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2020-04-15 Europe
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Sweden Tops 1,000 Deaths As Criticism Of ‘ Herd Immunity’ Strategy Grows
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h/t Instapundit
[Hot Air] - I write post after post here about how the U.S. should remain locked down as long as possible, until more testing and contact tracing is in place, but I find myself weirdly glad that Sweden is conducting its highly risky experiment with herd immunity. It’s the only way we’ll know whose approach to the disease was the correct one, the cautious "shut it all down" contingent or the more fatalistic "everyone’s getting infected eventually" group of one, i.e. Sweden. If Sweden’s death toll ends up being lower than expected and the country ends up achieving herd immunity sooner than expected, it’ll look like a brilliant gamble in hindsight. They wagered the lives of thousands of people in refusing to bring their economy to a screeching halt — and it paid off.
Just like their Socialized Medicine did
Epidemiologists, including many in Sweden itself, are willing to take that wager, though. They see a catastrophe in the making even though the Swedish government has put in place some basic social distancing measures. Gatherings of 50 people or more are banned, and citizens are asked to use good sense in keeping their distance from others. But as far as closing down schools and businesses? Nope. Life goes on.
Today they recorded their 1,000th death from the virus, far more than any of their Scandinavian neighbors.
...A group of 22 Swedish doctors and virologists published an open letter to the government in a newspaper today pointing to the much better data in Finland and Norway and begging the prime minister to start locking things down. I remember back when the UK was considering this strategy how scientists warned them that the plan to quarantine the old and vulnerable while letting the young and healthy walk free had a (literally) fatal flaw for senior citizens: Many of them need assistance day-to-day, and that assistance is typically provided by younger people. Who’ll provide that assistance if the young are out infecting each other? The fact that Sweden’s seeing an unusual number of deaths in nursing homes made me think of that. Of course the virus is going to get into clusters of the elderly if you’re making little effort to restrain it among younger caregivers.
A fatal flaw in "Libertarian" arguments against lockdown. Stupidity or cold "economic" calculation?
...In fact, if you look at the COVID-19 statistics here, you’ll see that Sweden isn’t (yet) a worst-case scenario. They have the ninth-highest number of deaths per one million people of any major country in the world, far more than other Scandinavian countries and ahead of the United States — but also far less than Spain and Italy, the hardest hit European nations. On the other hand, the IHME model predicts that Sweden won’t peak for nearly another month and that it’ll see more than 18,000 deaths before August 4, a *big* number relatively speaking. By population, that would be the equivalent of nearly 600,000 deaths in the United States, around 10 times as many dead as IHME projects for us by August.
I predict more than that - because, once the disease is spread enough, the essential service industries will shut down - the surviving doctors, and supermarket workers, will just leave their jobs.
Maybe you think that’s okay because of the accelerated timeline Sweden is aiming for. Conceivably they’ll be completely done with coronavirus by August while we’ll be gearing up for thousands more deaths this fall and winter — unless, of course, scientists discover an effective therapy between now and then that makes coronavirus much less lethal for us going forward. That’s the giant hole in Sweden’s "let’s get it over with" strategy. By not playing for time, they’re not giving medicine any chance to partially solve this problem for them. Imagine telling your citizens that they should carry on as usual in the name of herd immunity and accept that that means many thousands of deaths ... and then, just as you’re finished burying the bodies and the outbreak is finally calming down, researchers announce great success with an experimental antiviral. It’d be like a "Twilight Zone" episode.
Natural herd immunity is for wild animals, humans can do better.
In fact, I'm willing to take a bet. When, a few years down the road, we compare coronavirus damages to Swedish vs Israeli economies - it won't be Israel eating crow.
Of course, what I expect to really happen is for Swedes to pull their head from their ass, and start lockdown - like UK did 
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Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-15 04:00||
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Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-15 05:07||
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Posted by Lex 2020-04-15 17:54||
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Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-15 18:02||
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Posted by Bobby 2020-04-15 18:30||
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Posted by Lex 2020-04-15 18:33||
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Posted by Lex 2020-04-15 19:03||
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