The thread was about the Swedish Approach. You brought up Spain and Italy, not me. So maybe you should give Cleese and Co a watch.
The Swedish approach
- Thread starter Malaguena
- Start date
bear66
Well-known member
Sweden appears to have adopted lockdown by consent but it's doing very poorly compared with countries that locked down earlier and in a mandatory way. Their protection of the vulnerable has been a disgrace with visitors to care homes only stopped at the beginning of April. Hopefully those responsible are held accountable.
Not sure what measures you are using to compare. They concede that they didn't act early enough on care homes as far as I'm aware, and they had similar issues to the UK in sourcing sufficient PPE. But you are aprtially right about "by consent" ... but it's the same here to a large extent as the police are unwilling/unable to enforce the rather vague rules. Their approach isn't radically different to ours. The two main things that stick out to me are 1, they kept schools open for kids up to 14 I think (maybe older). And 2. They have allowed businesses, bars etc to keep functioning but with social distancing rules.
I think a failure to protect the elderly and vulnerable is common to quite a few countries (UK, Spain, Italy), but it may be, in the end, that it's impossible to do in the longer term.
bear66
Well-known member
Foreign Secretary Ann Linde admitting one area that has failed and the high death toll wasn't planned.
Lockdown by rules and guidelines that must be followed
Yep, I read that this morning (I read and watch Swedish news daily) for obvious reasons. I'm no expert but it strikes me that keeping the disease out of care homes, particularly the large ones with a lot of care staff and medics coming in and out for high dependency residents, would be nigh on impossible long term. This seems especially to be the case when you have high levels of asymptomatic transmission. A visiting doctor who feels absolutely fine ... who may have been tested clear a week previously ... could easily bring the disease into a home. It would then travel quickly around the residents, even with PPE involved (which it often isn't).
Interesting (from Australia) https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-its-safe-for-kids-to-go-back-to-school-137064
Today's press conference, abridged.
"695 new cases of covid-19 and 81 new deaths related to the disease. These are the figures that were presented at the daily press conference of the Public Health Authority, the National Board of Social Services and the Swedish Agency for Social Protection and Emergency Preparedness. "
"While the proportion of newly admitted to intensive care in Stockholm is beginning to decline, the curve has started to rise in other regions, for example the West Göralands region. "
"
Of course it is terrible with all these people in this disease and we certainly should not reduce them to numbers, but it is also important to understand how the development looks. And here it looks like we're starting to get a certain step down in the number of cases.
Even in the elderly, it appears in some data that the number of cases is beginning to decrease slightly.
- We hope it will last."
"695 new cases of covid-19 and 81 new deaths related to the disease. These are the figures that were presented at the daily press conference of the Public Health Authority, the National Board of Social Services and the Swedish Agency for Social Protection and Emergency Preparedness. "
"While the proportion of newly admitted to intensive care in Stockholm is beginning to decline, the curve has started to rise in other regions, for example the West Göralands region. "
"
Of course it is terrible with all these people in this disease and we certainly should not reduce them to numbers, but it is also important to understand how the development looks. And here it looks like we're starting to get a certain step down in the number of cases.
Even in the elderly, it appears in some data that the number of cases is beginning to decrease slightly.
- We hope it will last."
The 10M aren't spread all over Sweden, a lot of the country is uninhabited, same as their neighbours. The population densities in the big cities will be similar to some of the UKs cities.
To respond to Evil's comments too - Scandis practice social distancing as a natural state, more so than the UK. There are infinitely more bellends in the UK than over here, and people over here generally follow the rules better.
Also, I would suggest Sweden isn't directly comparable to some of their neighbours due to demographics and living habits of these different demographic groups. Pretty much no countries are directly comparable for a variety of reasons.
Tomorrow night is traditionally a big party night all over Sweden ... Walpurgis Night
The city of Lund has come up with a fairly radical approach to keeping crowds out of their park.
"
The city park in Lund is blocked off and monitored by police drones so that tens of thousands of students will not be able to have their traditional Walpurgis party.
In addition, a ton of chicken manure is spread out.
In the City Park in Lund, every Walpurgis evening in the evening, crowds of people gather for a spontaneous party. But during the current corona pandemic, it is considered inappropriate and the park has been blocked off.
The municipality is now taking the next step to make the park even more inhospitable. A ton of chicken manure is to be spread on the lawns"
The city of Lund has come up with a fairly radical approach to keeping crowds out of their park.
"
The city park in Lund is blocked off and monitored by police drones so that tens of thousands of students will not be able to have their traditional Walpurgis party.
In addition, a ton of chicken manure is spread out.
In the City Park in Lund, every Walpurgis evening in the evening, crowds of people gather for a spontaneous party. But during the current corona pandemic, it is considered inappropriate and the park has been blocked off.
The municipality is now taking the next step to make the park even more inhospitable. A ton of chicken manure is to be spread on the lawns"
bear66
Well-known member
Who needs a law when you have access to a tonne of chicken manure?
50% of Swedish deaths are from care homes. It's a perfect storm for infection. A group of people trapped in a care home. And the only people who can come into the home are those with a very high risk of infection either because they work in other homes, or in the case of nursing staff they work in hospitals dealing with Covid-19. The same is true in the UK (intimated by Raab this am), in Canada and in the US and I'm sure many others.
The US is an interesting crucible for approaches because they have 50 state organisations each with a different approach. So in New York, care homes are a disaster, and in Florida the governor (or rather his advisers) managed to protect care home residents so they've had much better protection. Perhaps because in Florida so many of the population are retired people over 60 they've had better care.
Comparison of death rates only makes sense when the pandemic is over and we get back to whatever is the new normal. Until then a variety of measures mean there will be some kind of quarantine or lock down in place in any country without herd immunity until a vaccine is developed. Only when a country completes its vaccination program will the comparisons be of value. By which time it's possible even the Norways of this world will have similar death rates to Sweden. It's probably more about how long you can afford to have your economy take time off. In Norway's case that's probably a few years. No so sure about Denmark.
The US is an interesting crucible for approaches because they have 50 state organisations each with a different approach. So in New York, care homes are a disaster, and in Florida the governor (or rather his advisers) managed to protect care home residents so they've had much better protection. Perhaps because in Florida so many of the population are retired people over 60 they've had better care.
Comparison of death rates only makes sense when the pandemic is over and we get back to whatever is the new normal. Until then a variety of measures mean there will be some kind of quarantine or lock down in place in any country without herd immunity until a vaccine is developed. Only when a country completes its vaccination program will the comparisons be of value. By which time it's possible even the Norways of this world will have similar death rates to Sweden. It's probably more about how long you can afford to have your economy take time off. In Norway's case that's probably a few years. No so sure about Denmark.
The norwegians are already thinking of opening up I believe. Certainly the Finns are. They've realised that they are simply putting things off rather than dealing with them. It is easier for them to do this, of course, because of the geography. They also have much smaller care homes for the elderly, so protecting them is easier.
I heard an expert in this field suggesting that larger care homes are a big part of the problem, and that care homes should have a maximum size of 10 residents. There is a care home near me with 143 residents and 50 staff infected, and so far 34 deaths. In total of the 731 cases in the area, 664 are from care homes or health care workers. The government here is totally transparent about their public health data. It's a couple of days out of date but they tell you that up front.
Corcaigh_the_Cat
Well-known member
10 residents per care home. Are you sure he was in Britain, we started building large care facilities decades ago, when we started sacrificing welfare in order to increase profit year on year.
I posted something similar yesterday. Swedish policy was designed around keeping it out of care homes, but It would be nigh on impossible to achieve, given that some residents will be high dependency with visiting clinical staff. I have a friend who is a nurse in glasgow. She has been going from home to home, into private homes etc to deliver care. For weeks she had zero PPE.
Alvez_48
Well-known member
Anyone still defending lockdown...
More 'excess' (horrible term) people are dying due to non covid related death than covid undeniably now.
The economy is in tatters and it's not even helping stop the spread.
That's before we even look at the impending big brother creep across the western world.
More 'excess' (horrible term) people are dying due to non covid related death than covid undeniably now.
The economy is in tatters and it's not even helping stop the spread.
That's before we even look at the impending big brother creep across the western world.
The same can be said of inner city apartment blocks. Which is what you have in most major cities ... but especially in large spanish and Italian cities (where multi-generational households and vit D deficient elderly patients are commonly resident). But if, as latest research seems to suggest, the virus could be airborne, it would be damned hard to keep it suppressed once it is in closed communities.
Billy Horner
Well-known member
Your verbal gymnastics on this issue are certainly impressive - Nadia Comaneci has got nothing on you!
For the past few weeks you've been claiming that Covid-19 deaths are being over-reported, despite being presented with evidence to the contrary, as doctors have been advised to use their clinical judgement when certifying deaths in the absence of a test result. Now you appear to have perfomed a volte-face and are claiming that the very same evidence you were informed about is, in fact, proof that the lockdown is causing significant excess deaths from other causes.
The simple fact is that we don't know. Unless the ONS changes its timetable, we won't see the data for causes of death until next year. Only then will we be able to determine whether there has been a spike in, say, heart attacks (which could possibly be lockdown related) or whether there's been a significant increase in other lower respiratory illnesses (which may be more suggestive of under-reporting of Covid-19).
Incidentally, I'm not advocating eternal lockdown, as clearly we can't simply cocoon ourselves until there is an effective vaccine (which may or may not happen). But the lockdown was necessary to buy us some time, in order that the NHS could cope with numbers and that we can try and put a properly resourced contact tracing and mass testing system in place, which is the only realistic way to try and manage this epidemic for the foreseeable future and what the government should have concentrated on in the first place.