Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, boardgamer, geocacher and father of two.
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61 thoughts on “18 Weeks Of Swedish ICU Admissions For COVID-19”
The mortality from COVID19 for those in intensive care has decreased immensly, as the medical staff got a better understanding of the disease.
In March, the mortality was 34% within 30 days of being admitted to intensive care. In April it was 19 and at the end of May it was 4.
Recent statistics: Mortality ten days ago was 15-17 COVID19 cases per day.
There is still a pool of virus in the population, but it is mostly spreading among younger people who rarely get the more serious manifestation of the disease.
Social distancing seems to be working. But we cannot relax while the virus remains. The ‘cluster spreading’ makes the transmission random, it cannot be predicted in the manner of ordinary infectious diseases.
Today, precisely 5500 people in Sweden have been confirmed dead from the virus.
Last week ca 80.000 pcr-tests were done.
The current situation regarding the virus transmission looks good. Denmark is reportedly considering opening up to travellers from Scania.
But lots more deaths among former West Germans than former East Germans, possibly due to tuberculosis vaccination of East Germans.
The WHO is not accepting this correlation yet, but the data look solid, and the correlation has been verified among numerous different populations.
The WHO has been perpetually, lamentably behind the curve with this pandemic all the way through. Trump is obviously wrong to pull the USA out of it, but it clearly needs to be fixed.
They and you are only looking at Germany, and they are econ0mists, who rank pretty low on my scale of respect for scientists – a bit below truck drivers, but above used car salesmen (just).
The researchers who think there is something in the BCG hypothesis looked at all countries.
There are several factual errors in the article.
The government could not order a shutdown – the constitution does not permit it- so it can only issue recommendations.
And it was Folkhälsomyndigheten- not the government – that was the driving force behind the policy. I will make more detailed comments when I have had the opportunity to research the details. I do NOT see it as my job to defend the government but facts are facts.
Don’t feel you need to do it on my account. I am definitely not a fan of the NYT. I just posted that so that people can see how things are being misrepresented in the American MSM, in a publication that a lot of people have far too much respect for IMHO.
Something to keep in mind here is that many US politicians were pointing to Sweden as a model for how to respond to the pandemic. The theory (I use that term loosely here) was that Sweden never locked down, therefore lockdowns were not needed in the US. But compared to their neighbors, Sweden did much worse in terms of death rate and infection rate. And they didn’t even get high enough infection rates to achieve herd immunity. So the US response to COVID-19 has been largely based on an overly optimistic assessment of one country’s response.
It may be that Sweden’s government lacks the proper tools for dealing with a pandemic. If so, this is a problem that has to be fixed before the next one comes (and there will be a next one, the only question is when).
Britain has a Trump clone with better social skills, although he lies just as shamelessly. But the main pathology is in the system(s) that enable these Pennywise wannabees.
…especially when the governing politicians themselves have relatives that get the disease, yet fail to see cause and effect in misrule and mortality.
Meanwhile, I am happy to say the debate about the pandemic here has been reasonably calm and to the point; The public apparently see through attempts at posturing about this matter.
My comment above was going off on a tangent, but politics is, alas, inavoidable with such large scale disruptions.
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I just read about how a couple of hospitals in the Stockholm area have a Really. Big. Backlog of patients waiting for treatment. This will take more than a year to solve and will add to excess mortality.
One week ago, HK had zero local transmissions, people were relaxing and things appeared to be going swimmingly. Since then, there has been a veritable explosion of infection, and we are now in a critical situation far worse than any since the whole thing started, and it is set to get far worse – because it is now no longer possible to trace and quarantine contacts, so it can no longer be contained.
What has happened? One possibility that the local infectious disease specialists are taking very seriously is that the dominant strain currently circulating globally has mutated to become a lot more infectious – the fatality rate has not become any worse, but the virus has become a lot more easily transmissible.
To make matters worse, the district we live in is one of the two most badly affected districts. The residents of whole high rise housing blocks are being evacuated and sent to quarantine camps.
All we can do for the time being is shelter in place as much as possible, and see how it develops. But, without wanting to be gloomy, it is really not looking good.
Sorry to hear it, but it is good for everyone to be aware that this can happen. I certainly don’t think Sweden is out of the woods yet. If we can get through to the end of november without a new outbreak, then maybe we can relax.
Local disease specialists are putting it down to relaxation of social distancing + the possibility that it has mutated to become more contagious.
One thing that is really worrying me is that the government does not seem to be taking it seriously enough. The HK Book Fair, which is a big annual event, is due to start on 14 July and run for several weeks, and the government has said it plans to let it go ahead. I (and, more to the point, the disease specialists) think that is a huge mistake. The government says the organisers will have good rules in place about social distancing and such like, but that is bullshit – once you get a big crowd at an event like that, enforcing distancing rules becomes an impossibility, particularly with people like HKers – it’s like trying to herd cats. The reality is that the government just does not want to make itself even more unpopular by shutting it down (it is always a very popular event, timed for the school holidays).
Other things they have not done this time which they did before, when things were actually a lot less bad (which made them very unpopular, but tough times require tough decisions) is shut down bars, karaoke lounges and ‘nightspots’, which are obvious environments that favour disease transmission. You can’t guzzle booze or sing lustily in an enclosed, poorly ventilated and crowded space while wearing a mask.
When government policy is driven by their desire to make themselves popular with the punters, rather than by science and common sense, it is time to get really worried. And I am really worried.
The government won’t mandate a lockdown, and is still saying the book fair will go ahead. Meanwhile, the lady doctor from the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) (which is part of the Health Department of the government), who has been front and centre right throughout this right from the very start, and so far has not put a foot wrong even once, and has been completely open and honest to the point of being almost brutally truthful, is pleading with the public to work from home, and not to go out unless they absolutely have to.
Obviously the the government ‘leaders’ won’t listen to the very person they should be listening to (they have a very poor track record in that regard), so she is appealing directly to the public.
So, the Secretary for Health, a retired nurse of (to put it as kindly as I can) limited cognitive ability, is saying it’s fine, the book fair will go ahead, and everyone can go, and have a great time. And we have to “learn to live with the coronavirus”, rather than trying to eliminate it. Well, we did eliminate it for a long time, thanks to the efforts of the CHP, but that was all undone by the government relaxing the rules too much too quickly. Falling into the same trap of thinking this is a balancing act between public health and the economy, when it is not.
And the medical practitioner from the CHP is saying: “No, please, don’t go. Don’t go out. Don’t go to work. Don’t go anywhere. Stay home.”
”Lockdown Lite: Sweden’s Model of Coronavirus Control | Foreign Correspondent”
NB: While local doctors wanted tests that give as quick response as possible, the state wants tests that give as few false poitive results as possible in order to prevent a false sense of safety. This led to some conflicts. Also, the government does not have the power to order a lockdown, not as in other countries.
So *now* the government has postponed the HK Book Fair, one day before it was due to start, causing maximum inconvenience to everyone concerned. It was obvious that they should have done this much earlier.
They have only done it now due to pressure from exhibitors for it not to go ahead. That’s right, the people who would be selling books at the event pushed the government not to let it go ahead, out of concerns it could cause a much greater coronavirus outbreak than we already have. At least they are behaving responsibly and intelligently, which is a lot more than can be said of our $@%#&@ government ‘leaders’.
Odd. Are there no people with a background in science (like Angela Merkel) in HK government?
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No press conference in Sweden today. Ten more confirmed dead.
And don’t blame the central government for that, particularly – the system was inherited from the British. Although the central government did choose the current Chief Executive, a decision I have no doubt they now deeply regret, regardless of what they say publicly.
In fact the current CE was a British national, as are her husband and two sons, but she had to give it up in order to be appointed as CE. We would have been much better off if she had kept it and buggered off to the UK, where her husband and sons are now.
The scientists from academia and the professionals from the Centre for Health Protection have won the argument with the government leadership, so we now have the most stringent control measures in place since the pandemic began.
Plus the scientists have been publicly very outspoken and critical of the mistakes that the government made which led directly to this ‘third wave’, pointing directly at the specific mistakes, which tells everyone exactly who it was in the administration who f*cked up, and who was too weak and incompetent to oppose the f*cking up. [For those who delude themselves that HK is now just like the Mainland and how “we no longer have freedom of speech”, this would not happen in the Mainland.]
So anyway, now we’ll see how effective this is. It is going to be a lot harder this time than damping down the ‘second wave’, when contact tracing of all infected people was still possible.
As Malik Peiris, a virologist at the University of HK (who was a HK hero during the 2003 SARS epidemic) put it: “This is not a choice between the economy and health. Without health, there will be no ‘economy’ anyway.”
The company I theoretically still work for is frantically redoubling efforts to keep disinfecting the office, instead of allowing staff to work from home, avoiding the obvious, which is that the main routes for transmission in enclosed, crowded spaces are directly person to person or by aerosols that remain airborne for some considerable time.
Every time someone in the government says something about “balancing fighting the pandemic against (fill in the blank)” I cringe. There is no ‘balancing fighting the pandemic’ – you’re either doing it or you’re not doing it, and these are just weasel words, a get-out excuse for not doing something they should be doing.
They should be closing down government offices and letting civil servants work from home, and they’re not, because they’re “balancing fighting the pandemic” with blah blah weasel weasel weasel. If they close down government offices, the private sector will feel the pressure to do likewise, like they did during the less severe ‘second wave’. But they’re not doing it because they think they are balancing something – most likely balls on their noses like performing sealions, except that sealions are more intelligent – they do it for fish.
A bunch of US state governors (and in Wisconsin, state supreme court justices) need to hear this message, too. Almost all US states reopened too quickly, under pressure from people who were unwilling to sacrifice the economy to fight a pandemic. They are going to get the worst of both worlds: a cratered economy and a pandemic.
9 new deaths have been confirmed today. The statistical death rate as of ten days ago is ca. 15 per day.
The number of new patients per day that need intensive care is quite low (I forget the exact number).
Two counties are now returning to ordinary levels of health care without extra mobilisation (stabsläge).
The number of tests increase, but the number who test positive is dropping.
Not an overwhelming change, but it is definitely moving in the right direction.
You have to see the funny side. The HK government has banned people dining in restaurants from 6.00pm to 5.00am, and has applied the same ban to drinking in bars. Says one Cat Hou Chui-shan, chairwoman of the Bartenders and Mixologists Union of Hong Kong: “The virus doesn’t exist in the afternoon? Do they really work like bats and only come out at night?”
It’s a bit like cancer, Cat – that takes weekends off. You can only get zapped by the ray gun on Monday to Friday.
I don’t want to sound overly optimistic, but the latest big spike in local infections already looks like it is already dying down, with the quick action taken to impose a lot of quite severe controls, at both government and local levels (and personal levels as well – people have responded quickly).
The owners’ committee/management office of our housing estate is doing its bit – the swimming pool is closed; much to the annoyance of the ankle-biters, the kiddies’ outdoor play facilities are also off limits, and no one is allowed outside without wearing a mask. Parents are keeping their kids inside, and staying inside themselves. People are forbidden to congregate in groups on the podium, which has put an end to the impromptu soccer games with the kiddies and such like. (I think the outdoor measures are probably a bit stringent, but better that than not stringent enough.)
And my gym is closed again. Not that it makes a difference to me, I wouldn’t be going there anyway – an indoor gym is a high risk environment, although that one is particularly well ventilated. But you can’t really exercise in a mask, and you can only social-distance to a certain extent away from people who are huffing and puffing deeply. You are supposed to wipe down all equipment with antiseptic wipes after using it, but who is going to do that? A few people do. Most people wipe it before they use it, or not at all.
I’ve reached a point where I don’t believe the current suppress-and-lift strategy will work. We need to be aiming for elimination. Test every single person in HK and eliminate the thing, while vigilantly guarding the borders, whether land, air or sea.
Spoke to soon – after a downward trend for the past several days, today was the highest total ever. This is not going to be under control any time soon.
21 new dead have been recorded today- due to lag time, most died a week or more ago.
Of ca 13000 that have been hospitalised ca 900 spent 30 days or more in hospital, so about one in 15 were in hospital a long period (these numbers are for survivors who have left hospital).
People without symptoms can travel across the country, but some companies have crammed the buses full, which makes distancing impossible 😦
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We hear contradicting claims from laboratories across Europe about how long after the disease immunity remains.
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In ny own town the hospital is testing medicine normally given to prostate cancer patients to reduce symptoms. A hypothesis that the virus interacts with a protein also important for this cancer was born from different severity of COVID19 between women and men.
Comparisons with the other Scandinavian countries are interesting. While the death toll in Sweden is much higher, the proportion of people in elder care facilities compared to the dead from the rest of the population is the same across the nations.
This implies the death toll depends on the degree the virus is present in the general population rather than differences in how the elder care facilities handled the pandemic.
We already know the virus had a very strong presence in the Stockholm area even before cases were discovered, so this makes sense. And with all the people moving between Stockholm and the rest of the country, the other regions inevitably suffered, but not to the extent of Stockholm.
There are a lot of details- today, the DN newspaper published a strong attack on inadequate medical interventions for patients in elder care facilities during the first weeks- but it is beginning to look like Sweden suffered for the same reason Belgium suffered: a multitude of cluster-spreading events early on.
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So we can expect to see some serious criticism of the early phase of the pandemic management, once the comission is ready with its report in approximately a year from now.
Current daily death toll: 10 or less. People that have had the virus are immune, even if the tests do not show antibodies. And so far none has had the virus a second time. The disease will give immunity for at least sig months.
Currently only intermittent cases of patients need to be admitted to intensive care each day.
The projected situation during fall and winter is hard to estimate, the most likely is that there will be regional flare-ups but nothing compareable to what Sweden has recently experienced.
Just in: The daily death toll is now under ten.
The number of people in hospital for COVID19 in the Stockholm region is 72 of which 11 are in intensive care.
Here in Västerbotten region the corresponding numbers are 4 and 1.
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Number of new cases nationwide (yesterday): 333. It is now possible to do tracing of how the contagion is spreading.
I confess it has taken me a long time to get around to reading this, although it is not very long or difficult; I have developed an aversion to constantly dwelling on the topic.
A nurse in the USA who is treating Covid-19 patients gave me this reference, in response to a comment I made weeks ago to the effect that I think viral load must be an important parameter. Contrary to what this paper says, virologists in HK have warned about non- or mildly-symptomatic people in the community who may be carrying high viral loads. Rather, this paper talks about people who emit abnormally high volumes of droplets when they cough or talk. I can’t resolve the contradiction, but my feeling is that either could be ‘super-spreaders’.
HK is now in a much worse position than Stockholm, in terms of the number of people in isolation in hospitals and the number in ICU. The next two weeks will be critical. The Mainland keeps making offers of support, and HK is responding by sending a lot of samples to labs over the border for analysis, to ramp up dramatically the rates of testing. Those labs now have lots of spare capacity, because the coronavirus has been virtually eliminated in the Mainland. But we cannot accept their offer to send healthcare personnel, because all such people working in HK must be registered healthcare workers in HK, which those people obviously are not. Plus a major constraint in our healthcare system now is not numbers of healthcare workers, but rather the capacity of hospitals, ICUs and quarantine facilities.
The coronavirus finally managed to get into some aged care homes, via infected workers who were working in multiple facilities, so the number of deaths, which was previously very low, is now climbing steadily.
HK has a particular problem – as one of the world’s busiest cargo ports, there is a constant stream of ships coming into the harbour, and many of those ships have infected crew members on board. As a moral government, HK cannot simply insist that the infected people remain on their ships, so they are disembarked and put into hospitals here, and there is a danger that this constant stream of imported cases, in addition to imported cases returning to HK now from India and the Philippines, will overwhelm the local healthcare system.
No matter what you might read, the HK government *does* always behave morally – in my experience in my time here, it always has, and nothing has changed.
Very good news with Sars-cov-2 in Sweden:
Looking back ten days, the daily death toll is now down to six. At these levels random fluctuations will make the results fuzzy.
In most Swedish counties, the number of virus patients- both in ordinary and intensive care- is down to single digits. The aforementioned fluctuations keep changing the numbers for Västerbotten up and down.
NB – in Stockholm county, there has been a slight increase in number of patients, probably a result of vacationers throwing caution away when the weather is fine.
And with a large reservoir of undiagnosed cases remaining in the region the r number can go up again. But I recognise human nature makes a final mid-summer distancing push difficult. At least there are new initiatives to improve distancing on trains and buses, as well as restaurants.
HK has solved the distancing problem in restaurants – it has closed them all, starting next Wednesday. They can only serve take-outs.
HK has a culture that people eat out very frequently. Some people never prepare food at home, they eat out literally all of the time. So you can take this as a sign that the government is very seriously worried.
Very good news, actually, two good tidnings.
Alzheimers may be discovered up to 20 years before symptoms appear. This makes effective preventive measures possible.
Also, only two COVID19 fatalities in the last 24 hours.
In all of Sweden, the COVID19 patients in intensive care are down to 49.
Notice to people in Stockholm and other places with crowds: (grabs bullhorn) KEEP BEING CAUTIOUS !!
What the… I learned that 28 deaths have been reported. Have the administrators that record the stuff been on vacation and just returned? I have not seen a backlog like this for a long time.
As I have noted in the general thread, those reported today have died on dates spread over a period of more than a month.
Maybe patients who died abroad, or persons only identified as infected with COVID19 during post-mortem?
Anyway, this statistical event does not indicate a new wave of contagion, the current daily death rate remains low.
People with COVID19 can be sorted in six symptom groups. This makes it possible to give early appropriate care to those predicted to be in most danger, by the symptoms of day five.
Don’t look now, but I think HK’s third wave might have peaked. I fervently hope so.
Meanwhile I am giving thanks for our big brothers over the border. The Mainland said it would render HK whatever assistance it could, and asked what they could do to help. So:
1. They are the masters of rapidly converting large buildings into temporary hospitals with individual isolation rooms. So they have just converted a huge exhibition space at a convention centre near the airport into a 500 room temporary hospital – they did that in a couple of days flat, and the temporary hospital is already in use, housing younger, less seriously ill Covid-19 patients, allowing the public hospitals to have more resources to devote to the more seriously ill patients. They are going to convert another large exhibition space into another 400 room temporary hospital. Those people are amazing, and this is going to be hugely helpful, because our hospitals were warning that they were getting to breaking point and about to be overwhelmed. Now they are not.
2. Mainland doctors and nurses can’t practise in HK because they are not registered here – they could get registered, but it is a lengthy procedure that takes years. But there is nothing to stop their medical science lab technicians from working here as long as they are appropriately qualified, so they are mobilising 70 lab technicians to come to HK to greatly ramp up the local testing capacity – locally established biotech companies have the lab capacity, but not enough lab monkeys to run the increased numbers of tests we need. The first 10 are already here and working, and I assume the others will arrive shortly. If necessary, they will have the capacity to test the whole population of HK in the space of a few days, but that is probably not what the government will decide to do – it will focus on high risk groups first, like people in aged care facilities, and test the whole lot of them. Taxi drivers. Minibus drivers. Restaurant workers. Slaughterhouse/abattoir workers. Security guards. Police. And medical staff themselves, of course, and other personnel working in medical clinics. There is a list of high risk occupations that they will concentrate on.
Today, one more COVID19 death was reported. This brings the total up to 5744.
I expect several more to be reported on Tuesday and Wednesday as the record-keeping catches up from the weekend. Still, no sign of a new surge, thank Asklepios.
HK’s third wave has definitely peaked. Despite that, work is racing ahead to build temporary hospitals with 2,400 new beds and to greatly ramp up testing capacity. One plan is to test school kids so they can return to face-to-face teaching, starting with new students and those studying for university entrance exams, which seems like a good idea.
If the third wave is now on its way down, why is the work to increase hospital capacity racing ahead? They are preparing for the fourth wave, and winter.
HK numbers: total known infected since the beginning of the pandemic 3,670; fatalities 41. So the fatality rate has risen to 1.1%, which is far more typical of many other places. The reason for that is that the virus has finally got into elderly care homes, with the inevitable increase in fatalities among the very elderly and chronically ill.
Today 5th August a new batch of death statistics came in, some of which is for people who died in June. Going back 14 days to make the register lag minimal, the death rate was 6-7 per day. I hope the current rate will turn out to be even less.
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Here in Västerbotten the numbers oscillate 1-2 back and forth. Today we had 4 in hospital including one patient in intensive care.
-I read there is intense research to make particles that binds more tightly to the sars-cov-2 spike protein than the cell receptors the virus targets.
66 confirmed new cases of the virus today 5/8.
Latest into about new arrivals in intensive care comes from 2/8: 4 new patients.
I do not have the numbers for new non-intensive care hospital patients.
During the pandemic 2 million children/youngsters have remained in school in Sweden. Very few have fallen sick, and no children have died.
This happened with a background of high mortality and substantial virus spreading in the rest of society.
By comparison Taiwan kept the schools open, but to a background of very little virus spreading in the population.
This has made Sweden an object of interest for other countries considering re-opening the schools despite a high incidence of sars-cov-2.
“Covid-19 may spread more easily in schools than thought, report warns Covid-19 may spread more easily in schools than thought, report warns”
This will mainly be a concern for teachers and other staff…..not to mention parents.
Addendum. A certain politician* got a tweet removed for claiming children are almost immune to sars-cov-2.
In reality children get sick. Sometimes they get very sick. Fortunately no child has died in Sweden so far. Those who get sick generally may have milder symptoms which correlates to being less infectious but the number is not zero.
*the Merican eejit, not the British one.
HK’s third wave is still gradually subsiding, but there are still a lot of cases where the source of the infection cannot be identified, which means there must be a sizeable number of ‘silent carriers’ in HK who are infecting people. So, with the help of the big testing teams sent by the Mainland, all 7.5 million residents of HK will be offered a free test, in the hope that will identify a lot of the silent carriers so that they can be taken out of circulation.
If all 7.5 million people take up the offer, the testing can be completed in 2 weeks, thanks to the help provided by the Mainland. The testing will be carried out in 3 labs run in HK by the HK branches of Mainland companies, who have quickly ramped up their testing capacity in order to cope with the numbers.
Of course, the Usual Suspects claim that HK is perfectly capable of doing this by itself, and it is just an evil plot for the Chinese Communist Party to get the DNA of all HK people. But then, they would, wouldn’t they? Except that all people tested will be given a bar code for identification purposes when they give their samples, and their identities will not be revealed to the Mainland lab staff, so there is no possible way that the Mainland can get their DNA and identify who it belongs to (to do what with, exactly?), even if the lab staff were equipped and had time to genotype 7.5 million people in 2 weeks, which they aren’t and haven’t.
In this case, the Usual Suspects have just identified themselves as paranoid xenophobes of low intelligence and poor understanding of the processes involved and effort required, and the general public have been reassured by the bar code idea, and can see the Usual Suspects for what they are – a bunch of stupid liars.
Current situation in Sweden:
206 are in hospital, of which are 31 in intensive care.
Today, two more deaths were registered; one that took place July 28, the other has not a recorded date (yet).
Much concern about how to deal with crowding in high school/college and the municipal bus services.
Aardvarchaeology - by Dr. Martin Rundkvist 
The mortality from COVID19 for those in intensive care has decreased immensly, as the medical staff got a better understanding of the disease.
In March, the mortality was 34% within 30 days of being admitted to intensive care. In April it was 19 and at the end of May it was 4.
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Erratum: in May it was 19%. Too many data points to keep track of…
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The error was actually in the TV news broadcast, not in my memory (this time, at least) .
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Recent statistics: Mortality ten days ago was 15-17 COVID19 cases per day.
There is still a pool of virus in the population, but it is mostly spreading among younger people who rarely get the more serious manifestation of the disease.
Social distancing seems to be working. But we cannot relax while the virus remains. The ‘cluster spreading’ makes the transmission random, it cannot be predicted in the manner of ordinary infectious diseases.
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Today, precisely 5500 people in Sweden have been confirmed dead from the virus.
Last week ca 80.000 pcr-tests were done.
The current situation regarding the virus transmission looks good. Denmark is reportedly considering opening up to travellers from Scania.
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Germany has 10 times the population of Sweden but only twice the number of deaths from COVID-19.
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But lots more deaths among former West Germans than former East Germans, possibly due to tuberculosis vaccination of East Germans.
The WHO is not accepting this correlation yet, but the data look solid, and the correlation has been verified among numerous different populations.
The WHO has been perpetually, lamentably behind the curve with this pandemic all the way through. Trump is obviously wrong to pull the USA out of it, but it clearly needs to be fixed.
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My guess is that at least as big a role is played by the fact that there is much more travel to and out of former West Germany.
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For what it’s worth, these folks agree with me: https://voxeu.org/article/bcg-vaccine-does-not-protect-against-covid-19
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They and you are only looking at Germany, and they are econ0mists, who rank pretty low on my scale of respect for scientists – a bit below truck drivers, but above used car salesmen (just).
The researchers who think there is something in the BCG hypothesis looked at all countries.
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For what it’s worth:
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There are several factual errors in the article.
The government could not order a shutdown – the constitution does not permit it- so it can only issue recommendations.
And it was Folkhälsomyndigheten- not the government – that was the driving force behind the policy. I will make more detailed comments when I have had the opportunity to research the details. I do NOT see it as my job to defend the government but facts are facts.
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Don’t feel you need to do it on my account. I am definitely not a fan of the NYT. I just posted that so that people can see how things are being misrepresented in the American MSM, in a publication that a lot of people have far too much respect for IMHO.
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Something to keep in mind here is that many US politicians were pointing to Sweden as a model for how to respond to the pandemic. The theory (I use that term loosely here) was that Sweden never locked down, therefore lockdowns were not needed in the US. But compared to their neighbors, Sweden did much worse in terms of death rate and infection rate. And they didn’t even get high enough infection rates to achieve herd immunity. So the US response to COVID-19 has been largely based on an overly optimistic assessment of one country’s response.
It may be that Sweden’s government lacks the proper tools for dealing with a pandemic. If so, this is a problem that has to be fixed before the next one comes (and there will be a next one, the only question is when).
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Britain has a Trump clone with better social skills, although he lies just as shamelessly. But the main pathology is in the system(s) that enable these Pennywise wannabees.
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…especially when the governing politicians themselves have relatives that get the disease, yet fail to see cause and effect in misrule and mortality.
Meanwhile, I am happy to say the debate about the pandemic here has been reasonably calm and to the point; The public apparently see through attempts at posturing about this matter.
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My comment above was going off on a tangent, but politics is, alas, inavoidable with such large scale disruptions.
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I just read about how a couple of hospitals in the Stockholm area have a Really. Big. Backlog of patients waiting for treatment. This will take more than a year to solve and will add to excess mortality.
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One week ago, HK had zero local transmissions, people were relaxing and things appeared to be going swimmingly. Since then, there has been a veritable explosion of infection, and we are now in a critical situation far worse than any since the whole thing started, and it is set to get far worse – because it is now no longer possible to trace and quarantine contacts, so it can no longer be contained.
What has happened? One possibility that the local infectious disease specialists are taking very seriously is that the dominant strain currently circulating globally has mutated to become a lot more infectious – the fatality rate has not become any worse, but the virus has become a lot more easily transmissible.
To make matters worse, the district we live in is one of the two most badly affected districts. The residents of whole high rise housing blocks are being evacuated and sent to quarantine camps.
All we can do for the time being is shelter in place as much as possible, and see how it develops. But, without wanting to be gloomy, it is really not looking good.
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Sorry to hear it, but it is good for everyone to be aware that this can happen. I certainly don’t think Sweden is out of the woods yet. If we can get through to the end of november without a new outbreak, then maybe we can relax.
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Local disease specialists are putting it down to relaxation of social distancing + the possibility that it has mutated to become more contagious.
One thing that is really worrying me is that the government does not seem to be taking it seriously enough. The HK Book Fair, which is a big annual event, is due to start on 14 July and run for several weeks, and the government has said it plans to let it go ahead. I (and, more to the point, the disease specialists) think that is a huge mistake. The government says the organisers will have good rules in place about social distancing and such like, but that is bullshit – once you get a big crowd at an event like that, enforcing distancing rules becomes an impossibility, particularly with people like HKers – it’s like trying to herd cats. The reality is that the government just does not want to make itself even more unpopular by shutting it down (it is always a very popular event, timed for the school holidays).
Other things they have not done this time which they did before, when things were actually a lot less bad (which made them very unpopular, but tough times require tough decisions) is shut down bars, karaoke lounges and ‘nightspots’, which are obvious environments that favour disease transmission. You can’t guzzle booze or sing lustily in an enclosed, poorly ventilated and crowded space while wearing a mask.
When government policy is driven by their desire to make themselves popular with the punters, rather than by science and common sense, it is time to get really worried. And I am really worried.
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The government won’t mandate a lockdown, and is still saying the book fair will go ahead. Meanwhile, the lady doctor from the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) (which is part of the Health Department of the government), who has been front and centre right throughout this right from the very start, and so far has not put a foot wrong even once, and has been completely open and honest to the point of being almost brutally truthful, is pleading with the public to work from home, and not to go out unless they absolutely have to.
Obviously the the government ‘leaders’ won’t listen to the very person they should be listening to (they have a very poor track record in that regard), so she is appealing directly to the public.
So, the Secretary for Health, a retired nurse of (to put it as kindly as I can) limited cognitive ability, is saying it’s fine, the book fair will go ahead, and everyone can go, and have a great time. And we have to “learn to live with the coronavirus”, rather than trying to eliminate it. Well, we did eliminate it for a long time, thanks to the efforts of the CHP, but that was all undone by the government relaxing the rules too much too quickly. Falling into the same trap of thinking this is a balancing act between public health and the economy, when it is not.
And the medical practitioner from the CHP is saying: “No, please, don’t go. Don’t go out. Don’t go to work. Don’t go anywhere. Stay home.”
I know who I am going to listen to.
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”Lockdown Lite: Sweden’s Model of Coronavirus Control | Foreign Correspondent”
NB: While local doctors wanted tests that give as quick response as possible, the state wants tests that give as few false poitive results as possible in order to prevent a false sense of safety. This led to some conflicts. Also, the government does not have the power to order a lockdown, not as in other countries.
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So *now* the government has postponed the HK Book Fair, one day before it was due to start, causing maximum inconvenience to everyone concerned. It was obvious that they should have done this much earlier.
They have only done it now due to pressure from exhibitors for it not to go ahead. That’s right, the people who would be selling books at the event pushed the government not to let it go ahead, out of concerns it could cause a much greater coronavirus outbreak than we already have. At least they are behaving responsibly and intelligently, which is a lot more than can be said of our $@%#&@ government ‘leaders’.
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Odd. Are there no people with a background in science (like Angela Merkel) in HK government?
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No press conference in Sweden today. Ten more confirmed dead.
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Not in leadership positions. They refer to we STEM types as “technicians”.
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And don’t blame the central government for that, particularly – the system was inherited from the British. Although the central government did choose the current Chief Executive, a decision I have no doubt they now deeply regret, regardless of what they say publicly.
In fact the current CE was a British national, as are her husband and two sons, but she had to give it up in order to be appointed as CE. We would have been much better off if she had kept it and buggered off to the UK, where her husband and sons are now.
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The scientists from academia and the professionals from the Centre for Health Protection have won the argument with the government leadership, so we now have the most stringent control measures in place since the pandemic began.
Plus the scientists have been publicly very outspoken and critical of the mistakes that the government made which led directly to this ‘third wave’, pointing directly at the specific mistakes, which tells everyone exactly who it was in the administration who f*cked up, and who was too weak and incompetent to oppose the f*cking up. [For those who delude themselves that HK is now just like the Mainland and how “we no longer have freedom of speech”, this would not happen in the Mainland.]
So anyway, now we’ll see how effective this is. It is going to be a lot harder this time than damping down the ‘second wave’, when contact tracing of all infected people was still possible.
As Malik Peiris, a virologist at the University of HK (who was a HK hero during the 2003 SARS epidemic) put it: “This is not a choice between the economy and health. Without health, there will be no ‘economy’ anyway.”
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The company I theoretically still work for is frantically redoubling efforts to keep disinfecting the office, instead of allowing staff to work from home, avoiding the obvious, which is that the main routes for transmission in enclosed, crowded spaces are directly person to person or by aerosols that remain airborne for some considerable time.
Every time someone in the government says something about “balancing fighting the pandemic against (fill in the blank)” I cringe. There is no ‘balancing fighting the pandemic’ – you’re either doing it or you’re not doing it, and these are just weasel words, a get-out excuse for not doing something they should be doing.
They should be closing down government offices and letting civil servants work from home, and they’re not, because they’re “balancing fighting the pandemic” with blah blah weasel weasel weasel. If they close down government offices, the private sector will feel the pressure to do likewise, like they did during the less severe ‘second wave’. But they’re not doing it because they think they are balancing something – most likely balls on their noses like performing sealions, except that sealions are more intelligent – they do it for fish.
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A bunch of US state governors (and in Wisconsin, state supreme court justices) need to hear this message, too. Almost all US states reopened too quickly, under pressure from people who were unwilling to sacrifice the economy to fight a pandemic. They are going to get the worst of both worlds: a cratered economy and a pandemic.
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9 new deaths have been confirmed today. The statistical death rate as of ten days ago is ca. 15 per day.
The number of new patients per day that need intensive care is quite low (I forget the exact number).
Two counties are now returning to ordinary levels of health care without extra mobilisation (stabsläge).
The number of tests increase, but the number who test positive is dropping.
Not an overwhelming change, but it is definitely moving in the right direction.
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You have to see the funny side. The HK government has banned people dining in restaurants from 6.00pm to 5.00am, and has applied the same ban to drinking in bars. Says one Cat Hou Chui-shan, chairwoman of the Bartenders and Mixologists Union of Hong Kong: “The virus doesn’t exist in the afternoon? Do they really work like bats and only come out at night?”
It’s a bit like cancer, Cat – that takes weekends off. You can only get zapped by the ray gun on Monday to Friday.
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I don’t want to sound overly optimistic, but the latest big spike in local infections already looks like it is already dying down, with the quick action taken to impose a lot of quite severe controls, at both government and local levels (and personal levels as well – people have responded quickly).
The owners’ committee/management office of our housing estate is doing its bit – the swimming pool is closed; much to the annoyance of the ankle-biters, the kiddies’ outdoor play facilities are also off limits, and no one is allowed outside without wearing a mask. Parents are keeping their kids inside, and staying inside themselves. People are forbidden to congregate in groups on the podium, which has put an end to the impromptu soccer games with the kiddies and such like. (I think the outdoor measures are probably a bit stringent, but better that than not stringent enough.)
And my gym is closed again. Not that it makes a difference to me, I wouldn’t be going there anyway – an indoor gym is a high risk environment, although that one is particularly well ventilated. But you can’t really exercise in a mask, and you can only social-distance to a certain extent away from people who are huffing and puffing deeply. You are supposed to wipe down all equipment with antiseptic wipes after using it, but who is going to do that? A few people do. Most people wipe it before they use it, or not at all.
I’ve reached a point where I don’t believe the current suppress-and-lift strategy will work. We need to be aiming for elimination. Test every single person in HK and eliminate the thing, while vigilantly guarding the borders, whether land, air or sea.
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Spoke to soon – after a downward trend for the past several days, today was the highest total ever. This is not going to be under control any time soon.
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21 new dead have been recorded today- due to lag time, most died a week or more ago.
Of ca 13000 that have been hospitalised ca 900 spent 30 days or more in hospital, so about one in 15 were in hospital a long period (these numbers are for survivors who have left hospital).
People without symptoms can travel across the country, but some companies have crammed the buses full, which makes distancing impossible 😦
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We hear contradicting claims from laboratories across Europe about how long after the disease immunity remains.
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In ny own town the hospital is testing medicine normally given to prostate cancer patients to reduce symptoms. A hypothesis that the virus interacts with a protein also important for this cancer was born from different severity of COVID19 between women and men.
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Comparisons with the other Scandinavian countries are interesting. While the death toll in Sweden is much higher, the proportion of people in elder care facilities compared to the dead from the rest of the population is the same across the nations.
This implies the death toll depends on the degree the virus is present in the general population rather than differences in how the elder care facilities handled the pandemic.
We already know the virus had a very strong presence in the Stockholm area even before cases were discovered, so this makes sense. And with all the people moving between Stockholm and the rest of the country, the other regions inevitably suffered, but not to the extent of Stockholm.
There are a lot of details- today, the DN newspaper published a strong attack on inadequate medical interventions for patients in elder care facilities during the first weeks- but it is beginning to look like Sweden suffered for the same reason Belgium suffered: a multitude of cluster-spreading events early on.
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So we can expect to see some serious criticism of the early phase of the pandemic management, once the comission is ready with its report in approximately a year from now.
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Dang. My finger scraped the screen resulting in me ‘liking’ my own comment again. I need shorter fingers.
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Current daily death toll: 10 or less. People that have had the virus are immune, even if the tests do not show antibodies. And so far none has had the virus a second time. The disease will give immunity for at least sig months.
Currently only intermittent cases of patients need to be admitted to intensive care each day.
The projected situation during fall and winter is hard to estimate, the most likely is that there will be regional flare-ups but nothing compareable to what Sweden has recently experienced.
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Just in: The daily death toll is now under ten.
The number of people in hospital for COVID19 in the Stockholm region is 72 of which 11 are in intensive care.
Here in Västerbotten region the corresponding numbers are 4 and 1.
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Number of new cases nationwide (yesterday): 333. It is now possible to do tracing of how the contagion is spreading.
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I confess it has taken me a long time to get around to reading this, although it is not very long or difficult; I have developed an aversion to constantly dwelling on the topic.
Probability of aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.16.20155572v1
A nurse in the USA who is treating Covid-19 patients gave me this reference, in response to a comment I made weeks ago to the effect that I think viral load must be an important parameter. Contrary to what this paper says, virologists in HK have warned about non- or mildly-symptomatic people in the community who may be carrying high viral loads. Rather, this paper talks about people who emit abnormally high volumes of droplets when they cough or talk. I can’t resolve the contradiction, but my feeling is that either could be ‘super-spreaders’.
HK is now in a much worse position than Stockholm, in terms of the number of people in isolation in hospitals and the number in ICU. The next two weeks will be critical. The Mainland keeps making offers of support, and HK is responding by sending a lot of samples to labs over the border for analysis, to ramp up dramatically the rates of testing. Those labs now have lots of spare capacity, because the coronavirus has been virtually eliminated in the Mainland. But we cannot accept their offer to send healthcare personnel, because all such people working in HK must be registered healthcare workers in HK, which those people obviously are not. Plus a major constraint in our healthcare system now is not numbers of healthcare workers, but rather the capacity of hospitals, ICUs and quarantine facilities.
The coronavirus finally managed to get into some aged care homes, via infected workers who were working in multiple facilities, so the number of deaths, which was previously very low, is now climbing steadily.
HK has a particular problem – as one of the world’s busiest cargo ports, there is a constant stream of ships coming into the harbour, and many of those ships have infected crew members on board. As a moral government, HK cannot simply insist that the infected people remain on their ships, so they are disembarked and put into hospitals here, and there is a danger that this constant stream of imported cases, in addition to imported cases returning to HK now from India and the Philippines, will overwhelm the local healthcare system.
No matter what you might read, the HK government *does* always behave morally – in my experience in my time here, it always has, and nothing has changed.
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https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3094640/donald-trumps-chinese-lab-theory-may-be-weakened-fdas-bat
Trump and Pompeo owe Shi Zhengli an apology. I doubt she is going to get it.
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Very good news with Sars-cov-2 in Sweden:
Looking back ten days, the daily death toll is now down to six. At these levels random fluctuations will make the results fuzzy.
In most Swedish counties, the number of virus patients- both in ordinary and intensive care- is down to single digits. The aforementioned fluctuations keep changing the numbers for Västerbotten up and down.
NB – in Stockholm county, there has been a slight increase in number of patients, probably a result of vacationers throwing caution away when the weather is fine.
And with a large reservoir of undiagnosed cases remaining in the region the r number can go up again. But I recognise human nature makes a final mid-summer distancing push difficult. At least there are new initiatives to improve distancing on trains and buses, as well as restaurants.
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HK has solved the distancing problem in restaurants – it has closed them all, starting next Wednesday. They can only serve take-outs.
HK has a culture that people eat out very frequently. Some people never prepare food at home, they eat out literally all of the time. So you can take this as a sign that the government is very seriously worried.
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Very good news, actually, two good tidnings.
Alzheimers may be discovered up to 20 years before symptoms appear. This makes effective preventive measures possible.
Also, only two COVID19 fatalities in the last 24 hours.
In all of Sweden, the COVID19 patients in intensive care are down to 49.
Notice to people in Stockholm and other places with crowds: (grabs bullhorn) KEEP BEING CAUTIOUS !!
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What the… I learned that 28 deaths have been reported. Have the administrators that record the stuff been on vacation and just returned? I have not seen a backlog like this for a long time.
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As I have noted in the general thread, those reported today have died on dates spread over a period of more than a month.
Maybe patients who died abroad, or persons only identified as infected with COVID19 during post-mortem?
Anyway, this statistical event does not indicate a new wave of contagion, the current daily death rate remains low.
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People with COVID19 can be sorted in six symptom groups. This makes it possible to give early appropriate care to those predicted to be in most danger, by the symptoms of day five.
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https://www.rt.com/op-ed/496689-sweden-covid-cost-economy/
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Right now 269 are in hospital nationwide with COVID19, of these 38 are in intensive care.
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Don’t look now, but I think HK’s third wave might have peaked. I fervently hope so.
Meanwhile I am giving thanks for our big brothers over the border. The Mainland said it would render HK whatever assistance it could, and asked what they could do to help. So:
1. They are the masters of rapidly converting large buildings into temporary hospitals with individual isolation rooms. So they have just converted a huge exhibition space at a convention centre near the airport into a 500 room temporary hospital – they did that in a couple of days flat, and the temporary hospital is already in use, housing younger, less seriously ill Covid-19 patients, allowing the public hospitals to have more resources to devote to the more seriously ill patients. They are going to convert another large exhibition space into another 400 room temporary hospital. Those people are amazing, and this is going to be hugely helpful, because our hospitals were warning that they were getting to breaking point and about to be overwhelmed. Now they are not.
2. Mainland doctors and nurses can’t practise in HK because they are not registered here – they could get registered, but it is a lengthy procedure that takes years. But there is nothing to stop their medical science lab technicians from working here as long as they are appropriately qualified, so they are mobilising 70 lab technicians to come to HK to greatly ramp up the local testing capacity – locally established biotech companies have the lab capacity, but not enough lab monkeys to run the increased numbers of tests we need. The first 10 are already here and working, and I assume the others will arrive shortly. If necessary, they will have the capacity to test the whole population of HK in the space of a few days, but that is probably not what the government will decide to do – it will focus on high risk groups first, like people in aged care facilities, and test the whole lot of them. Taxi drivers. Minibus drivers. Restaurant workers. Slaughterhouse/abattoir workers. Security guards. Police. And medical staff themselves, of course, and other personnel working in medical clinics. There is a list of high risk occupations that they will concentrate on.
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Today, one more COVID19 death was reported. This brings the total up to 5744.
I expect several more to be reported on Tuesday and Wednesday as the record-keeping catches up from the weekend. Still, no sign of a new surge, thank Asklepios.
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Yesterday August 3rd, there were 166 confirmed cases.
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And 3 new cases in intensive care on August 2nd.
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HK’s third wave has definitely peaked. Despite that, work is racing ahead to build temporary hospitals with 2,400 new beds and to greatly ramp up testing capacity. One plan is to test school kids so they can return to face-to-face teaching, starting with new students and those studying for university entrance exams, which seems like a good idea.
If the third wave is now on its way down, why is the work to increase hospital capacity racing ahead? They are preparing for the fourth wave, and winter.
HK numbers: total known infected since the beginning of the pandemic 3,670; fatalities 41. So the fatality rate has risen to 1.1%, which is far more typical of many other places. The reason for that is that the virus has finally got into elderly care homes, with the inevitable increase in fatalities among the very elderly and chronically ill.
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Today 5th August a new batch of death statistics came in, some of which is for people who died in June. Going back 14 days to make the register lag minimal, the death rate was 6-7 per day. I hope the current rate will turn out to be even less.
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Here in Västerbotten the numbers oscillate 1-2 back and forth. Today we had 4 in hospital including one patient in intensive care.
-I read there is intense research to make particles that binds more tightly to the sars-cov-2 spike protein than the cell receptors the virus targets.
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66 confirmed new cases of the virus today 5/8.
Latest into about new arrivals in intensive care comes from 2/8: 4 new patients.
I do not have the numbers for new non-intensive care hospital patients.
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During the pandemic 2 million children/youngsters have remained in school in Sweden. Very few have fallen sick, and no children have died.
This happened with a background of high mortality and substantial virus spreading in the rest of society.
By comparison Taiwan kept the schools open, but to a background of very little virus spreading in the population.
This has made Sweden an object of interest for other countries considering re-opening the schools despite a high incidence of sars-cov-2.
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“Covid-19 may spread more easily in schools than thought, report warns Covid-19 may spread more easily in schools than thought, report warns”
This will mainly be a concern for teachers and other staff…..not to mention parents.
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OK, here is the link.
having kids sleep in communal cabins during a pandemic is not a good idea.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/05/covid-19-may-spread-more-easily-schools-than-thought-report-warns
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Addendum. A certain politician* got a tweet removed for claiming children are almost immune to sars-cov-2.
In reality children get sick. Sometimes they get very sick. Fortunately no child has died in Sweden so far. Those who get sick generally may have milder symptoms which correlates to being less infectious but the number is not zero.
*the Merican eejit, not the British one.
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HK’s third wave is still gradually subsiding, but there are still a lot of cases where the source of the infection cannot be identified, which means there must be a sizeable number of ‘silent carriers’ in HK who are infecting people. So, with the help of the big testing teams sent by the Mainland, all 7.5 million residents of HK will be offered a free test, in the hope that will identify a lot of the silent carriers so that they can be taken out of circulation.
If all 7.5 million people take up the offer, the testing can be completed in 2 weeks, thanks to the help provided by the Mainland. The testing will be carried out in 3 labs run in HK by the HK branches of Mainland companies, who have quickly ramped up their testing capacity in order to cope with the numbers.
Of course, the Usual Suspects claim that HK is perfectly capable of doing this by itself, and it is just an evil plot for the Chinese Communist Party to get the DNA of all HK people. But then, they would, wouldn’t they? Except that all people tested will be given a bar code for identification purposes when they give their samples, and their identities will not be revealed to the Mainland lab staff, so there is no possible way that the Mainland can get their DNA and identify who it belongs to (to do what with, exactly?), even if the lab staff were equipped and had time to genotype 7.5 million people in 2 weeks, which they aren’t and haven’t.
In this case, the Usual Suspects have just identified themselves as paranoid xenophobes of low intelligence and poor understanding of the processes involved and effort required, and the general public have been reassured by the bar code idea, and can see the Usual Suspects for what they are – a bunch of stupid liars.
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Current situation in Sweden:
206 are in hospital, of which are 31 in intensive care.
Today, two more deaths were registered; one that took place July 28, the other has not a recorded date (yet).
Much concern about how to deal with crowding in high school/college and the municipal bus services.
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