Lockdowns never again: Sweden was right, and we were wrong

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LeafByNiggle critical of me comparing Sweden to its “next-door neighbor” Finland . . . .
The more relevant comparison is between Sweden and its Nordic neighbors, like Norway.
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From Google and Encyclopedia Britannica . . .

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

That’s because it doesn’t work for your paradigm.

I get to make my own Scandanvian comparisons, you get to choose to make your own too.
 
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Thbolt . . .
Why didn’t Sweden just use HCQ like Norway to limit the number of deaths?
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Why not stop asking questions with built-in presuppositions?
 
Yep Ridge. Covid-19 is here to stay.

It is not going to go away.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
I see nothing in what you have quoted here that justifies why Sweden is being unfairly evaluated. And I will note that ZeroHedge is a far-right financial blog and not a good place to get opinion.
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Typical Leaf ad hominem dodge that indicates the article was never read.
LeafByNiggle said:
Nope. I am tired of reading right-wing opinion pieces, just as I’m sure you are tired of reading left-wing opinion pieces. (actually, I’m tired of both.)
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You’re definitely not tired of left wing opinion pieces.
LeafByNiggle said:
Hey, but if the content really is worthwhile, it should be no trouble to find it on a more reputable site and then post it.
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The original article that Zero Hedge republished.


Now before you cry this is just as bad as Zero Hedge, check this out:


closing quote (emphasis mine):
Overall, we rate The American Institute for Economic Research Right-Center biased based on Libertarian leaning economic policy and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and a clean fact check record.
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You’ll be glad to know Media Bias Factcheck considers Breitbart a questionable source. So read that article this time and challenge the points made there. Some are good ones.
 
Thank you for the AIER article. I found it quite readable and objective. So I am pleased to address the points the author made in that article.

The first point, which I will summarize as the “bad initial luck” was that through accidental circumstances beyond the control of Swedish policy, Sweden got infected early and hard. I find myself in general agreement with that analysis. It does go a long way toward explaining the much higher death toll in April in May, compared to their Nordic neighbors. Incidentally, it also goes a long way toward explaining the much higher death toll in New York and New Jersey too, but that is another story.

The next point is the “dry tinder” theory in which the relatively low influenza infection rate the previous year left a lot of “tinder dry” people, much more likely to die of coronavirus. This theory applies very well to forest fires, but not on a one-year basis. You have to go many years without forest fires before the nature of the forest is changed so significantly that standing dead trees make the forest much more susceptible to a run-away forest fire. One year without fires would not do it. Now, trying to apply that to people, the only way a low influenza rate one year would make the whole population more vulnerable to coronavirus deaths is if it raised the average age of the population. But just as with the forest, one year of low influenza infection can only add at most one year to the average age of the population. And that assumes that nobody else died or was born that whole year, which of course is impossible. So if the low influenza rate the previous year raised the average age in Sweden, it would only be by a tiny fraction of a year. I didn’t look up the yearly demographics of Sweden, but does the data support that theory? I don’t know. The article did not cite any demographics data to support that theory - only the low influenza rate the previous year.

But I will give them this: There is no proof that Sweden has done terrible on coronavirus. And if you discount the “early bad luck”, Sweden is doing no worse than their Nordic neighbors. In fact they are much better than the US on recent data. For the past month, Sweden (and all the Nordic nations) have had deaths in the low single digits per day, while the US continues to hover at 700 deaths per day. Even accounting for the fact that Sweden has a much smaller population, that still puts Sweden doing ten times better than the US. So apparently they are doing something right. And so is Norway and Finland and Denmark. They are all doing something right.
 
Thbolt said:
I don’t listen to Trump on this because he says nothing of value and much of it is incorrect. Actually, that’s pretty much Trump on every topic, isn’t it?
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No. You and he at least were in agreement on that. Sorry to let you know you and he share something. But you might be in luck. Maybe he has changed his mind by now.
 
One thing that actually is very interesting, is the political positions of those who engage in the debate about the Covid strategies.

Now I am going to generalize, but it seems like conservatives/right-wing/Trump supporters in the USA are more critical of lockdown policies and mask usage, while the liberals/leftists pretty much supports them.
In Sweden, it is pretty much the other way around. The right-wingers wants more lockdown and masks, and the left promote lax regulations and keeping our usual freedoms during the pandemic.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
You have to go many years without forest fires before the nature of the forest is changed so significantly that standing dead trees make the forest much more susceptible to a run-away forest fire.
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I think you have not seen a forest fire up close. You can easily get one in one year because it’s a function of several things, not just fuel buildup. Get into a drought with a high wind and a lot of things that weren’t fuel before, become fuel.
 
LeafByNiggle . . . .
Incidentally, it also goes a long way toward explaining the much higher death toll in New York and New Jersey . . .
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True enough.

Which is WHY earlier in the thread (here it is again) I explicitly wondered about a “Cuomo factor”.

To lurkers here. NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, under certain circumstances, explicitly ordered COVID-19 INFECTED patients . . . get this . . . INTO nursing homes and other long-term care facilities (LTCFs)!!!

The nation watched in horror as the deaths mounted.

Even here at CAF, people foresaw what would happen with throwing proverbial lit-matches on just as proverbial dry tinder.

The obvious occurred. Many elderly and disabled people died as a result of this.

Initially, Cuomo tried to say it was working, later tried to blame LTCF staff,
eventually tried to blame the CDC,
and of course sooner or later tried to blame . . . (can you guess who?) . . . . Yep. “Trump”.

New Jersy was doing the same thing.

Later under much political pressure, they stopped this terrible practice.

The LTCF deaths in New York have a significant fraction of corona deaths in the WHOLE COUNTRY!

Here is leftist pro-abortion Cuomo ignoring mask mandates and social distancing guidelines.

Is Cuomo a disease “superspreader”? Who knows?

He was in a public place without a mask yesterday (or the day before) too so this kind of thing CONTINUES. (Likewise Pelosi in a “closed” hair salon running around maskless on video. He people denied it but you can see it on video. It is just lies.)


This was before they started mandating self-quarantining of healthy visitors . . .

Verma previously told Breitbart News that Cuomo and other Democrat governors issued coronavirus-related directives contrary to federal government guidelines.
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Thbolt said:
I don’t really worry about sharing a point of view with Trump. You seem to think that someone should be ashamed by that. You only need to be shamed if you share his immoral points of view or excuse his immorality because of political expediency.,
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No. I’m merely amused. But what really isn’t amusing is rash judgment. For all you know, he might be a great deal more moral than you.
 
That wasn’t so hard, was it? That was a well written reply. Thank you.

Zero Hedge reposts a lot of articles from other sources. These sources can be all over the map which can and does drive someone like yourself into reflexively dismissing everything from them as you have done numerous times. I skip over the conspiracy theories too, but there are definitely good articles to be found in it here and there. I don’t expect you to make ZH part of your reading, but just maybe you might be less quick on the trigger when it comes to dismissing cites here at CAF.
 
Ridgerunner said:
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LeafByNiggle:
You have to go many years without forest fires before the nature of the forest is changed so significantly that standing dead trees make the forest much more susceptible to a run-away forest fire.
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I think you have not seen a forest fire up close. You can easily get one in one year because it’s a function of several things, not just fuel buildup. Get into a drought with a high wind and a lot of things that weren’t fuel before, become fuel.
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But people are not dead trees.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
Zero Hedge reposts a lot of articles from other sources. These sources can be all over the map which can and does drive someone like yourself into reflexively dismissing everything from them as you have done numerous times. I skip over the conspiracy theories too, but there are definitely good articles to be found in it here and there. I don’t expect you to make ZH part of your reading, but just maybe you might be less quick on the trigger when it comes to dismissing cites here at CAF.
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I’m a regular Zero Hedge reader, but only because a crazy friend of mine gets most of his beliefs from that site and I want to understand where he’s coming from. You make a good point that I eventually came to realize, too. To flesh it out a little bit for others…

Zero Hedge is made up of articles written by the site owner(s) - aka “Tyler Durden”. This where you’ll regularly find the completely off-the-wall Alex Jones-style conspiracy theory.

Separate from that, they have articles they republish from other sites. The majority of them are conspiracy theory or extreme libertarian financial stuff (every day for many years now the permanent collapse of the western financial system has been about to occur). However, there is some minority of reposted articles that are more sane and actually worthwhile. I found that, rather than dismissing them out of hand, I had to do a little research first on the source and then decide if it was worth my time. Once in a while they surprise me!

Part of what makes it very difficult to ferret out the decent stuff is that all the articles are listed on the front page with no labelling as to its origin, so you have to click into every article to find the reposts. I don’t blame people for deciding it’s too much chaff to find wheat. If I didn’t have this ZH-loving buddy, I probably wouldn’t spend the time.
 
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Thbolt said:
am not racist.
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We’ll see.

But probably St. Augustine led a more sordid life than either of you. But he’s now a saint. You might not be a bit better than Trump is at present. Your thinking you’re better might not be right.
 
Thbolt said:
But I have only been married once, haven’t had numerous affairs, participated in a pornographic movie or am not racist.
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Wow…just, wow.

I am uncertain what exactly you will say to God during judgement, but attempting to make some kind of morality one upmanship is bound to be an awkward conversation.

All fall short without God. And no one is qualified to claim moral superiority.
 
Not really conjecture. We had time to get ready. Measures had very very high approval at the beginning despite anything political ( which is a miracle where I live).
We didn’t have the elements, personnel had time to be trained . I f today ready and all we are 9000 deceased, cannot imagine the disaster it would have been then. The system would have collapsed.This we can basically agree on here where I live despite our differences.What followed is another story which tends to repeat where I live.( Daddy will care care of you and solve your problems sort of thing…)
 
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