Bender said:
Stebro said:
Nik said:
Stebro said:
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.
Stebro said:
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.
