Denmark declares it no longer considers coronavirus a socially critical disease | Hacker News Reader

Denmark declares it no longer considers coronavirus a socially critical disease

theguardian.com

39 pointskasperni18 comments

There’s an excellent (research-based) thread outlining some possible explanations for the Danish success story over on Twitter:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1436193837744107523.html

It really boils down to Denmark being a high trust society, and excellent communication from the government.

I just came back from holidays in Denmark. It was wonderful! No mask wearing anywhere. Around German and Italian tourists some wore masks and refused to take the same elevator, but overall it was as in the good old times. Back in Germany I still have to face the sceptics, refusing to vaccinate or even test, and nobody is checking the vaccination or test papers.

how did they get to 80% vaccinations? Any Danes here who can tell?

Ex-Danish resident here.

Denmark is a wonderland for issues like this where people need to come together and trust the government to do the right thing.

Simply put, people have a lot of trust in the government to do the right thing(rightly so because the government and its policy making are very transparent). There is exceptionally high level of social trust in the society and people generally stand up for the greater good.

Their immigration policies on the other hand is the polar opposite of being sane.

There's also a less charitable description of the high trust society as less of a hard-earned trait/moral attribute, and more of an artefact of the monoculture in Denmark (which would also go a long way to explain the prevalent attitudes/policies towards immigration).

Is 80% really that shocking? The US is on track to hit 80% pretty easily. Over 75% of the population >18 has at least one shot and the number is climbing.

Pretty sure this is incorrect. I read just this morning that we were more like 52% vaccinated

See for yourself:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-...

52% includes people ineligible for the vaccine, like infants and those <12. It also excludes those with at least 1 shot.

It gets the most press because it stokes the Vax vs Anti-Vax conflict narrative and gets more outrage clicks

Yes but Denmark's number include those with both shots.

> More than 80% of people above the age of 12 in the Scandinavian country have had the two shots

To be clear, Im not saying the US has higher vaccination rates than denmark, just that 80% in the US isn't outlandish or that far off.

I hope that you are right, but I fear we're in the long tail at this point

The CDC also has numbers on that: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-trends

I wouldnt fear too much about the last 25% of vaccinations. Keep in mind that post infection immunity is also quite good and the CDC estimates that 30+% of the population has been infected at this point.

The US has more than 300 million people and quite different cultures in the different states.

Then Scandinavian countries have like 5-10 million people and have no difference in culture (besides lots of immigration).

So when the government says something, most people have very similar ideas about it. The differences between people are not very big. It's not like a cowboy from Texas talking to a MIT graduate.

80% for USA would be like 80% for western Europe or similar.

I don't think the US will ever get to 80%, but more importantly Denmark has 95%+ in the 50+ age group, which is still by far the most likely to end up in hospital. A lot of US vaccination hesitancy seems to be in the older population, which ultimately means more deaths.

>A lot of US vaccination hesitancy seems to be in the older population, which ultimately means more deaths.

I wonder where you got this impression, because it is exactly backwards. The older an American is, the higher the vaccination rate. 93% of Americans over 65 have at least one dose. Highest hesitancy is with the young who have very low chances of personal complication.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-...

I don’t know for sure. Most think it’s natural to take the vaccine if it’s approved like other vaccines. It’s not like we don’t have antivaxxers here.

Its a small population. Nothing to see here. There are lots of areas on the planet with similar coverage that arent called a country.

There's a pretty good thread here from one of the advisors to the Danish government: https://twitter.com/M_B_Petersen/status/1436193837744107523?...

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