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Coronavirus in Sweden

Coronavirus in Sweden

Old Sep 2, 2020, 10:45 am
  #1036  
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Originally Posted by GUWonder
Is the claim about being imprisoned separately for four months in their own bedroom really accurate? I am curious if the family's home even has enough bedrooms for that to take place. I am also curious if the family has "foreign-origin" members, as the Swedish authorities seem to be far more inclined in swiping away children from such families. Check: they have foreign-origin members.

Speaking of homes in Sweden:

Swedish home prices have risen during this pandemic to now be at the highest they've ever been, apart from apartments in Stockholm and Gothenburg. And even apartments in Stockholm and Gothenburg are pretty close to their historical peaks.

Want to know where people made the most money flipping houses in Sweden this year? In (rather isolated) northern Sweden; and there it made the return percentages even in Malmo look like peanuts.

Welcome to Sweden where even Malmo-area 2012/2013 purchases in the 5-8 million SEK range have people getting out with 12-15 million SEK in 2020 during this coronavirus situation.
It seems that the parents are not Svensson Swedes.

I think the housing market is being stimulated by the extreme low interest rate.
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Old Sep 2, 2020, 12:04 pm
  #1037  
 
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Originally Posted by fransknorge
(emphasis mine)

Huh ???!!!
Fransknorge, I hope I did not totally confound things. The chart I posted bases on the same data used in your chart with its relative plotting, albeit in a logarithmic time-series that presents differently from linear versions with relative plotting like yours. Along with the 'per capita' wording I inexplicably left in the CFR description, all is to our mutual confusion (it is now corrected).

In any case, OurWorldInData advises that 'Limited testing and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death means that the number of confirmed deaths may not be an accurate count of the true number of deaths from COVID-19.'

Here is a good article on the problem with comparing inconsistent and dissimilar death tolls.
Coronavirus: Why are international comparisons difficult?
- But there are all sorts of challenges in comparing countries, such as how widely they test for Covid-19 and whether they count deaths from the virus in the same way. Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter from Cambridge University has said trying to rank different countries to decide which is the worst in Europe is a "completely fatuous exercise". -

- First of all, there are differences in how countries record Covid-19 deaths. France and Germany, for example, have been including deaths in care homes in the headline numbers they produce every day. But the daily figures for England referred only to deaths in hospitals until 29 April, when they started factoring in deaths in care homes as well. A further complication is that there is no accepted international standard for how you measure deaths, or their causes. -

- There is a lot of focus on death rates, but there are different ways of measuring them too. One is the ratio of deaths to confirmed cases - of all the people who test positive for coronavirus, how many go on to die? But different countries are testing in different ways. Early in the outbreak, the UK mainly tested people who were ill enough to be admitted to hospital. That can make the death rate appear much higher than in a country with a wider testing programme. -

- There are real differences in the populations in different countries. Demographics are particularly important - that's things like average age, or where people live. -

- not all testing data is the same - some countries record the number of people tested, while others record the total number of tests carried out (many people need to be tested more than once to get an accurate result). The timing of testing, and whether tests took place mostly in hospitals or in the community, also need to be taken into account. -

- So, is anything useful likely to emerge from all these comparisons? "What you want to know is why one country might be doing better than another, and what you can learn from that," says Prof Jason Oke from the University of Oxford. "And testing seems to be the most obvious example so far." But until this outbreak is over it won't be possible to know for sure which countries have dealt with the virus better. -

Last edited by FlitBen; Sep 2, 2020 at 1:36 pm
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Old Sep 2, 2020, 12:22 pm
  #1038  
 
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Originally Posted by stimpy
France was referred to in your post, and if you look at a regional COVID map of France you can see that most of the country has hardly any COVID hospital cases. It is just a few areas that are starting to see more people test positive, but not a big increase in hospital cases as I reported above. There is absolutely no reason for France to shut down again based on today's statistics. That said, school is now starting so it will be interesting to see what the numbers look like in a few weeks.

Equally in New York, private schools started last week and public schools soon I suppose. So New York's numbers will be interesting soon as well.
Urban communities vary in risk profile and Sweden's mix appears to be hard on Covid-19 spread among the young. I assume that well-run cities in France, the US, and other modern countries will feature much the same classroom populations and environments, so we can expect to see few if any case surges stemming from outbreaks among schoolchildren.
Sweden's health agency says open schools did not spur pandemic spread among children
- The report showed that severe cases of COVID-19 were very rare among both Swedish and Finnish children aged 1 to 19, with no deaths reported. A comparison of the incidence of COVID-19 in different professions suggested no increased risk for teachers. Children made up around 8.2 percent of the total number of COVID-19 cases in Finland, compared to 2.1 percent in Sweden. -

- State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell of the health agency, who has devised Swedens response to the epidemic, has said there is little evidence linking the death toll to the absence of a lockdown, pointing instead to conditions at nursing homes, a decentralised health care system and travel patterns.

Separate studies by Swedens Karolinska Institutet (KI), an independent medical research institute, and the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children and Unicef, showed that Swedish children fared better than children in other countries during the pandemic, both in terms of education and mental health.

WHO emergencies head Mike Ryan urged countries earlier this week not to turn schools into another political football, saying they could safely reopen once the virus had been suppressed.
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Old Sep 2, 2020, 2:18 pm
  #1039  
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For Swedish pre-high-school kids — the vast majority being in Swedish schools that remained open all this year — it was between very difficult to impossible to get kids tested for this virus before school summer vacation started. If such children here had some symptoms for this, the general advice being provided by government healthcare here was inclining people toward keeping the children away from getting tested and out of the healthcare system. If Finland did sort of the same thing — and it definitely did so in parts — then of course the incident of reported cases amongst such children would be expected to be akin since only the same kind of children population would get tested: those few who get access to a test.

The Swedish authorities may try to keep claiming that school children don’t spread the virus, but these are the same authorities that are hostile to mask use to try to slow down the spread of a virus that most sensible experts agree spreads mainly by non-fomite means.
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Old Sep 2, 2020, 2:52 pm
  #1040  
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Originally Posted by nacho
It seems that the parents are not Svensson Swedes.

I think the housing market is being stimulated by the extreme low interest rate.
The SR report indicates that the parents are citizens of a country where a lot of people kids included sheltered in place to try to avoid getting hit by this virus.

That area in parts was sort of like the Swedish Bible Belt, and it even attracted some Americans for that reason even in rather recent years.

In various high income parts of the world, the housing market in at least parts has rallied; and its not all due to lower interest rates even as that too has driven price increases. When your commuting, dining and entertainment and vacation costs are down and you have more time and desire to work from home, then allocating more money to housing becomes more desirable and likely. About housing prices in the north, not sure how much of it was driven by Stockholm folk doing the NYC thing: the work-from-home-if-possible crowd moving out to get more space and more social distance. Some of it must have been.
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Old Sep 3, 2020, 1:23 am
  #1041  
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Originally Posted by GUWonder
Is the claim about being imprisoned separately for four months in their own bedroom really accurate? I am curious if the family's home even has enough bedrooms for that to take place. I am also curious if the family has "foreign-origin" members, as the Swedish authorities seem to be far more inclined in swiping away children from such families. Check: they have foreign-origin members.
The SR article said that there were three kids. Why is it difficult to believe that they have a home with four bedrooms?

I do agree that Swedish (and Norwegian) authorities in many cases are very quick to take kids away from foreign families. There's too little information in this article to say whether it was the case with this family.

Originally Posted by nacho
Where in the article stating that they were locked in their own bedroom?
barnen har varit begrnsade frn att umgs med varandra, och ftt vara p sina rum.
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Old Sep 3, 2020, 2:25 am
  #1042  
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Originally Posted by RedChili
The SR article said that there were three kids. Why is it difficult to believe that they have a home with four bedrooms?
I know the government's parental custody breaking involves pulling the three kids from their two parents. About the home, it's a matter of the home's actual count of bedrooms, not about belief. Three or fewer bedrooms for a family of five in the home puts into doubt any kind of insinuation that the kids were locked away from each other for four months. You're free to try to get the home's floor plan, as Sweden makes it very easy to get that stuff too at the local level as well.

Also, the whole thing about the front door being boarded up with planks or whatever ignores the fact that the family needed to get food and other supplies and weren't doing that all via a window for four months. The government and the other government-retained parties should have thrown in the "the parents were setting up a fire hazard for the kids and themselves" whom they wanted to spare from Covid-19 in Sweden. But I can tell you that too is like selling a bridge to Brooklyn, something the Swedish government seems to sell to its public very easily when its convenient to the driving elements of Swedish society. A huge proportion of homes in Sweden only have one door to enter/exit the home to get out of the buildings. Fire escapes in Sweden? Pitiful. Sort of like the government's coronavirus response in Sweden. Sort of ironic given how extremely safety conscious Sweden prides itself on being safety conscious.

Last edited by GUWonder; Sep 3, 2020 at 3:19 am
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Old Sep 3, 2020, 3:45 am
  #1043  
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Originally Posted by GUWonder
I know the government's parental custody breaking involves pulling the three kids from their two parents. About the home, it's a matter of the home's actual count of bedrooms, not about belief. Three or fewer bedrooms for a family of five in the home puts into doubt any kind of insinuation that the kids were locked away from each other for four months. You're free to try to get the home's floor plan, as Sweden makes it very easy to get that stuff too at the local level as well.

Also, the whole thing about the front door being boarded up with planks or whatever ignores the fact that the family needed to get food and other supplies and weren't doing that all via a window for four months.
Yes, it appears that the kids were forcefully taken from their parents, something that I strongly dislike.

I'm not going to spend time trying to find the home's floor plan. I have no reason to do that, and I have no reason to doubt that they had at least four bedrooms.

The front door being boarded up sounds unlikely. At the same time, this is what actually happened according to the court. The only logical explanation that I can come up with is that maybe they boarded up the door initially, thinking that the pandemic would be over in a couple of weeks, and then they took away the planks when they ran out of food and realized that they had to go out and get some.
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Old Sep 3, 2020, 4:09 am
  #1044  
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Originally Posted by RedChili
Yes, it appears that the kids were forcefully taken from their parents, something that I strongly dislike.

I'm not going to spend time trying to find the home's floor plan. I have no reason to do that, and I have no reason to doubt that they had at least four bedrooms.

The front door being boarded up sounds unlikely. At the same time, this is what actually happened according to the court. The only logical explanation that I can come up with is that maybe they boarded up the door initially, thinking that the pandemic would be over in a couple of weeks, and then they took away the planks when they ran out of food and realized that they had to go out and get some.
The logical explanation is that there was a way to exit and enter their home the entire time, but that saying that the kids were physically locked in by a boarded-up front door was a way to make the situation sound more "frightening" and thus pile on another excuse to cut off the parental custody in ways and justify it publicly or otherwise.

Four bedroom homes aren't all that common in Sweden. It's very rare to find Swedish homes where there are four (or more) bedrooms with at least four toilets. The kids almost certainly didn't each have a portable potty -- forget about those Swedish baja majas -- and a shower in each and every one of the bedrooms in the home.

I can't say I'm surprised that it was a foreign-origin family that got caught up first with their young kids being removed from them by the state due to the coronavirus situation in Sweden. Rather it's exactly what I expected to happen in Sweden. Let's see what comes next for others kids' parents getting in trouble for kids not showing up at school because of a child's persistent dry cough lasting for weeks or more and yet may not be due from Covid-19, not readily subject to a medical cure, and yet being told to not to show up at work/school with presumptive symptoms of Covid-19.
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Old Sep 4, 2020, 12:58 am
  #1045  
 
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I came across this somewhat muddy PDF on entry into Denmark for "Persons resident in a country other than an EU Member State, a Schengen country or the United Kingdom.

1. Passengers can be tested for free at CPH and will need to "isolate themselves for 48 hours after the test until the result is in.

2. Alternatively they "must present proof of a negative COVID-19 test carried out no more than 72 hours before entry.

Lets say the journey takes 24 hours, reducing the 72 hours to 48. So on one hand Denmark takes two days to return the result of its test, yet on the other hand its expected of your country of residence that you cant take the test there more than two days prior to you leaving. Thats a bit tight!

Could the Swedes possibly come up with something that crazy?

https://politi.dk/en/-/media/mediefi...quirements.pdf
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Old Sep 4, 2020, 1:36 am
  #1046  
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Originally Posted by vanillabean
I came across this somewhat muddy PDF on entry into Denmark for "Persons resident in a country other than an EU Member State, a Schengen country or the United Kingdom.

1. Passengers can be tested for free at CPH and will need to "isolate themselves for 48 hours after the test until the result is in.

2. Alternatively they "must present proof of a negative COVID-19 test carried out no more than 72 hours before entry.

Lets say the journey takes 24 hours, reducing the 72 hours to 48. So on one hand Denmark takes two days to return the result of its test, yet on the other hand its expected of your country of residence that you cant take the test there more than two days prior to you leaving. Thats a bit tight!

Could the Swedes possibly come up with something that crazy?

https://politi.dk/en/-/media/mediefi...quirements.pdf
I think the 48 hour isolation is due to the fact that foreigners are only contacted if the test is positive, so it is to make certain that there is time to get the test result and make the contact. So a bit of buffer is included in the time indications
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Old Sep 4, 2020, 3:17 am
  #1047  
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Originally Posted by vanillabean
I came across this somewhat muddy PDF on entry into Denmark for "Persons resident in a country other than an EU Member State, a Schengen country or the United Kingdom”.

1. Passengers can be tested for free at CPH and will need to "isolate themselves for 48 hours after the test“ until the result is in.

2. Alternatively they "must present proof of a negative COVID-19 test carried out no more than 72 hours before entry”.

Let’s say the journey takes 24 hours, reducing the 72 hours to 48. So on one hand Denmark takes two days to return the result of its test, yet on the other hand it’s expected of your country of residence that you can’t take the test there more than two days prior to you leaving. That’s a bit tight!

Could the Swedes possibly come up with something that crazy?

https://politi.dk/en/-/media/mediefi...quirements.pdf
I had family go to visit Alaska this summer that needed a quick turn test to visit there. It was about the same travel time to get to CPH as to get to Alaska for that trip. When I first heard what they needed, I thought it sounded risky due to the very limited window of time, and yet it worked out. Apparently, Alaska didn’t really pay the details much mind. The Danish authorities may well be a very different story about checking the test result details, but I haven’t seen or asked how this is being done on arrival.

Does Sweden even have any testing requirement for visitors?

Last edited by GUWonder; Sep 4, 2020 at 6:17 am
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Old Sep 4, 2020, 12:22 pm
  #1048  
 
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Originally Posted by CPH-Flyer
I think the 48 hour isolation is due to the fact that foreigners are only contacted if the test is positive, so it is to make certain that there is time to get the test result and make the contact. So a bit of buffer is included in the time indications
Yes. And there may not be much time window benefit to having a NemID (_and_ resident?).

"All persons resident in Denmark and issued with the special Danish NemID login solution will receive their test result at www.sundhed.dk no later than 48 hours after the test."

Originally Posted by GUWonder
I had family go to visit Alaska this summer that needed a quick turn test to visit there. It was about the same travel time to get to CPH as to get to Alaska for that trip. When I first heard what they needed, I thought it sounded risky due to the very limited window of time, and yet it worked out. Apparently, Alaska didnt really pay the details much mind. The Danish authorities may well be a very different story about checking the test result details, but I havent seen or asked how this is being done on arrival.
I think my plan will be, for one or both of us, to take a test maybe two weeks ahead, then, both of us, stay at home even more than so far until departure, reserve the tickets halfway inbetween following a negative test result, take the test at CPH with high probablity of negative, stay at the family summer house for the first two days.

Heres some Scandinavian entry stuff elsewhere on todays FT, just in case you haven't seen it.

#3697 Sweden Denmark
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/coro...l#post32652240

#676 Norway
Entry restrictions / reopening per country
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Old Sep 4, 2020, 3:06 pm
  #1049  
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Originally Posted by vanillabean
Lets say the journey takes 24 hours, reducing the 72 hours to 48. So on one hand Denmark takes two days to return the result of its test, yet on the other hand its expected of your country of residence that you cant take the test there more than two days prior to you leaving. Thats a bit tight!
Actually, there are several countries that require a test within 72 hours of arrival. It's a tricky thing to pull off.

Originally Posted by GUWonder
Does Sweden even have any testing requirement for visitors?
No, nothing. When Sweden had very high numbers, it kind of made sense to not have any requirements at all. Now that Sweden's numbers are falling, maybe it would make some sense to introduce some kind of requirement for a negative test. Sweden could do this as a first step towards lifting the embargo on non-Europeans.
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Old Sep 4, 2020, 3:22 pm
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The number of infected people in Sweden is falling dramatically fast. During week 35, 85,060 tests were made, a higher figure than ever before. Only 1,329 or 1.6% were positive. This is a reduction from a level of 3-4% positive tests during the past seven weeks.

Sweden had 12 positive cases per 100,000, down from 16 the previous week.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/f...en-fler-testas

It's interesting to note that this reduction comes as people are going back to work and back to school and public transportation is filling up. In my opinion, the most logical explanation is that Sweden has reached herd immunity, the pandemic is over, and covid-19 is now an endemic disease.
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