(09-26-2020, 09:09 PM)mateinone link Wrote:Lods you could be right, it is possible they are being singled out, but then the comparisons are interesting.

So Spain and Italy (as an example) we know part of their high original death tolls can be attributed to underestimating the power of this disease to cause the chaos it has, they were hit earliest and I think any country hit in this way was going to suffer a similar fate.
The other thing about these countries is that besides sharing land borders with other continental countries, they have high numbers of immigrants coming through unchecked from Africa, which means there is no quarantine for many of these people and if they have the virus it is going through unchecked. Not only is it going through unchecked, but if one person on an overcrowded boat makes it to those lands undetected, then that entire boat will almost certainly be infected also. This creates a situation where each fresh boat has the potential to be another wave starter.

Sweden on the other hand shares a land border with Finland (7 day average 90) and Norway (7 day average 111) whilst maintaining a 7 day average currently of 298.
It does share a bridge with Denmark (7 day average 535), which Denmark have restricted entry to from Sweden, but Sweden has to my knowledge left open. Freight traffic is still open both ways.
Denmark being a continental (thought Nordic) country of course shares a land border with Germany (7 day average 1780).

The reason for bringing that all up is that with less migration to Scandinavian countries than continental countries, there is less unchecked travel through borders and less chance for the virus to spread. England should have less issues as they have the ability to restrict traffic (as we do), but being a "destination" country there are also more attempts at illegal entry and all the problems that come with that, especially as until mid August they had removed the 14 day quarantine between itself and France (which by the way is self-quarantine). Why the UK didn't go into harder lockdowns I really don't know they left themselves on the precipice of a huge outbreak by sitting in a middle ground and hoped it would die out. It seems quite idiotic when you think about how they brought it down from 5,000 a day to 500 (about our average here at out peak), but started to ease restrictions, in that time is has increased 10 fold.

With regards to a dozen countries having worst death tolls per million than Sweden, this is true.. but it's neighbours are all between 60-100 ranking for deaths per million and sitting 14th (12th if you remove countries of less than 100,000 population) is not really a glowing endorsement.

You are right though, I feel like Sweden is being specifically judged because they made the decision that the financial importance was greater than the importance of life. There is no doubt they could have reduced their death toll by at least 70%, or if human terms at least 4,000 lives were sacrificed in an attempt to let the rest of the country live their lives. When you make a decision like that, you need to come out a clear winner, which Sweden hasn't done and it has resulted to them considering lockdown measures..

The UK has clearly mishandled their crisis, they are a destination country for sure, but they had fair warning, whilst most people who had the virus upon hitting continental Europe will have likely passed the worst of it by the time they setup in the Calais region to try and cross to England, there will be a lot that have picked it up during their travels from the south of Europe up to Calais and I suspect these camps often have large numbers of infections due to the transient nature of the people passing through there. Still, they should have been able to control their case load much better than they have and I don't know why they have not locked down through each county with hard lockdowns and tried to grow from there.

So yes continental countries are suffering worse than Sweden, but it is still suffering worse than it to land border  neighbours.

To be honest though, I would not want to be in any European country right now. Even Austria who, in my opinion, handled the first wave better than pretty well any other European country (along with maybe Norway) is suffering a lot at the moment. It is not surprising, it is a landlocked country with 8 borders and a number of those countries are exploding. Their deaths per million despite this are 87 (ranked 70th).

(09-26-2020, 10:37 PM)Thryleon link Wrote:The few sources of information I have seen on Sweden has them faring much worse during the second wave than their Nordic neighbours based on trend.

We wont know until we know for sure but data is coming out to show that herd immunity is impossible to achieve and they did take some lockdown measures but think of us in June and that was closer to what they did.  Businesses and schools open.

(09-26-2020, 11:23 AM)mateinone link Wrote:The fairer comparison is to compare Sweden with it's Nordic neighbours.
On this comparison, it has endured a shocking death toll and a shocking case rate (and the unknown long term effects of that).
It has seen a big jump recently in cases and it doesn't have herd immunity. It needs 60-70% of the population to have herd immunity, if the virus does not mutate over the next year or so and outsmart the antibodies, or if the antibodies don't begin to disappear (which there is some evidence it does).

To have herd immunity it would require infections to be at least 8x higher than they have been, which of course is possible as we know that the true number is not really reflected in the positive test number, but the new rise in infections suggest that herd immunity has clearly not been achieved.

Now they are talking lockdowns, I would suggest losing close to 6,000 lives based purely on the strategy you undertook could be declared a disaster

[table]
[tr][td]Country[/td][td]Cases[/td][td]Deaths[/td][td]Population[/td][td]Cases Per Mill[/td][td]Deaths Per Mill[/td][td]Tests Per Mill[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Norway[/td][td]13,545[/td][td]270[/td][td]5,431,254[/td][td]2,494[/td][td]50[/td][td]186,167[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Finland [/td][td]9,577 [/td][td]343[/td][td]5,542,777[/td][td]1,728[/td][td]62[/td][td]173,227[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Sweden[/td][td]90,923 [/td][td]5,880[/td][td]10,114,184[/td][td]8,990 [/td][td]581[/td][td]151,533[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Denmark [/td][td]25,594[/td][td]647[/td][td]5,797,058[/td][td]4,415[/td][td]112[/td][td]622,430[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Iceland [/td][td]2,561[/td][td]10[/td][td]341,767 [/td][td]7,493[/td][td]29[/td][td]786,609[/td][/tr]
[tr][td] Comparison [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][td] [/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Australia[/td][td]27,015 [/td][td]870[/td][td]25,569,269 [/td][td]1,057[/td][td]34 [/td][td]293,979 [/td][/tr]
[/table]

Ans of course we should have had MUCH less, 50-70% less at least
You were 17x more likely to die from this virus if you were in Sweden, than if you were in Australia

(09-27-2020, 12:50 AM)cookie2 link Wrote:Actually GTC I don't think it would have been appropriate for police to be looking after quarantine.  Maybe PSOs would have been ok but if the ADF was offered ????

This whole affair reeks of a massive internal squabble within the government and a subsequent very amateurish cover up.

(09-26-2020, 11:45 PM)flyboy77 link Wrote:https://www.aier.org/article/swedens-high-covid-death-rates-among-the-nordics-dry-tinder-and-other-important-factors/

and a great recent piece from Ivor Cummins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvFhIFzaac&t=745s

(09-27-2020, 01:43 AM)mateinone link Wrote:Not sure I agree about not appropriate.
The resources dedicated to maintaining quarantine etc far outweigh the resourcing that would have been required for babysitting.
Well unless there is another objection?

But of course what this doesn't speak to, is that of course the police could have also made mistakes and the ADF also.

It was just less likely they would when you compare to untrained security.

(09-26-2020, 11:40 PM)flyboy77 link Wrote:Really?

There is a lot of evidence to show that herd immunity is very much achievable...and at much lower thresholds than we originally thought was needed.

The Brit Nic Lewis wrote a great paper (tying in some of the work of Garbriela Gomes).

https://www.nicholaslewis.org/herd-immunity-to-covid-19-and-pre-existing-immune-responses/

Several of the great minds in the relevant field agree.

Start with  Sunetra Gupta.

One example, from a very level headed lady - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbvO4sUg1eA