js1993

You didn't say anything about the average age of population in your original post. You seemed to imply the lack of lockdowns in Sweden caused a decline in "societal cohesion" and an "increase in gang activity, serious gang violence and illegal drug use." Everyone knows what caused the big spike in those in Sweden, and it wasn't that native Swedes were allowed to go to the gym while Danes weren't.

RedChili

Wow! I got a lot of replies to my post! It's going to take a few days to reply to all (which is exactly the reason why I stopped posting in this thread a couple of years ago ...)

I'm not surprised that the authors say so. During the past three years, most "experts" in the field have claimed that face masks are the best safeguard against transmission, and people claiming otherwise have been censored on social media. The result of their study is really humiliating for all those experts. I saw a TV interview with Fauci where he was confronted with it, and he just stumbled out an answer that "there are other studies," without giving any details.

By using common sense, it's quite obvious that the emperor is naked. SARS-Cov-2 is around 1 micron, and it's mainly transmitted via aerosols, that are between 10-60 microns. Most face masks have holes that are between 80-500 microns, meaning that most aerosols and viruses easily can pass through.

While saying that, I do agree that there is a possibility that a portion of the viruses may get stuck in the mask. (After all, everybody that has worn a mask has noticed that they do get wet.) But that's not necessarily a good thing. If we assume that a human being breathes out eight times a minute, and if we assume that a face mask can stop 10% of the viruses, it means that after one hour, a face mask is filled with 50 times the amount of viruses as exists in a single breath. The face mask is actually a virus bomb. It needs to be handled in the correct way, and that means washing hand before and after touching it. But many airlines required passengers to put the mask on between each sip of drink or bite of food, and that is certainly not the way to go.

So, while I do believe that there could be a small theoretical reduction of virus transmission by using face masks, that theoretical benefit turns negative when masks are handled incorrectly.

When it comes to the issue of toxins, I read a study about it, but it's a couple of years ago, I don't remember where I saw it, and I don't have time to look for it now, but it appeared to be a good scientific study.

RedChili

I do agree with one point that you seem to be making. The claim that has often been made, was that all countries in Europe shut down, while Sweden alone remained open. That was never the truth. The truth was probably that all Scandinavian countries had pretty soft lockdowns. Places like the UK and Spain certainly had far more restrictions that any Scandinavian country.

But you are incorrect in saying that "you need to look at the death rate when Sweden was wide open." Firstly, there were restrictions in Sweden until well into 2022. From my observations, I'd say that the hardest "lockdown" period in Sweden was March-April 2020, when most people locked down voluntarily. Probably out of sheer fear, most public places were completely empty. And this voluntary lockdown period was basically the only period during the entire "pandemic" when Sweden had a higher mortality rate than the rest of Scandinavia. When people came out of their voluntary lockdown, mortality fell and was basically equal in Scandinavia during the rest of 2020.

But it seems that you have entirely missed my point. My point is that you'll have to pay for your decisions one way or another. Firstly, because a lockdown can in the best case scenario only delay the transmission, and everybody will be infected sooner or later. Secondly, because a lockdown destroys people's health, and that means that in a couple of years, you'll see a higher overall mortality. The problem with the covid response was that everybody was only focused on the immediate number of deaths with covid, and didn't look at the entire picture of what's good for public health overall. I've always believed that for every life that lockdown saves from covid, you'll have to pay back with at least 100 deaths from other causes. And that's why it's imperative to compare total mortality numbers over a long period of time. Three years is the biggest perspective that we can get right now.

nacho

Definitely not what I remember. At that time I kept my kids at home because the atmosphere of the school was pretty bad - teachers were scared and they had to force students to go to school. Lunds kommun was sending warning letters to parents to keep their kids at home. The border wasn't closed and Sweden has never banned flights from China. We were not even allowed to lockdown voluntarily. The only people that could do that were office workers - ask bus drivers, train conductors or a 65 years old if they did that.

The mortality rate is not the only thing to judge what is right or wrong. Also, the mortality rate is not the best to look at because how healthy a person is depends on multiple factors from how healthy they live, whether they have received proper healthcare services when it was needed and how much preventative measures they have provided by their healthcare provider.

I don't like Tegnell said life goes on as usual back in March 2020 and then 6 months later they decided to follow the world and only allowing Swedes to cross the bridge to Sweden from Denmark. I chose to keep my kids at home because I don't have any faith in the Swedish healthcare system - back then the virus was more lethal than now. It was more than just a flu - remember the patients in Italy walking around with a balloon covering their heads?

As I also said before, if Sweden had isolate the risk group and protect them, sure, life can go on and let us get hit and get it over with. But it didn't because it's impossible to demand all the staff to isolate themselves for a prolonged period of time. A lot of teachers in Sweden are in the risk group because of their age. Obviously Tegnell somehow realized and changed the policy.

The reason for lockdown is to lessen the burden of the healthcare sector, it's unfair to flood a hospital with sick Covid patients - what should they do? There was no space in hospitals in Stockholm as it was packed. Most places in the world don't have state of the art healthcare that can handle a pandemic like this, so the best way to deal with it is to take turn getting ill (this is how we pay for the lockdown decision).

Would I do the same again if there is another pandemic? Probably yes. Although I think the world should open faster when most people are vaccinated.

js1993

More healthy kids have died in car accidents than from Covid since 2020, but you want us to do all of the same things the next time?

CPH-Flyer

No, I want people to stop driving with their kids. Clearly.

tom tulpe

More people in Sweden die from cancer than from car accidents. Time to scrap speed limits and safety belt laws I guess.

js1993

Non sequitur.

tom tulpe

That was my point

js1993

Then it was, indeed, a non sequitur.

Saying we should pull kids out of school for a year again while knowing full well that Covid has a lower risk to kids than riding in a car is absolutely insane.

nacho

How can you compare accidents to children passing the virus to risk groups? This is like comparing an apple to an orange. Kids don't get ill so easily but they are the carrier of the virus that can pass on to others they are in touch with. That was the reason for higher mortality rates for immigrant families as more generations tend to live together.

A 50 years old teacher who has a weak lung still had to go to teach a bunch of kids - basically that's like a virus central. I know teachers were told either they come to school or they quit.

Did I say I want everyone to do that? I said I would do that again for myself. I want the choice to self-isolate and clear information about the virus (not like it's just a flu) - and now it doesn't matter anymore as we are out of Sweden. If you want to further burden the already overloaded healthcare system, that's your choice.

tom tulpe

Comparing deaths from road accidents to a pandemic is no better. Hence my comparison.

dodgeflyer

Why is always the "50-year old" etc... which gets thrown up as an argument? Always something vague. I agree initial covid restrictions came largely as a consequence to safeguard healthcare systems, but you can never plan for a healthcare system which has 100% recovery rate. It effectively means there should be 1 hospital bed for each citizen. People will die, some will die earlier than the average, if not Covid that year, might as well be the flu.

Life comes with great risks. Even by just getting up and going to work you've put yourself at the risk of death x times (shower, car, walking in traffic, etc...). Should we mandate for laws which stop it all? Of course not and of course you can't, the costs to society couldn't even be quantified. We also know that every so often there will be viruses which will cause excess deaths above the average (wrong strain of flu, the Spanish flu, avian flu, etc...). Whilst personally I don't disagree with the initial lock-downs (whilst taking stock), the 2-year ordeal was far too severe, and I agree with RC that the mental and economic side effect will cause damage for much longer. What it showed me was that democractic have no issues making very undemocractic decisions as, particularly the last lock-downs, where done at a point where they were aware of the effects were no longer commensurate. Never mind that countries, and in this case, particularly Norway, stepped away from several treaty obligations.

Media did a very small introspection post (in Norway), and found that during all the government press conferences, not a single question was asked if it was "too much, too severe, disproportionate" and all were more "why not more restrictions". In addition to government, media, which in the Western world forms an integral part to democracy, failed as well. [/half-rant].

What I do find sad, and perhaps FT has a bunch agorophobic people in addition to travel-mad people, but reading the good OMNI and the Covid thread there, the tone from Americans and suggestions of isolation, refusing to see people etc... which popping up again I just find sad.

GUWonder

There is no indication that Sweden’s school kids without a “lockdown” have turned out to have more stable or better health outcomes than Denmark’s school kids. The mental health, drug use and crime problems involving kids has had a worse increase in Sweden following the pandemic than it has had in Denmark when even controlling for demographic background.

Keeping Sweden supposedly more open during the pandemic hasn’t made life easier for those who work with kids in Sweden — and that includes the health services, social services, school services and the law enforcement services. It also hasn’t worked wonders for the Swedish labor market, and so we get the Swedish PM and finance minister dropping by to try to run up the number of Swedes going to work in Denmark even as Denmark already has the giant sucking sound for workers given the average Swede gets a c. 30+% bump in SEK denominated pay by moving to Danish work instead of sticking to working in southern Sweden.

nacho

I totally agree with you that once the vaccine is available to everyone, that place should open. Asia and Australia have been really insisting on not opening until this year which is pretty insane.

I also said that for me it is to avoid overburdening the hospital and to get a choice to stay home if one feels the need to. Yes we all die from something but there is no reason to bombard our already seriously diminished healthcare system. The Danish government should never spend that kind of $ to do massive testing - testing for Covid was like a sport in Denmark (at least twice a week during peak time and then whenever there's a positive case). Instead they should invest in better resources when something like this happens again so we don't need to worry about burdening the healthcare system, and we know that we will be well taken care of in case we got hit by it.

From what I heard about CDC's advice is their recommendation is 100% related to burden to healthcare, if they deem an area where there is a risk to overflow their healthcare capacity they would like people to wear mask. I'm not a mask person (I don't like the way that people who use them don't use them properly and I don't know how much masks have been disposed and it's not recyclable) and I think their advice should be to warn the risk group about a possible outbreak and give them options on how to deal with it. BTW, UA crews on my flights were all wearing masks.

Yeah I was chatting with a mum of my kid's classmates during the lockdown, she was working from home and she said she needed her kids to go to school so that she could work in peace, and that was her reason wanting the schools to stay open so she can "park" her kids there (this term was from another mum who was a teacher). It wasn't fun that they couldn't go to school and it's true that they learned less than being at school (that's because we are in Scandinavia so there is 0 enforcement to do homework). My kids were at the age that their social lives were already online, I could hear my little gamer chatting with classmates all the time. At least DK was really quick at getting everyone vaccinated so we can go back to "Business as usual" before a lot of countries.

The reason for the Swedish government to force kids to schools is keep them away from the street and give them a warm lunch. Basically, the government thinks all parents are poor, stupid and don't care about their children. My kids were starving every single day when I picked them up and when Danish parents admiring about the free school lunch in Sweden I immediately tell them what it was like - limited budget and you need to cook for everyone (Hindu, Muslims, Vegans, Vegetarians etc.) and they have to cook something that everyone can eat so that they can save $, so what do you think they serve? They all said, "that's not good" and I said "Yep".