Ha! You’re easily fooled. They always put a big number up for a day or two before the actual number is posted. Especially on weekends. It’s 3 or 4, not 18! Wait a day or two and check again. I’ve been following the numbers almost every day.
I was talking about here, in So. Cal., not Sweden, with that particular comment, for pete’s sake. Read my post slooowly.
It’s a rolling 7 day average and it’s been around 20 for a while. Don’t you understand how to read a simple graph?
Golly gee, I guess not. But here’s where I’ve been looking:
Check it out. Note the big number as a placeholder at the very end (which will go away). Note the number the day before. And the day before. And the day before…
Yeah, OK, it was 7 a week ago…
The punch line was about the situation in Sweden, not So. Cal. and you suggested that it needed to be revised. Did anyone ever suggest that it would apply to So. Cal?
Sure sounds like you did.
Here is the latest official weekly report from the Swedish authorities published April 9.
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-uppfoljning/smittsamma-sjukdomar/veckorapporter-covid-19/2021/covid-19-veckorapport-2021-vecka-13-final.pdf
Deaths week 8: 143
Deaths week 9: 128
Deaths week 10: 135
Deaths week 11: 126
For weeks 12 and 13, only very preliminary numbers exist due to a lag in reporting and the report doesn’t mention them since they will likely be revised upwards.
Fair enough. We’ll see.
I think the point is that the medical authorities in Uppsala have come to the conclusion that a lockdown is a good idea or they wouldn’t be recommending it. That’s a bit of a departure from how Sweden responded to the pandemic originally but consistent with the policy U-turn that has been going on there this year as it became overwhelmingly clear that the original policy was flawed.
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There is enough scientific evidence in numerous medical journals about the connection between long covid and the medical conditions - there are many, many articles in peer reviewed journals describing it - just read some of these journals instead to ignoring scientific evidence.
And you don’t have to repeat your myth that Sweden approach has done them especially good when they are current ranked 23 of worst effected countries by death/millions - so yes, there are countries who have done worse but overall Sweden belongs to the group of worst hit countries in the world by Covid
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Obviously Sweden’s approach did not work well, there’s no need to reiterate that five times a day.
What’s interesting it is that countries that imposed far more restrictions did worse. There are surely some lessons for future pandemics there among the mistakes.
Amen.
You can’t judge the actual behavior of a population merely based on what official restrictions there are. There are tons of other factors. For instance, how likely is it that the population will abide by those restrictions and how well are they enforced? In the US, several states, including NY and NJ, had self-quarantine requirements for travelers coming into the area from out of state. Pretty much no enforcement and I’m sure very few travelers were rigorously self quarantining. Hawaii’s travel restrictions seem to have had much more bite. Germany, too, had fairly strict restrictions for arriving international travelers. I flew into Frankfurt several times last summer and had to sign off on having read all the lengthy quarantine restrictions only to discover that there was no real form of monitoring or enforcement. Most rules for social behavior, in general, haven’t had a lot of actual enforcement even if officially mandatory. The willingness of a population to follow government rules and recommendations is a cultural thing that varies between countries. In the case of Sweden, you also had the fact that the early high death tool in certain age groups scared a lot of people in those age groups into being extremely cautious about everything like, for instance, traveling or going out to restaurants even if there was no official restriction on taking a train and restaurants were open. Fear of death can be a better motivator than a mandatory rule and such a fear of death probably saved quite a few lives in high-risk groups.
Obviously there are many, many interrelated factors. It’ll take years to figure out what positive lessons there are scattered among Sweden’s big pile of policy mistakes.
People in some parts of the US changed their behavior prior to lockdown. In Berkeley and Oakland, business at the bar and restaurant I went to on the Saturday and Sunday before the Tuesday lockdown was down by around 80%.
Exactly, and that’s the kind of stuff that makes it tricky to evaluate the effects of mandatory restrictions.
After a few months it got pretty easy to compare US states.
This was also true in San Diego. At the time, most of the people staying away expressed that they were avoiding restaurants in general, due to the transmission hazard in enclosed spaces over long exposure times.
As a sidebar, though, I’ll comment that at the beginning of that public response, Asian restaurants took a disproportionately big hit. This was explained in the media as being a precautionary response by many in the public, since the virus had its origins in Wuhan. Frankly at the time, considering the fragmented amount of credibly factual information that was available, that was probably not unreasonable.
In any case, very significant pre-lockdown mitigation behavior in San Diego was manifest spontaneously within the population itself, neither mandated nor endorsed by the federal and local government. We do seem to have a level of ability and willingness to at least partially self-regulate here in the US – at least in some cities/states.
One of the last restaurants I went to before lockdown was actually a Wuhan place!
Withdrawn question about Wuhan cuisine.
Not sure if I agree. If I just look at the different approaches, regulation and recommendations in Massachusetts (and neighboring states) it was a complete mess and very hard to compare. If I drive 10 minutes towards Boston I drive through Somerville, Cambridge and Boston and all of them have and had different mandatory regulations, e.g. how many people are allowed in the restaurants etc