Sweden avoiding lockdown

Thats me

s1ippy wrote: »

16,000 today is off the wall.

This thread should really have a different title given the fact that

A) There are regional lockdowns now, so they clearly haven't avoided diddly.

Their strategy has been proved to be woeful, immoral, economically damaging and headstrong.

Are there still people on here who think no restrictions are a good idea?

I do not think no restrictions are a good idea in Ireland But could you provide some observable review confirming "Their strategy has been proved to be woeful, immoral, economically damaging and headstrong" ? We are still close to them, 13K vs 16K cases per 1M population. They have significally more deaths per capita, but obviously by different reasons than strategy. May be their health services more corrupted or whatever else..

Vieira82

Thats me wrote: »

I do not think no restrictions are a good idea in Ireland But could you provide some observable review confirming "Their strategy has been proved to be woeful, immoral, economically damaging and headstrong" ? We are still close to them, 13K vs 16K cases per 1M population. They have significally more deaths per capita, but obviously by different reasons than strategy. May be their health services more corrupted or whatever else..

Read this thread, there's plenty to choose from

s1ippy

When there is no discernible benefit to their country over other strategies, and there is economic, social and health service fallout which damages them, I'm pretty sure the onus is on anyone who denies this to prove otherwise.

ArthurDayne

ArthurDayne wrote: »

I didn’t say that people denied them — I said that much more is made of Sweden’s differences from ourselves (to the point where you know as well as I do that they can be rhymed off at this stage in a way you could not do with other countries — high levels of trust, civic responsibility, better healthcare, high level of single occupancy etc).

Well actually, you didn't say that either.

You made an argument that people 'won't ever mention' the demographic differences between Ireland & places like Italy & Belgium. Obviously you can't prove that something doesn't exist, but you can show where people criticising Ireland's policies compared Ireland to Italy & Belgium and people deflected from it.


The difference between someone stating "Fans of the swedish approach regularly dismiss comparisons between Sweden & it's neighbours" and "You won't see people talking about Ireland's differences between it and Italy & Belgium" is that there's readily available evidence for the former, and you're arguing that the absence of evidence for the latter is in fact evidence of absence.

For someone as learned and estimable as yourself, I'm sure you understand the distinction between absence of evidence and evidence of absence.

Right?

It is perfectly correct to say that direct comparisons are not definitively indicative, it is certainly correct to say that direct comparisons require pinches of salt and acknowledgement of contextual variations — but it is most certainly not correct to say that direct comparisons are “pointless”.

It's 'most certainly not correct' how? I mean, you just stated it was without explaining how it was and then moved on.

I mean, who should we compare ourselves to then? The U.K. ? Is it vastly more demographically similar to us than Sweden? What about NZ, is it a far better geographical comparator?

It's most certainly correct because you can't think of a better comparison?


That's not rational either.

Yeah, but that doesn’t make the baseline immune from criticism. If news flashes came on a Friday evening that a massive group of hostile bomber jets was flying towards Dublin and would bomb the city in a few hours, would it be a sensible to say that people would all still behave the exact same way?

You're showing that you don't understand what a baseline even is. A baseline is where you start to show a response to change.

Even before the authorities have time to make emergency plans, would ‘Dublin on a regular Friday night’ be a good baseline for predicting how many people would be in town?

****ty anecdotes and analogies are a poor mask for a lack of understanding.

No. Because when people perceive risk they adjust their behaviour, they don’t just do what they always do until someone orders them to do otherwise. They might do it in different ways, or indeed some will be less risk averse than others, but overall society would not behave the exact same way.

You still don't understand what purpose a baseline serves.

You come on here parading the words “logical, rational and intellectual”, you accuse me of being disingenuous...and yet when I discuss an academic paper and actually try to weigh up their findings — this is your response:

You didn't discuss an academic paper, and you didn't try 'weigh up their findings'. You picked two figures from a 31 page paper to support an argument that nothing else in the paper supports. Quite the opposite, the paper says;

Different national policy decisions have been justified by socio-geographic differences among countries. Such differences as well as the tempo and stringency of public-health interventions are likely to affect the impact on each country’s mortality and healthcare system.

Even worse, the paper modelled that even with stringent public health guidelines

Social distancing with closure of schools and non-essential businesses: In addition to intervention 1, all schools and non-essential businesses are closed,and social distancing is advised for the entire population. School transmission is removed, workplace transmission is reduced by 75%. Household interactions increase by 50% and community interactions decrease by 75%. Social distancing occurs at a 90% compliance rate, indicating strong reduction of all social contacts.

Sweden would still suffer between 2.6million and 4.6million infections and between 28-48,000 deaths by July.


If the paper's estimations of infections and deaths, even with the most stringest public health measures that more than replicate any possible potential behavioural change at an individual level are off by an order of magnitude, it's clear that the paper's underlying assumptions about the virus and/or the population are incorrect in general.

. There is nothing intellectual about doing that my friend. If there is a deficiency in what I say, please point it out — otherwise keep the mockery to yourself. If my point was easy for you to mock, then it should be easy for you to deconstruct with an argument.

I did point it out. That you responded by showing an even deeper lack of intellectual ability is 'definitively indicative' of what I stated in my first post.


Using analogies instead of making points, stating truisms, claiming that cherrypicking two figures from a paper constitutes 'discussing a paper and weighing up its findings'. Arguing that a lack of evidence is instead evidence.

Now, do you dispute that the Uppsala University figures were, in the end, wrong (bearing in mind even their more ‘conservative’ estimates were really, really wrong). If they were wrong, why were they wrong?

If you had read the actual paper - available here (since you didn't bother to link it so other people could 'discuss it' too, how did you expect to have a discussion if no-one else could read it?) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v1.full.pdf


You wouldn't need to ask that question. Instead you picked two figures from it to support an argument that the very paper undermined.

I’m putting forward the argument that they were wrong because their model could not capture the very thing I mention — that people would naturally react to the risk rather than just behaving as normal. If you have a counter argument, then I’m happy to listen to it — not mock it.

Again, from the paper you very intellectually didn't read:

While aggregate population models yield the basic principles of epidemic spread, discrete models that take into account geographic and demographic structure permit more specific assessment of different interventions in national contexts. Individual-based discrete models-also called agent-based models, since every individual of a geographic region is modelled by an agent-provide a flexible platform to analyse the propagation of emerging infectious diseasesand the effect of social distancing and similar behavioural changes.

Stop spoofing.


1) Assumptions are generally false


2) Arguments made to defend an assumption are axiomatically indefensible


You fall down utterly on both points.

ArthurDayne

ArthurDayne wrote: »

The mathematical models did not capture this because it is a a fundamentally human phenomenon. The models could only say “Here is what happens in normality and here is what happens when you create an environment that prevents normality” — they failed to capture the more realistic outcome of people adjusting their behaviour based on their understanding of risk.

Mathematical models can do this. Mathematical models commonly do this.

You being unaware of them doesn't magically make them cease existing just so you can make an ignorant uninformed point on a web forum.

is_that_so

Deleted User wrote: »

Mathematical models can do this. Mathematical models commonly do this.

You being unaware of them doesn't magically make them cease existing just so you can make an ignorant uninformed point on a web forum.

Yeah but what we see in our models doesn't seem to include that. As your link points out they too have their perceived flaws.

Thats me

Vieira82 wrote: »

Read this thread, there's plenty to choose from

I was looking for alternative to read 420 pages checking out every link on it :rolleyes: Also, some evaluations are changing over time, therefore every reference would require fact checking making this nearly impossible. It would be much simpler for me if poster would provide one or few references.

humberklog

Anders Hahlne was on Pat Kenny this morning and it's worth a listen back. Anders was skeptical of Tegnell's approach from the early days.

This is from a very good (and thankfully brief and easily read) article by Heba Habib in The BMJ (12- June-2020).

"Anders Vahlne, a professor of virology at Karolinska, thinks that government advice misinformed the public by implying that those who don’t have symptoms are not contagious (the Public Health Agency of Sweden’s website states “as long as siblings or other members of the family do not show symptoms of disease they can go to school, preschool,or their workplace.”).“I think this amongst other things has caused a lot of older people in care home to get sick and die and it’s quite unnecessary,”Vahlne toldThe BMJ."


The article also has a number of interesting views from other Swedish health service tefal-heads such as Jon Tallinger, a specialist in general medicine and operations manager at a hospital in Tranås, Yngve Gustafsson, professor of geriatric medicine at Umea University and Anders Bjorkman, a professor of infectious diseases at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

tobefrank321

s1ippy wrote: »

16,000 today is off the wall.

This thread should really have a different title given the fact that

A) There are regional lockdowns now, so they clearly haven't avoided diddly.

Their strategy has been proved to be woeful, immoral, economically damaging and headstrong.

Are there still people on here who think no restrictions are a good idea?

16,000 is for the last 4 days - an average of 4000 a day.

As for their strategy being wrong, Czech Rep are now running at about 150 deaths a day, or ten times that of Sweden (same population).

Do you consider their strategy better or more "moral"?

Poland is running at 350 deaths a day. Moral also?

Poland and Belgium have posted deaths of 430 and 350 today.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

You would struggle to see any mention of it in the media though.

wakka12

tobefrank321 wrote: »

16,000 is for the last 4 days - an average of 4000 a day.

As for their strategy being wrong, Czech Rep are now running at about 150 deaths a day, or ten times that of Sweden.

How exactly their strategy more moral?

Poland is running at 350 deaths a day. Moral also?

Czech Rep will overtake Sweden in deaths per capita before Friday

Czech Lockdowns (2) - Sweden (0)
Czechia also has field hospitals in Prague, UN doctors flying in to save them..the whole Bergamo works

is_that_so

wakka12 wrote: »

Czech Rep will overtake Sweden in deaths per capita before Friday

Czech Lockdowns (2) - Sweden (0)
Czechia also has field hospitals in Prague, UN doctors flying in to save them..the whole Bergamo works

Czechia opened up far too soon and they admit it. Their first one was successful because of how swiftly they responded, now they are seeing what other countries got.

tobefrank321

is_that_so wrote: »

Czechia opened up far too soon and they admit it. Their first one was successful because of how swiftly they responded, now they are seeing what other countries got.

I don't like criticizing particular countries because everyone is trying their best, but holding parties to celebrate the end of covid was in hindsight a huge mistake. It was an example of lockdown fatigue getting the better of them.

Slovakia is doing mass testing and found 57,000 positive cases currently. This gives you an idea of the real scale of cases in the community even if a fraction are detected.

Even during lockdown infections are circulating, just waiting for lockdown to be lifted.

I'm interested to see how Sweden gets on over the coming months, if their long term low level restrictions with voluntary compliance works or if they decide to go for full lockdown to get things under control.

charlie14

Numbers up again today. We`re looking at 30,000 new cases for this week alone.
Meanwhile their public health authority is like Hitler in his bunker issuing orders to imaginary armies.
Their public health authority has been issuing edicts that are contrary to what regional authorities representing practically the total population are saying.

It`s past time for the Swedish government to grow a pair, tell the public health authority that their strategy has been a failure, and take charge.
Especially now with the news on vaccines and them not only having stated what their vaccination programme will be, but also due to their deal with AstraZeneca they will be one of the first countries in the world to be in a position to begin vaccinations.

ArthurDayne

Deleted User wrote: »

Well actually, you didn't say that either.

You made an argument that people 'won't ever mention' the demographic differences between Ireland & places like Italy & Belgium. Obviously you can't prove that something doesn't exist, but you can show where people criticising Ireland's policies compared Ireland to Italy & Belgium and people deflected from it.


The difference between someone stating "Fans of the swedish approach regularly dismiss comparisons between Sweden & it's neighbours" and "You won't see people talking about Ireland's differences between it and Italy & Belgium" is that there's readily available evidence for the former, and you're arguing that the absence of evidence for the latter is in fact evidence of absence.

For someone as learned and estimable as yourself, I'm sure you understand the distinction between absence of evidence and evidence of absence.

Right?






It's 'most certainly not correct' how? I mean, you just stated it was without explaining how it was and then moved on.



It's most certainly correct because you can't think of a better comparison?


That's not rational either.







You're showing that you don't understand what a baseline even is. A baseline is where you start to show a response to change.



****ty anecdotes and analogies are a poor mask for a lack of understanding.



You still don't understand what purpose a baseline serves.






You didn't discuss an academic paper, and you didn't try 'weigh up their findings'. You picked two figures from a 31 page paper to support an argument that nothing else in the paper supports. Quite the opposite, the paper says;





Even worse, the paper modelled that even with stringent public health guidelines





Sweden would still suffer between 2.6million and 4.6million infections and between 28-48,000 deaths by July.


If the paper's estimations of infections and deaths, even with the most stringest public health measures that more than replicate any possible potential behavioural change at an individual level are off by an order of magnitude, it's clear that the paper's underlying assumptions about the virus and/or the population are incorrect in general.




I did point it out. That you responded by showing an even deeper lack of intellectual ability is 'definitively indicative' of what I stated in my first post.


Using analogies instead of making points, stating truisms, claiming that cherrypicking two figures from a paper constitutes 'discussing a paper and weighing up its findings'. Arguing that a lack of evidence is instead evidence.





If you had read the actual paper - available here (since you didn't bother to link it so other people could 'discuss it' too, how did you expect to have a discussion if no-one else could read it?) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v1.full.pdf


You wouldn't need to ask that question. Instead you picked two figures from it to support an argument that the very paper undermined.




Again, from the paper you very intellectually didn't read:





Stop spoofing.


1) Assumptions are generally false


2) Arguments made to defend an assumption are axiomatically indefensible


You fall down utterly on both points.

Taking an academic paper which sets out to forecast Covid deaths and taking the figures they ultimately churn out for...well... Covid deaths is hardly “cherry picking”. I mean, I’m sorry I didn’t share all 31 pages of information with everyone, but I think it’s OK to pick out the actual main conclusion. As for not giving the link, fair enough, but I did give the title and the institution so I don’t imagine the copy and paste job into Google was too much trouble for you.

Now for the sake of brevity, let us step back and consider for a moment that in your post above you at the very least appear to agree that the paper was wrong. That’s because, quite clearly, it was spectacularly wrong (interesting of course that the study used a similar model to that used by the Ferguson team at Imperial College London).

What’s odd is that you appear to be very kind in your interpretation of them actually having considered behavioural change in any accurate or meaningful way. You seem to be of the view that simply because they say that behavioural change is factored in, then this somehow means that my point about the inadequacy of their modelling in predicting the real minutiae of human behaviour is wrong. They assumed less restriction meant more transmission (which is entirely reasonable) but they failed to grasp that wider transmission did not invariably mean almost exponential death because there was a clear risk group and people would act accordingly around people of that group. I mean, their model is so flawed that they actually explicitly try to dissuade any suggestion that they haven’t taken Sweden’s demography and geography into account (page 17 bottom) — and they still grossly overshoot.

And it brings me back to the original point — that the same flawed logic is being applied by the authorities and media in this country. It’s the same flawed logic that leads people to say that the social differences between Ireland and Sweden are almost a constant that is equally applicable in times of normality and times of crisis. Of course, as you say, assumptions for the purpose of modelling are often wrong — but we are talking models and papers which cumulatively have formed the basis for an unprecedented suspension of civil liberties, the exacerbation of socioeconomic misery and poverty across the world, and the changing of the course of history.

nofools

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Well actually, you didn't say that either.

You made an argument that people 'won't ever mention' the demographic differences between Ireland & places like Italy & Belgium. Obviously you can't prove that something doesn't exist, but you can show where people criticising Ireland's policies compared Ireland to Italy & Belgium and people deflected from it.


The difference between someone stating "Fans of the swedish approach regularly dismiss comparisons between Sweden & it's neighbours" and "You won't see people talking about Ireland's differences between it and Italy & Belgium" is that there's readily available evidence for the former, and you're arguing that the absence of evidence for the latter is in fact evidence of absence.

For someone as learned and estimable as yourself, I'm sure you understand the distinction between absence of evidence and evidence of absence.

Right?






It's 'most certainly not correct' how? I mean, you just stated it was without explaining how it was and then moved on.



It's most certainly correct because you can't think of a better comparison?


That's not rational either.







You're showing that you don't understand what a baseline even is. A baseline is where you start to show a response to change.



****ty anecdotes and analogies are a poor mask for a lack of understanding.



You still don't understand what purpose a baseline serves.






You didn't discuss an academic paper, and you didn't try 'weigh up their findings'. You picked two figures from a 31 page paper to support an argument that nothing else in the paper supports. Quite the opposite, the paper says;





Even worse, the paper modelled that even with stringent public health guidelines





Sweden would still suffer between 2.6million and 4.6million infections and between 28-48,000 deaths by July.


If the paper's estimations of infections and deaths, even with the most stringest public health measures that more than replicate any possible potential behavioural change at an individual level are off by an order of magnitude, it's clear that the paper's underlying assumptions about the virus and/or the population are incorrect in general.




I did point it out. That you responded by showing an even deeper lack of intellectual ability is 'definitively indicative' of what I stated in my first post.


Using analogies instead of making points, stating truisms, claiming that cherrypicking two figures from a paper constitutes 'discussing a paper and weighing up its findings'. Arguing that a lack of evidence is instead evidence.





If you had read the actual paper - available here (since you didn't bother to link it so other people could 'discuss it' too, how did you expect to have a discussion if no-one else could read it?) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v1.full.pdf


You wouldn't need to ask that question. Instead you picked two figures from it to support an argument that the very paper undermined.




Again, from the paper you very intellectually didn't read:





Stop spoofing.


1) Assumptions are generally false


2) Arguments made to defend an assumption are axiomatically indefensible


You fall down utterly on both points.

I'm confused, did you use all these lovely words to defend Sweden's failed policy?

screamer

humberklog wrote: »

Anders Hahlne was on Pat Kenny this morning and it's worth a listen back. Anders was skeptical of Tegnell's approach from the early days.

This is from a very good (and thankfully brief and easily read) article by Heba Habib in The BMJ (12- June-2020).

"Anders Vahlne, a professor of virology at Karolinska, thinks that government advice misinformed the public by implying that those who don’t have symptoms are not contagious (the Public Health Agency of Sweden’s website states “as long as siblings or other members of the family do not show symptoms of disease they can go to school, preschool,or their workplace.”).“I think this amongst other things has caused a lot of older people in care home to get sick and die and it’s quite unnecessary,”Vahlne toldThe BMJ."


The article also has a number of interesting views from other Swedish health service tefal-heads such as Jon Tallinger, a specialist in general medicine and operations manager at a hospital in Tranås, Yngve Gustafsson, professor of geriatric medicine at Umea University and Anders Bjorkman, a professor of infectious diseases at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

Heard that this morning. I was shocked when he said anyone who was 80 or over and caught covid, instead of getting oxygen and treatment were given morphine and palliative care. Awful, awful stuff.

odyssey06

screamer wrote: »

Heard that this morning. I was shocked when he said anyone who was 80 or over and caught covid, instead of getting oxygen and treatment were given morphine and palliative care. Awful, awful stuff.

Sssshhh. You are bringing too much reality to the topic. This is what the ignorant / couldnt care less about the vulnerwble crowd demanding "protect the vulnerable but magically open up society" means in practice.

99nsr125

screamer wrote: »

Heard that this morning. I was shocked when he said anyone who was 80 or over and caught covid, instead of getting oxygen and treatment were given morphine and palliative care. Awful, awful stuff.

We did the same here, older patients were shipped to nursing homes while beds lay idle.

Killing them and the people they infected

We're a great bunch of lads

Thats me

screamer wrote: »

Heard that this morning. I was shocked when he said anyone who was 80 or over and caught covid, instead of getting oxygen and treatment were given morphine and palliative care. Awful, awful stuff.

OK, this explains higher mortality rate.

99nsr125 wrote: »

We did the same here, older patients were shipped to nursing homes while beds lay idle. Killing them and the people they infected

Who are you and where you are? :eek:

cnocbui

screamer wrote: »

Heard that this morning. I was shocked when he said anyone who was 80 or over and caught covid, instead of getting oxygen and treatment were given morphine and palliative care. Awful, awful stuff.

What is the survival rate of 80+ year olds put on ventilators?

Italy were no different:

Coronavirus victims in Italy will be denied access to intensive care if they are aged 80 or more or in poor health should pressure on beds increase, a document prepared by a crisis management unit in Turin proposes.

Some patients denied intensive care will in effect be left to die, doctors fear.
...
One doctor said: "[Who lives and who dies] is decided by age and by the [patient's] health conditions. This is how it is in a war."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/14/italians-80-will-left-die-country-overwhelmed-coronavirus/

And that is exactly what ended up happening.

And of course, it happened in Spain: https://news.yahoo.com/as-coronavirus-ravages-spain-doctors-get-a-grim-order-on-futility-of-care-for-the-very-old-and-very-sick-202454937.html

“Catalonia’s govt decides to let die coronavirus patients who have ‘less years to live’, [and recommends] no ‘admissions in hospital of patients with little benefit’. Elders and those with preexisting conditions will be given morphine to avoid ‘futility of health care.’”

Notice a pattern here?

screamer

cnocbui wrote: »

What is the survival rate of 80+ year olds put on ventilators?

Italy were no different:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/14/italians-80-will-left-die-country-overwhelmed-coronavirus/

And that is exactly what ended up happening.

And of course, it happened in Spain: https://news.yahoo.com/as-coronavirus-ravages-spain-doctors-get-a-grim-order-on-futility-of-care-for-the-very-old-and-very-sick-202454937.html



Notice a pattern here?

They weren’t even given oxygen, for Christ sake, that’s just cruel.

Vieira82

cnocbui wrote: »

What is the survival rate of 80+ year olds put on ventilators?

Italy were no different:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/14/italians-80-will-left-die-country-overwhelmed-coronavirus/

And that is exactly what ended up happening.

And of course, it happened in Spain: https://news.yahoo.com/as-coronavirus-ravages-spain-doctors-get-a-grim-order-on-futility-of-care-for-the-very-old-and-very-sick-202454937.html



Notice a pattern here?

It's not the same at all... what happened in Italy and Spain was a question of choice in an extremely overcrowded scenario. Doctors where FORCED to choose who to save due to lack of resources.

Another very differently is having the resources available and choosing to send the elderly to die in care homes.

Look around there's plenty of news of elderly people in Italy, Spain, Portugal in their 80s, 90s and 100s that survived this by being taken care off when the cases where going down and health services could again coupe with the influx of patients...

biko

screamer wrote: »

Heard that this morning. I was shocked when he said anyone who was 80 or over and caught covid, instead of getting oxygen and treatment were given morphine and palliative care. Awful, awful stuff.

Sweden has been doing that since very early in the pandemic, this is me 5 months ago:

biko wrote: »

Doctor orders morphine to end the man's life without consulting the relatives.
After son hears about it he contacts media and father is put on nutrition, and recovers fully.

tobefrank321

screamer wrote: »

Heard that this morning. I was shocked when he said anyone who was 80 or over and caught covid, instead of getting oxygen and treatment were given morphine and palliative care. Awful, awful stuff.

Could never happen in Ireland. Except it did.

https://www.thesun.ie/news/5894594/f...ovid-19-death/

On March 17, Florence’s daughter, Linda Maples, got a call from staff at the home to tell her that four residents and two staff had picked up the virus but her mum was fine.

But on April 9, her family were told she had a temperature and was refusing to eat or drink.

Former hospital cleaner Florence — who was known as the Queen of Sheba at the nursing home because she always had her make-up on — was later confirmed to have Covid.

The family wanted Florence to be sent to hospital but were told by staff that hospitals weren’t accepting patients from nursing homes as they were trying to free up beds for an expected surge of Covid cases.

Her relatives spent the next two weeks outside the nursing home watching her slowly “get worse” through the window.

'ABSOLUTELY HEARTBREAKING'
Emotional Ann Marie said: “The last morning we had camped out. We all stayed in our cars outside the window. It was about quarter past five in the morning and I went over the window to check on her and something was wrong.

“Then her mouth just dropped to her chest and she just took this gasp in. I rang the nurses station and told everyone.

“The nurse came in and went and got the head nurse and they told us that Florence was on her last ­transition and I told my mam that I didn’t want her to die alone.

“So I was going to put on the full PPE and go in and then my aunt came back and they were only ­letting one of us go in so Linda went in.

“The rest of us stood ­outside watching every minuscule breathe she took and it was just absolutely heartbreaking.

“Not once could my mam go in and tell my nana she loved her. She only got to do that two weeks before she died.

“The last time she spoke to her was on a WhatsApp video call.”

STAFF UNDER 'SEVERE PRESSURE'
Florence had six kids, with son Jimmy left to watch his mother pass away on a video call from Australia.

Ann Marie said: “I actually held the phone in the window with Jimmy on FaceTime watching his mother die.

“That was the hardest thing I think I’ve ever had to do.

“He was in tears on the phone. Anyone who thinks that this disease is easy, it hasn’t hit them.

“You only truly know what it’s like when it affects your family.”

Ann Marie said the nursing home “tried their best” to accommodate the family and used WhatsApp calls to allow them see their grandmother but said the workers were under “severe pressure” with no supports.

The family are furious with how the Government handled the virus outbreak in nursing homes and are devastated that Tara Winthrop Clinic’s plea for help fell on deaf ears at the start of the pandemic.

And in every other country too.

tobefrank321

screamer wrote: »

They weren’t even given oxygen, for Christ sake, that’s just cruel.

I think you need to familiarize yourself with what happened in nursing homes in every developed country including Italy, Spain, UK, Ireland, US, Canada and France before you make a comment on what happened in Sweden. In France, nursing homes were abandoned by staff, with residents inside them, essentially left to starve.

The elderly in nursing homes were treated terribly in every one of these countries.

The Swedes apologised. No other country had the decency to do so including our own government who back slapped themselves the whole time and were taking plaudits from the public while nursing home residents died.

screamer

tobefrank321 wrote: »

I think you need to familiarize yourself with what happened in nursing homes in every developed country including Italy, Spain, UK, Ireland, US, Canada and France before you make a comment on what happened in Sweden. In France, nursing homes were abandoned by staff, with residents inside them, essentially left to starve.

The elderly in nursing homes were treated terribly in every one of these countries.

The Swedes apologised. No other country had the decency to do so including our own government who back slapped themselves the whole time and were taking plaudits from the public while nursing home residents died.

Other wrongs don’t make it right. In the other European countries they and we tried to prevent Covid taking hold, it might not have worked but we tried. Sweden essentially sacrificed their old people and continue to do so with their choices on how they “control” Covid. They are no role models to be following nor looking up to.

coppergrass

Deleted User wrote: »

If the paper's estimations of infections and deaths, even with the most stringest public health measures that more than replicate any possible potential behavioural change at an individual level are off by an order of magnitude, it's clear that the paper's underlying assumptions about the virus and/or the population are incorrect in general

Thanks for giving a link to that paper. The code is much better organised and commented than the Fergusson clusterf**k released a few months ago - it's much more pleasant to read! It's also a simpler model though, and it doesn't look like they included the type of behaviour that AD outlines, namely that low risk people will exercise greater caution around those they perceive to be high risk. Agent based models use lots of relatively simple interactions between individuals to predict emergent behviour or complex results at the level of the group. These interactions are explicitly defined and are often quite simplified due to the computational load involved in running the simulation. Choosing the interactions to model and their level of granularity can be as much an art as a science and it doesn't look like they got the balance quite right here given the results.

Of course non of this lends any weight to AD's conjecture either.

While it's really impressive that they got something like this together so quickly, I find it a little depressing that models like this can inform policy affecting the livelihoods of millions. It's certainly some elegant modelling but it's only around 8,000 lines of code. While this stuff is a few levels above my pay grade, I had imagined something much more elaborate and well resourced where the behaviour AD mentions was either explicitly included or could have been found emergently. I guess hindsight is always 20/20 though and governments and research agencies just didn't see it as that much of a priority before Covid.

tobefrank321

screamer wrote: »

Other wrongs don’t make it right. In the other European countries they and we tried to prevent Covid taking hold, it might not have worked but we tried. Sweden essentially sacrificed their old people and continue to do so with their choices on how they “control” Covid. They are no role models to be following nor looking up to.

Sweden took the approach of long term low level restrictions with voluntary compliance. This means a lower risk of lockdown fatigue.

Other countries such as Czechia, Poland, Portugal, Greece or Hungary took the strict lockdown approach at the start. They abandoned it after a few months for economic and lockdown fatigue reasons. Cases then exploded in these countries as did deaths.

Its not as simple to say Sweden made no effort to contain it - they went down the sustainable restrictions approach - sustainable economically and socially.

Czechia are currently seeing ten times the daily deaths of Sweden and their lockdown will ultimately make no difference. If the pandemic ends by say March 1st 2021 through use of a vaccine, they are unlikely to have less deaths than Sweden and will probably have more on current trends. The other countries too. Most of the lockdown countries in Europe are on course to have a similar death rate or worse than Sweden.

In other words its difficult to argue one approach was right while the other was wrong when the outcome will be the same.

I think like a lot of people you ignore the fact Sweden is currently doing better than a large number of countries. That may change and they may catch up in deaths, but I'm getting tired of people trying to imply Sweden is doing terrible when other places are doing well. UK, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and most of the rest of Europe are currently doing far worse. But don't expect Pat Kenny to focus on that.

Bit cynical

screamer wrote: »

Other wrongs don’t make it right. In the other European countries they and we tried to prevent Covid taking hold, it might not have worked but we tried. Sweden essentially sacrificed their old people and continue to do so with their choices on how they “control” Covid. They are no role models to be following nor looking up to.

It is not so simple however. We in Ireland had a similar proportion of our elderly die with Covid as Sweden.

greyday

Bit cynical wrote: »

It is not so simple however. We in Ireland had a similar proportion of our elderly die with Covid as Sweden.

The difference is we tried and failed to protect the elderly, Sweden made a conscious decision to allow the elderly to die.