Sweden's liberal pandemic strategy questioned as Stockholm death toll mounts

[angrysoba]

Cases are rising very quickly here in Japan, now though.

And now they have no hope of tracing all the clusters.

I think Japan needs to be ready for a sudden spike of deaths in the next week or two.

[eerok]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

Well if the forums amateur epidemiologists recommendations are anything to go by the best way is simply to copy the countries doing well without even considering wheter the situations are even similar. If Japan does something and it is working (at least for the moment) then obviously it must have the same effect here.

Who cares what experts, with an intimate picture of what is feasible, think? They are COMPLETE IDIOTS. You don't even need to take a basic introductory university course in biology to see that it's obvious, based on this graph I just saw on facebook, that we must rally to the great Japanese way immediately!

It's not just forum amateurs.

Quote:

The prime minister, Stefan Löfven, has urged Swedes to behave “as adults” and not to spread “panic or rumours”.

Panic, though, is exactly what many within Sweden’s scientific and medical community are starting to feel. A petition signed by more than 2,000 doctors, scientists, and professors last week – including the chairman of the Nobel Foundation, Prof Carl-Henrik Heldin – called on the government to introduce more stringent containment measures. “We’re not testing enough, we’re not tracking, we’re not isolating enough – we have let the virus loose,” said Prof Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a virus immunology researcher at the Karolinska Institute. “They are leading us to catastrophe.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ockdown-europe

[dann]

Originally Posted by eerok

It's not just forum amateurs.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ockdown-europe

You're right. I already mentioned the opposition to Swedens lax coronavirus policies in post 57, but your link to an article from March 30 sure puts it into perspective. It's not like he shouldn't know better.

Well, Arcade22? Did you find any graphs on Facebook lately that would come in handy now?

[Arcade22]

Originally Posted by eerok

It's not just forum amateurs.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ockdown-europe

First of all, most of the people who signed that had no education in any field relevant to fighting contagious diseases. Having a PHD in underwater basketweaving or gender science does not mean that your opinions are of any value whatsoever.

Secondly, they don't have a clue as to what the problem is. It's not that they haven't been testing for infected people, it's that there was no mass testing capability at all. If anything it's shocking that educated people who should know better somehow fail to realise that you can't make decisions based on what will have the best outcomes instead of what is actually achievable.

[eerok]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

First of all, most of the people who signed that had no education in any field relevant to fighting contagious diseases. Having a PHD in underwater basketweaving or gender science does not mean that your opinions are of any value whatsoever.

Secondly, they don't have a clue as to what the problem is. It's not that they haven't been testing for infected people, it's that there was no mass testing capability at all. If anything it's shocking that educated people who should know better somehow fail to realise that you can't make decisions based on what will have the best outcomes instead of what is actually achievable.

Good luck. You'll need it.

[dann]

If anything, it's shocking that you can consider the fact "that there was no mass testing capability at all" to be the best excuse in the world for not immediately setting about to getting mass testing capability and in the meantime go on lockdown until that mass testing capability is achieved.

Achieving mass testing capability does not require that a

Originally Posted by Arcade22

country is under a totalitarian state that can allocate an almost infinite amount of resources according to the whims of its leadership.

And that you are uneducated is no excuse at all for thinking that it is.

[HoverBoarder]

Originally Posted by Ryokan

That's mostly because, unlike the USA, Norway has done aggressive testing.

As per Worldometer, Norway has tested 19 528 per million citizens, while the USA has tested 4 933.
...
It was the aggressive testing that made it look so bad, but it was also that testing that made us come out ahead of the curve.

Massive testing is likely the most important factor in successful Corona response countries, along with what countries do with that data. It is also likely that countries who are able to do massive testing also have made the health care investments to be most prepared to do something effective with that data.

Of course at some point countries will have to open up again. The approach in Sweden is very likely going to make them more safe and prepared when they fully open up again compared to other countries, but it comes at the cost of more deaths now vs. more deaths later. They also have a good enough health system to go through that managed pain now.

Basically I think that almost all countries are going to be in the situation that Sweden is in, but I worry that they might have burned through much of their PPE by the time they get there. The most important factor is if those countries can do massive testing and have sanitizer/PPE/social safety engineering to keep businesses run safely when they do open up again.

[Arcade22]

Originally Posted by dann

If anything, it's shocking that you can consider the fact "that there was no mass testing capability at all" to be the best excuse in the world for not immediately setting about to getting mass testing capability and in the meantime go on lockdown until that mass testing capability is achieved.

Yes because they can just pull out enough labs to cover every 30,000 residents out of their magic hat. The fact that every single country on earth is also busy doing that only makes it so much easier to buy the necessary equipment, supplies and tools to do it.

Quote:

And that you are uneducated is no excuse at all for thinking that it is.

You know what, when you get a university degree in epidemiology I'll take your criticism seriously. Until then take your uninformed nonsense to Facebook or the comment section of your trashy Danish tabloids.

[Arcade22]

Originally Posted by eerok

Good luck. You'll need it.

Good luck to you Canada, you aren't doing much better.

[dann]

Originally Posted by dann

Originally Posted by Baylor

As of this post, Norway has more confirmed corona virus cases per capita than the US: 1 confirmed case for every ~950 persons in Norway. 1 confirmed case for every ~1,050 persons in the US

And as of this post, the USA (51 per million) now has more confirmed deaths per capita than Norway (20 per million). The USA also has 466.299 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, Norway has 6.219, and since hardly anybody in the USA is being tested, not even people who suspect that they've come down with Covid-19, it is fair to assume that millions of Americans are now infected.

What do those numbers tell you, Baylor?

They tell me that Norway is doing its best to test and then isolate as many as possible, and that the USA is headed by a lying, unscrupulous dimwit.
Nyeste corona-tal fra Danmark og verden: Så mange er smittede, døde og indlagte (TV2, April 10, 2020)

The USA now has 60 Covid-19 deaths per million, Norway has 22. The USA also has 514,415 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, Norway has 6,403.


Baylor? ... Baylor? ... Baylor?

[Rolfe]

I'm still trying to process the fact that human beings who can apparently tie their own shoelaces seem to think that "the best way to protect people from this virus is for most of them to get it" is actually a rational statement.

[dann]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

Good luck to you Canada, you aren't doing much better.

Coronavirus deaths per million
Canada: 17
USA: 60
Sweden: 88

[dann]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

I'm still trying to process the fact that human beings who can apparently tie their own shoelaces seem to think that "the best way to protect people from this virus is for most of them to get it" is actually a rational statement.

It most certainly isn't, but in another thread some people actually argued that infection = vaccination!
I guess it works much the same way as a fractured skull = wearing a helmet.

[dann]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

Yes because they can just pull out enough labs to cover every 30,000 residents out of their magic hat. The fact that every single country on earth is also busy doing that only makes it so much easier to buy the necessary equipment, supplies and tools to do it.

If you were ill prepared to begin with, and many countries were, for whatever reason, you should take advantage of a temporary lockdown and protect people from infections in this way while you get busy getting hold of the stuff needed for testing.

Quote:

You know what, when you get a university degree in epidemiology I'll take your criticism seriously. Until then take your uninformed nonsense to Facebook or the comment section of your trashy Danish tabloids.

Being wrong is no reason to get this upset. You should do something about your obsession with Facebook and learn to distinguish between tabloids and reliable news media.


Recent Covid-19 news from Sweden

Quote:

Coronakrisen visar att det var fel att avveckla beredskapslagren i Sverige.
Det menar socialminister Lena Hallengren, som nu öppnar för mer inhemsk produktion av skyddsutrustning till läkare och sjuksköterskor.
– Vården måste bli mer robust, säger hon.
Ministern: Ett misstag att stänga beredskapslagren (Aftonbladet, April 11, 2020)

Quote:

Flera miljoner ansiktsmasker brändes på regeringens order.
Under loppet av några få år avskaffade Sverige de beredskapslager som tagit decennier att bygga upp – och i coronapandemin har bristen på skyddsutrustning blivit akut.
– Vi är glada över att vi i Finland inte har gjort samma sak, säger Tomi Lounema, tills nyligen chef för finska Försörjningsberedskapscentralen.
Sverige stängde beredskapslagren och brände miljoner ansiktsmasker (Aftonbladet, April 11, 2020)

Quote:

– I tältet finns inget vatten eller avlopp. Det är trångt och patienterna måste ligga betydligt tätare än inne på en vanlig avdelning. Dessutom är ventilationen dålig och respiratorerna är mycket omoderna, säger ytterligare en överläkare.
SVT Nyheter Väst har pratat med flera överläkare som ger en samstämmig bild av den kritik som finns. De vill alla vara anonyma eftersom de menar att kritiken är mycket känslig på sjukhuset.
Överläkare slår larm om tältet på Östra: ”Riskerar människors liv” (SVT.se, April 11, 2020)

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by dann

It most certainly isn't, but in another thread some people actually argued that infection = vaccination!

I have been blocking a lot of people on Twitter these past few days. Idiots either pushing the point of view that the virus is essentially impossible to avoid (it's actually ridiculously easy to avoid getting it), or that there is no post-exposure immunity at all, or that the only way to protect people from the virus is for them all to get it. Sometimes all at once. One guy was insisting it was "airborne HIV".

They bombard you with an almost random shower of links to newspaper articles, preliminary non-scrutineered papers they don't understand, and badly-written blogs. They won't listen to any reasonable point of view that doesn't align with their pet theory. And all the time they're obscuring the fact that this virus is far from invincible, there is every reason to believe it can be kept squashed down at a low level until a vaccine is available, and any state that doesn't do that is basically killing its citizens.

Twice in my career, in quick succession (2007 and 2012) I was involved in operations to keep novel viral diseases of livestock that had emerged in Europe out of Scotland. The first one wiped out sheep production in Belgium and the Netherlands. The second was a brand new orthobunyavirus that had never before been seen in livestock before it suddenly appeared in Germany. Each time we kept up the fight for a year, and each time a vaccine then appeared and saved the day. Even to the orthobunyavirus.

The idea that we should simply assume that this can't be done for the present agent, even though it's already been shown that the majority of those infected seroconvert to the virus and that antibody appears to be protective, is absolute defeatism. The countries that win Covid-19 will be the ones which kept the largest proportion of their population alive by the time the vaccine appears. It's not going to be us, or America, or Sweden, or the Netherlands. New Zealand is a good one to bet on. So is Iceland. Maybe even South Korea.

[Arcade22]

Originally Posted by dann

If you were ill prepared to begin with, and many countries were, for whatever reason, you should take advantage of a temporary lockdown and protect people from infections in this way while you get busy getting hold of the stuff needed for testing.

The largest source of excess deaths, especially compared to neighboring countries, appear to come from elderly care homes. Elderly individuals who live in their own homes, whether apartments or houses, are far less likely to have been infected or died.

A lockdown would not have stopped these individuals from being infected because, with all likelihood, they were not infected by strangers walking into care-homes and coughing in their face. They were almost certainly infected by coming into close contact with the personnel working there that happened to be infected and due to the lack of protective equipment they would be contagious. Some people kept working even-though they felt sick.

It's not the responsibility of the central government nor the public health agency to make sure that the municipalities, whom are the ones responsible for the care of the elderly, are adequately equipped or trained to care for the elderly without significant risk of infection during a pandemic. That responsibility lies almost completely in the hands of said municipalities. Cutting costs on emergency preparedness is not something you squarely blame the central government for.

Quote:

Being wrong is no reason to get this upset. You should do something about your obsession with Facebook and learn to distinguish between tabloids and reliable news media.

You are the one that claimed Sweden's lead epidemiologist was a complete idiot based on your uninformed and uneducated interpretation of a graph your found in a newspaper. So don't try pretending that you are right about anything. Seriously, you know next to nothing and yet you pretend that you know what you are talking about.

Quote:

Recent Covid-19 news from Sweden

You do realize that most people don't speak Swedish here so why don't you actually translate it?

[uke2se]

I would like to thank you all for the concern you are showing the citizens of Sweden. Thus far, we're managing. Will probably get worse, but I'm confident we'll get through it. I hope you guys are managing as well.

Happy Easter, everyone and stay safe.

[dann]

You too, uke2se. It sounds as if you're going offline for the Easter holidays.


A new article compares the Swedish and Danish corona strategies:
Danmark og Sverige gik hver sin vej, da coronakrisen ramte - sådan er det gået (TV2, April 12, 2020)
Denmark and Sweden went their separate ways when the corona crisis hit them - this is how it played out

The article is very long, and it's in Danish, obviously, but it is full of the kinds of graphs that Arcade22 detests, so I think that even people without any knowledge of Scandinavian languages will be able to get most of the very educational facts and figures.
The two guys at the top of the page are the Danish and Swedish top virus-pandemic experts.
Notice the comparison "Indbyggere per kvadratkilometer" = inhabitants per square kilometer: Denmark:136 Sweden:25.
"Bekræftede tilfælde" = Confirmed cases. Denmark has tested comparatively more people.
"Aktiemarkerne" (should actually have been Aktiemarkederne) = stockmarkets.

By the way, I wish they had included Norway in the comparison. If they had, Denmark would no longer look like the beacon of scientific enlightenment and efficiency the way it does in the comparison with Sweden.

[dann]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

The largest source of excess deaths, especially compared to neighboring countries, appear to come from elderly care homes. Elderly individuals who live in their own homes, whether apartments or houses, are far less likely to have been infected or died.

A lockdown would not have stopped these individuals from being infected because, with all likelihood, they were not infected by strangers walking into care-homes and coughing in their face. They were almost certainly infected by coming into close contact with the personnel working there that happened to be infected and due to [hilite]the lack of protective equipment[/i] they would be contagious. Some people kept working even-though they felt sick.

It seems to give you some degree of comfort that the majority of coronavirus deaths were in nursing homes. You keep mentioning it. And again you return to the idea, which you are also quite fond of, that a lockdown would not have stopped those infections. However, your argument for this is spurious, and at this point it probably doesn't surprise anyone that you come up with a strawman: "strangers ... coughing in their face."
But you haven't considered the one thing that should have made you wonder since you mention it yourself: the neighboring countries!
I don't know about Norway and Finland, but I guess they have probably been doing better than Denmark in this respect as in most others. I do know, however, that the solution in Denmark wasn't to prevent strangers from entering nursing homes but to prevent relatives from doing so. And it has been tough for the elderly as well as for the relative to comply with this, but it seems to have helped.
I don't doubt that some old people may have been infected by the staff working at the homes before tests were made more available, but preventing visits from relatives seems to have limited the spread of the virus.
And once again: The lack of preventative measures or training is a very bad excuse for infecting the elderly.

Quote:

It's not the responsibility of the central government nor the public health agency to make sure that the municipalities, whom are the ones responsible for the care of the elderly, are adequately equipped or trained to care for the elderly without significant risk of infection during a pandemic. That responsibility lies almost completely in the hands of said municipalities. Cutting costs on emergency preparedness is not something you squarely blame the central government for.

You're probably not even aware that you are adopting another one of Trump's favourite arguments: It wasn't me, I'm not to blame, it wasn't the Federal Government! It was the states/municipalities. They are responsible, they should have taken care of the problem ... "almost exclusively."
I have no idea how responsibility is distributed in the Swedish way of doing things, and I have no idea why you side with "the central government" and "the public health agency" on this - I suppose you aren't married to Stefan Löfven or Anders Tegnell. But I also don't really care. It has been obvious that Anders Tegnell was the strategist behind the Swedish way of (not really) tackling the pandemic and that Stefan Löfven, at least until very recently, seemed to follow his advice. If something isn't right about the way that power is distributed between the "central government" and the municipalities, I would criticize the system instead of pushing blame from one to the other.

Quote:

You are the one that claimed Sweden's lead epidemiologist was a complete idiot based on your uninformed and uneducated interpretation of a graph your found in a newspaper. So don't try pretending that you are right about anything. Seriously, you know next to nothing and yet you pretend that you know what you are talking about.

It's possible that Anders Tegnell is not a complete idiot (nobody's perfect!). Maybe he is just a cynic who doesn't care how many the epidemic in Sweden will kill, but throughout this thread, I've been the one who has presented facts and figures, and you have been the one who has come up with .... nothing whatsoever! Your posts stand out as the most uneducated and uninformed of all, which is probably why you pretend that something was wrong with the facts that I have presented. Even Baylor posted facts that he had come across somewhere. It was obvious that he didn't understand them and it is conspicuous that he hasn't returned, but at least he tried.
You, however, have done nothing but appeal to authority, i.e. the central government of Sweden, and use ad hominem.

Quote:

You do realize that most people don't speak Swedish here so why don't you actually translate it?

Yes, I do know! I hope that you appreciate the three articles. I posted them exclusively for your edification, but if anybody else was interested, Google Translate could probably have rendered them readable in English. And if you feel the need to share them with the others reading this thread, you could actually translate them yourself.

[Ryokan]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

You do realize that most people don't speak Swedish here so why don't you actually translate it?

They don't?

Barbarians.

[Ryokan]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

The largest source of excess deaths, especially compared to neighboring countries, appear to come from elderly care homes.

Despite being just 60, my mom is in a care home.

She's blind, a cancer survivor and a stroke survivor. She never recovered from her stroke, so she's immobilized, in a wheelchair and requires constant care.

I'm very happy that Norway shut down when it did and to the extent we did. Covid-19 is not rampant in care homes here like it is in Sweden.

My mom probably wouldn't have survived getting the virus.

[dann]

The number of deaths per day in Sweden appear to have decreased - April 10: 887, April 11: 899 - but …

Därför är dödstalen så låga just nu (Aftonbladet, April 12, 2020)
”Blir tuffare i slutet av april” (Aftonbladet, April 9, 2020)
Sjuksköterskan Sofia: ”Vi gör saker vi aldrig hade accepterat förut” (SVT.se, April 12, 2020)
Så påverkar corona möjligheten att opereras (SVT.se, April 9, 2020)

[dann]

Swedish Television (SVT) has received information that several acute clinics in Stockholm are fighting to make the supply of oxygen suffice for corona patients.

Quote:

Enligt uppgifter till SVT Nyheter kämpar flera av akutsjukhusen i Stockholm med att få syrgasen att räcka till för coronapatienter.
Tunga kritiken: ”Ofattbart att fältsjukhuset inte har öppnat” (SVT.se, April 12, 2020)

[Rolfe]

Hmmm. I suppose time will tell whether this is accurate or not. Various commentators seem to think it's not far off the mark.

https://twitter.com/kausmickey/statu...01952675835904

Quote:

A document from Karolinska hospital in Stockholm (Sweden’s best hospital) reveals that they will no longer give intensive care to patients over 80, those over 70 with 1 underlying health issue, or those over 60 with 2 under-lying health issues.

This comes after the Stockholm region being heavily overloaded by coronavirus patients.

[angrysoba]

Well, it does look as though deaths have decreased a lot over the last two or three days. 77, 17 and 12 (iirc)

Let’s hope it continues to go down and that this is not an artifact of the recording of deaths that may be affected over the Easter weekend (I notice that fatalities seem lower almost everywhere - not just Sweden - though and think it could be misleading).

[Sherkeu]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Hmmm. I suppose time will tell whether this is accurate or not. Various commentators seem to think it's not far off the mark.

https://twitter.com/kausmickey/statu...01952675835904

About a week ago I read that this isn't different than normal in Sweden. Aggressive end-of-life care is not given if it is shown to have little effect on outcomes.

[Arcade22]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Hmmm. I suppose time will tell whether this is accurate or not. Various commentators seem to think it's not far off the mark.

https://twitter.com/kausmickey/statu...01952675835904

Quote:

Björn Persson, head of operations for intensive care at Karolinska, says that individual doctors should have the document as support when they make difficult decisions.

- We have an extreme situation in intensive care with a very high load. In this situation, it is extremely important that we use our resources for the patients we believe have the greatest chance of surviving and benefiting from intensive care, he says and continues.

- Although you may not have a chronologically high age, and may be in your 60s, but in combination with, for example, severe diabetes, cardiovascular disease or stroke, the biological age can be high. Of those who have a failing health and end up under intensive care and come out of it, many of the patients die within the immediate time. Intensive care is very tough for the body even for a healthy person. Then we make an individual assessment in each case.

...

- To me it is nothing strange or controversial. There is nothing that stands out or is really new. In my eyes, this is exactly how we reason about each patient when intensive care is being considered. The difference is that it is formalized in text clearly now, which I think is valuable, says Mattias Bergström.

According to Karolinska, the new decision support is based on the National Board of Health and Welfare's new national guidelines for intensive care priorities in extraordinary circumstances, which were developed especially during the pandemic. Karolinska's decision support is more specifically held than the National Board of Health's guidelines. According to Lars Sandman, professor of health ethics at Linköping University, it is expected that an interpretation of the document will be made.

- It was a conscious choice that we did not go into such medical parameters, nor to specify any type of age for a so-called cut-off limit. However, there is a general writing about the importance of a high chronological age, says Lars Sandman.

https://translate.google.se/translat...ntensivvard%2F

[Arcade22]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Well, it does look as though deaths have decreased a lot over the last two or three days. 77, 17 and 12 (iirc)

Let’s hope it continues to go down and that this is not an artifact of the recording of deaths that may be affected over the Easter weekend (I notice that fatalities seem lower almost everywhere - not just Sweden - though and think it could be misleading).

The deaths seem to have plateaued and perhaps decreased, but that sharp drop is with almost complete certainty caused by a backlog of reporting. Pretty much every weekend sees a drop like that which is subsequently revised once staff gets back to work after the weekend.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

The deaths seem to have plateaued and perhaps decreased, but that sharp drop is with almost complete certainty caused by a backlog of reporting. Pretty much every weekend sees a drop like that which is subsequently revised once staff gets back to work after the weekend.

Yeah, that's what I fear. The downturn may be illusory.

[dann]

Originally Posted by angrysoba

Well, it does look as though deaths have decreased a lot over the last two or three days. 77, 17 and 12 (iirc)

Let’s hope it continues to go down and that this is not an artifact of the recording of deaths that may be affected over the Easter weekend (I notice that fatalities seem lower almost everywhere - not just Sweden - though and think it could be misleading).

It is an artifact of recording! And Easter probably doesn't make recording better.

Originally Posted by dann

The number of deaths per day in Sweden appear to have decreased - April 10: 887, April 11: 899 - but …

Därför är dödstalen så låga just nu (Aftonbladet, April 12, 2020)
”Blir tuffare i slutet av april” (Aftonbladet, April 9, 2020)

Translation of the two titles:
This is why the number of deaths is so low right now
"It will get tougher in late April"
(I assume that tuff in Swedish means tough, but I don't really know)

[dann]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Hmmm. I suppose time will tell whether this is accurate or not. Various commentators seem to think it's not far off the mark.

https://twitter.com/kausmickey/statu...01952675835904

I think it refers to what I posted here:

Originally Posted by dann

Doctors in Sweden receive a letter telling them how to distinguish between coronavirus patients, i.e. which patients won't receive intensive care if hospitals run out of hospital beds in intensive-care units:
Dokument sendt til læger: Sverige forberedt på at prioritere mellem coronapatienter (TV2, April 10, 2020)
Dokument visar: De prioriteras bort från intensivvård (Aftonbladet, April 10, 2020)

The if is important. I don't think that is has actually happened yet.

[dann]

Originally Posted by Arcade22

https://translate.google.se/translat...ntensivvard%2F

On the one hand:
"- We have an extreme situation in intensive care with a very high load. In this situation, it is extremely important that we use our resources for the patients we believe have the greatest chance of surviving and benefiting from intensive care, he says and continues."

On the other hand:
"- To me it is nothing strange or controversial. There is nothing that stands out or is really new. In my eyes, this is exactly how we reason about each patient when intensive care is being considered. (...) According to Karolinska, the new decision support is based on the National Board of Health and Welfare's new national guidelines for intensive care priorities In extraordinary circumstances, which were developed especially during the pandemic."

[Arcade22]

Quote:

Patients are being discharged from the intensive care unit at Karolinska - and more than 80 per cent of those in intensive care survive. The situation is much better than expected, says David Konrad, chief physician at IVA Karolinska University Hospital.

Intensive care at Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm has so far been able to handle the burden of corona patients better than expected, according to David Konrad, who is chief physician and head of function at Karolinska University Hospital's intensive care unit. Today, 177 intensive care units are open at Karolinska University Hospitals, but they are ready to go up to 216 if needed.

- There are still empty beds left, not only at Karolinska but the intensive care unit in Stockholm in general has made an incomparable increase. I think we are now at a total of over 300 percent against where we normally are, so many are struggling, says David Konrad of the Weekend Studio.

More and more discharged: "Is there a slight slowdown"
Currently, 127 corona patients in intensive care are being cared for in Karolinska. Every day, between six and twelve new intensive care patients are discharged.

- But we also now see that more and more people are being discharged from the intensive care unit, so we are approaching a little bit the plateau phase you are talking about. There is a slight slowdown - it may be temporary, it is too early to say - but it looks a little better, says David Konrad.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/o...intensivvarden

Google translate apparently doesn't work on the webpage.

[dann]

For those of you who may find it difficult to understand the Swedish attitude, I can recommend this article:

Sweden Continues With Controversial Coronavirus Strategy: Is It A Big Mistake? (Forbes, April 10, 2020)

Some of the attitudes described in the article are close to being verbatim sentences written by the Swedish posters in this thread.

[Rolfe]

It will be interesting to see what happens. I think at the moment that a lot of things are being prohibited and prevented in many western countries that are actually extremely low risk. Once more data are in it might prove perfectly OK to allow more activities. However there's a strategy difference between locking down tight at the start then strategically relaxing, and being very light touch at the beginning and only tightening restrictions if it's seen to be necessary. Every single principle of epidemiology says the first approach is the right one.

Even in the Chinese studies nobody was identified as having caught the virus out of doors. All the crazy park policing is probably helping to do nothing but make people stressed and anxious. The preliminary German study also found nobody who had caught the virus in a shop or a restaurant, although I think that may simply be a feature of the small sample size (500 people at that point). Nevertheless it has been suggested that Wuhan found it so difficult to get the virus under control at least partly because it's a bit of a midden. Communal toilets and insanitary restaurants and food outlets. Germany, with better public hygiene all round, wasn't experiencing the same problems. Cases in France also appear to be falling off a cliff.

So we could see a gradual opening up to something closer to the Swedish situation as other countries reasses their strategies. However we don't know if Sweden is still permitting too much contact, and if it needlessly cost lives in the early period by not being more restrictive.

It's looking as if the main route of transmission of this virus is indoors, especially in gatherings which are fairly large but quite intimate. Birthday parties, funerals and so on, where an infected person may talk face to face for a fairly prolonged period to several other people. There was a choir practice of about 60 people in America where 40 became infected and two died. It's suspected that the physical act of voice projection by a trained singer produces a dangerous aerosol from deep in the lungs. I would imagine that these sorts of gatherings and indeed theatres and concerts and so on might be off the agenda for quite some time.

On the other hand parks, beaches and fields are probably quite safe as long as people mostly keep their distance. You're not going to get it from someone who just walks past you. Shops and indeed restaurants might be possible to operate with reasonable safety if the viral prevelance in the community is low.

So we'll see. However my experience in animal disease control very heavily favours the "lock down tight at the first sign of trouble, evaluate the situation and then relax gradually and strategically" policy over the "let's not over-react and see how this goes" approach. I give you Foot and Mouth in 2001 as an example.

[angrysoba]

Originally Posted by dann

For those of you who may find it difficult to understand the Swedish attitude, I can recommend this article:

Sweden Continues With Controversial Coronavirus Strategy: Is It A Big Mistake? (Forbes, April 10, 2020)

Some of the attitudes described in the article are close to being verbatim sentences written by the Swedish posters in this thread.

It also sounds very similar to what is going on in Japan. Now, finally, here in Osaka restaurants have to close after seven or eight o'clock. Yesterday, a large family restaurant across from me had customers well into the evening.

It is something that *maybe* can work if the vast majority of the population are not twats about it.

We still have people going out shopping in the city centres, and going to parks to soak up the sun. And, as I may have mentioned, the subways are still packed.

How long can the eggshell dance last?

[dann]

Virus isn't fond of sunshine, so being outside in the sun is probably safe if you follow the rules of social distancing. In Denmark, our parks are open, too. (The cherry-blossom park mentioned above was an exception because it could be expected that too many people would be there simultaneously.)
The weather (and the water!) isn't hot enough yet, but I could do with a trip to the beach. (I think that some of the photos of people on beaches in Florida may have been deceptive. In a photo, it's very easy to make it seem as if people aren't social distancing.)

My local park, Frederiksberg Have, has been regulated so that running is now prohibited. Exercise runners have been exiled to the neighboring park, Søndermarken, and they have to run in one direction only.
It seems to be working fine. I definitely don't miss the runners and would love to see the rule made permanent!

[Arcade22]

By the way, as a concrete example of how social distancing measures are working one can look at how the spread of the "winter vomiting bug" has been heavily decreased compared to recent years.

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/...t-2020-v13.pdf

The green bars are confirmed cases of Calicivirus (norovirus) infections. The lines are past years.

The influenza season is also over at a way earlier date than usual.

[dann]

That the spread of the flu stopped as a side effect of social distancing has been mentioned in Denmark, too!

[dann]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

It will be interesting to see what happens. I think at the moment that a lot of things are being prohibited and prevented in many western countries that are actually extremely low risk. Once more data are in it might prove perfectly OK to allow more activities. However there's a strategy difference between locking down tight at the start then strategically relaxing, and being very light touch at the beginning and only tightening restrictions if it's seen to be necessary. Every single principle of epidemiology says the first approach is the right one.

Even in the Chinese studies nobody was identified as having caught the virus out of doors. All the crazy park policing is probably helping to do nothing but make people stressed and anxious. The preliminary German study also found nobody who had caught the virus in a shop or a restaurant, although I think that may simply be a feature of the small sample size (500 people at that point). Nevertheless it has been suggested that Wuhan found it so difficult to get the virus under control at least partly because it's a bit of a midden. Communal toilets and insanitary restaurants and food outlets. Germany, with better public hygiene all round, wasn't experiencing the same problems. Cases in France also appear to be falling off a cliff.

So we could see a gradual opening up to something closer to the Swedish situation as other countries reasses their strategies. However we don't know if Sweden is still permitting too much contact, and if it needlessly cost lives in the early period by not being more restrictive.

It's looking as if the main route of transmission of this virus is indoors, especially in gatherings which are fairly large but quite intimate. Birthday parties, funerals and so on, where an infected person may talk face to face for a fairly prolonged period to several other people. There was a choir practice of about 60 people in America where 40 became infected and two died. It's suspected that the physical act of voice projection by a trained singer produces a dangerous aerosol from deep in the lungs. I would imagine that these sorts of gatherings and indeed theatres and concerts and so on might be off the agenda for quite some time.

On the other hand parks, beaches and fields are probably quite safe as long as people mostly keep their distance. You're not going to get it from someone who just walks past you. Shops and indeed restaurants might be possible to operate with reasonable safety if the viral prevelance in the community is low.

So we'll see. However my experience in animal disease control very heavily favours the "lock down tight at the first sign of trouble, evaluate the situation and then relax gradually and strategically" policy over the "let's not over-react and see how this goes" approach. I give you Foot and Mouth in 2001 as an example.

Animals are absolutely awful at social distancing, and they are even worse at washing their hands - not to mention sneezing into their elbows!

Everything you write makes sense. In another thread somebody wrote about a wedding where many of the guests came down with Covid-19, but none of the staff did. However, they obviously didn't have to use their lungs the way people do at choir practice.

When I understood the seriousness of the situation, I immediately gave up what is probably one of the most contagion-prone activities imaginable, and I warned the others against it: Salsa Cubana Rueda-style (scroll down to the video: Just Dance, Have Fun – and Enjoy the Cuban Vibe; I'm the one in the grey T-shirt with a green Che Guevara, of course!): You dance close with several people, touch hands, take deep breaths, and this time of the year it's always indoors. I'm actually surprised that I haven't heard about any of my friends and acquaintances coming down with it yet.