Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

[Shifty Geezer]

A few posts back, you followed up tuna's post (which denied the Swedes refused care to the elderly, despite wco81's post linking to a report which indicated these things had taken place), to point out that the Swedish death rate was better than the European 'average', but didn't say anything about why you thought this might be the case. Here's a link to wco81's post, incidentally: 4,913

I had no reasons nor theories. I was just pointing out that article in isolation that's very damning of Sweden is ironic considering the failures elsewhere. Why was the LA Times talking about Sweden so harshly while the US faired so much worse?!

I think you'd surely have to agree that the available evidence points to the fact that the higher deathrate in Sweden (in comparison to their Nordic neighbours) was due to their policy

Yes. I wasn't presenting theories.

Incidentally, Shifty, I thought it was well-understood that the actual numbers of deaths during the Indian Delta wave was many multiples higher than the official numbers? It was widely reported last year:

The problem is that you assume I'm presenting an argument in favour of a viewpoint even when I'm just asking questions. "I don't know how accurate their data is though." I was just referencing a point in the graphs as provided where I grabbed those graphs from OurWorldInData with more info after wco81 asked specifically about India. By presenting that "I don't know", someone else can follow up with better explanations. Which is also true of the generally poorer nations. Which was something I suggested...

Is that indicative of it largely being dependent on co-morbidities which wealthier nations have more of due to excessive lifestyles and better health-care? Or is that trend just from low income nations abandoning reporting that much earlier? Or did a lack of restrictions early on establish a baseline herd immunity on a weaker version of the virus which was subsequently reinforced from successive waves of variants, whereas the nations that resisted the disease most were more susceptible to the more dangerous strains that developed?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There's a whole host of theories there to consider, followed by a hope that someone would investigate them properly and honestly. That governments wouldn't try to cover up what happened out of some misplaced sense of pride, and that other parties won't try and skew the data to show a particular narrative that isn't representative of reality.

 

[wco81]

Why was the LA Times talking about Sweden so harshly while the US faired so much worse?!

LA Times columnist was discussing a study published in Nature, by European researchers, many of them with affiliations to Swedish institutions -- Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Gothenburg University.

It was the researchers who drew the conclusions, not the LA Times.

Evaluation of science advice during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Sweden was well equipped to prevent the pandemic of COVID-19 from becoming serious. Over 280 years of collaboration between political bodies, authorities, and the scientific community had yielded many successes in preventive medicine. Sweden’s population is literate and has a high level of trust...

www.nature.com

 

[milk]

It's human nature to cover your arse when you've made an error or misjudgement, but that doesn't help find out what actually occurred.

Of course, you must surely be aware that that same suspicion can be cast over every government and decision-making institution throughout the whole spectrum of covid reactions.

 

[entity279]

LA Times columnist was discussing a study published in Nature, by European researchers, many of them with affiliations to Swedish institutions -- Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Gothenburg University.

It was the researchers who drew the conclusions, not the LA Times.

That article feels like a scientific joke to me as the authors have somehow endowed themselves with the ability to rate the morality and ethics
And spends heaps of space discussing political declarations

 

[Shifty Geezer]

LA Times columnist was discussing a study published in Nature, by European researchers, many of them with affiliations to Swedish institutions -- Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Gothenburg University.

It was the researchers who drew the conclusions, not the LA Times.

It was the LA Times that headlined Sweden's result was 'disastrous' when it was superior to the US. All its emotive language is absent from the analytical Nature paper. It then picked some random sampling for their OurWorldInData graphs. The more EU countries added, the better Sweden would have looked.

Other than that it was a reasonable article looking at Sweden's strategy via a breakdown of the Nature article. But then the same article can also be levied against a lot of nations saying what they did wrong.

I'm guessing it was intended as a cautionary tale to certain pro-libertarian factions in the US to show them that, no, the Swedish model did not work.

Also, some of the criticism was pretty universal - "The Swedish people were kept in ignorance of basic facts such as the airborne SARS-CoV-2 transmission, that asymptomatic individuals can be contagious and that face masks protect both the carrier and others." - the general scientific conversation at the start of the pandemic was just that, COVID wasn't airborne and no-one knew how contagious it was depending on own illness severity. There are as many question marks over the 'science' of this pandemic as there are the politics. The fact scientists can disagree so vehemently on what's going on shows a complete lack of actual science; there should be nothing but questions and 'experiments' until the truth is determined but many, like ordinary folk, leap to conclusions and push their viewpoint instead of Sciencing the questions some more!

 

[tuna]

That article feels like a scientific joke to me as the authors have somehow endowed themselves with the ability to rate the morality and ethics
And spends heaps of space discussing political declarations

I completely agree!

 

[tuna]

I think you'd surely have to agree that the available evidence points to the fact that the higher deathrate in Sweden (in comparison to their Nordic neighbours) was due to their policy and it doesn't appear that many benefits were gained? Better for personal freedoms, I suppose, but the promised economic benefits don't seem to have appeared.

I think that schools being open for kids <15 is a pretty good benefit and helped society a lot!

 

[Mariner]

I think that schools being open for kids <15 is a pretty good benefit and helped society a lot!

Might have helped society, I suppose. What about poorer families with multi-generational households where grandparents were living with grandchildren who then brought the virus home with them from school?

Don't get me wrong, I want the schools to be open. Here in the UK, it was the poor response from government which meant they were closed for so long. A lot less school missed by children countries who got it under control quickly.

Irritatingly, we still don't have any proper ventilation/air filtration in classrooms to this day. Better air quality would be a win-win regardless of Covid, but it isn't even a consideration. My wife is a teacher and it isn't even possible to open the windows in her classroom! Temperature in there is unbearable when the sun is shining on warm days and I shudder to think about the air quality in the classrooms, even without considering airborne pathogens.

 

[tuna]

Might have helped society, I suppose. What about poorer families with multi-generational households where grandparents were living with grandchildren who then brought the virus home with them from school?

They are screwed (or something). What about older teachers?

 

[wco81]

I don't know about Europe but in the US, people cited things like greater youth depression and certain declining scholastic metrics -- actually some of these were declining before the pandemic.

But the dirty little secret was, many parents didn't know what to do when their kids were home all day while they were as well.

Many got to work from home but also meant having their kids needing and diverting their attention.

Few months in some were jokingly asking them to take their children. But many weren't joking when they confronted school administrators demanding and threatening them if they didn't re-open schools.

 

[milk]

Might have helped society, I suppose. What about poorer families with multi-generational households where grandparents were living with grandchildren who then brought the virus home with them from school?

Don't get me wrong, I want the schools to be open. Here in the UK, it was the poor response from government which meant they were closed for so long. A lot less school missed by children countries who got it under control quickly.

Irritatingly, we still don't have any proper ventilation/air filtration in classrooms to this day. Better air quality would be a win-win regardless of Covid, but it isn't even a consideration. My wife is a teacher and it isn't even possible to open the windows in her classroom! Temperature in there is unbearable when the sun is shining on warm days and I shudder to think about the air quality in the classrooms, even without considering airborne pathogens.

Let it be known, that when I'm old, I'll never expect children to make sacrifices to protect an old fart like me from dying a couple years earlier than I'm bound to anyway for one reason or another. And lets leave it at that.

 

[Mariner]

You don't think the kids might be a little bit upset that Grandpa dies after they make him poorly?

 

[milk]

You don't think the kids might be a little bit upset that Grandpa dies after they make him poorly?

I think death is and has always been a part of life that kids are bound to learn of at one point or another. I also think blaming a kid for grampa's death is very short-sigheted since what killed grampa was the combo of the virus PLUS their age, PLUS their poor health, and once they are in that weakened state, it would have happened anyway through another person with or without a kid. And that is what the parents should be telling their kid.

In fact, that is what we've already done for millenia when grandpa died from the flu or some other infectious disease. Weird that grown adults forgot that so quickly.

What a great oportubity to teach kids about perspective, mortality, the cycle of life, how health works, diseases. All while still having them go to school and play outside. Who would have thought of that?

 

[wco81]

There were some articles about kids crying because their parents were hospitalized or even died and they blamed themselves for it.

I doubt most kids would just shrug and say "c'est la vie, it was nana's time anyways."

 

[milk]

There were some articles about kids crying because their parents were hospitalized or even died and they blamed themselves for it.

I doubt most kids would just shrug and say "c'est la vie, it was nana's time anyways."

That's where guardians come in. Kids should be taught. In and out of school. Its normal for kids to cry when their parents go to the hospital. Worldwide policies should not hinge on kids crying. Come on.

 

[wco81]

Um more than crying I suspect. Some may have guilt hang over them, that they got their parents and grandparents sick or worse.

 

[Mariner]

I do find the nihilism which has come to surround Covid among the views of some people remarkable to see, even now.

The shrug that we're all going to die at some point, ignores all the other factors around morbidity and mortality which affect the world in which we live. If we were increasing healthcare capacity to help us cope with the ongoing hospitalisations caused by this novel virus, especially during the winter months, it could be understood to some degree, but we're not. Unless people are really happy to turn away older folk from hospitals when they are ill because, hey, you've got to die of something. What age do we make the cut off for hospital treatment when you're seriously ill with Covid? 70? What about obese people? Do we say they can't enter hospitals if their BMI is too high? Diabetics are obviously shit out of luck.

Pretending Covid doesn't exist or we should just ignore it really doesn't make sense. The fact that nothing is done to prevent nosocomial infections is the most bizarre of all. Many winters, the healthcare system is going to be on the brink of crumbling, but people are campaigning against the use of PPE, even in medical settings! Just bizarre.

At the very least, we should be advocating/legislating for improved ventilation and filtration (and, I'd argue, in public buildings and businesses, UVC to reduce all airborne pathogens, including Covid) to mitigate as much as possible. Especially considering that there appears to be a signal indicating increases in type 1 diabetes in children since the pandemic began. But no, we're doing nothing. Less than nothing, really.

Hopefully, somebody will develop improved vaccines to help us out, but that's not really on the cards in the immediate future. And the problem is that, even if such vaccines are developed, we'll have some people fighting tooth and nail to try to stop people getting them!

The world really is a stranger place than you might believe.

 

[milk]

In my country at least, one of the leading causes of death are car accidents. Yet, we have not prohibited cars. Nor has the acceptance of cars been called nihinistic.

I am for the prevention of illnes and dearh just like anybody, within reason. If you wonder if covid restrictions are outside of reason, describe whatever risk you are worrying about and switch it for the flu. Have kids in multi generational homes brought in flu from school which ultimately infected grandpa and led to his death before? Absolutely. Millions of times. How did we handle that scenario then? I'll leave that question opened.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There's a thread in RSPC for discussion the politics and ethics of Covid policies.

 

[Mariner]

We haven't prohibited cars, but we've legislated to ensure that they are as safe as possible. They need to be built to a certain standard to be authorised for use, need to be kept in good order to be allowed to use the roads and drivers are required to obey rigorous rules or face losing their right to drive. But I'm not really sure what a means of transport has to do with transmissible disease.

Interesting that you mention influenza. Here in the UK, young children are given an annual flu vaccination and one of the express reasons given for this is to reduce the risk of illness in their older relatives. However, it is now impossible to get a young child vaccinated against Covid, a more virulent disease which isn't as seasonal and which multiple waves caused by different variants currently hit each year! Hopefully, this policy will change should more effective vaccines be developed, but I'm not holding my breath...