Coronavirus

[OldTimeHockey]

Just ridiculous that Masks are not legislated gear when out in public.  In the UK if you go into a store etc without a mask you may be fined 100 pounds.

To be fair, the UK hasnt exactly been an example of well executed COVID policy or strategy.

True but even in Canada, Tam didn't seem to realize that masks were our best line of defense in not spreading the disease.  Hard to believe she was even spouting off against it some point, I seem to remember. (could be wrong).

The learning to this pandemic is very fluid and at the point that Tam said masks don't help, they were learning new facts every hour. I kind of feel that they over exposed themselves as a government in their desire to inform the public. Perhaps there was too much info being passed. I know that's the opposite of what you want your government to do, but now you have people quoting recommendations from March to support their argument in July.

That's true, but I mean isn't there a playbook on infectious diseases? Like have there not been studies conducted for other viruses in the past that show some level of effectiveness or not? Asian countries have masked up for years, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be any data for other diseases. I think the idea that cloth masks would do more harm than good was kind of ridiculous (at worst I could see it as net neutral), and maybe this is the kind of debate laypeople have but surely our Chief medical officer would have more depth of knowledge on masking in a general sense than we do. Also this line of reasoning just resurfaced (although with a little more legitimacy) in the Sick Kids document saying kids under a certain age shouldn't be required to wear masks because younger kids might play with discarded masks on a playground and are less likely to spread disease (which when I talk to people with kids seems very untrue considering they complain about being sick frequently). I mean, there are a couple good arguments for kids not wearing masks but worrying about kids playing with discarded masks and spreading disease that way vs. lack of space, ventilation etc. is so bizarre to me.
 

I don't know that Tam ever said that masks do more harm than good (other than creating a false sense of security).
I believe many balls were dropped with this pandemic, but let's be honest, they were learning on the fly. I give both Ford and Trudeau a pass because of this very reason.

When this first struck they were unsure how this virus was passed. Was it airborne? Was it passed from item to item? Was it just saliva? Was it passed through the eyes? They had ideas but the goal posts kept moving as more and more cases popped up.

Also, as Nik says, there were real concerns on shortages of supply.

I get that but that but she did question whether they did more harm because people would be more likely to touch their face or not adhere to distancing. I mean, maybe you could just say "remember to still distance and wash your hands and not touch your face." The hoarding issue of cloth masks, I mean wouldn't it have been better if some people wore masks early on than none, even if access would be more difficult early on?

It's a coronavirus. I think a basic assumption would be that it transmits similarly to other coronaviruses and taking the precautionary principle makes sense. It's the same thing we are seeing now with some institutions saying kids aren't able to spread the virus. Why not take the cautious approach and just assume everyone transmits until proven otherwise and take steps to mitigate? Especially now that data supports children spreading of the virus. And it just strikes me as odd in saying masks would have no effect considering that PPE clearly works against this virus and surely SOME level of protection is better than none at all. From the epidemiologists I've followed on Twitter there was a large number of them saying masks protect the other person from your own droplets etc. fairly early on in April/May. There was a ton of foot dragging. And I'm not going to just tee off on Tam, I think Yaffe & Williams have been abysmal in their messaging.

At any rate, I think we're making a mistake by opening bars and not seeing if we can mask up younger kids, reduce class sizes and just generally have a better approach in the fall because having people shoved indoors without strong measures does not bode well for winter. I hope I'm wrong.

I don't disagree with anything that you are saying. Hindsights 20/20 and all that.
Yes, many of us would like to err on the side of caution, but unfortunately, many wouldn't. Which one of my biggest contentions with how the politicians have handled it. Sometimes it's felt more about trying to appease and gain more voters then to actually keep people safe. I've felt that way about Ford. I've felt that way about Trudeau as well.

 

[herman]

https://twitter.com/MatthewFacciani/status/1289579380990070785

 

[Stebro]

I'll give an update on Sweden, as it's been a while. The amount of icu admissions as well as deaths have decreased a lot. However it seems as if the virus is starting to increase in the group 20-29. We haven't really changed anything in our strategy, so immunity is probably playing a part. As for the economy the last I heard was that Sweden were doing best in the EU, although taking a big GDP hit in the second quarter.

The swedish strategy is based on an overall health approach. So we're not just focused on covid. The health agency is also considering factors such as mental health, abuse, what unemployment will lead to in terms of health issues. Also how not being in school would impact kids. There's no recommendation to wear face masks unless you work in the healthcare or with risk groups.

The experts here have different opinions on the evidence of the use of face masks. Currently the health agency stress that it's much more important to keep the social distance, as well as stay home if you are sick, and considering that our numbers are going down they see no reason to change things. They also say that a face mask can give you a false sense of security, and depending on whether you have underlying health issues or not a mask could make it worse. I would guess that maybe up to 5% wear face masks here.

In general I find the media reports of Sweden quite strange. From my perspective it's not the Swedish approach that is so odd, I'd say that it's the rest of the planet pretty much. From my perspective most countries seem hysterical, and let the virus control the desicion making, and completely ignore all the bad things it will lead to. I mean it's not the first time we get hit by a virus, and we haven't locked down before. It was tried during the spanish flu, but didn't work out too well. It is kind of worrying how much the planet have changed. Most people here are quite calm. Sure we talk about the amount of deaths, and that's sad, but the numbers here are based on those who died "with" covid. A lot of the old people here would have been sensitive to any kind of additional disease, not only covid, a regular cold or the flu could have been deadly as well.

Everyone is just waiting for the vaccine now, and there are so many unknowns. Is it safe? Can we even vaccinate covid away? We've tried to vaccinate the flu away for a long time, but we still have the flu.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly. I really wonder how kids growing up now will deal with all the fear and hysteria. Media in general have done an awful job imo, and it doesn't serve public health.

People here are in general quite relaxed, but more careful than usual. There are idiots though, which makes me annoyed. There is also a lot of information about our strategy and recommendations that are false, that's being spread in the media.

 

[Highlander]

Thanks Stebro for the update, it is most appreciated.  I live in interior BC where up till now Covid has virtually not touched, until now with the summer heat.  Young people are getting together to be....well young people, trying to have fun and meet other young people.  So in fact the fastest growing cases seem to be in the 20's for sure.

I wish things were being handled more like Sweden, there is far to much panic that the media spreads like wildfire. 

 

[Kin]

https://twitter.com/CityNews/status/1299385894659674113

Sigh...this is the world we live in.

 

[Frank E]

I'm shocked.

 

[princedpw]

I'll give an update on Sweden, as it's been a while. The amount of icu admissions as well as deaths have decreased a lot. However it seems as if the virus is starting to increase in the group 20-29. We haven't really changed anything in our strategy, so immunity is probably playing a part. As for the economy the last I heard was that Sweden were doing best in the EU, although taking a big GDP hit in the second quarter.

The swedish strategy is based on an overall health approach. So we're not just focused on covid. The health agency is also considering factors such as mental health, abuse, what unemployment will lead to in terms of health issues. Also how not being in school would impact kids. There's no recommendation to wear face masks unless you work in the healthcare or with risk groups.

The experts here have different opinions on the evidence of the use of face masks. Currently the health agency stress that it's much more important to keep the social distance, as well as stay home if you are sick, and considering that our numbers are going down they see no reason to change things. They also say that a face mask can give you a false sense of security, and depending on whether you have underlying health issues or not a mask could make it worse. I would guess that maybe up to 5% wear face masks here.

In general I find the media reports of Sweden quite strange. From my perspective it's not the Swedish approach that is so odd, I'd say that it's the rest of the planet pretty much. From my perspective most countries seem hysterical, and let the virus control the desicion making, and completely ignore all the bad things it will lead to. I mean it's not the first time we get hit by a virus, and we haven't locked down before. It was tried during the spanish flu, but didn't work out too well. It is kind of worrying how much the planet have changed. Most people here are quite calm. Sure we talk about the amount of deaths, and that's sad, but the numbers here are based on those who died "with" covid. A lot of the old people here would have been sensitive to any kind of additional disease, not only covid, a regular cold or the flu could have been deadly as well.

Everyone is just waiting for the vaccine now, and there are so many unknowns. Is it safe? Can we even vaccinate covid away? We've tried to vaccinate the flu away for a long time, but we still have the flu.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly. I really wonder how kids growing up now will deal with all the fear and hysteria. Media in general have done an awful job imo, and it doesn't serve public health.

People here are in general quite relaxed, but more careful than usual. There are idiots though, which makes me annoyed. There is also a lot of information about our strategy and recommendations that are false, that's being spread in the media.

At the moment, I don?t see any way to view Sweden?s decisions as anything but tragic.

At the moment, Sweden has the 7th worst death rate per capita.  And, of course, that means a high rate of very bad non-death outcomes (severe ongoing heart and lung problems, cognitive impairment, unknown future problems). This is despite significant structural advantages ? they weren?t hit early like Italy and they have relatively low population density (I?m guessing).

As for masks, it doesn?t really matter if there are some scientists in a particular country who are skeptical of their efficacy. The broader scientific community has a fair amount of evidence they work. So it just means these Swedish scientists who are unconvinced are likely wrong and the Swedish population will likely continue to suffer unnecessarily, as they already have.

 

[Kin]

We've tried to vaccinate the flu away for a long time, but we still have the flu.

Just to stop here a second I think this needs to to be fact-checked a bit. I'm not sure there really is or ever has been a wide-scale effort to come up with a vaccine that eradicates "the flu" because there is no singular disease that is the flu. Every year we get a new strain of flu and the vaccines that have to change every year are pretty good at keeping up with it.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly. I really wonder how kids growing up now will deal with all the fear and hysteria. Media in general have done an awful job imo, and it doesn't serve public health.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly.

Also, I'm really puzzled as to why you see this as a bad or new thing. Look at WW2. The world also faced a crisis there and very quickly people were willing to change their lives much more drastically than we have had to. Almost every factory in North America was re-fitted to produce military equipment, people accepted food rationing of important items, huge amounts of men uprooted their lives to join the army and women entered the work force.

By comparison our willingness and ability to change our circumstances were much more muted. But even then, I think it's really a sign of our resiliency and community spirit that we're willing to make personal sacrifices for a common good.

 

[Stebro]

I'll give an update on Sweden, as it's been a while. The amount of icu admissions as well as deaths have decreased a lot. However it seems as if the virus is starting to increase in the group 20-29. We haven't really changed anything in our strategy, so immunity is probably playing a part. As for the economy the last I heard was that Sweden were doing best in the EU, although taking a big GDP hit in the second quarter.

The swedish strategy is based on an overall health approach. So we're not just focused on covid. The health agency is also considering factors such as mental health, abuse, what unemployment will lead to in terms of health issues. Also how not being in school would impact kids. There's no recommendation to wear face masks unless you work in the healthcare or with risk groups.

The experts here have different opinions on the evidence of the use of face masks. Currently the health agency stress that it's much more important to keep the social distance, as well as stay home if you are sick, and considering that our numbers are going down they see no reason to change things. They also say that a face mask can give you a false sense of security, and depending on whether you have underlying health issues or not a mask could make it worse. I would guess that maybe up to 5% wear face masks here.

In general I find the media reports of Sweden quite strange. From my perspective it's not the Swedish approach that is so odd, I'd say that it's the rest of the planet pretty much. From my perspective most countries seem hysterical, and let the virus control the desicion making, and completely ignore all the bad things it will lead to. I mean it's not the first time we get hit by a virus, and we haven't locked down before. It was tried during the spanish flu, but didn't work out too well. It is kind of worrying how much the planet have changed. Most people here are quite calm. Sure we talk about the amount of deaths, and that's sad, but the numbers here are based on those who died "with" covid. A lot of the old people here would have been sensitive to any kind of additional disease, not only covid, a regular cold or the flu could have been deadly as well.

Everyone is just waiting for the vaccine now, and there are so many unknowns. Is it safe? Can we even vaccinate covid away? We've tried to vaccinate the flu away for a long time, but we still have the flu.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly. I really wonder how kids growing up now will deal with all the fear and hysteria. Media in general have done an awful job imo, and it doesn't serve public health.

People here are in general quite relaxed, but more careful than usual. There are idiots though, which makes me annoyed. There is also a lot of information about our strategy and recommendations that are false, that's being spread in the media.

At the moment, I don?t see any way to view Sweden?s decisions as anything but tragic.

At the moment, Sweden has the 7th worst death rate per capita.  And, of course, that means a high rate of very bad non-death outcomes (severe ongoing heart and lung problems, cognitive impairment, unknown future problems). This is despite significant structural advantages ? they weren?t hit early like Italy and they have relatively low population density (I?m guessing).

As for masks, it doesn?t really matter if there are some scientists in a particular country who are skeptical of their efficacy. The broader scientific community has a fair amount of evidence they work. So it just means these Swedish scientists who are unconvinced are likely wrong and the Swedish population will likely continue to suffer unnecessarily, as they already have.

There has been investigations regarding the deaths in covid in Sweden, and they've been confirmed to be higher than reality depending on how we count. I expect Sweden to do something similar to what The UK did. What was tragic was the spread in nursery homes early on, but that was unrelated to the strategy itself. Our population density is higher than what people in general think since pretty much 70% of our surface is forest and mountains.

I'm not convinced about masks unless we talk about high quality ones, used in the right situations for a limited amount of time. It seems like a lot think that as long as you wear a mask it's all good, that's a risk factor if it's not efficient enough and if you lack the knowledge of how to use it. Several european countries see more infection despite using masks.

I still think most of the world acted in panic and ignored science. Several experts wanted to do what Sweden did, but got ran over by politicans.

I don't know if we had it so much easier than Italy in one perspective, we had the lowest or second lowest amount of icu beds per capita in Europe.

 

[Stebro]

We've tried to vaccinate the flu away for a long time, but we still have the flu.

Just to stop here a second I think this needs to to be fact-checked a bit. I'm not sure there really is or ever has been a wide-scale effort to come up with a vaccine that eradicates "the flu" because there is no singular disease that is the flu. Every year we get a new strain of flu and the vaccines that have to change every year are pretty good at keeping up with it.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly. I really wonder how kids growing up now will deal with all the fear and hysteria. Media in general have done an awful job imo, and it doesn't serve public health.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly.

Also, I'm really puzzled as to why you see this as a bad or new thing. Look at WW2. The world also faced a crisis there and very quickly people were willing to change their lives much more drastically than we have had to. Almost every factory in North America was re-fitted to produce military equipment, people accepted food rationing of important items, huge amounts of men uprooted their lives to join the army and women entered the work force.

By comparison our willingness and ability to change our circumstances were much more muted. But even then, I think it's really a sign of our resiliency and community spirit that we're willing to make personal sacrifices for a common good.

My point is that there's no evidence whatsoever that we can vaccinate covid away, and it seems like that's what people are counting on. Then the question is if it's worth it to ruin the world economy, increase mental health issues, stress children with this etc. When people talk about us having around 5800 deaths of a population over 10 million, it's not that much, it's obviously tragic for those who lost someone, but most who died in Sweden were already very sick, and a cold, flu or anything really could have contributed to their death, but for some reason we chase every single covid case at all costs. We don't do that with the flu etc. I think all this changed the western world for worse, and it's not related to corona. We see a lot of unrest, people are suffering. Humans were born to be free, not be locked up. I know that a lot of media abroad is critical, but im actually very happy about living in Sweden, but I do think our early screw ups were sad, but now we're doing better than pretty much the rest of Europe, both with corona and our economy. Sweden has also opened up for using face masks in certain situations, but not in a forced fashion. I bought some, just in case something changes.

 

[Bender]

We've tried to vaccinate the flu away for a long time, but we still have the flu.

Just to stop here a second I think this needs to to be fact-checked a bit. I'm not sure there really is or ever has been a wide-scale effort to come up with a vaccine that eradicates "the flu" because there is no singular disease that is the flu. Every year we get a new strain of flu and the vaccines that have to change every year are pretty good at keeping up with it.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly. I really wonder how kids growing up now will deal with all the fear and hysteria. Media in general have done an awful job imo, and it doesn't serve public health.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly.

Also, I'm really puzzled as to why you see this as a bad or new thing. Look at WW2. The world also faced a crisis there and very quickly people were willing to change their lives much more drastically than we have had to. Almost every factory in North America was re-fitted to produce military equipment, people accepted food rationing of important items, huge amounts of men uprooted their lives to join the army and women entered the work force.

By comparison our willingness and ability to change our circumstances were much more muted. But even then, I think it's really a sign of our resiliency and community spirit that we're willing to make personal sacrifices for a common good.

My point is that there's no evidence whatsoever that we can vaccinate covid away, and it seems like that's what people are counting on. Then the question is if it's worth it to ruin the world economy, increase mental health issues, stress children with this etc. When people talk about us having around 5800 deaths of a population over 10 million, it's not that much, it's obviously tragic for those who lost someone, but most who died in Sweden were already very sick, and a cold, flu or anything really could have contributed to their death, but for some reason we chase every single covid case at all costs. We don't do that with the flu etc. I think all this changed the western world for worse, and it's not related to corona. We see a lot of unrest, people are suffering. Humans were born to be free, not be locked up. I know that a lot of media abroad is critical, but im actually very happy about living in Sweden, but I do think our early screw ups were sad, but now we're doing better than pretty much the rest of Europe, both with corona and our economy. Sweden has also opened up for using face masks in certain situations, but not in a forced fashion. I bought some, just in case something changes.

You've made quite a lot of assumptions in your post above that can be challenged. Obviously every point can be challenged but some points are closer to the truth than others, and saying there is no evidence that we can vaccinate our way out of this is just false. We have some evidence supporting promising vaccines, whether they offer long term immunity is a different story but at the end of the day I really don't care if SARS COV 2 infects every human on the planet if vaccination brings it in line with a cold or seasonal flu. There is a difference in preventing infection and in preventing disease. There absolutely is enough evidence to be hopeful that we will have a vaccine that will likely turn COVID from a 1% Infection Fatality Rate disease (potentially 20M - 75M worldwide dead) with a significant number of people who have recovered technically but are long haulers dealing with shortness of breath, headache, fatigue & other ailments for months (this really doesn't seem to get talked about enough) to a bad cold.

SARS COV 2 is not the flu. There are differences between this and the flu that are important, but basically as we have seen we can control this to a degree that we can't with flu. Flu isn't as contagious but it can spread a lot more quickly than SARS COV 2, making containment much harder. This is what we saw in the 1918 flu pandemic where it went wildly out of control very quickly and there was no way to catch up (this is the nature of flu), while you do have a level of control with this that you wouldn't have with flu. And, as I would note, if this flu was deadly enough we absolutely would be asked to quarantine or shelter in place. The fact is seasonal flu just isn't that big of a deal if we're comparing death rates. Once all was said and done the H1N1 flu of 2009 only killed 284,000 worldwide. We are still seeing 6,000 deaths a day globally from this and 850,000 total out of at most 300million total infections and I'm being SUPER generous with how many cases we may be missing globally.

anything really could have contributed to their death

I take some issue with the statement above. I have asthma. By your logic if I get COVID and die you will tell me "Well, he had asthma." Yes, it was a contributing factor, but I doubt you would say someone who had asthma deserved to die from COVID, so how can you rationalize this way? As well, you're also forgetting that many conditions are manageable. People live through chronic conditions all the time and can lead otherwise healthy lives. Many can withstand getting a cold or the flu, but the risk is a lot higher with COVID. COVID is generally agreed to be 5-10x stronger than seasonal flu. The saving grace of this disease is that the young generally don't get sick or have mild illness, but that doesn't mean I'm ok with giving people above 60 a potential death sentence because it doesn't affect me, or because they're already past their prime. On average people who have died have lost 10 years of life expectancy from COVID.

And to add, I have looked at reports of Sweden's GDP. It is not recovering any better than any of the other Nordic countries. There is this false choice being flouted around that lockdowns are killing the economy. I honestly believe that COVID is killing the economy and if you can stamp things out you are more likely to walk that tightrope and you can maintain a better standard of normal while the economy recovers: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/opinion/coronavirus-economy-reopen.html

The idea of front-loading cases is also kind of idiotic because the longer you can hold off the disease from taking hold the more chance you have of not just waiting it out for a vaccine but of improved understanding of the disease and treatment. Dexamethosone seems to really help keep people alive who are on ventilators who would normally have had a 50/50 at best shot of survival.

While we're at it how about I ask you how many deaths are acceptable? The States has 187,000 dead. If Sweden were the same size as the US, Sweden would have even more, and this is with likely at most 10% of the population having been infected. Would you be ok with 20k dead? 50k? Canada by comparison has half the death rate of Sweden and to be quite honest, I think even that is too high.

And to wrap things up, that isn't to say I am for another lockdown or stopping every case of COVID at all costs. I think that's a strawman and I don't think that's what anyone is saying in the absence of a vaccine or good treatment right now, because we literally don't have the tools to stop every case of COVID, but I do think initial lockdown accomplished a few things that made a lot of sense at the time

1. Figure out what it is we're dealing with
2. Buy time to work out issues in the fall
3. Stamp out flare ups as they occur to shield society at large
4. Clamp down on deaths

Making assumptions about this virus in March and letting it rip would've been the most negligent thing that could've been done because you can't put that genie back in the bottle. You can decide to let it rip later on if it's deemed safe enough, but you don't have that option if you've locked in that choice from the get go.

I understand we may have a difference of opinion and that's how you fell then you're entitled to how you feel, but I also think you've kind of already bought what Tegnell was selling from the beginning and I highly disagree with your position. I don't see any pro other than Sweden has been able to keep up a very questionable facsimile of normal.

 

[Phileas Fogg]

Good post, Flexo. Agree with your points.

 

[Kin]

My point is that there's no evidence whatsoever that we can vaccinate covid away, and it seems like that's what people are counting on. Then the question is if it's worth it to ruin the world economy, increase mental health issues, stress children with this etc. When people talk about us having around 5800 deaths of a population over 10 million, it's not that much, it's obviously tragic for those who lost someone, but most who died in Sweden were already very sick, and a cold, flu or anything really could have contributed to their death, but for some reason we chase every single covid case at all costs. We don't do that with the flu etc. I think all this changed the western world for worse, and it's not related to corona. We see a lot of unrest, people are suffering. Humans were born to be free, not be locked up. I know that a lot of media abroad is critical, but im actually very happy about living in Sweden, but I do think our early screw ups were sad, but now we're doing better than pretty much the rest of Europe, both with corona and our economy. Sweden has also opened up for using face masks in certain situations, but not in a forced fashion. I bought some, just in case something changes.

So I have a few thoughts in reply to that. First, I'm not sure everyone is necessarily counting on a vaccine. Obviously there are huge efforts towards that and there are good signs but I think as Bender noted trying to slow the spread of the virus is as much about learning about it, what it can do to people and how to treat it, and trying to give our health care systems a manageable level of patients as it is just stalling for a magic cure-all. We saw what happened in Italy and Spain and New York. That couldn't be allowed to happen everywhere.

Secondly, I think we should focus on the idea that that what we did "killed" the economy. I mean, stock markets are by and large doing fine. Wealthy people somehow are getting wealthier. If the economy has suffered serious lasting damage, how is the housing market doing fine?

I think what has happened is that we've learned a great deal about our economy and that it was fundamentally broken anyway. For years and years we've had an economy based around the labour of working people turning into wealth for a select few at the top. Productivity has increased hugely, wages stagnate. People work 2 or 3 jobs and can barely make ends meet. People working full time can't afford apartments in the cities they work in. Only an incredibly lucky few have enough in the bank even to absorb a temporary hardship.

A society of great wealth, as Canada is and Sweden is as well, should be able to shoulder a temporary pause on economic activity while a crisis is dealt with. Governments have good credit and, if there's political will, we can pay for that by taking some of the money going to the incredibly wealthy and redirecting it to people so they can afford childcare or take a sick day or look after an elderly relative. Nobody working 40 hours a week doing "unskilled" work that we now know we all rely on should be unable to pay their bills. People who worked all their lives deserve to be cared for and protected in their later years, not seen as expendable because they're no longer cogs in a machine that funnels wealth upwards. Economies exist to enrich the lives of people, people don't live to enrich economies. An economy built on exploitation deserves to die. If our modern notion of what an economy is and who it's for is killed it would be the only deserving victim of Covid-19. 

Lastly, I think we all need to get used to the idea that our lives are going to change in the coming years. Covid 19 almost certainly won't be the only pandemic we deal with and some of the things we're seeing now should be permanent. People should wash their hands more, we should stop valorizing the notion of working while you're sick, we maybe shouldn't build our lives around the notion of a constantly available stream of dirt cheap consumer goods.

Because even if we do get a vaccine for Covid-19, a climate crisis is almost certainly ahead of us. And that will require drastic action to combat. Our lives may need to shift again, only to a much greater degree and permanently. We need to be able to show resiliency, flexibility and an ability to work together for a common purpose. I think there's been a lot of that over the past 6 months and it gives me a lot of hope for the future. 

 

[Heroic Shrimp]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/im-optimistic-that-we-will-have-a-covid-19-vaccine-soon/615811/

 

[Bullfrog]

Jesus, Nik. That was perhaps the most inspirational chunk of prose I've ever read.
Good on you, man. I agree with everything you said.

While I consider myself an intelligent, educated person, economics and finance (and I'd add political science) are probably my areas of least understanding. If I understand it right, money is basically a concept to allow for the valuation of goods/services so that fair trade can happen amongst greater expanses of people. Fairtrade is so that we can all prosper and get the goods/services that we need (and want.)

I struggle to pay my bills like many Canadians. I struggle even more to understand how some people can have or feel like they need so much money, particularly when they haven't earned it. Curve of wealth growth is so out-of-touch with fairness. I had a bad year last year; I think I made around $28k and my wife made around $10k. We manage because we live within our means and are not wasteful with what little money we have. An extra $10k would mean the world to me. It'd be life-changing. For the ultra-wealthy, they can drop $10k on the ground and not even notice. This is just flat out unfair.

I'm not a jealous man at all. (sometimes a touch envious, admittedly.) There is so much wealth in this country (and world) that it could be distributed so much more equitably and the ultra-rich could still remain very wealthy. I don't believe that important contributions to society shouldn't be suitably rewarded (I do believe we that we do need an economic or incentive-based system). It's just that at a certain point, the super-wealthy don't actually earn the money they get.

I'm no anarchist, but I do wish people would better understand that our economies, our governments, our cultures are human constructs. We made them. We can change them.

 

[herman]

I too would vote for Nik

 

[Stebro]

We've tried to vaccinate the flu away for a long time, but we still have the flu.

Just to stop here a second I think this needs to to be fact-checked a bit. I'm not sure there really is or ever has been a wide-scale effort to come up with a vaccine that eradicates "the flu" because there is no singular disease that is the flu. Every year we get a new strain of flu and the vaccines that have to change every year are pretty good at keeping up with it.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly. I really wonder how kids growing up now will deal with all the fear and hysteria. Media in general have done an awful job imo, and it doesn't serve public health.

Long term i'm not worried about covid, I'm more worried about how pretty much the entire planet were willing to change their lives so quickly.

Also, I'm really puzzled as to why you see this as a bad or new thing. Look at WW2. The world also faced a crisis there and very quickly people were willing to change their lives much more drastically than we have had to. Almost every factory in North America was re-fitted to produce military equipment, people accepted food rationing of important items, huge amounts of men uprooted their lives to join the army and women entered the work force.

By comparison our willingness and ability to change our circumstances were much more muted. But even then, I think it's really a sign of our resiliency and community spirit that we're willing to make personal sacrifices for a common good.

My point is that there's no evidence whatsoever that we can vaccinate covid away, and it seems like that's what people are counting on. Then the question is if it's worth it to ruin the world economy, increase mental health issues, stress children with this etc. When people talk about us having around 5800 deaths of a population over 10 million, it's not that much, it's obviously tragic for those who lost someone, but most who died in Sweden were already very sick, and a cold, flu or anything really could have contributed to their death, but for some reason we chase every single covid case at all costs. We don't do that with the flu etc. I think all this changed the western world for worse, and it's not related to corona. We see a lot of unrest, people are suffering. Humans were born to be free, not be locked up. I know that a lot of media abroad is critical, but im actually very happy about living in Sweden, but I do think our early screw ups were sad, but now we're doing better than pretty much the rest of Europe, both with corona and our economy. Sweden has also opened up for using face masks in certain situations, but not in a forced fashion. I bought some, just in case something changes.

You've made quite a lot of assumptions in your post above that can be challenged. Obviously every point can be challenged but some points are closer to the truth than others, and saying there is no evidence that we can vaccinate our way out of this is just false. We have some evidence supporting promising vaccines, whether they offer long term immunity is a different story but at the end of the day I really don't care if SARS COV 2 infects every human on the planet if vaccination brings it in line with a cold or seasonal flu. There is a difference in preventing infection and in preventing disease. There absolutely is enough evidence to be hopeful that we will have a vaccine that will likely turn COVID from a 1% Infection Fatality Rate disease (potentially 20M - 75M worldwide dead) with a significant number of people who have recovered technically but are long haulers dealing with shortness of breath, headache, fatigue & other ailments for months (this really doesn't seem to get talked about enough) to a bad cold.

SARS COV 2 is not the flu. There are differences between this and the flu that are important, but basically as we have seen we can control this to a degree that we can't with flu. Flu isn't as contagious but it can spread a lot more quickly than SARS COV 2, making containment much harder. This is what we saw in the 1918 flu pandemic where it went wildly out of control very quickly and there was no way to catch up (this is the nature of flu), while you do have a level of control with this that you wouldn't have with flu. And, as I would note, if this flu was deadly enough we absolutely would be asked to quarantine or shelter in place. The fact is seasonal flu just isn't that big of a deal if we're comparing death rates. Once all was said and done the H1N1 flu of 2009 only killed 284,000 worldwide. We are still seeing 6,000 deaths a day globally from this and 850,000 total out of at most 300million total infections and I'm being SUPER generous with how many cases we may be missing globally.

anything really could have contributed to their death

I take some issue with the statement above. I have asthma. By your logic if I get COVID and die you will tell me "Well, he had asthma." Yes, it was a contributing factor, but I doubt you would say someone who had asthma deserved to die from COVID, so how can you rationalize this way? As well, you're also forgetting that many conditions are manageable. People live through chronic conditions all the time and can lead otherwise healthy lives. Many can withstand getting a cold or the flu, but the risk is a lot higher with COVID. COVID is generally agreed to be 5-10x stronger than seasonal flu. The saving grace of this disease is that the young generally don't get sick or have mild illness, but that doesn't mean I'm ok with giving people above 60 a potential death sentence because it doesn't affect me, or because they're already past their prime. On average people who have died have lost 10 years of life expectancy from COVID.

And to add, I have looked at reports of Sweden's GDP. It is not recovering any better than any of the other Nordic countries. There is this false choice being flouted around that lockdowns are killing the economy. I honestly believe that COVID is killing the economy and if you can stamp things out you are more likely to walk that tightrope and you can maintain a better standard of normal while the economy recovers: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/opinion/coronavirus-economy-reopen.html

The idea of front-loading cases is also kind of idiotic because the longer you can hold off the disease from taking hold the more chance you have of not just waiting it out for a vaccine but of improved understanding of the disease and treatment. Dexamethosone seems to really help keep people alive who are on ventilators who would normally have had a 50/50 at best shot of survival.

While we're at it how about I ask you how many deaths are acceptable? The States has 187,000 dead. If Sweden were the same size as the US, Sweden would have even more, and this is with likely at most 10% of the population having been infected. Would you be ok with 20k dead? 50k? Canada by comparison has half the death rate of Sweden and to be quite honest, I think even that is too high.

And to wrap things up, that isn't to say I am for another lockdown or stopping every case of COVID at all costs. I think that's a strawman and I don't think that's what anyone is saying in the absence of a vaccine or good treatment right now, because we literally don't have the tools to stop every case of COVID, but I do think initial lockdown accomplished a few things that made a lot of sense at the time

1. Figure out what it is we're dealing with
2. Buy time to work out issues in the fall
3. Stamp out flare ups as they occur to shield society at large
4. Clamp down on deaths

Making assumptions about this virus in March and letting it rip would've been the most negligent thing that could've been done because you can't put that genie back in the bottle. You can decide to let it rip later on if it's deemed safe enough, but you don't have that option if you've locked in that choice from the get go.

I understand we may have a difference of opinion and that's how you fell then you're entitled to how you feel, but I also think you've kind of already bought what Tegnell was selling from the beginning and I highly disagree with your position. I don't see any pro other than Sweden has been able to keep up a very questionable facsimile of normal.

There is no evidence that a vaccine that will be effective for everyone, history shows that, we've only been able to get rid of a few diseases by vaccination entirely, that's a fact, not an opinion. It's irrelevant imo whether the studies for vaccines for covid is promising or not, don't get me wrong, I hope that it will will stop the virus from spreading, but the fact is still we don't know, claiming something else is just ignoring science. We don't know what the side effects will be either. Now again, I hope that it will be efficient and that it wont have any serious side effects, but we don't know. So to claim that it's promising etc doesn't mean anything until we see the actual results.

Early on studies claimed that Sweden would see about 70-80 000 deaths with our approach, which wasn't even close to being right. Sweden went with knowledge the entire world pretty much have used for 100 years, yet it's being described as an experiment which is strange at best. It's true that there are people who have had issues long after being infected I know a few, and to be honest yes, I'm worried about that, because they are friends and family and mean a lot to me, and I wish it didn't happen. One thing to remember is that a lot of covid deaths are not actually covid deaths, and in terms of flu, we don't chase those cases as intensely as covid cases, so flu cases are probably more than we report.

From what I guess you're young, and I certainly don't want anything bad to happen to you as a result of your asthma, but if I look at the actual stats from Sweden, the average age of the ones who die are extremely high, pretty much on par with the average age in Sweden which is around 82. One thing to remember that I think is important to take into consideration as well is that people take their own lives due to depression etc due to losing their jobs etc. These are not easy decisions to make, I just think that the ones who argue for lockdown pretty much completely ignore all the negative side effects of the other side. We don't know how kids will be impacted from being in school, we don't know how people will be impacted from losing their jobs, although the science is quite clear. I would expect people in countries with lockdowns work out less which will have a negative impact on health.

The issue is also what is the long term plan for those who do a lock down, I've seen it in several countries, that they open up schools, then the virus spreads again, and they lock down, you can't do that on and on again. The unrest is growing as well, this should not be ignored because it can increase the spread of the virus. Sweden has opened up for wearing masks in certain instances, it really depends on the situation, I have bought some high quality ones just in case, because I might be forced to take trains, buses etc due to work, but for 95% of the time I work from home, I just want to have the option of wearing a mask if I think it helps out or protect someone else.
As for Sweden's overall strategy I agree with it, although I'm not happy with certain things, but that is more related to how we are organized rather than the actual strategy. I don't buy everything that Tegnell says, but I have an understand for the overall approach since the public health agency of Sweden is not only looking at covid, they are also looking at other potential health issues and weigh them all against eachother, which I think is the right thing to do. I also think that when international media is comparing Sweden to say Norway, Finland, Denmark, they ignore important factors, such as the how we are organizised. The nursery homes are much larger in Sweden, and the people who take care of the people in the nursery homes usually work for a lot of different nursing homes which is a big risk factor, but it's not related to the strategy itself, rather the organization.

I don't know if you watch youtube, but I watch a lot of videos where "experts" from Sweden are being interviewed and being claimed as experts, and I've never heard of them. I hear doctors that claim that Sweden have achieved herd immunity which I personally think is complete bs, it may be true in Stockholm, but for the rest of the country, probably not.

 

[Stebro]

My point is that there's no evidence whatsoever that we can vaccinate covid away, and it seems like that's what people are counting on. Then the question is if it's worth it to ruin the world economy, increase mental health issues, stress children with this etc. When people talk about us having around 5800 deaths of a population over 10 million, it's not that much, it's obviously tragic for those who lost someone, but most who died in Sweden were already very sick, and a cold, flu or anything really could have contributed to their death, but for some reason we chase every single covid case at all costs. We don't do that with the flu etc. I think all this changed the western world for worse, and it's not related to corona. We see a lot of unrest, people are suffering. Humans were born to be free, not be locked up. I know that a lot of media abroad is critical, but im actually very happy about living in Sweden, but I do think our early screw ups were sad, but now we're doing better than pretty much the rest of Europe, both with corona and our economy. Sweden has also opened up for using face masks in certain situations, but not in a forced fashion. I bought some, just in case something changes.

So I have a few thoughts in reply to that. First, I'm not sure everyone is necessarily counting on a vaccine. Obviously there are huge efforts towards that and there are good signs but I think as Bender noted trying to slow the spread of the virus is as much about learning about it, what it can do to people and how to treat it, and trying to give our health care systems a manageable level of patients as it is just stalling for a magic cure-all. We saw what happened in Italy and Spain and New York. That couldn't be allowed to happen everywhere.

Secondly, I think we should focus on the idea that that what we did "killed" the economy. I mean, stock markets are by and large doing fine. Wealthy people somehow are getting wealthier. If the economy has suffered serious lasting damage, how is the housing market doing fine?

I think what has happened is that we've learned a great deal about our economy and that it was fundamentally broken anyway. For years and years we've had an economy based around the labour of working people turning into wealth for a select few at the top. Productivity has increased hugely, wages stagnate. People work 2 or 3 jobs and can barely make ends meet. People working full time can't afford apartments in the cities they work in. Only an incredibly lucky few have enough in the bank even to absorb a temporary hardship.

A society of great wealth, as Canada is and Sweden is as well, should be able to shoulder a temporary pause on economic activity while a crisis is dealt with. Governments have good credit and, if there's political will, we can pay for that by taking some of the money going to the incredibly wealthy and redirecting it to people so they can afford childcare or take a sick day or look after an elderly relative. Nobody working 40 hours a week doing "unskilled" work that we now know we all rely on should be unable to pay their bills. People who worked all their lives deserve to be cared for and protected in their later years, not seen as expendable because they're no longer cogs in a machine that funnels wealth upwards. Economies exist to enrich the lives of people, people don't live to enrich economies. An economy built on exploitation deserves to die. If our modern notion of what an economy is and who it's for is killed it would be the only deserving victim of Covid-19. 

Lastly, I think we all need to get used to the idea that our lives are going to change in the coming years. Covid 19 almost certainly won't be the only pandemic we deal with and some of the things we're seeing now should be permanent. People should wash their hands more, we should stop valorizing the notion of working while you're sick, we maybe shouldn't build our lives around the notion of a constantly available stream of dirt cheap consumer goods.

Because even if we do get a vaccine for Covid-19, a climate crisis is almost certainly ahead of us. And that will require drastic action to combat. Our lives may need to shift again, only to a much greater degree and permanently. We need to be able to show resiliency, flexibility and an ability to work together for a common purpose. I think there's been a lot of that over the past 6 months and it gives me a lot of hope for the future.

I agree that it's sad what happened in New York and Italy. One thing to remember is that at first everyone talked about bending the curve, which meant that we accepted a certain amount of deaths, now people have shifted to counting deaths per capita as a rate of success. What people don't seem to understand is that there are more than one curve. If you look at Sweden for example our case load is likely in reality around 15-20 times as high as our neighbours, we did a poor job of testing during March, April and May, with out strategy that will logically also lead to more deaths. What's interesting is that if you look at July, August then Sweden have fewer deaths on average than the last 5 years, but they were higher during April, May and June.

What's interesting about the economy is that largely the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. A lot of countries are getting into more debt, who will have to pay that? The younger generations will, who is making the money? The rich.

A lot of the covid deaths in Sweden are not actual covid deaths, more science is proving this in Sweden now. The thing is we've never locked down before for a serious flu season etc, I'm not claiming that the flu is the same thing is the same as covid, I'm just saying where do you draw the line? During a serious flu season Sweden have around 2000 deaths, and then we don't chase every single case. Now we have around 5800 deaths in covid, and it's also been proven that some of them are complete bogus, I don't know exactly how many but we are probably talking about 1000+ at least. The question then, is it worth risking increased mental health issues (which at least in Sweden is a huge problem), people being afraid to go to the ER for other conditions, risking increased unemployment, keeping kids out of school without knowing what it will do to them. Having the media spread panic and risk ptsd for people. I'm just not sure it's worth it. To me the ideal approach would be to protect the risk groups, Sweden failed with this early on especially for nursery homes mainly due to 2 reasons, one being our nursery homes being very big, and having people with insecure unemployment working at a lot of these nursery homes at once, so they could spread it easily, and if they don't work they could end up in a situation where they can't pay their rent as they are paid by the hour to a large extent. This was a big risk factor for Sweden, but not related to the strategy itself as someone have to feed these people and help them out regardless of strategy. So that will likely be a lesson for Sweden.

I agree that we should see it as something good if we work if we are sick. The approach in Sweden and what's been communicated is that even if you feel any kind of symptoms regardless of what it is, you should stay at home, no questions asked. Sweden also changed some policy here, so you get paid from the first day if you are at home due to being sick. I'm worried about the west in general, and we do see a lot of unrest and protests that likely will just increase the virus load. I think the major problem in the west if you look at every major movement, regardless of what it is is that we need more heroes, not more victims. It's true for Sweden as well, most people want to be a victim, we have too few heroes, the west needs to get their act together.

Another interesting part to point out is that The UK and the Scandinavian countries agreed on the strategy at first, but only Sweden stuck to it after a report that came out that turned out to be completely inaccuarete. Scandinavia and The UK are very close in these kind of issues in general.

 

[Highlander]

I think the Swedish approach for right or wrong has to be considered, the toll on so many economically is like a mass death.  My living is made in the Caribbean islands, they are one horse economies.  People and friends are dying there as there is nothing happening, absolutely no business at all and none to be seen in the near or even semi-distant future.  And only a minor amount of deaths on St.Thomas, St.Maarten and Aruba from Covid.
In my own case I have been out of work since March with zero income, my job is in the balance but most likely gone, I may have to sell my house. I am 64 in a few weeks and out looking for work.  Depressed, yes, suicidal, not yet.  So I share the pain of a totally ruined industry and all that work under the tourist banner.  Tens of millions are in jeopardy who work in Tourism.
Not saying what our course of action should be, just saying the cure may end up worse than the disease.
There are 1,350,000 people who die world wide in car accidents each day.  Gosh that is carnage, but we don't ban driving do we.
A strange thing is I know 13 people who have passed since February including my Mom and best buddy. A host of other close friends.  Cancer got most of them, Mom, old age. Not one from Covid except Dave who blew his brain out down in Florida, that may have been Covid related.
Even if a great flawless vaccine is available by early spring, they will be a lot less of us to receive it. 
Getting near the end of my tether but just saying what I feel. 

 

[Highlander]

sorry 1,350,000 souls who die each "year" in car accidents, not each day.