At least we agree on this.
There’s sort of a notion of feedback control in the tier system, but what California has actually been doing to date is reacting when things are out of control, or lifting restrictions for political reasons.
If the current move to the red tier in many counties does not result in another out-of-control situation, then it could be characterized as feedback control.
I for one have been greatly disillusioned and disappointed in Newsom’s handling of the pandemic in CA. Since the start. And I voted for him.
Yes, reactionary and/or political – so it seems, at least.
His failures over the past year “managing” covid-19 have touched almost everyone in our otherwise special, even enviable (at least formerly), State.
IMO.
As I write this, for example, the metrics that would represent the “ultimate desired goal” for stability have yet to be codified, although Newsom said a few days ago that people are “working on it”. Working on it? This should have been established before any controls (restrictions) were applied, right from the beginning. Whatever that holy grail is, it would represent a fifth, Green tier (as it’s being called), but it’s never been spelled out.
What exactly constitutes the ultimate set of metrics for return to full-up “normalcy” in CA?
Sweden has really won the overall battle, it seems, and their restaurants and bars never closed:
Plus, they always said what the CDC now says (at least for schools): 3 ft. separation, not 6, is enough.
The big problem in Sweden that gave it a bad rep was their very poor handling of nursing home “inmates”. Those deaths can’t be erased from the record.
But the general public scene there has otherwise been remarkably normal. For the entire time.
I’m not surprised. They have smaller households, more people live alone.
Sorry, but you have absolutely no clue about the situation in Sweden. The official Swedish statistics show that people in their mid 60s and older make up something like 97 percent of the pandemic fatalities. People under 50 make up a minuscule fraction, like less than 1 percent. And people who are in the high-risk groups are very much aware of this fact and essentially scared sh*tless about contracting the disease and taking every precautionary measure in the book to be careful. Social distancing? You bet! A lot of Swedish seniors won’t even venture outdoors. No government involvement necessary. Now, if you are in your 20s, you are probably low risk so why not party on?
Have you actually talked with anybody from Sweden - you couldn’t be further from the truth about restrictions and how well everything went when you compared death rates between Sweden and other Scandinavian countries
Per the data in the article, Sweden’s excess deaths (7.7%) were less than half those of Spain (18.1%) and Belgium (16.2%). That’s a pretty radical difference even though it’s way more than Denmark, Finland, and Norway.
I haven’t said that other countries haven’t done worse than Sweden but to say that the Swedish approach worked is rather laughable based on the data (and even talking with Swedish people who are quite critical about their government approach
Certainly people can make an argument that lockdown would have been a better choice, but it was still the opposite of the worse-than-Italy disaster a lot of people predicted. And if they’d done a better job of protecting people over 80, their numbers would look more like other Scandinavian countries.
Not sure if I agree. Italy had some things playing against them which they had little influence on - Milano (and Northern Italy in general) has a very strong business connection with China and so they got hit hard because they were the first country in Europe to really experience Covid with little medical knowledge at that time (if Sweden or Germany would have had this connection they would have struggled similarly). In addition Italy has one of the oldest population worldwide with relatively dense population (Milan has double the population density of Berlin or Washington) with a cultural history of hugging etc. which don’t really help in a pandemic.
Sweden’s curve of excess deaths is similar to Italy’s, except that Sweden had less of a resurgence since November.
Not sure how anyone can reliably account for excess deaths in Sweden. But as a first approximation, you might try the official CSV file, which is updated weekly.
https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/globalassets/1-globalt/covid-19-statistik/statistik-over-antal-avlidna-i-covid-19/statistik-covid19-avlidna.xlsx
I am talking about the early days of Covid (March-May 2020) when Northern Italy was one of the hardest hit areas in the world (with the famous pics from the hospital in Bergamo) - this time has brought the overall numbers of Italy in a bad territory even though their response wasn’t bad later on in the pandemic.
Italy lost control around November and the trend has been up since then.
Actually, nocharge, I’ve been following the situation in Sweden rather closely for a long time, as a matter of interest, and have posted a number of comments here since June 2020. Search this topic for “Sweden”.
My previous post (March1), in response to you was this:
Yes, people seem to think that there are no restrictions at all in Sweden, but that’s not the case. And they’re vaccinating as fast as they can.
I am talking about the beginning of pandemic
Sweden’s Covid strategy can’t be meaningfully compared with other countries’ except over the long term.
But if you compare it is also necessary to take into account unusual situations like at the beginning in Italy to have a meaningful comparison
At the beginning in Sweden they totally dropped the ball on care homes.