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Comment by febeling | Hacker News Reader

So why not choose (1)?

This seems to have been the strategy in the past with similar risks. And it avoids the costs of freedom and live at the same time. What am I missing?

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That it doesn't work. Sweden had to go back on it, and in many countries trying to do (1) ended up with hospitals full - like France. Everything was done to avoid a third lockdown this spring, but hospitals are at 150% capacity and here we are again. Are you aware of some magic trick that negates that?

Sweden did not "go back on it". They remain with significantly lighter restrictions than ~all of continental Europe:

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/the-public-health-agency...

As far as I can tell, their most stringent restrictions are limits on group gatherings to 8, and closing bars at 8pm:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-30/swedish-h...

Contrast to France, Italy, the UK, Belgium, etc., where people have been forcibly restricted to their homes for a significant portion of the last year.

And Sweden has the worst infection and death rates per capita compared to all of Scandinavia:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1113834/cumulative-coron...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14034948209802...

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/sweden

But they faired much better than e.g. Spain and Belgium.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/24/swedens-2020-death-...

Which are incomparable due to a vast amount of variables ( culture, population density, population spread in housing, temperatures, weather, etc.)

That's patently false.

Everyone compares countries all the time.

You literally just did it a few posts up by comparing it to other Scandinavian countries which are all different from Sweden.

Covid zealots compare other countries to New Zealand when it's convenient.

All with different cultures climate population density etc.

If what you're saying is true then you can't make any claims about any country's success rate because they're all unique.

You're just selecting Sweden as incomparable because it doesn't fit your narrative.

Scandinavian countries have similar cultures, population densities, climates, customs ( e.g. people don't kiss on the cheek when they meet, which is what French people used to do pre-pandemic). They're more comparable between themselves than with Spain, with an entirely different climate, people living much closer together, etc.

New Zealand are isolated by water from everyone, lockdown is drastically easier in that case.

Swedes are European and share as much in common with Europeans as they do with other Scandinavian countries. Comparing Sweden to other European countries is a perfectly valid comparison.

You're cherry picking and choosing cultural aspects and labeling it as 'unquestionable fact' with no scientific evidence.

Classic Covid zealot move.

As a matter of fact, we're all human beings that like to congregate together and eat out and go to bars and coffee shops and see live music, and our biological drives have way more significance than anything cultural .

It's extremely disingenuous.

You have never visited any of those places, have you?

I don't know what "Covid zealot" is supposed to mean, but i think you need a reality check.

So, let's be clear: you make claims that aren't true (Sweden hasn't done what you originally claimed; they have significantly fewer restrictions than most of Europe, even today), and then when people point out the factual inaccuracies in your statements, you retreat to arguing about the wisdom of Sweden's choices.

Reasonable people can disagree about policy choices, but misrepresenting facts as a starting point does not make you look reasonable.

My claims are true, Sweden has significantly tightened restrictions. And to add insult to injury, their death rate is appalling, so their policy was indeed wrong on top of not working.

You said:

> Sweden had to go back on it

They did not. If your standard for "going back on it" is "adding some restrictions", then you are erecting a straw man argument. By this standard, every country in Europe "had to go back on it", as all of them changed their tactics over time.

Also, not incidentally: I'm aware of no legitimate source for the claim that Sweden's hospitals were "full" (which is a non-specific claim). Most sources I've read emphasized that hospitals were under stress -- like in most parts of the Europe -- with some hospitals closer than others to capacity, and resources being shifted around the nation to manage:

https://www.thelocal.se/20201211/is-the-second-wave-overload...

Again, you could take this article and put it in Paris, Berlin, London, Brussels or other major cities in Europe in December of 2020. Details matter, and vague claims that "hospitals are full" are meaningless.

When their policy is "let's avoid any restrictions and just ask people to stay away from each other", and then they add light ( compared to other countries) restrictions, how is that not "going back [on their initial policy]"? No other European country persisted with the "no restrictions" policy post-spring 2020.

And i never said the Swedish hospital system was "full", just that their death toll compared to their neighbours was appalling, and said neighbors had to add restrictions on movement from Sweden.

My understanding is that these restrictions were only imposed in December of last year (and are in force until at least 30 June), so I would tend to agree with the parent that they definitely changed directions.

They added some restrictions, certainly, but it's completely inaccurate to suggest that they've somehow reversed course -- the OP is erecting an ideologically rigid, straw-man argument that Sweden can never do anything differently at all, or they are somehow "going back on" their initial approach.

Overall, Sweden has taken a light touch with the pandemic, and continues to do so, even though, yes, they've adapted over time.

Of course they went back on their initial approach, same as the UK. If you say "no need to restrict anything, it will go away", your death toll is significantly hire than comparable countries, and then you enact restrictions, what is that? Yes, the situation and our knowledge of the virus and the pandemic is highly evolving and the UK took barely a few months before making a U-turn, while Sweden persisted for many months with their strategy, in spite of the death toll, and some research saying that the economic impact is still significant.

The secret to not having hospitals overwhelmed is to have enough capacity in the first place, but also to avoid superspreader events. Sweden did ban some gatherings and they did close down schools briefly.

Most other lockdown measures are questionable at best, including mandatory mask usage. They are clearly symbolic tools for the political class to signal that something is being done, but the data to support them is not very strong considering that there is not much of a control group.

> The secret to not having hospitals overwhelmed is to have enough capacity in the first place

Enough for what? Hospital capacity was wildly sufficient for regular times, but the pandemic turned that around. Even Germany, which has multiple times the capacity per capita than France, is struggling in that regard. What is "enough"?

> but also to avoid superspreader events

Lol. Events with more than 2000 people outside ( at the best of times, usually it has been flat out forbidden), and 6-100 inside have been forbidden in France since last year. That obviously didn't help.

> Most other lockdown measures are questionable at best, including mandatory mask usage. They are clearly symbolic tools for the political class to signal that something is being done, but the data to support them is not very strong considering that there is not much of a control group.

There is, check the US and Brazil.

> Enough for what? Hospital capacity was wildly sufficient for regular times, but the pandemic turned that around.

Indeed, "enough" for normal times is not the same as "enough" for pandemic times.

> Even Germany, which has multiple times the capacity per capita than France, is struggling in that regard. What is "enough"?

Of course it's a "struggle" to suddenly work at capacity, but Germany wasn't in the situation of having to turn down patients. To the contrary, Germany was able to pick up patients from neighboring countries. That's "enough".

> Events with more than 2000 people outside ( at the best of times, usually it has been flat out forbidden), and 6-100 inside have been forbidden in France since last year. That obviously didn't help.

How do you know that it didn't help? We know from epidemiological studies that superspreader events were responsible for causing a surge of cases in a short amount of time.

> There is, check the US and Brazil.

There really isn't, we have countries with strong lockdowns doing poorly and countries with weak lockdowns doing relatively well, and everything in between. Lockdown measures are also difficult to compare, as are populations, as is testing and reporting.

For example, Brazil with minimal lockdowns is doing just as poorly as Peru, with heavy lockdowns. Florida is doing better than many other US states with heavier restrictions. Japan is supposedly doing well with few restrictions, but also performs little testing.

There are lots of variables and unknowns here and one can always cherrypick data to argue for or against lockdowns in various forms.

That was during the first lockdown. More recently, they're closer to capacity:

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-germany-icu-capacit...

> How do you know that it didn't help? We know from epidemiological studies that superspreader events were responsible for causing a surge of cases in a short amount of time.

It didn't help in the sense that hospitals are overcapacity and new cases, hospitalisation and death rates were still exploding until the recent pseudo-lockdown.

"An intensive care doctor has warned that only five to 10% of intensive care beds are still available in parts of Germany."

In most countries, running at 90% ICU capacity is the normal state of affairs, Germany being an exception.

Of course you can always warn that the health care system is just about to collapse.

In 2015:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/19/nhs-collapse...

In 2016:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/10/hospitals-on...

In 2017:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/20/nhs-at-break...

In 2018:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/nhs-fa...

In 2019:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/02/nhs-winter-c...

In 2020:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/21/doctors-warn-c...

In 2021:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/09/nhs-counts-the...

Spoiler: The NHS did not collapse. Working right at the brink of collapse is normal.

> It didn't help in the sense that hospitals are overcapacity and new cases, hospitalisation and death rates were still exploding until the recent pseudo-lockdown.

According to your own source, hospitals are not over capacity. If you had a few super spreader events, that could obviously change rather quickly. Whether a "pseudo-lockdown" meaningfully slows spread is not so obvious.

It’s absolutely true that ICU capacity generally runs at 90% utilisation - ICU beds are bloody expensive (staffing etc). In NSW, Australia, where I live and work (and have worked in ICU) there is a statewide ICU service so if you need a bed and you’re on the other end of the state you can end up getting transferred 1500 km to be in one.

Having said that about utilisation, what pandemic beds requirements meant in the rest of the world and would have meant here is that no elective surgeries could be performed; leukaemia/cancer patient stem cell/marrow transplants couldn’t go ahead and trauma victims risked not being able to be cared for. This was absolutely the case in the UK during the height of things (friends are ortho/trauma surgeons over there and ended up working as assistants in nursing for 3-4 weeks in January).

So, with increase in ICU bed availability through adding new beds and with stopping any potential procedures that would electively require an ICU bed for recovery countries were able to basically meet demands (although many of my emergency colleagues in the UK reported having to determine who was going to be for ICU or not - ie top level care was not offered to some people during the height due to lack of resources) - there is now a massive backlog of patients requiring their baseline care to be fulfilled.

For example, another of my colleague’s mothers is a (retired) dermatologist in London. She was pulled back into work because there are now people presenting eith melanomas that were missed because no one was going for their regular care early in the year. And now they’ve spread and now people are dying because of this; not to mention the backup.

There’s no silver lining here.

You moved the goal post to encompass elective surgeries and other things.

The argument was: Did the hospitals overflow from Covid?

And they did not overflow anywhere in the world.

From the CBC: The latest on the coronavirus outbreak for April 20 [1]

> New Toronto field hospital prepares to accept patients as ICUs overflow

> Greater Toronto Area hospitals are so overwhelmed due to record COVID-19 admissions that some patients are being transferred to health-care centres outside the region.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/coronavirus-newsletter-april-...

Covid zealots say #believeTheSciene but the use the news media as scientific sources.

Post an actual link to ICU numbers if you truly '#believeTheScience'

Here I did it for you.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=078a3...

Do your own data analysis and see ICU admissions are only up 15% or so.

Also, according to other media outlets, ICUs in Toronto haven't filled up, they're 'NEAR capacity'.....which has been the story for over a year everywhere.

The media drums things up to make money and should not be used as evidence for your argument.

The media also said San Diego ICUs and Houston ICUs were overflowing but it didn't happen.

For example, this sensation article never happened:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/...

Do you have anything supporting your argument of hospital overflow with substance?

Or do you get all of your 'science' from the news media?

I'm not posting to try to convince you, as you're clearly beyond reason. I just find some aspects of your comments here interesting, and worth laying out for any third party who might read them.

First you attacked a comment (above), claiming they'd moved goalposts in their arguments, and then you claimed hospitals had not overflowed. Subsequently, you responded to a comment providing a citation saying they did, by demanding a different source - which is moving the goalposts, the very thing you criticized in someone else.

Here, look at this, another article showing Indian hospitals have overflowed, this time from Reuters:

> Indian hospitals turn away patients in COVID-19 ‘tsunami’ [1]

This is relevant because you yourself consider Reuters a citable source, at least when you like what it is saying [2].

That comment you cited Reuters in reminded me of another of your comments [3] (I actually did mark your words, as requested):

> Mark my words America is heading towards herd immunity as long as we stay this course, and this will be all over by the end of the year. (you, eight months ago)

How's that herd immunity coming along? Was it all over by the end of the year?

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-daily-coronavirus...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26732877

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24277509

I'm glad you marked my words.

Texas had 40,000 people at a football game, has no covid restrictions, and is at record lows for Covid.

With the exception of Michigan almost every single state has reached record lows of Covid.

It's not an exact science but we have reached herd immunity in almost all of America within a few months of what I predicted.

All with only 25 to 40 percent vaccination number. So it's clearly not vaccination or restrictions providing the full herd immunity.

As for India sure I'll give you that. I should amend my statement to mean 'First world' countries with adequate ICU capacity had no ICU overflow.

You have to quote a third world country with the average personal income of 2000 dollars a month to support your argument because the hundreds and hundreds of other worldwide first and second world countries didn't have any hospital overflows. This is not surprising or unexpected and disingenuous of you to discredit hundreds of other countries in favor of a single country to support your argument.

However, the rest of the first world outside of India has had no hospital overflow.

Asking for a legitimate source this is not the news media.... is not 'moving the goal posts'.

You 'beleiveInScience' Covid zealots think the news media is science. I hate to break it to you but the news media is not a reliable scientific source. You should try to learn what science is before you #believe in it.

I'm not sure what you Covid zealots require to feel safe again.

I legitimately feel sorry for you.

You're in a permanent prison of fear.

I have to say, you never disappoint: you've moved the goalpost again.

You're implicitly conceding that contrary to your earlier assertions, there have been hospital overflows, but now are further restricting your claims to only apply to first and second world countries.

You're also ignoring the fact that I chose this particular article not because I couldn't find first world examples (I already did, see above), but because this one was from a source (Reuters) you've already endorsed by citing articles from it yourself.

Now you're writing a rambling attack to distract from the fact that you have nothing to support your claims, and can only try to evade the evidence against them.

Sure Ill concede that out of hundreds of countries, one third world country of India has had hospital overflows.

Any person with good faith and an honest mindset would agree that India is the exception not the rule.

Covid zealots are not known for honesty though.

I don't know what the f your problem is, but you're wrong. France is today, even past the worst of the current wave, still at more than 100% original capacity of ICU beds. (118% for France, 152% for the Ile de France region with Paris)

Official sources and raw data: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210310-paris-hospitals-... https://bonjour.tousanticovid.gouv.fr/app.html#chiffres

Are you going to shift the goalposts again and redefine to "Anglosphere first world countries"? Or are you going to admit you don't know what the hell you're talking about?

"Covid zealots" is a peculiar term, i'll give that. Makes little sense of course, but nothing you say does.

The first article that you linked was a news article and said "Near capacity" not "Over capacity" and the second link you posted didn't have ICU numbers that I could see.

ICU's run "near capacity" all the time, so the news source you linked is simply stating a normal situation in a sensational context.

See here: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc....

What I mean by Covid zealot is people who believe things that aren't real about Covid based on poor critical thinking and/or poor understanding of the data or some other reason that I don't understand.

The second link includes ICU numbers in the "rea" ( for reanimation, the French term for ICU). Pre-pandemic capacity is readily available online.

ICUs in France had their capacity doubled over last summer, and since the beginning of the year everything elective has been postponed to make place for Covid patients.

> What I mean by Covid zealot is people who believe things that aren't real about Covid based on poor critical thinking and/or poor understanding of the data or some other reason that I don't understand

So denialists that still fail to grasp the gravity of the situation, like yourself?

Unless, I'm missing something about that link you posted, it's just simply showing REA numbers increasing and not the total capacity of ICU.

Patient numbers are still NOT ICU capacity. Numbers can go up and still not be at capacity.

If I'm indeed not missing something that is either poor reasoning or a disengenuous citation.

If you get all of your information from the news media there's 'gravity to the situation' but if you look at statistics...

Covid is mostly over in the states and either over or on the downswing around the world, with the exception of a few third world countries.

You should look at statistics and not the news media.

In the U.S., States are at record lows of new infections and almost every state has lifted most of it's restrictions and we're not even at 40% vaccination rate.

Even New Zealand has opened it's borders to Austrailia and their vaccination rate is in the mid teens.

Covid's fatality rate in the states was around 0.00125 and I'm assuming other places as well.

Trying to understand the gravity of the situation that you claim exists.

It's like The 3 billion people who believe in God. Despite all evidence to the contrary the zealots will cling to their narrative.

> Covid's fatality rate in the states was around 0.00125 and I'm assuming other places as well.

Totally wrong. Johns Hopkins says the case fatality rate in the states is 1.8% [1]. Many others are worse, like Canada at 2.0% and 2.9% for the United Kingdom.

[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

500,000 dead / 400 million people.

You can do the math.

Hell only 33 million in the states tested positive for contracting Corona.

33 million / 400 million

Which is infection rate of .0825

Even if you double it to account for non tested cases that .16% JUST CASES.

Even if you double that you're not even at 1% yet.

The experts err to the EXTREME side of safety.

These are the same experts that say only eat steak if it's well done and not to drink more than 2/3 cup of wine in an evening.

The divisor for case fatality is number of infections, not total population.

You can look up the definition.

so 572,674 / 32,124,869 = 1.8%

As I already said, and as you can look up yourself, in the link I gave.

No that's the chance of death if you're already infected.

The fatality chance for a healthy person in the general population is the measure of risk for the average person. Using the same measure of population that the R value uses to calculate infectiousness.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

Have you been using 1.8% chance of death as your chance of dying? I would be scared too.

For a healthy person to become infected is a very small number to begin with and highly biased towards the elderly or people with co morbidities.

You can legitimately lighten up. Your risk from this is infinitesimally small if you're under 55 and healthy.

If not it's still unbelievably small.

This is right from the Johns Hopkins page linked to above:

> fatality ratios (the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases)

So you’re wrong. Again.

fatalities / infected = fatality rate of those infected.

It's literally the definitions of those words.

It's fine continue to be scared. I legit feel bad for you.

My state just lifted the mask mandate recently and were not even at 30% vaccination rate yet.

Feels good.

You're ignoring the reality, which is that people died preventable death and suffered preventable harm because hospitals were overwhelemed.

There are thousands of English HCPs talking about this. Here's one: https://twitter.com/seahorse4000/status/1386263023900319745?...

(That comment about staff is for their particular NHS trust, not the NHS as a whole)

We rationed oxygen

We shut the hospital

I was managing icu pts on amu

We stopped elective surgery

We had over 400 staff off with covid

I had 9 pts die on a single shift

Using twitter and the mainstream media are the new scientific sources.

interesting that you don't level the same at parent poster.

Parent poster was using links to mock the news media and evidence how unreliable and hypocritical they are.

You are using an anecdotal Tweet as an actual epidemiological citation.

It's very interesting to me how low the bar is for the Covid zealots scientific sources!

(2) leads to fewer deaths overall than (1). (1) gives better quality of life to the healthy than (2). (3) leads to fewer deaths than (1) or (2), but it requires political will. If you can pull it off, (3) is what you want. That's a big "if" though.

As a healthy person, I personally would have been better off under (1). However, I think the economic and emotional damage of that number of deaths would have been too much for society as a whole.

I'm not certain the emotional damage around the deaths would be worse than the emotional damage around the restrictions. Same with the economic damage, I'm entirely certain the the economic damaged caused by the death of a large amount of largely economically inactive persons would have been way less than the economic damage caused by forcibly shutting down large chunks of the economy.

The whole 1 vs 2 thing is just a matter of how much must the whole suffer for the benefit of the few?

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