Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

It is described in the article/blog. I had never heard of it either.

 

Well, JB Handley, if you look at Worldometer you can see that no country has followed Farr's law so it does not apply!!
No point in remembering a law when the real facts are sitting your desktop.

 

Thread

https://twitter.com/user/status/1267821236144402438

 

The recent paper (not yet reviewed) might be worth a look:

https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/asymp-transmission.html

 

That is a modelling study with far too many questionable assumptions.

As such, it is important not to confuse pre-symptomatic and individuals who are deliberately not reporting symptoms (there is a strong incentive to do so if you wish to disembark!) with being asymptomatic.

Likewise, PCR tests are not foolproof, with contamination being a risk (which was a problem for the CDC tests initially too)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/covid-19-false-positives-1.5555322

 

JB Handley is also a vaccines-cause-autism guy.

 

There have been a couple of news articles recently in Swedish media about the aftermath in Italy, about people's "unhealed emotional wounds" and growing anger, the need to hold someone accountable for the fact that some of their elderly family members were denied medical care and died during the worst part of the crisis, back when there weren't enough ventilators or hospital beds for everyone who needed them.

I find it "interesting" how they write about Italy, compared to how they write about the corresponding situation here in Sweden.

The official message from the Swedish government, the impression I've been getting as a reader, has always been that "everything is under control, there are enough ventilators and hospital beds in the intensive care units", "everybody who needs medical care is receiving it", "no one is being put so low on the list of priorities that they aren't receiving the medical care they need" etc, despite the numbers of deaths rising.

At the same time, a few published opinion pieces, by among others a professor in geriatrics, have accused some Swedish doctors of euthanizing (actually they used the word "avliva" which is the word for when you kill/put animals down) desperately ill elderly patients with covid related symptoms in care homes; criticising doctors for refusing to see these patients in person but choosing to diagnose over the phone instead, which reportedly has often resulted in pallative care (morphine, sedatives, anti-anxiety and anti-nausea meds etc) and deaths, instead of the treatments recommended in the covid guidelines (profylactic anti-coagulants, antibiotics, intravenous fluids, oxygen, hospitalisation, ventilation etc). Here's an example of the replies the opinion piece have gotten.

In one of the news papers' written reporting of the Public Health Authority's live-streamed press conferences the other day it said that 50% of the covid deaths in Sweden so far has happened in care homes. (25% of the deaths have been people who had home care.) I haven't been able to find a written source for those numbers, though.

Recent news reports show 30% excess deaths in care homes on average in the country, while the number for Stockholm is 100%. The official numbers from the National Board of Health and Welfare is 40%.

According to SVT Agenda (a current events television program) last week, only 10% of the 1 739 people who died of covid in care homes got hospital care.

There have also been some official complaints regarding people with urgent need for intensive care due to other diagnoses (kidney disease, for example) who have had to go without due to the prioritisation of covid patients, even though apparently there were available intensive care beds.

Yesterday the Swedish newspaper SvD published an article (paywalled) with numbers clearly showing how suddenly, during the worst part of the crisis, much much fewer elderly people were getting intensive care. They also compare the numbers of people above 70 years old who receive intensive care in Denmark (49%) and Norway (30%), compared to Sweden (21%). They argue that this is because elderly people are not being prioritised.

I really hope there will be accountability here in Sweden too.

 

So far the most repeated response by the Swedish chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, when faced with criticism, seems to be "In the fall we will know what countries were successful". It really irks me, because to me it sounds as if they won't even consider changing their approach, no matter what happens, regardless of the rising number of deaths and the constantly growing amount of data.

For example, judging by the Public Health Authority's actions (or rather lack of action) they seem to be aiming for herd immunity and concentrating their efforts along those lines (despite the obvious: no one knows the scientific facts about covid-19 immunity, so it's all just based on assumptions and speculations). However, when asked about it they deny that herd immunity would be their aim, saying that "herd immunity is simply a fact, the more people who have had the disease, the fewer are able to spread it." ...

Then they do a study on antibodies and are surprised by the result (7,3% i Stockholm, 3.7% in Västra Götaland, the region of Göteborg/Gothenburg which is Sweden's second largest city) which turns out to be way lower than they had expected based to their models: most recently around 20%, but just a few weeks ago they speculated that herd immunity of 40-60% could be reached in Stockholm in May... In interviews Tegnell chose to focus on the possible reasons why the result may be wrong (sample may not be representative, the number may have risen a lot in the 2 weeks since, maybe the tests aren't accurate enough, maybe not all those who have been infected have developed anti-bodies etc etc etc...).

Another Swedish study that was in the news yesterday reports that among people younger than 19 years nearly 8% have developed antibodies. Among people between 20–64 years old 7% and among people older than that around 3%.

In the light of that, I was very surprised to see some slightly self-critical comments by Tegnell in an interview today:

"In the future"? Why not now, today? There's still time to take action to prevent further avoidable deaths! The numbers of deaths and infected still keep rising in large parts of the country, and there's plenty more we could be doing to try and stop that. Don't make it sound as if it's something inevitable that is going to happen no matter what. You have the power to make the necessary changes, today! Where's the sense of urgency?!

It really irks me that the news websites publish articles with big headlines on the days when the reported number of deaths are low, which usually happens on the weekends when there's a delay in data registration. It's really really misleading. For example last Wednesday there were 95 reported deaths, Friday 84, Saturday 45, yesterday 65 and today 74. On Sunday there were no reported deaths and immediately there were news articles with big headlines like "No deaths reported - has not happened since March 13". However, when the numbers rise dramatically again the next day, as expected (since the reported numbers in question never reflected reality), there are no headlines, or maybe there's just some sentence in the middle of an article saying something like "the numbers are no longer decreasing".

And if you check the numbers published by Statistics Sweden (a government agency) you can clearly see how the reported number of covid deaths for any given day keep changing over time, usually rising in the space of several weeks before they are final, sometimes by a lot (due to delays in registration of data etc). The misleading numbers keep getting all the attention, which in my opinion is a big problem.

And then they act surprised when more and more people stop following the recommendations about social distancing, travel restrictions etc...

 

Further on the topic of "asymptomatic",

The Chinese authorities claim they have tested 9.9 million people in Wuhan!!! They claim 300 positive results, however they tried (and failed) to culture live virus from 106 of these samples to see if they were genuine. They also collected 3,343 additional samples from the belongings of "asymptomatic" cases such as masks, toothbrushes etc and none of those samples tested positive. None of the "asymptomatic" cases were associated with infecting others.
en.nhc.gov dot cn/2020-06/03/c_80586.htm

Whether you wish to believe these results (no symptomatic cases!?!) is a different question...

Indeed. The fact is, the more time that passes, the worse the Swedish strategy looks.

Sweden has just overtaken France into 5th position in most deaths per million (of non-microstates). They will also overtake Spain and Italy within a few months, ultimately leaving the UK and Sweden to battle it out to see which country is a greater failure in 3-6 months.

 

According to a news article today, the Swedish government is apparently trying to save face by asking international diplomats/ambassadors to portray Sweden's covid strategy in a more positive light. Possibly in response to the negative attention the strategy has gotten internationally lately, as well as the fact that several countries aren't very keen to welcome Swedish tourists this summer?

The message they want to send is that "Sweden's strategy isn't as different as it is said to be".

 

Lots of articles about this around the world today, in English: The Guardian, Bloomberg, Politico, Reuters, Independent, AFP, New York Times and others.

ETA: Here's another interview in Swedish, where Tegnell shares his own thoughts and opinions a bit more in depth. Google Translate, English

 

Wayback Machine link to get around sign-up wall, https://web.archive.org/web/2020060...mn-secrecy-over-false-negative-covid-19-tests
Original if you have an account with the Guardian already, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...mn-secrecy-over-false-negative-covid-19-tests

 

The Chinese government did the same and it was pretty controversial at the time so I hope this will be too. Whew this is so bad. And when damage control takes precedence it only further commits to the initial mistakes.

Ideology guiding medicine is always horrible. This practice has to end.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1267856088449323010

 

I'm sorry to hear that he's ill, but it's possible he's done other MPs and staff a favour by highlighting the risks of reconvening parliament and stopping remote attendance. It seems particularly obtuse to replace a functioning system of digital voting with time-consuming, risky queuing.

 

After weeks of reports that Swedish people are moving about and travelling more despite the recommendations not to, a continuously high number of covid-19 deaths, and a rising number of infected people for the last 2+ weeks, new recommendations have been announced today:

https://www.krisinformation.se/nyheter/2020/juni/reserekommendationer-lattas

Why??

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se...s-for-dampad-smittspridning-vid-okat-resande/

Here are the current recommendations (in effect until 13 June):

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se...tt/aktuella-utbrott/covid-19/fragor-och-svar/

 

Well

https://www.theguardian.com/society...e-operating-fully-until-september-coronavirus

NHS test-and-trace app ‘not fully operational until September’