*** you dont arf

By staying open they do not have to worry about when to 'open up' again. More young people will have had the virus those reducing risk of a second and third wave as well as protecting the economy.

Lock downs of younger people just holds off what has to happen as it rips through. What do people think happens when France, UK etc open up?

Lock down of younger people was to protect the NHS. We have done that.

I watched that UnHerd video and it is indeed interesting.

However, I still feel that Sweden is a special case where that approach was an option for a good while after the virus started spreading there and that option was gone very quickly everywhere else because the spread had already got out of hand due to government inaction, making a lockdown inevitable.

You are talking about a country where 50+% of the population in the biggest city live alone(!), most people can switch to working from home seamlessly because they do it to some degree anyway, people naturally socially distance 100% of the time, 50+% of the population live in areas with less than 50k inhabitants, nearly all old people already live apart from younger folk, if you have a cough you stay home from work and get full pay etc, people do what their government tell them a lot more.

Unless you imposed those restrictions before the virus got into your country and effectively turned your country into a clone of Sweden, which was impossible, then the virus was always going to spread at a much faster rate in your country. Every single comparison with Sweden I've seen fails to take this into account or glosses over it like it's not hugely relevant.

Then there is the question of whether immunity exists after infection or for how long? I'd imagine there must be some a least but it's not a given either.

I also watched the video that came afterwards which is an American guy and his Swedish girlfriend and they say that the numbers in Sweden are high because there was an outbreak in care homes in Stockholm, which takes the gloss off what the Swedish expert in the first video says about protecting the old and the frail, but also makes their numbers in the wider community look better.

How would the UK or anywhere else have introduced measures to turn London into the equivalent of Stockholm in terms of people living alone?

Perhaps they can reach out for volunteers to be exposed to the virus to find out.
Hancock and Johnson may put their hands up.

It wasn't Ferguson's report and the numbers which set you off course of where Sweden is. You were never in a position to do what day did and you were never on a better path while encouraging the spread early on.

When Sweden's mortality rate came down to around 15 to 20 in April about the 11th to the 13th, it began to look like they might get away with it. And if those figures had levelled out at that sort of mark, or at least stayed in double figures. Then they had a reasonable case to say that they might come out of it quite well. Unfortunately, the figures spiked again, so you have to say it looks at the moment as if they are paying too high a price with 10 times as many deaths as Norway.

anders tegnell is a hostage to fortune, he miscalled the spread of covid and has backed himself into a corner. he believed covid  would not spread from china and then he thought it would be enough to trace individual cases that came from abroad. so all the swedes who returned home after their skiing holidays in italy were encouraged to go back to work if not sick, even if some of their family were ill. he didnt think there was community transmission and so no mitigation was necessary. 

five minutes in and the great professor is talking about protecting the elderly, maybe someone should tell him a third of the dead in sweden are from nursing homes. he believes the fatality rate will be 0.1% and says he is certain that millions of people have already had it, but he offers zero evidence for this. he claims mass antibody testing will show 50% have had it in sweden and the uk, again no basis for this claim and the interviewer fails to probe him. 17 minutes in and he recognises that old people have not been protected. 19 minutes in and he claims south korea have given up on their policy, that is an untruth. 24 minutes he is comparing it to the flu. oh dear he guesses a number for uk dead that we have already surpassed. at 26 minutes he now realises it is different to the flu, well done professor.

the swedish approach is a gamble, pure and simple, even if it turns out to work. the arguments for it are being made by people who failed to act and are seeking to justify their inaction. countries that try and stop the spread are buying time, so giving themselves more options. those that acted quickest (in the east) did not lock down their economies, those in europe who acted quickest have so far had less deaths.

these two swedish chaps are definitely well thought of  but there are far more experts who think the swedish approach is bonkers than think it is sound. 

covid is a novel virus, we know very little about it. not once on the forum (or on this video) have i heard the proponents of the herd immunity approach talk about the long term consequences for those who get this illness. people on here seem to think you either die or have few  or zero symptoms. we know that it isnt just the lungs that are attacked, the kidneys and liver may be affected too. a german paper showed some active divers (all youngish and in good health) who got covid in what is considered a mild form - they did not go to hospital and are considered recovered- have all been left with significant damage to their lungs

All of them were not severe cases, their illnesses were five to six weeks ago and they are considered to have recovered. But they can no longer dive. "The damage to the lungs is irreversible," said Hartig in an interview with the APA. And the,

"This is shocking, we don't understand what's going on here. They are probably lifelong patients, so it doesn't matter whether they dive again or not," said the doctor. The bad news was made clear by lung CTs. "They didn't get any better at all in imaging," said Hartig. "As an emergency doctor with 20 years of experience, you swallow when you see something like this in a 40-year-old patient."

https://www.rainews.it/tgr/tagesschau/articoli/2020/04/tag-Coronavirus-Lungeschaden-Forschung-Uniklinik-Innsbruck-6708e11e-28dc-4843-a760-e7f926ace61c.html

we have no idea how widespread these problems will be.

we dont know how long immunity lasts or how strong immunity is. at the moment we dont even know if you get immunity or if people can get it a second time and it potentially be worse second time around.

Fine. I'm not saying his numbers were right, they were likely way off. But you were in for a disaster anyway if you'd continued on that course, encouraging the spread and not banning sports events and you'd have had to lock down anyway, with a higher chance of hospitals getting overwhelmed at the same time.

Thank your lucky stars Arteta got infected when he did.

we have the worst of all worlds due to the government's approach of letting the virus spread at the start and then changing their minds and having a lock down. now there is no easy way out.

You continue to repeat that there are 115k active cases in the UK.
I continue to point out that this is not true.

of course it will happen, slowly, and hopfully managed

germany taken more steps on facemasks today


we in uk seem to be hiding that it will be usful even to wrap a scarf over your face and mouth.



hope we dont get straight back to sweaty palm handshakes , ..surely not even tory whack jobs
will be espousing that for a year or two.

We've got 3 months of lockdown and then we just have to crack on as the economic cost and ensuing human cost is just too high otherwise.  Thousands of extra deaths from cancer already likely because of the lockdown.

That is basing policy on a guess.

I'm not sure the scientists or politicians are making informed decisions so one guess is as good as another

Angoose
22 Apr 20 21:22
Joined: 18 Jul 02
| Topic/replies: 15,106 | Blogger: Angoose's blog
You continue to repeat that there are 115k active cases in the UK.
I continue to point out that this is not true.

^

Going off these numbers
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Is Germany's 45k wrong as well Angoose?

if 0.1 cases result in death should be easy to work out

The lockdown was introduced to stop the spread continuing before it got to a level where the NHS would be overwhelmed.
Yes, that hasn't happened but you weren't at peak when you introduced those measures and you can't be sure that it has peaked just yet either. But you are talking about releasing lockdown when you are at or near peak??? Do you realise how mental that would be? Do you honestly think the spread wouldn't very quickly get to a higher than current level and get you straight back to another lockdown within a week or two? You are weeks away from releasing lockdown. The spread and numbers will have to fall a lot more before you can do that.

And there is no way you can go on active cases unless the whole population has been tested. Case numbers don't mean anything. Growth in case numbers at the same level of testing are indicative. Comparing case numbers between two countries who test completely differently is pointless.

Sweden's death rate has to be read with the fact that their economy isn't dead.

WTF has brexit got to do with it. Talk about obsessed.