Sweden is not a very dense country. It has a relatively large land mass and 10m total people. Have there been any large scale outbreaks in mostly rural countries? Stockholm is the only large metro at 1.3m. They have had almost 6,000 total deaths which is horrible for a country of that size/density. Their similar neighbors have 257 (Norway) and 333 Finland.
My theory is that Covid doesn’t spread effectively in places like Sweden so having a result as bad as they have is stunning. The low deaths at this point is likely due to most of the low hanging fruit already getting picked off. .06% of all people in Sweden are already dead of Covid. Sweden also should have a lower IFR than a country like the US because their population is healthier.
There have been antibody studies there which show sub 20% prevalence. It probably isn’t herd immunity. They also have had some restrictions all along, so the idea they haven’t has always been a bit of a fallacy.
I think the more likely reason is similar to how we have seen the current US wave start to recede even without really any government intervention. At a certain point people start to modify their behavior voluntarily once it gets bad enough. And in a country like Sweden containing the virus should be trivially easy. Again look at their neighbors. There wasn’t even a first wave there really.
They have had less than 10,000 total confirmed cases so defintely do not have herd immunity. Sweden’s data is just a 15x version of the same thing basically.
You need what 50-60% (maybe more) immunity to get herd immunity? NY is still averaging over 500 new cases a day so they are not there yet but probably closer than most places. NY especially NYC has some of the strictest Covid restrictions in place in the world right now.
I think this thread has consistently underestimated how quickly selfish COVID-denying morons transition to selfish COVID-avoiding morons once they start to see deaths in their immediate social circle. It doesn’t take government mandates to shut things down once people realize that they are personally at risk.
Sweden, Florida, Texas are all going to follow a pattern consistent with this.
Florida, Georgia, and Texas were gold standards of people ignoring their terrible governors at the beginning of the pandemic. Those governors were all criminally late in enacting anything, but the people listened to the experts in those states. It wasn’t until April 14 when Trump started screaming ‘LIBERATE’ that things fell apart.
By early June, the drum beat was so strong that Texas, Florida, and Georgia began listening to their terrible governors over the experts. That’s why they’re at where they are right now. In many of the places that are improving in those three states, they are doing it in spite of, not because of their terrible governors. Those guys are all prolific murderers, but no one rises to the level of Trump on this…no one. Probably 80 percent of this would have been avoided from a death standpoint if he would have kept his stupid fat face shut about reopening the economy for another two weeks.
It sounds like respiratory diseases coming and going like they always do. Note that not everyone gets herd immunity to the flus/colds that swing through every year, but they still have this boom/bust cycle.
This is to say there’s probably some kind of quasi-herb immunity where human responses plus acquired immunity combine to keep the virus from hitting everyone until it simmers down for a while and comes back, just like the colds and flus we’re used to. The essential differences are that this is way more damaging than the common cold but also the world is scrambling to find a vaccine and set up social distancing protocols.
The SDI scorecard for 7/29-8/4 is in and the news just plain sucks. The only place still above its target SDI is D.C. Kansas fell off the wagon after 6 weeks above, being the last non-D.C. place to end a good reign.
It was moving week for places moving from bad to ugly. Falling into the worst group of SDI offenders (5+ weeks under target) are:
New York, Utah, Maryland, Minnesota, Connecticut, Maine, and Wyoming
Without a change in the next measurement period, Alabama, Rhode Island, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, and New Hampshire will join the other losers.
If those make it to 5 weeks without a change, just 15 places in the United States will be at better than 5 weeks under their target SDI (13 will be at 3 weeks without a change in the next measurement). Like I said last night, things are about to get really ugly…
Today, testing returned to a high level of 896,486. The problem is 397,965 of those tests came from Texas (up 106,906 since yesterday), California (up 24,838 since yesterday), Massachusetts (up 43,633 since yesterday), and New York (up 124 since yesterday.
Andy Beshear still trying to do his best every day doing a weekday video begging Kentuckians, please just do the right thing. Guess his team slipped up and allowed youtube comments today. So top youtube comment
I saw an expressway sigh today that said “answer your phone when the COVID-19 task force calls”.
Cool cool, we are finally getting on the right track…right…right…
I will never vote for a democrat as long as I live so help me god.
Just got done with 3 nights in a row at the hospital.
I have a 42 year old patient who was on our floor for 22 days with Covid. He never went to ICU, but he did require a lot of oxygen and was touch and go for a time. Was outside the window for remdesivir, but he did get convalescent plasma and dexamethasone.
He’s finally going home today! So that feels pretty good.
I’m getting tested again today. I have now had a sore throat for 2 days. No other symptoms, and probably just a cold, but I’d rather know. 5-6 day turnarounds really make you question whether it’s worth getting tested.
Some good news from New Zealand: genetic analysis of the virus in their new outbreak reveals that it has not been seen before in NZ. This means that the virus was somehow imported, rather than cases smouldering away beneath the surface in the community. They really did eradicate the virus, which means they can do it again.
That leaves the question of how it got there. The cluster involves a freight warehouse where they handle frozen goods, so there’s speculation that perhaps the cold temperatures permitted virus to stay viable on a surface for a long time. The other possibility is just that someone with the virus came into the country and somehow passed it to the people involved in the outbreak. I’d probably bet on the latter, but we’ll see.
