Well, on that I hope you’re right. There might be some legal and logistical issues, though.
Schools, definitely, in places where they already require proof of vaccination.
Employers, maybe.
Concerts and sports, no way, not in this country.
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I’m glad that Dr. Fauci is speaking out. I couldn’t agree more with what he said in this article.
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Many employer, for example in the biotech and pharma industry but other sectors will also follow, have made it already clear that they will only allow onsite work with vaccination proof.
Live Nation has also discussed how they want to verify the vaccination status for concerts
The Swedish approach has changed:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/11/18/sweden-coronavirus-surge-policy/
ETA: one of the Twitter accounts in this article - that of Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (https://twitter.com/DrEricDing?s=20) - is worth following
Another Eric (Eric Topol) is also a good starting point for BioTwitter news
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We still have a way to go to see how this all plays out. The Swedish have a different attitude, nationally, than in the US. The people there don’t want to have to endure lengthy and extensive government “mandates” to control things. They’ll instead individually and thereby collectively choose to respect and respond to health experts’ warnings and advice. I think. So we’ll see, now that their intensive care units are 70% full and daily new case numbers exploding, if the population there will “self-correct” in order to regain control of the situation – which I think is really their objective, and which was going so well for months after their initial disaster in elder-care homes.
I am not sure why you think the Swedish approach went well for months when nearly all the time neighboring countries like Norway and Finland with much more restrictive measures had much better numbers
By “months” I was referring to the period after the Swedish government’s calamitous initial failures (vis-à-vis care home populations) had stabilized, the time between roughly Aug 1 and Oct 20, during which the 7 day rolling average of deaths per day there ranged from 1 - 2. It was 0 - 1 in both Norway and Finland (neither of which experienced similarly massive early losses in care homes) during the same period.
I guess what I’m saying is that if Sweden hadn’t screwed up initially, they’d be much closer to the other Nordic countries. Maybe not better than, but much closer to. They are painfully aware of this.
I’m an interested observer, not one with a cast iron opinion. As history evolves in the coming months, we may all have our updated Monday Morning Quarterback ideas about what play should have been called; what was and what should have been done.
Since the dramatic increase in infections doesn’t seem to be tied to any change in behavior, maybe it’s simply a combination of people closing windows and turning on the heat (which dries out the air).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/winter-covid-19-humidity/
Sweden has had ten times as many deaths per capita. The early deaths due to not protecting old people can’t account for much of that.
Well, we’re both half-right, it seems. I can’t find data specific to the period 4/1 - 8/1, but to date almost half of all deaths in Sweden have been in care homes. If those deaths had been prevented, total deaths per million, in all age groups, would have been about 300, which is still roughly five times that in Norway and four times that in Finland.
Almost all of the deaths in Sweden since late March have been people over the age of 70, however, so it’s not just nursing homes, as I had somehow been led to believe. All “elderly” in Sweden have borne the brunt of covid, and among them the majority, about two thirds, were age 80+.
So what?
So what? So I was responding to your comment. In the US, total deaths per million is about 800, making us the 11th worst among all countries in the world. Sweden’s total deaths per million is about 600 even when you include all of the initial losses, and they’re 23rd worst in the world. It’s worth observing and comparing, and taking into account. Sweden has done much worse in this metric than Finland and Norway (the countries you cited earlier), but significantly better than the US. They’re having a major second wave in terms of cases, but deaths haven’t followed suit.
A rise in deaths follows weeks after a rise in cases. Data takes a while to come in, so the decline at the end of the graphs does not mean things have gotten better.
It only shows that Sweden did a pretty terrible job (and yes, they are better than the US but that isn’t terrible difficult and supportive of your arguments)
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I thought I’ve said that, and I’m not making an argument here, just observations.
I think we need to rewind a bit, back to 11/18. There I was responding to the WP article in ElsieDee’s post, “The Swedish Approach has changed.”, which I read and thought was worth discussing. There have been many other articles like that one.
Earlier, we had been talking about lockdowns vs. dial-downs (“dimmer control”), and vaccines.
I earnestly hope that we can all keep our minds open to all options, going forward.
On vaccines, efficacy (preventing infection or symptoms?), anti-vaxxers, and a return to “normal”:
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