From the unbiased and proudly independent Australian government news agency;
Curious minds might find a series of important questions not asked by Toby Mann and wires. Incidentally, I believe I saw Toby Mann And Wires supporting Shakespeare’s Sister at The Garage, Highbury in 1992.
Sweden’s failed coronavirus herd immunity gamble came at a high cost of lives and the country could still have to implement a lockdown to tackle the spread, experts say.
Failed? As the ambassador from post-revolutionary China reportedly replied when asked about his opinion on the success of the French Revolution, “It’s too early to tell“.
Also, experts. Anyone who thinks, in late 2020, an appeal to experts is persuasive really needs to pay more attention. Perhaps the most polite reaction the majority of people have when they see the noun, experts, is, “Sigh, really? Let me guess; and they’ve got a fucking computer model too?“.
Sweden’s approach to dealing with coronavirus was flawed from the start, according to Professor David Goldsmith, the lead author of a paper published by the UK’s Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Ok, let’s see his evidence for that view then:
In it, Professor Goldsmith examined what went wrong with Sweden’s policy and why its case mortality rate is about triple that of its Scandinavian neighbours.
Case mortality rate? That’s our metric of choice for this argument is it?
Case mortality rate is a function of two numbers; the number of dead, which is relatively easy to count, and the number of people who have tested positive for the virus. That second measure is really not comparable across different countries, is it? Testing more people reduces the CFR but doesn’t mean the disease is any more or less dangerous.
And with a severe second wave presently moving through the country, he believes drastic measures need to be undertaken to control the spread.
“Sweden, unfortunately, have done the wrong thing in the wrong way,” Professor Goldsmith told the ABC.
“They thought they were going to get this herd immunity nonsense.”
“Herd immunity” is a term used by epidemiologists to describe the effect of a population that has grown immune to a virus either by catching it and recovering from it or by vaccination. Professor David Goldsmith’s expertise is not in virology, which might explain this mistake.
It doesn’t stop him from giving those Swedes a stern telling off;
“Nobody has ever tried to control a pandemic or an epidemic by inducing herd immunity.
Excuse me for a moment while I just check I’m up to date on my vaccinations agains the Black Death and Spanish Flu…..oh, hang on.
A measure of antibodies taken in June and July from people in Stockholm, the epicentre of Sweden’s first wave, found only about 15 per cent of the population had them.
Around this time, the country’s case and death rates were dropping.
From what rate to what new rate? We’re not told, obviously it’s not important.
Also unimportant are questions like, how bad was Sweden’s 2019 and 2018 flu season compared to the countries they are now being compared to? If the flu took more frail and sick in a particular country than another in those years, it seems logical Covid19 would take fewer during 2020.
Similarly, this time last year, much of Australia was in flames. This week, not so much. It’s almost as if something happened to the dry tinder…..
“What was it about the Swedes that would simply mean they could sit there and expect not to have a second wave of such severity?” he said.
“It astonishes me. I think they were caught up in their own bullshit.”
Some dispassionate, sober and scientific language there by Professor Goldsmith.
Standby, here comes a further demonstration that Australian universities are not sending their brightest and best to intern at The ABC;
Some of the results of this approach are borne out in simple numbers.
Simple numbers? Cool bananas, we can handle simple numbers. Give it your best shot, Toby Mann And Wires, play us a medley of your greatest hits:
There have been 225,560 cases of coronavirus in Sweden, a country of 10 million, and 6,500 people have died.
Ok, so forgetting the case numbers because, as we’ve said, that’s just a function of how many you test; the total fatality rate for the entire country is currently 0.065%.
With where else shall we compare the European country with 4 land borders?
Oh yes, the island nation of Australia, with its nearest neighbouring foreign major airport (not you, Auckland; sit down) an 8 hour flight away:
For comparison, there have been 27,854 cases and 907 deaths in Australia, which has a population of 25 million.
That comparison is the classic apples with pears.
Against numbers from large countries like the US, India or Brazil, Sweden’s tallies don’t seem too bad.
….not that Toby Mann And Wires is going to give you those comparisons though.
The professor has a co-author who is an actual epidemiologist;
Chair in Epidemiology at Deakin University, Professor Catherine Bennett, said Sweden’s case fatality rate was about 3 per cent, compared to about 1 per cent across the rest of Scandinavia.
“That’s an extraordinary death rate,” she told the ABC.
Case fatality rate. See what she did there?
Sweden’s COVID-19 death toll per capita is more than 10 times Norway’s and nearly five times that of Denmark.
How bad were Norway and Denmark’s 2018/19 flu seasons? Nah, not important.
Perhaps we get a hint at why certain people are so exercised and motivated to prove Sweden’s approach has been a disaster:
Rather than imposing lockdowns like many other countries, Sweden focused on voluntary measures aimed at promoting social distancing and good hygiene, such as working from home if possible, and avoiding public transport and crowded indoor activities.
Sweden had a lockdown of sorts, they just didn’t need over-zealous cops fining dog walkers, arresting beach-goers and flying drones over hikers.
Bill’s Opinion
There are obvious flaws in both the report and the subsequent news article. Hanlon’s Razor suggests we should just write these off as genuine mistakes.
It’s 2020 though. It’s probably long past the time for us to listen to Hanlon or any other expert or unbiased journalist.
These people are not fit to undertake these jobs, or at least not to the standards of the job description most people would expect of them.
Find another job, you mendacious activist bastards.
It’s all turned political. Lockdowns have ended up as a policy of the left so the ABC has to support them, even if they huffed at extreme measures in Wuhan earlier in the year. This is because Trump was skeptical about lockdowns. Had he gone the other way, the ABC would presently be commending Sweden for preserving individual liberties while still ending up with a total fatality rate only about the same as the UK’s.
The funny thing about the Swedish experiment is, it’s result is about average. In other words, it suggests lockdowns make little or no difference.
There’s heaps of fascinating data being generated from this year’s shenanigans but I suspect it will not be properly studied and acted upon for a decade or so because it’s too political, and science is very far from pure in that regards.
From Wikiquote, which I looked up earlier in response to a post by Alex Noble at ConTel:
How does so much [false news] get into the American newspapers, even the good ones? Is it because journalists, as a class, are habitual liars, and prefer what is not true to what is true? I don’t think it is. Rather, it is because journalists are, in the main, extremely stupid, sentimental and credulous fellows — because nothing is easier than to fool them — because the majority of them lack the sharp intelligence that the proper discharge of their duties demands.
~ H.L.Mencken