid will certainly absolutely get them.
Kawasaki is broadly associated with all sorts of viral infections. It’s super duper rare.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6932e2-H.pdf
I barely slept during this time.
I saw and heard a lot of examples of how quickly things can turn south in the hospital.
How do you dispose of the trash when you're quarantined in a flat?
There's so much more than the symptoms that will screw with you for this disease.
Up to that point it didn't register how tired I was, because I was just not doing anything physical.
Hang in there, it will hopefully get better soon.
I saw a 48 year old guy unable to put his oxygen nostrils back when his saturation read something like 85.
I think he went ~72% before someone put his nostrils back and the nurse put him back on facemask + an additional O2 tank, besides the regulat O2 coming in the copper pipes.
He kept saying he was fine, just sleepy.
Glad you're ok now.
You can get the exact same thing from the flu. I had a flu a few years ago that kept me coughing for 8 weeks.
Then again, I had flu/cold before that is mild but feel horrible as I experienced it.
its not.
current best estimate of ifr according to cdc :
0-19 years: 0.00003
20-49 years: 0.0002
50-69 years: 0.005
70+ years: 0.054
Percent of infections that are asymptomatic: 40%
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
Which is a good news that so many the cases are asymptomatic and the ifr is so low.
Which is also inline with my own observation, I know almost nobody get really sick from covid.
I still go out whenever I can, still travel whenever I can, still doing normal socialization/gathering as I possibly still can.
All-causes mortality is up quite a bit too.
Though i could understand that for some people even 1 death is a lot.
What about million people suffering due to lockdown? To you they should just endure it right?
How about you, how much low is low to you ? 0 death ? 1 death ?
How much is lockdown suffering is acceptable to you ?
1. The human population is very large so even the smallest fraction is a sensational number.
2. Any death is a tragedy for someone, not the least the person who died.
This creates a situation where you have lots of people talking past each other.
This is a graph of historical deaths in Sweden which has a similar death rate as the US. https://twitter.com/PanData19/status/1297919439212552193/pho...
While this year isn't over yet there has been years in my life time with worse death rates that went by completely unnoticed. Looking back in a couple of years I don't think people are gonna say that a lot of people died this year.
The thing is decision to lockdown is not just affect you, it affect other people too.
But am I alone in this?
I don't think so, I think most people would go through the same stress and anxiety in my situation, that is the part that is so easy to overlook.
How close were you to your friends/others and did you go inside the bar at all? Did either of your friends test positive?
My friends did not get tested, but they also showed no symptoms.
I sprayed the table with alcohol, the seats, my beer bottles.
I did share an uber ride with one of my friends, I did open the windows, I think the driver might have coughed once or twice, I did make the huge mistake about asking him about his car model and he wouldn't shut up afterwards.
We usually have 3-6k death of flu each year https://akjournals.com/view/journals/650/161/23/article-p962...
And so far 683 deaths from Covid http://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/coronavirus-09-19/
My (European) country did quite well so far, so from our point of view he would certainly seem overly cautious. People have much less fear than during the first wave. They try to live with the risk of getting infected by accepting that it is real, but not letting it dictate everything they do, which would make life more "surviving" than "living".
And I think that's a good approach! Within the confines of necessary precautions like wearing masks, keeping your distance, and banning big events, I think it is still possible to live a life which is worth living in a responsible way. After all, I also don't mind getting into a car while being fully aware of the risks (which could be worse than COVID's depending on where you live). So yes, I do think his recommendations are too drastic and also bad for your mental health. Next to that, most of them are impossible to realize for people who aren't lucky enough to be able to work from home etc.
Maybe I would have a different opinion if I was a US resident.
No, unfortunately in the USA, sensible public health recommendations are considered drastic. Heaven forbid Kyle can't buy his khakis and Wendy can't visit her hair salon. Restaurant dining is an inalienable right. Wearing a mask is briefly uncomfortable, therefore totally unacceptable. Banning large gatherings is communism. You gotta flex your freedom at all times to show how much of a good American you are. 2020 has drained me of my empathy. It sometimes feels like half the country has chosen suicide pact to avoid temporary inconvenience.
If you survive.
You’re asking a person tasked with tending a single tree in their back yard about what the state of the forest looks like.
Especially since the linked raw data there is completely flat.
This happens all too frequently on HN. A story blows up, then gets flagged - with no explanation whatsoever.
At the very least, it seems it would be in the interest of the moderators to include an explanatory comment as a guidepost for future submissions.
I don’t get it.
When this first kicked off. So many people were getting hospitalised that hospitals were overwhelmed and had to turn people away.
Lockdown happened but still there were workers that had to continue working and other people that didn't care about the measures going out.
A smaller proportion of the population were in the pool of potential covid catchers.
This meant that hospitals could handle new admissions.
Since proper hospital care reduced the chance of death.
The UK government has not indicated that they intend to do a full lockdown intending eliminate covid.
BTW: why was the article flagged?
Why the article was flagged? Probably because HN has its own share of COVID deniers and they can't help themselves. Uncomfortable truths and all that. I'm so going to track one down and interview them in six months. I'd love to see their retrospective, see if they have learned or not.
I don’t think it’s really fair to portray the resistance or skepticism as only originating from idiocy or “fringe”. Authorities have said everything and its opposite in the last 6 or so months. They started by telling us this wasn’t really contagious so don’t worry, they told us not to procure masks before they told us to wear masks always, etc. Some people definitely use that to reach all sorts of ridiculous conclusions, no doubt. But I think you can’t discount how disorienting that all is, not to mention the whiplash of being told you must do x after you were told not to. There is also, again at least in America, a certain amount of resentment over health officials and others endorsing certain group events and condemning others, on a political basis, when the virus actually doesn’t care what your politics are. So yep, it is a political football.
Right wingers in a couple countries said that. If you listened to actual experts, by February you knew it was highly contagious, asymptomatic spread was a big control problem, etc. The mask issue is the strongest charge because the goal of not buying up the same supplies needed by healthcare workers was confused into general advice not to wear them but by April that had been recognized as a mistake.
The problem was that politics entered the picture when Trump blew off the experts briefing him starting in December and went with the Fox pundits desire first to hope that the economic impact wouldn’t be significant and later trying to pretend they hadn’t been so disastrously wrong. That meant that medical experts were overridden at previously non-political agencies, and that reporters were now pulled into treating advice as political opinions to be hedged.
Is Cuomo the governor for New York a right winger? He downplayed the pandemic as late as march 18. Pretty sure he wasn't the only democrat doing it either. If he didn't downplay it New York wouldn't have had one of the worst corona responses in the world.
Quotes:
> "That is not going to happen, shelter in place, for New York City," Cuomo said on The Daily podcast by The New York Times. "For any city or county to take an emergency action, the state has to approve it. And I wouldn't approve shelter in place."
> "Quarantine in place, you can't leave your home," Cuomo said. "The fear, the panic is a bigger problem than the virus."
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/cuomo-says-he-wont-approve-c...
The big problem is that in the United States so much depends on the federal response. Having the CDC treating it like a political response removed the trigger and support for a lot of local actions because they had to do on their own what would normally have been a CDC publication by February. Similarly, waiting extra months to get serious about travel bans meant that local officials had to deal with a constant stream of infection from outside of their jurisdiction.
He literally said that panic was worse than the disease.
> The big problem is that in the United States so much depends on the federal response.
He could have locked down New York, but he told people to continue their lives as usual. This resulted in over 30k deaths, most of which could have been saved if he weren't so adamant in keeping business as usual for another week. And likely if he locked down he would have saved neighboring states as well, so maybe a hundred thousand lives in total could have been saved if he wanted to.
> Similarly, waiting extra months to get serious about travel bans
This was said days after Trump had enacted the travel ban against Europe and after we had confirmed cases in here in Europe known to be spread fron New York. Everyone knew New York was a corona hotbed at this time, yet he still kept things open for 10 more days. With a doubling of every 4 days it means he could have saved 80% of everyone who died in the east if he wanted to, but he choose to keep things open since "panic is worse than the disease".
This is just fear mongering. Millions of people have had covid now and so far there's zero evidence that it's significantly more likely to have long-term adverse side effects for the average person than any other respiratory virus.
>Reacting decisively, forcefully and without delay could make the difference between a disaster of epic proportions or something that we will barely remember in twenty years.
This is complete hyperbole. Sweden reacted minimally, and it was hardly a disaster of epic proportions: around four thousand people died in a country of ten million, and those were mostly nursing home residents, due to government failure to properly protect the nursing homes. In fact allowing the disease to spread seems to have brought some form of immunity, as predicted, since it's not experiencing a "second wave" like the other countries in Europe.
> Let me make something very plain here: it is not a choice between the health on the one side and the economy on the other. COVID-19 will continue to hurt us economically until there is a vaccin or we get our act together and decide to deal with it frontally.
This is also not true. After the lockdowns ended the economy has been continuously recovering, even in places where case numbers continued rising after lockdown (for instance the US, unemployment is falling now but covid cases never stopped rising). I don't understand how anybody can think the economic impact of literally forcing a bunch of businesses to close indefinitely is no worse than the impact of businesses just having fewer customers due to some people being scared to go because of the virus.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects....
> Sweden reacted minimally, and it was hardly a disaster of epic proportions: around four thousand people died in a country of ten million, and those were mostly nursing home residents, due to government failure to properly protect the nursing homes. In fact allowing the disease to spread seems to have brought some form of immunity, as predicted, since it's not experiencing a "second wave" like the other countries in Europe.
So far. Sweden was a few months behind the curve with every other Western European country due to accidents of Geography. They may have gotten off lucky, but they are the exception. The Swedish demographics and Geography do not translate well to other countries in Western Europe, even so, the thing here is to compare Sweden with the countries around it and based on that they could have done a lot better than they did.
> After the lockdowns ended the economy has been continuously recovering, even in places where case numbers continued rising after lockdown
I'm not sure if we are looking at the same data but the economy is still very much depressed compared to where it was in March. This situation is not likely to improve any time soon, wishing it so won't make it so. As an employer I too would very much like things to go back to normal ASAP, however, I'm not going to pretend that things are better than they are.
That’s hardly going to be true. Only because we’re told that we might get a vaccine people like the author make it sound like that this is the obvious thing to happen, but that is really no different than someone hoping to win the lottery. Realistically we need to consider that currently there is no vaccine and theoretically there might never be one. If the above statement is true then theoretically we will never recover from COVID until eternity which is obviously quite ridiculous to say.
I think we should be planning for a way to live alongside COVID with the prospect of never having a vaccine and come up with a way of life that the population can get onboard with. Obviously we all hope that there will be a vaccine and we’ll get an easy way out, but it’s irresponsible to take hard damaging hits now with the outlook that this is a temporary hit only until the magic solution will follow shortly. We don’t know this. We should take actions which allow us to live in a worst case scenario, not the best case. Taking huge short term pains under the assumption of a magic way out doesn’t feel particularly smart. I think we need to consider more measured and balanced forms of dealing with this pandemic because we might be in this for a very long time.
"Even today it is not guaranteed that a useful vaccine will be developed at all"
But... a vaccine in the US exists and is effective at making an immune response in all testing so far. Maybe the vaccine won't stop all woes. Maybe the virus will mutate too fast. But the vaccine exists today. It's not a pie in the sky dream.
It's more of an ambitious project with multiple contenders then a lottery at this point. There's a chance they could all fail, but it's not huge.
Also humans are not an especially endangered species, so there is not much to fear on that side