Sweden - is the rest of the world dumb, blind or worse ?

[cmarshall]

51 minutes ago, mommysboy said:

It is undoubtedly true that there have been very low rates in Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and a few other countries.  In these countries we can safely say they simply were wise to the dangers of such a virus. Taiwan in particular wasn't going to listen to China for a second.  I can only think that the major European countries took on board the Chinese figures, and wrongly reasoned that the pandemic could be handled in the same way as influenza.

 

My comment merely pointed out that whilst some countries sought to produce accurate figures, others didn't.  UK is at least making some pretence of accuracy, whilst I do not think the same can be said for significant others.

The fact is that neither the Trump government in the US nor the Johnson government in UK ever had any interest in trying to mitigate the pandemic in their countries.  The Republicans and the Tories are only interested in governing at all to the extent that they can serve the interests of their rich sponsors.  They want to reduce government functions in every area including public health.  It wasn't that they were misled somehow by the Chinese into their policies of abdicating their responsibilities.  That was always their intention.  They didn't so much fail at controlling the virus and just couldn't be bothered even to try.  The fact that the UK is the second worst in deaths per million while the US is number nine is an utter disgrace in both instances.  It shows how deep the corruption runs in those countries.

 

 

[Bender Rodriguez]

20 hours ago, chessman said:

A good example of this is Russia.

 

just in St. Petersburg, 1552 more people died (of all causes) in May 2020 than last year. Only 171 officially died of Covid. So it is likely that The real Russian death toll Is much higher.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/st-petersburg-death-tally-casts-doubt-on-russian-coronavirus-figures

 

some countries put people with multiple chronic diseases on the way to their death (in hospice) and accidentally also got covid19 as COVID19 the pandemic virus that killed them

 

new numbers:  not worse as a bad flu season

 

old sick people DIE

[chessman]

20 minutes ago, Bender Rodriguez said:

new numbers:  not worse as a bad flu season

People keep saying this and there is no way to justify it.  It is just wrong.
 

 

[mommysboy]

12 hours ago, cmarshall said:

The fact is that neither the Trump government in the US nor the Johnson government in UK ever had any interest in trying to mitigate the pandemic in their countries.  The Republicans and the Tories are only interested in governing at all to the extent that they can serve the interests of their rich sponsors.  They want to reduce government functions in every area including public health.  It wasn't that they were misled somehow by the Chinese into their policies of abdicating their responsibilities.  That was always their intention.  They didn't so much fail at controlling the virus and just couldn't be bothered even to try.  The fact that the UK is the second worst in deaths per million while the US is number nine is an utter disgrace in both instances.  It shows how deep the corruption runs in those countries.

 

 

With Governments you always look for greed or incompetence; the latter is most likely imo.

[cmarshall]

3 hours ago, mommysboy said:

With Governments you always look for greed or incompetence; the latter is most likely imo.

But incompetence or a refusal to carry out its duties has not been characteristic of all governments.  For instance, S. Korea, New Zealand, Iceland, Greece, Thailand, Taiwan, PROC, and Australia all did an excellent, even admirable, job of containing Covid.  It was overwhelmingly the Western governments that failed miserably.  

 

The problem isn't government, but bad government.

[mommysboy]

8 hours ago, cmarshall said:

But incompetence or a refusal to carry out its duties has not been characteristic of all governments.  For instance, S. Korea, New Zealand, Iceland, Greece, Thailand, Taiwan, PROC, and Australia all did an excellent, even admirable, job of containing Covid.  It was overwhelmingly the Western governments that failed miserably.  

 

The problem isn't government, but bad government.

I just said that when governments get it wrong, then one should look for greed or incompetence.

 

It really is about one thing and one thing only- going in to lockdown early.  The western governments didn't do this for some strange reason.  I think they based their models on a reported death rate in PRC of just 3000, whereas we now know even 30,000 may be an underestimate.

 

But make no mistake eradication is/was impossible in the long run, and it relies on a magic bullet answer.

Edited June 6, 2020 by mommysboy

[cmarshall]

6 hours ago, mommysboy said:

I just said that when governments get it wrong, then one should look for greed or incompetence.

 

It really is about one thing and one thing only- going in to lockdown early.  The western governments didn't do this for some strange reason.  I think they based their models on a reported death rate in PRC of just 3000, whereas we now know even 30,000 may be an underestimate.

 

But make no mistake eradication is/was impossible in the long run, and it relies on a magic bullet answer.

Dr. Bruce Aylward of WHO pointed out that having to lockdown is indication of a failure to control the virus using known best practices:  surveillance of possible emerging viruses in China and Africa, testing, quarantine of positives and those who have had contact with positives, and then contact tracing.  If a country takes these steps starting early enough a lockdown is not necessary.  It's only after they have already failed to contain the virus that a lockdown becomes the only remaining option.  South Korea executed this plan meticulously, kept their death count to a total of 273, and never locked down.  This is important because the economic damage comes from the lockdown, not the sickness.

 

All of the Western countries failed including Germany.  Nearly all of the deaths in the West were avoidable as well as the economic damage.  

[Scott]

A post with a dubious video has been reported and removed.  

 

[nauseus]

6 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Dr. Bruce Aylward of WHO pointed out that having to lockdown is indication of a failure to control the virus using known best practices:  surveillance of possible emerging viruses in China and Africa, testing, quarantine of positives and those who have had contact with positives, and then contact tracing.  If a country takes these steps starting early enough a lockdown is not necessary.  It's only after they have already failed to contain the virus that a lockdown becomes the only remaining option.  South Korea executed this plan meticulously, kept their death count to a total of 273, and never locked down.  This is important because the economic damage comes from the lockdown, not the sickness.

 

All of the Western countries failed including Germany.  Nearly all of the deaths in the West were avoidable as well as the economic damage.  

What about the failure of eastern countries? Specifically China???

[mommysboy]

10 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Dr. Bruce Aylward of WHO pointed out that having to lockdown is indication of a failure to control the virus using known best practices:  surveillance of possible emerging viruses in China and Africa, testing, quarantine of positives and those who have had contact with positives, and then contact tracing.  If a country takes these steps starting early enough a lockdown is not necessary.  It's only after they have already failed to contain the virus that a lockdown becomes the only remaining option.  South Korea executed this plan meticulously, kept their death count to a total of 273, and never locked down.  This is important because the economic damage comes from the lockdown, not the sickness.

 

All of the Western countries failed including Germany.  Nearly all of the deaths in the West were avoidable as well as the economic damage.  

That very firmly implicates China and WHO, surely?

 

Certainly, the UK did do tracing.  However, there was a sudden surge of numbers that overwhelmed the system.  It suddenly became a futile exercise.  Unfortunately, somehow the Europeans got incorrect data about the Chinese outbreak!

[MikeyIdea]

Interesting article in a major Swedish newspaper today that should make people who support the Swedish model due to its financial benefits shAt Ap. 

 

Google translate 

Despite the fact that business operations, shops and restaurants have been kept open much like usual during the corona pandemic - Sweden's economy will be as suffering (about the same) as the countries that have closed down. This is forecasting the Riksbank in a new forecast. 

- Riskbank is The Swedish central bank. 

- Google translate didn't translate correctly so I added within brackets (about the same) to align the meaning with the original Swedish text. 

 

Europe is opening up now and European travel is starting, European tourism will slowly start, except Sweden of course. Sweden is shunned. 

 

The Swedish experiment: an economical fiasco. 

 

Link is to the Swedish language newspaper Aftonbladet so I'm not allowed to post it, sorry. PM me if you want it

Edited June 7, 2020 by MikeyIdea

[cmarshall]

17 hours ago, nauseus said:

What about the failure of eastern countries? Specifically China???

Time to get real.  China had 3.33 deaths per million.  It's true they bungled the outbreak and so had to lockdown Wuhan and then Hubei Province, but thereafter they followed the best practices scrupulously: testin, quarantine positives, and trace contacts.  They never had to lockdown any other area after their initial failure.  

 

New Cases in China

 

By contrast, the US has had 330.28 deaths per million and climbing.

 

All of the Western countries have had 100 times the deaths per million rate of the Asian countries.

 

Be grateful that you had to ride this out in a country with a competent public health bureaucracy.

 

As always, you are fully entitled to ignore the facts in favor of whatever fantasy makes you feel comfortable.

[yuyiinthesky]

8 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Time to get real.  China had 3.33 deaths per million.  It's true they bungled the outbreak and so had to lockdown Wuhan and then Hubei Province, but thereafter they followed the best practices scrupulously: testin, quarantine positives, and trace contacts.  They never had to lockdown any other area after their initial failure.  

 

 

 

By contrast, the US has had 330.28 deaths per million and climbing

Did China have a lockdown where the population was locked down in their homes/rooms?
Wasn't it only that they locked the region, Wuhan, no travel in and out?

If indeed so then China proves that the 'shelter in home' draconian lockdown was not needed. As the US / UK / Belgium numbers also show, despite draconian lockdowns, it did not get them to lower numbers than China, not even the same.

[yuyiinthesky]

17 hours ago, MikeyIdea said:

an economical fiasco. 

As said earlier, of course Sweden as a heavily export oriented country will suffer a lot if the economy in the countries they export to goes down. No surprise there.

Tourism is a different story, let's see how much tourism will happen this year, everywhere.

[Sheryl]

7 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

Did China have a lockdown where the population was locked down in their homes/rooms?
Wasn't it only that they locked the region, Wuhan, no travel in and out?

If indeed so then China proves that the 'shelter in home' draconian lockdown was not needed. As the US / UK / Belgium numbers also show, despite draconian lockdowns, it did not get them to lower numbers than China, not even the same.

Not sure about the rest of the province but Wuhan was a complete stay home lockdown. They even had the military delivering food i.e. people could not go put to buy it so stricter than here or in the West.

[yuyiinthesky]

There is an interesting interview conducted and published by John Anderson with Nobel-prize winning professor Michael Levitt.

John Anderson is former deputy Prime Minister of Australia, so I'd say somebody we can dare to listen to.
Professor Michael Levitt is a globally renowned biophysicist and chemist. He received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,  together with Martin Karplus and Arieh Warshel, "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems."

it is a quite lengthy interview, and it contains also a lot about the professors view on Sweden and Sweden's way to fight Covid-19.

The interview is on Youtube in John Anderson's channel. Please look there for it. It is quite lengthy, but it contains a lot of information, also about the efforts to contact Neil Ferguson to point out some errors in his models. (At that time Neil Ferguson rejected the input of Professor Michael Levitt.)

(I thought I posted the video here before, but probably not, as I don't see it. If it was in another thread, and I'm repeating myself, I apologize)
 

Edited June 8, 2020 by yuyiinthesky

[yuyiinthesky]

7 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

Not sure about the rest of the province but Wuhan was a complete stay home lockdown. They even had the military delivering food i.e. people could not go put to buy it so stricter than here or in the West.

Thanks.

It is quite interesting that the focus on Wuhan seemed to have worked for China, despite many clusters elsewhere.

[Bkk Brian]

3 minutes ago, yuyiinthesky said:

Thanks.

It is quite interesting that the focus on Wuhan seemed to have worked for China, despite many clusters elsewhere.

China imposed strict lockdown where they considered it to be necessary not only in Wuhan

 

"China puts city of Shulan under Wuhan-style lockdown after fresh Covid-19 cases"

[nauseus]

9 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Time to get real.  China had 3.33 deaths per million.  It's true they bungled the outbreak and so had to lockdown Wuhan and then Hubei Province, but thereafter they followed the best practices scrupulously: testin, quarantine positives, and trace contacts.  They never had to lockdown any other area after their initial failure.  

 

New Cases in China

 

By contrast, the US has had 330.28 deaths per million and climbing.

 

All of the Western countries have had 100 times the deaths per million rate of the Asian countries.

 

Be grateful that you had to ride this out in a country with a competent public health bureaucracy.

 

As always, you are fully entitled to ignore the facts in favor of whatever fantasy makes you feel comfortable.

Time for you to get real. The main point that cannot to be ignored is that China is responsible for the existence and release of this virus and it is this fact that seems to make you both uncomfortable and defensive. If truly responsible measures had been taken by China, and if the Chinese had  learned from their own poor history of this type of outbreak, then the virus would have been contained in country before it contaminated the rest of the world.

 

They haven't even apologised.

 

[chessman]

2 hours ago, yuyiinthesky said:

It is quite interesting that the focus on Wuhan seemed to have worked for China, despite many clusters elsewhere.

This is the most mysterious thing.

 

people asking why Tokyo and Bangkok have not been worse affected should be asking the same questions about Shanghai and Beijing. It’s very strange.

[mommysboy]

The Chinese figures are impossibly low.  

[Pattaya46]

3 hours ago, nauseus said:

// The main point that cannot to be ignored is that

China is responsible for the existence and release of this virus //

Speculation! It's totally impossible for anyone to prove that!

Nature doesn't need autorisation of a country to create a new virus.

[Monomial]

On 6/6/2020 at 10:52 AM, chessman said:

People keep saying this and there is no way to justify it.  It is just wrong.
 

 

When nobody trusts the numbers and statistics being put out by different governments according to dozens of different standards it is impossible to justify anything. Might be wrong. Might not. Who knows really. I don't. You don't. Even the researchers don't. They can only make models based on the data available. If the data is faulty, then the model will be bad as well. We'll only really know the truth a decade from now.

 

I can say this. If you didn't have all these sources, and if all you knew was what you could see and hear around you, would you have even known there was a virus, or would you simply have said "Hope I don't catch the flu" and gone about your business? Even in Italy and New York I doubt people would have been running for the hills like the Black Death. There might have been a few tent hospitals at worst like in 1918. And ultimately I doubt the world would have even hiccuped if not for governments screaming the sky is falling.

 

The real problem is that this virus just isn't scary enough or deadly enough that people are willing to accept the global (over)reaction to it. What people *DO* see however, what is absolutely crystal clear, is their livelihoods being destroyed by these lockdowns and restrictions.

 

The governments of the world are going to have a lot to answer for when the dust settles if this virus doesn't ultimately look like the big bad boogeyman they made it out to be. I see alot of rhetoric and spin in the near future. And I see many PhD thesis for historians about this period for a century to come.

 

 

[Logosone]

3 hours ago, nauseus said:

Time for you to get real. The main point that cannot to be ignored is that China is responsible for the existence and release of this virus and it is this fact that seems to make you both uncomfortable and defensive. If truly responsible measures had been taken by China, and if the Chinese had  learned from their own poor history of this type of outbreak, then the virus would have been contained in country before it contaminated the rest of the world.

 

They haven't even apologised.

 

I agree.

 

If China's lockdown had worked so well why did the virus spread to the rest of the world?

 

Besides, everyone knows China's numbers are pure fantasy, even the Chinese don't believe it.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/china-coronavirus-cases-might-have-been-four-times-official-figure-says-study

[Logosone]

6 hours ago, Sheryl said:

Not sure about the rest of the province but Wuhan was a complete stay home lockdown. They even had the military delivering food i.e. people could not go put to buy it so stricter than here or in the West.

After half the population of Wuhan had left the city already of course. Bit pointless to do a lockdown AFTER half the population left the city.

[chessman]

34 minutes ago, Monomial said:

When nobody trusts the numbers and statistics being put out by different governments according to dozens of different standards it is impossible to justify anything. Might be wrong. Might not. Who knows really. I don't. You don't. Even the researchers don't. They can only make models based on the data available. If the data is faulty, then the model will be bad as well. We'll only really know the truth a decade from now.

 

I can say this. If you didn't have all these sources, and if all you knew was what you could see and hear around you, would you have even known there was a virus, or would you simply have said "Hope I don't catch the flu" and gone about your business? Even in Italy and New York I doubt people would have been running for the hills like the Black Death. There might have been a few tent hospitals at worst like in 1918. And ultimately I doubt the world would have even hiccuped if not for governments screaming the sky is falling.

 

The real problem is that this virus just isn't scary enough or deadly enough that people are willing to accept the global (over)reaction to it. What people *DO* see however, what is absolutely crystal clear, is their livelihoods being destroyed by these lockdowns and restrictions.

 

The governments of the world are going to have a lot to answer for when the dust settles if this virus doesn't ultimately look like the big bad boogeyman they made it out to be. I see alot of rhetoric and spin in the near future. And I see many PhD thesis for historians about this period for a century to come.

High numbers of worldwide flu deaths are calculated with models that look at all-cause mortality, that is why the figures are often given as a range.

 

Covid deaths are calculated by doctors making decisions on cause of death, almost always with a Positive test. You can question this all you want but analysis of all-cause mortality suggest that these deaths are actually being undercounted. 
 

if your seriously think that the data is so incomplete that you don’t have an opinion on whether Covid is worse than the flu, I would suggest your anger over the economic issues is blinding you about the Public health crisis.

 

in Italy, for example, they have had 100s of doctors die after catching Covid. They have had hospitals, in their busiest time,  where hundreds and hundreds of nurses and other staff were on sick leave after showing symptoms. Is this normal for flu?
 

when the dust settles, the picture will be immensely complicated and I would imagine your simplistic reading of economic catastrophe caused by government over-reaction will be mainly made by a small group of right wing loudmouths. What governments in Europe will have to answer for will be their lack of serious preparation in January and February, the fact that they did too little and they did it too late.

[nauseus]

31 minutes ago, Logosone said:

After half the population of Wuhan had left the city already of course. Bit pointless to do a lockdown AFTER half the population left the city.

Yep, gong xi fa cai and all that!

 

 

Happy New Virus.

[nauseus]

1 hour ago, Pattaya46 said:

Speculation! It's totally impossible for anyone to prove that!

Nature doesn't need autorisation of a country to create a new virus.

Aha. So it was created then, or is that speculation? 

[Pattaya46]

5 minutes ago, nauseus said:

Aha. So it was created then, or is that speculation? 

Uh? Maybe it's not the correct word, but I used "create" the same way as in "Nature created life" or "Nature created all species on Earth". Human was not needed for all that. (Human is just one of created species)

[Logosone]

1 hour ago, nauseus said:

Yep, gong xi fa cai and all that!

 

 

Happy New Virus.

That was certainly part of it, the other was that when the writing was on the wall many Chinese, rightly, assumed being in a locked down city might not be a great idea and just left.

 

"The mayor of Wuhan, China, said about five million people left the city before it was placed on lockdown last week to slow the spread of coronavirus."

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/5-million-left-wuhan-before-coronavirus-quarantine-2020-1?r=DE&IR=T