In a week Sweden's relative per capita cases jumped from 170% to 197% and now their daily deaths are higher than our daily new cases. While our graph is showing signs of slowing down the Swedish cases are proceeding at a steady rate of +~10% per day.
Supposedly Sweden is going for herd immunity. Get everyone sick and if they recover they will be immune. Or something like that.
Hell of a way to test who is right. Sweden will be back to 'normal' sooner, but will be interesting to see at what cost and if their normal is really going to be that normal.
Well also that recovered people arn't necessarily immune. It seems some worldwide are testing positive again after they recover and test negative. Now is it they get a different strain, maybe they went into remission and seemed recovered even though they were still infected I don't know.
The human body has quite a robust immune system with overlaying immune system responses. The normal one we think of is, we get sick and overcome it becoming immune because we now have antibodies that are specific to that virus. Some of the responses because of what they normally do will not give immunity. They are just acting as back up to a signal that something is wrong. These back up or alternate responses could be front lining the immune response because the body simply doesnt know what to do.
In Finland we haven't shut down jobs or so, everyone still goes to work - well, except baristas, bar keepers, waitresses... But you know, most people still do their jobs and even non-essential people who can't work remotely still go to their work. The mail works and I can still order swords from abroad and all. Simply, our approach was not to destroy the whole economy with this. I mean it has an effect, you can't shut down like a third of the service sector without a big hit to the economy but besides that one most fields are not affected much except primarily by international travel and transportation restrictions that affect every country whether they quarantine or not. As we're an exports based hitech economy we have a ton of machine installation crews sitting on their hands here unable to travel to the work site to install machinery - this is something we can't affect. Most countries are in lockdown and there were quite a few unfinished installations going on in northern Italy and in China, including Wuhan region. I mean, we wouldn't be hit that much more even if we had not put up any quarantine measures. As for having the hospital systems overrun which results in a huge spike in mortality rate as people are getting infected at overcrowded hospitals, the staff are getting infected and with everyone getting infected only a fraction are getting treated - yea, that's the point where even I could simply die off if I got it at such a time and if I was hospitalized. The thing people forget about the 'let's herd immunize ourselves quickly' is that it does hit even healthy young people hard. You can't just write it off saying "oh, I'm 35 and I'm in good shape and healthy so it won't hit me" - it can hit healthy 20-year olds very badly. Sure, you can bounce out of it after 2 weeks at hospital and getting oxygenated. But have you seen how quickly your strength and resistance drop if your blood saturation starts dropping? Suddenly you can't walk and then you can't sit up. I've got relatives in the risk groups, young folks and I've in the past spent a long time watching someone with a regular flu hitting their lungs spending more than a week with an oxygen mask - I spent that whole time with that person in the hospital. With Covid apparently it's as if the lungs are lacerated all over if I got it right. It can take quite some time for a person to even make a full recovery and apparently the immune system gets pretty close to being knocked out while at it. And those lungs in bad condition allow for an easy route for regular bacteria and such to attack the body, which may be suffering from significant reduction in immunal response. In short, for damage control and failing at the first step I think our current line seems quite good. I'm starting to see the hill shape forming slowly with our graph - and even if it doesn't start dropping it is still achieving the intended result of saving many lives and not overwhelming the hospital system without wrecking the whole economy. I wouldn't be surprised to see significant relaxation to the situation here during the summer. I can't tell and don't see the future but if the rate of infection slows down it's quite plausible. ------------ Edit. The retail group I favor has been really ramping up their pickup and home delivery services. I've advertised their food services before and now they've extended this to their hardware stores as well. I hear that there are still a lot of shops in many places that simply won't let you just pick up your shoppings on the parking lot nevermind ordering a home delivery. Literally, we drive to parking lot, pop up the trunk, text the shop and they lift the shoppings into the trunk and close it and off we go, never going near the worker.
See I'd not have been so gentle. I'd have told him to wait a moment, gotten the police and encouraged them to force him to perform community service right then and there, handing out free rolls of TP to every customer until he was out. And donated the sanitizer to the hospital.
The aussie government and web stores put a complete stop to selling products that are at risk of being hoarded or priced gouged. The person in question used a team of people to buy all of the products over the course of a day or two as they had already been limiting 1 per customer. They are now stuck with all the stuff. The government could seize it but that could cause other problems.
see now, in my mind that constitutes a conspiracy to commit fraud and they should all go to jail. They knew what they were doing was wrong and went -out of their way- to do it anyway. Because of their actions people who need those materials will not have them on hand and thusly reparations would seem fit for them to be required to provide those materials to any who need them. The monetary cost hardly seems a sufficient penalty, but it'd suffice
Fraud is a very specific charge and it does not work that way, but you are half right: there are some laws out there (depending on the state) that can be used to prosecute these people: "To regulators and many others, the sellers are sitting on a stockpile of medical supplies during a pandemic. The attorney general’s offices in California, Washington and New York are all investigating price gouging related to the coronavirus. California’s price-gouging law bars sellers from increasing prices by more than 10 percent after officials declare an emergency. New York’s law prohibits sellers from charging an “unconscionably excessive price” during emergencies." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes-amazon-sellers.html I have no sympathy for these people. They are fucking amoral scum for exploiting a crisis to make very short-term, short-sighted profits. Almost invariably, they don't even show remorse for what they do (the is certainly the case with the asshole in the article linked above). If you know of someone hoarding, find out what your state's laws are regarding price gouging and report their asses to the police.
Sweden, what the hell? And they came at it so strong less than a month ago: "We are not like the rest of the world, we're Swedes, we have superior education and culture" I'm so glad they couldn't convince other countries to follow their model with their irresponsible remarks.
Holy crap. That attempt at herd immunity really backfired on them. If that is what caused the skyrocket.
Yea, they have the bars and all places open. It spread to elderly care units because they don't take any precautions and now a lot of people are dying and a lot more are getting infected. I mean, if it has 1% mortality rate then the infected numbers are ~100x the dead. With the deaths often being placed ~2-3 weeks after being infected as with collapse of the immune defense and subsequently getting killed by bacterial infection or any number of things by which this thing kills you afterwards. For the past 3 weeks Swedish politicians have been constantly saying "we're only a few days away from herd immunity". They are doing nothing about it. As they said - "we are Swedes, we are not like the rest of the countries; we are educated and smart. We will manage this by telling our people to mind their distance and wash their hands". Note that South Korea has 50 million people and Poland has 37 million, Sweden has 10 million people and it's skyrocketing past all those big countries. Nevermind Taiwan, 23 million people and less than 400 cases because they started quarantining travelers in December-January turn, effectively stopping this on the border and tracing back the chain of infections effectively as well as having an app telling people where to get face masks - the availability of masks store to store on a map. Does anyone recall the "masks won't help" and "the masks being sold at pharmacies should not be bought because they are intended for the healthcare professionals working in hospitals" ? "Don't buy masks being sold at pharmacies because they're for the real doctors". How about that, the pharmacies have the stuff that is reserved for hospital use available for sale? Gee, better then not to buy anything from the pharmacies or else the hospitals will go without!
Interesting. Wrong for Hawaii though I think. Short-Term Forecast In one week from 2020-04-26, the model forecasts about 650 total confirmed cases (90% Prediction Interval: 610 - 830). That would be a 44 case increase in the next 5ish days. Its been going at 1-2 a day so far, so unless theres a huuuuuge spike I don't see it happening.
I wonder if they are basing the model off the modified virus they released and tracked (10-15?) years ago?
