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#81 |
Philosophile
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Osaka, Japan
Posts: 28,914
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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. |
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"The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before." "Evolution and Ethics" T.H. Huxley (1893) |
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#82 |
Quixoticist
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: ON Canada
Posts: 3,458
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"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." - Oscar Wilde |
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#83 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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? |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#84 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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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. |
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#85 |
Quixoticist
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: ON Canada
Posts: 3,458
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"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." - Oscar Wilde |
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#86 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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 And that you are uneducated is no excuse at all for thinking that it is. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#87 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: May 2011
Posts: 1,555
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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. |
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#88 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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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.
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#89 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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__________________
We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#90 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#91 |
Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 46,327
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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.
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"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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#92 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#93 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#94 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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.
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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
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#95 |
Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 46,327
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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. |
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"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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#96 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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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.
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#97 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 14,172
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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. |
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Before you say something stupid about climate change, check this list. "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. " Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1 |
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#98 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#99 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#100 |
Insert something funny here
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Norway
Posts: 10,413
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#101 |
Insert something funny here
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Norway
Posts: 10,413
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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. |
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#102 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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) |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#103 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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Swedish Television (SVT) has received information that several acute clinics in Stockholm are fighting to make the supply of oxygen suffice for corona patients.
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#104 |
Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 46,327
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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
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"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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#105 |
Philosophile
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Osaka, Japan
Posts: 28,914
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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). |
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"The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before." "Evolution and Ethics" T.H. Huxley (1893) |
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#106 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Disneyland
Posts: 1,992
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#107 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#108 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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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.
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#109 |
Philosophile
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Osaka, Japan
Posts: 28,914
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"The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before." "Evolution and Ethics" T.H. Huxley (1893) |
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#110 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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It is an artifact of recording! And Easter probably doesn't make recording better. 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) |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#111 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#112 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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." |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#113 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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Quote:
Google translate apparently doesn't work on the webpage. |
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#114 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#115 |
Anti-homeopathy illuminati member
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: NT 150 511
Posts: 46,327
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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. |
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"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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#116 |
Philosophile
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Osaka, Japan
Posts: 28,914
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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? |
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"The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before." "Evolution and Ethics" T.H. Huxley (1893) |
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#117 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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! ![]() |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#118 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 6,768
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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. |
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We would be a lot safer if the Government would take its money out of science and put it into astrology and the reading of palms. Only in superstition is there hope. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr And no, Cuba is not a brutal and corrupt dictatorship, and it's definitely less so than Sweden. - dann |
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#119 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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That the spread of the flu stopped as a side effect of social distancing has been mentioned in Denmark, too!
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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#120 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 13,253
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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. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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