pewpew

Morphine (and other opioids) is a common treatment for "air hunger." Basically, what's happening before the morphine is that the person is breathing, but they're not getting enough oxygen in their blood because their lungs are damaged. This results in the accumulation of lactic acid as cells don't get the oxygen they need to fuel themselves (and so they revert to anaerobic metabolism, of which lactic acid is a byproduct). The brain senses this acidity and sends signals to the body to breathe more quickly, with the ultimate aim being to get more oxygen (and blow off carbon dioxide, which sort of acts as an acid in the blood). Unfortunately, that doesn't work because, again, the lungs are injured. So the person exerts a lot of effort trying to breathe, but it doesn't do all that much, and they'll eventually tire out the muscles helping with respiration. If you give them supplemental oxygen, it'll help a lot (because whereas room air is 21% oxygen, we can put higher oxygen quantities through cannulae etc, resulting in greater oxygenation of the blood), but it won't fully solve the problem (because some blood will continue to flow to areas which are too damaged to receive that oxygen), and they'll still tire out those muscles. If you give them morphine in small doses, it will act on the respiratory centers in the brain to decrease their need to breathe at such a high rate, and it'll avoid them tiring out their muscles + alleviate the psychological burden of having the mismatch between oxygen supply and demand.

RedChili

In my opinion, you're putting the cart before the horse. In the end of February and beginning of March, many Norwegians came home from their skiing holidays in Italy and Austria, and they saw on telly what disastrous scenes were being played out in Italian hospitals. That fear was the reason why they welcomed the lockdown. The lockdown didn't cause people to fear covid-19. It was the other way around.

FHI has always believed that most of the lockdown measures had little or no effect on how the virus spread. Norway would never have experienced what the UK has seen, because of vast differences within the population of those countries.

You probably need 60-80 percent immunity to stop the domestic spreading of the virus, but that's irrelevant. Norway and Denmark are nowhere near any of those numbers. The thing is that an immune tourist is the "ideal" tourist, because an immune tourist can't infect others or be infected. And Sweden has a far higher proportion of "ideal" tourists in their population.

Great explanation! Thanks!

CPH-Flyer

An immune tourist is potentially an ideal tourist, but there is still way to few ideal tourists in Sweden for that to matter. What did the latest test show? 7 percent or so? A far cry from something that makes a difference.

As for behaviour and reaction. It is impossible to know now, and it will only be our beliefs based on the reactions of people we know and have talked to, and observations of society in Scandinavia. Based on my observations, I'd say it would not have ended well without the lockdown.

Until less than a week before the lockdown you had the authorities saying this can't happen here. Yet it did in many places. Changing the message to "This will happen here, you have to take care while going about your business as normal" would have had a high risk of leading to a UK style outbreak. In my view.

RedChili

The latest immunity test results that were reported were about 7 percent, but those results reflect the situation from about a month ago. They did those tests two weeks ago, and it takes about 2-3 weeks to develop antibodies.

CPH-Flyer

Even saying it doubled in the two weeks since the tests were taken, assuming that infections run pretty unchecked in Sweden, you are still not close to a number that really matters in this context.

The only reason for the number of people with antibodies to grow exponentially, is if the infections in Sweden is growing exponentially. And while the number of infections seems to grow at a disturbing rate, it is not at an exponential rate.

CPH-Flyer

By the way, the "spike" in Korea really turned out to be a nothing burger. Night clubs does seem to be back in business. At least you can reserve tables for today at the trendy ones.

Their track and trace seems to have worked for the containment of the cluster.

GUWonder

Danish vehicular traffic on the bridge from Sweden to Denmark was so heavy on Sunday that the Danish-bound side of the bridge had a nearly 4 mile long traffic jam on it.

[This past weekend was a long holiday weekend for those working in Denmark, and they seemed to have rushed to visit Skane and Bornholm.]

I don’t see the utility of Denmark not wanting Swedish tourists coming across the bridge when so many Danes and others are connected to Sweden anyway and playing tourist like this in/via Sweden.

Fredrik74

Not stopping that means the Danes aren't serious or just use it for political purposes. Once they enforced two weeks self-isolation for travellers this would stop.

CPH-Flyer

At the moment, Denmark does not want random tourists from anywhere. Including Sweden.
The easing of the borders applies to Sweden, as well as the rest of the Nordic countries and Germany. In the end, despite the rhetoric, I would expect Sweden to be included with the rest of the Nordic countries as further easing occurs.

CPH-Flyer

Despite all the bad news still coming from all over the world, we are still somehow heading the right way. Looking at the closed cases vs. the active cases we are now getting close to having more closed cases than active. The world was there once, but then Europe, the US and South America happened. But we are getting close again


​​​​​​And in these numbers, remember that the UK and the Netherlands don't report recoveries at all.

nacho

Danish citizens are always allow into Denmark, the only way that Denmark can stop this completely is to enforce a 2 weeks self-isolation.

I went to DK 3 times in the past 2 weeks and the situation there is much better than SE IMO. Hand disinfectant and/or gloves in every shop and in IKEA there were hand disinfectant between certain distance inside the shop. Also outside the shops there is a guy counting how many are in the shop so they can stop people from coming in if it exceeds a certain amount. We had an online meeting with IKEA Helsingborg and that staff told us that the shop was packed.

Most people kept their distance andI didn't see many old people out shopping (I was shopping during work hours so mostly elderly that shop) - here in Sweden - at very least in my town, 80% of shoppers I have seen are over 70 (I think they are because they have push chairs).

I'm not saying that everyone follow the rules but there are certainly more that are doing that in DK than SE.

Some Danes are questioning about the closure - I don't think it's a lockdown because people were allowed out. However, I'd rather have that than seeing 4000+ peoples' live being taken away, and the medical staff in Stockholm work like hell and some elderly were put on morphine. https://www.svtplay.se/video/2585909...-15?start=auto

GUWonder

This is a bit like wanting your cake and eating it too. But since this is Denmark, maybe we should use another sweet-tooth lover’s delight that is more popular in Denmark.

Any random tourist from Sweden can come into Denmark by claiming to visit for a date in Denmark. An American resident in Skåne can even do that by showing text messages claiming they came from some prospective date in Denmark. Maybe we can send love messages to ourselves.

At this point, the remaining restrictions in Denmark applicable to traffic from Sweden at least are a joke in terms of their utility in responding to this virus risk and also in terms of how ineffectively they are policed.

Allowing all Danish traffic to/from Skåne while still limiting Skåne traffic to Denmark by Swedes is the ridiculous situation that exists now around the bridge and ferry ports.

CPH-Flyer

Of course you can cheat by claiming something you are not. In the end how do you prove you have a relationship above 6 months in a way that is not easily foiled..

The fact that people can cheat does not mean you should not have rules in place and generally expect people to comply with them. You can always discuss the extend of the effort you want to put in to enforcing them. Initially the Danish authorities wanted more than just a statement, but the media response was so strong that they had to accept just a statement.

nacho

Those random tourists has to be a permanent nordic country or German resident - so it's not that everyone can just go in and it a YMMV situation because the border police decide who is real and who is fake.

We are trapped in Sweden until July 15 at the earliest by UD, I'm going to be really mad if they extend that further.

GUWonder

To go on a date in Denmark with a person residing in Denmark, a person coming from the Nordic countries or from Germany need not be a permanent resident or citizen of any of these countries. Being on a short term visa to Finland, for example, allows a visiting American or Indian student or professor in Finland to go over to Sweden and Denmark to go out on dates in Denmark.

Given this virus doesn’t care about citizenship, residency or visa status, the allowance for Danes to go back and forth to Sweden without limits and to allow people from Sweden to enter Denmark to go on “dates” in Denmark, the remaining Danish restrictions applicable to people coming from Sweden make no sense given all that is going on.