{"id":40014,"date":"2020-09-20T16:56:59","date_gmt":"2020-09-20T20:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=40014"},"modified":"2020-09-20T16:56:59","modified_gmt":"2020-09-20T20:56:59","slug":"did-sweden-get-it-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=40014","title":{"rendered":"Did Sweden Get It Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hot Air<\/a> posted an article today about the way that Sweden dealt with the coronavirus. From the start, they followed a different path than much of the world.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

In the global battle against the pandemic, few countries drew as much scrutiny and frequent criticism as Sweden during the early days. While the United States and most of Europe shut down their economies and put everyone on lockdown, the Swedes largely went about their business with no mandates for the wearing of masks or prohibitions on public gatherings. Sweden initially experienced a surge of novel coronavirus cases as compared to its neighbors. And then it felt like we stopped hearing about them quite so much. So what\u2019s been going on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As this report from the Associated Press<\/a> indicates, what\u2019s been going on has largely been\u2026 not much, at least in terms of the virus. Sweden only made slight modifications to its policies after the initial surge, but largely stuck with the herd immunity strategy. And now, just as much of Europe is experiencing a second surge in cases, Sweden has some of the lowest numbers in all of Europe. So did their herd immunity strategy actually work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Associated Press<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n

Now, as infection numbers surge again in much of Europe, the country of 10 million people has some of the lowest numbers of new coronavirus cases \u2014 and only 14 virus patients in intensive care.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether Sweden\u2019s strategy is succeeding, however, is still very uncertain.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Its health authorities, and in particular chief epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell, keep repeating a familiar warning: It\u2019s too early to tell, and all countries are in a different phase of the pandemic.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article at Hot Air continues:<\/p>\n

Among Sweden\u2019s population of ten million, they currently have a total of 14 people<\/em> in ICU beds fighting COVID. In the past two weeks, they have reported 30.3 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. By comparison, Spain is at 292.2 and France reports 172.1. That\u2019s a rather startling difference.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes with some interesting speculation:<\/p>\n

This should leave us to wonder if that wasn\u2019t the ideal solution from the beginning. If we had locked down the nursing homes and provided relief to everyone over the age of 55 so they could stay home, along with anyone with a doctor\u2019s note saying they had underlying respiratory or immune system issues, could we have just left the rest of the economy running? The idea of requiring a doctor\u2019s note wouldn\u2019t be any big deal. Most employers do that already for many Human Resources functions, including the use of sick time for more than a day or two. Further, the death toll in New York City wouldn\u2019t have been anywhere near what we saw were it not for Governor Andrew Cuomo\u2019s disastrous order forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients and forbidding the screening of new residents.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What would our current death toll be today if we had followed that path? The vast, vast majority of healthy people under the age of 55 who contract the virus still come out the other side alive and without any serious, permanent health issues. There are some who are hit very hard to be sure, but the same can be said for other diseases that we live with (or, in some cases, don\u2019t) every year. We\u2019ll have to wait until the second wave has finished washing over Europe to be sure, but it\u2019s starting to look as if the Swedes were onto something all along.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We can’t turn back the clock, but we can keep this in mind in dealing with future diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hot Air posted an article today about the way that Sweden dealt with the coronavirus. From the start, they followed a different path than much of the world. The article reports: In the global battle against the pandemic, few countries … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12501,12581,1583,12804,10648],"class_list":["post-40014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coronavirus","tag-herd-immunity","tag-hot-air","tag-lockdowns","tag-sweeden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40015,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40014\/revisions\/40015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}