It was a suggestion. Not a mandate. distancing works. it is based on data. Covid is spread by the symptomatic... the higher the viral the more likely the risk. Covid is spread mostly if not entirely via droplets and exposure over time. Droplets which fall to the ground after a few meters. Distance... wash your hands. Don't be indoors near sick people.
Number in intensive care in Sweden hits highest point since first COVID-19 wave https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/0...-hits-highest-point-since-first-covid-19-wave The number of patients being treated in intensive care units in Sweden is now higher than during the second wave of the pandemic and eclipsed only by the first, deadly outbreak of the disease roughly a year ago, figures showed on Monday. Sweden has taken a different path from most countries during pandemic, opting against strict lockdowns, though it has gradually ratcheted up still mostly voluntary restrictions on public gatherings and social activities. The number of new COVID-19 cases has been picking up in recent weeks and 392 people were now being treated in intensive care units, according to the Swedish Intensive Care Registry. That topped the 389 who were treated in ICU units in early January, but was below the number in intensive care during the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020, when the total reached as high as 558. While infections have surged, the death toll from the disease has so far not spiked in similar fashion, a trend attributed by the health agency to the roll-out of vaccinations among the most vulnerable, above all nursing home residents.
Sweden needs to get their vaccinations ahead of the increasing Covid variants. Also, as a reminder, Tegnell and Swedish health officials had stated they would be extremely worried if Sweden exceeded the 7,000 threshold. Sweden infections has been increasing dramatically since they said that...its now nearing that threshold. In contrast, Denmark / Finland / Iceland / Norway still outperforming Sweden. In fact, those countries have seen a small uptick except for Iceland (declining). wrbtrader
Sweden has highest new Covid cases per person in Europe Figure of 625 new infections per 1m people is many times larger than Nordic neighbours https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-highest-new-covid-cases-per-person-in-europe Sweden has reported Europe’s highest number of new coronavirus cases per head over the past week and has more patients in intensive care than at any time since the pandemic’s first wave. The Scandinavian country, which has opted against strict lockdowns but gradually ratcheted up its still mostly voluntary restrictions, has recorded 625 new infections per million people in the past seven days, according to ourworldindata.org. That compares with 521 in Poland, 491 in France, 430 in the Netherlands, 237 in Italy and 208 in Germany, the data showed. The figure was many times higher than the 65, 111 and 132 per million in Sweden’s Nordic neighbours Finland, Denmark and Norway. According to the Swedish intensive care registry, 392 people were being treated in the country’s intensive care units on Monday, more than the second-wave peak of 389 in January but still lower than the 558 patients in ICUs in spring 2020. However, while both infections and ICU patients have surged, Sweden’s death toll has so far not risen so sharply, a trend the national health agency said was due to many of the most vulnerable, particularly care home residents, now being vaccinated. The Social Democrat-led government of the prime minister, Stefan Löfven, postponed a planned easing of some restrictions in late March until at least 3 May, but has insisted tougher measures are not yet needed to bring the latest surge under control. The Swedish public had “really changed its behaviour and daily life is, to a very great extent, already very restricted”, said the health minister, Lena Hallengren. The government had planned to ease some rules, including raising the limit on the number of visitors to amusement parks, concerts and football matches, after the Easter break, but was advised against doing so yet by the public health agency. Non-essential shops have remained open in Sweden, although the government has limited customer numbers, and bars and restaurants have continued to serve, albeit with increasingly tough restrictions on opening hours and alcohol sales. Restrictions have been steadily tightened on public gatherings but schools have mostly stayed open, although rules vary regionally. Hallengren said last week the government had brought in the measures it believed necessary. “Whether that has been sufficient, is not a judgment that I can sit here and make,” she told MPs last week. Hallengren said the policy had been to “put lives and health first and protect the healthcare system as much as we can”. But Hallengren said the government had also tried to “secure society’s other important functions. Once this is over, society should be able to continue to function.” The aim was not to affect people’s private lives “overly much”, she said. Surveys show Swedes have been paying less attention to recommendations in recent weeks, prompting the country’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, to call for greater discipline. “What’s needed is for people to observe the rules we have,” he said. The country of 10 million people has seen more than 13,000 Covid-related deaths, giving it a death rate per million of nearly 1,350 – many times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours, but lower than in several European countries that opted for lockdowns. (More at above url)
They are still leading Europe on my list except for the UK... but... the virus outbreak is concerning. Hopefully they are towards the end of they cycle with the UK variant before immunity starts kicking in stronger.. https://ourworldindata.org/explorer...L~CAN~FRA~GRC~GBR~USA&Metric=Confirmed+deaths
WTF? No strategy for addressing a global pandemic. ‘Sweden never had a formal coronavirus strategy’: Health Minister tells inquiry https://www.thelocal.se/20210410/sw...onavirus-strategy-health-minister-to-inquiry/ Sweden's government has never had a formal strategy for handling the coronavirus pandemic, the country's health minister Lena Hallengren said on Friday, a day before revealing that she has undergone surgery for breast cancer. But she told the Committee of the Constitution that the government had brought in the measures they believed had been necessary at all stages in the pandemic. “Whether that has been sufficient, is not a judgement that I can sit here and make,” she said. During her questioning, Hallengren was asked several times why the government had never formally decided on a strategy, with several MPs expressing surprise and wondering aloud how health and other agencies could have been controlled by the government without a strategy. “How can the government run the country in the biggest crisis in modern times without having set a strategy,” Tobias Billström, group leader of the opposition Moderate Party, told the TT newswire. “If you don’t have one, how can you expect to have different agencies working together towards the same goal? This raises far more questions that we had at the start [of the committee’s inquiry].” Hallengren said that it was not unusual for a country to lack a formal government strategy, pointing out that neither Germany, France nor Italy had one. The committee’s inquiry is likely to give the Swedish government’s handling of the pandemic a different, and certainly more political, type of scrutiny than the independent Coronavirus Commission, which initially had a very narrow remit, with the first phase of its investigation limited to the handling of the pandemic in the elderly care sector. The inquiry was called by Tobias Billström, group leader of the opposition Moderate party and the committee, the most powerful in the Swedish parliament, is headed by the Moderate MP Karin Enström, Minister of Defence from 2012 to 2014. After the hearing, Hallengren revealed that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, had an operation a month ago, and will begin chemotherapy on Monday. She said that she felt well and intended to continue working if possible, but realised that if this becomes too difficult in the coming weeks and months she may have to go on sick leave. READ ALSO: What can the parliament’s inquiry tell us about Sweden’s coronavirus strategy? In the hearing, Hallengren said that her government had set coronavirus policy on the basis of a few overarching goals. “We should put lives and health first, protect the healthcare system as much as we can, and make sure that they have the resources they need. “But we have also stressed the importance of securing society’s other important functions. We believe that once this pandemic is over, society should be able to continue to function.” Part of this final goal had meant, she said, that the government had tried to protect jobs and also make sure that people’s private lives were not affected “overly much”, adding that in spring this approach had enjoyed broad support in the country. “There’s nothing particularly strange or mystical about the Swedish strategy,” she went on, questioning the focus on what the Swedish strategy has been. Hallengren argued that it had been impossible to predict at the start of the pandemic how quickly there would be shortages of personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves and visors for health personnel. “No one made a judgement that they would run out in 2-3 weeks,” she said. Tuve Skånberg, from the Christian Democrats, and Ida Drougge, from the Moderates, both asked why the government had not responded to the shortages in protective equipment by taking tougher measures to reduce the level of transmission in society. “We did everything we could to get hold of protective equipment and push down on infection rates,” Hallengren replied. She said that the government had been surprised and worried by the fact that it took until nearly last summer before testing rates reached hoped-for levels, something Sweden’s regions have blamed on uncertainties over funding. “I don’t accept the description that this came down to a lack of money,” Hallengren said, noting that the government had already on April 2nd pledged a billion Swedish kronor for testing, although she conceded that the government could have reached an agreement with the regions on the issue earlier. She also denied that the decision to limit testing at the start of the pandemic was evidence that Sweden had hoped to achieve herd immunity. “There was never any idea about letting a lot of people get infected so long as they didn’t become too sick. That was never a part of the Swedish strategy. If it had been we would have been able to miss out on a lot of measures which we imposed.”
The Real Lesson of Sweden’s Laissez-Faire COVID-19 Response Numerical analysis indicates the failure of a hands-off approach to the pandemic https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/biomedical/ethics/swedens-actual-covid-policy-herd-immunity The COVID-19 pandemic, now in its second year, has prompted a great deal of debate and reflection on the tension between personal civil liberties and the collective good. A surprising amount of this soul searching has offered up Sweden as either a shining example or a cautionary tale, depending on the viewpoint of the onlooker. In Europe, America, and elsewhere, politicians ostensibly arguing for individual liberty and economic growth have weighed in against mandates on business restrictions and the wearing of masks. Some scientists have also joined the fray. For example, Scott Atlas (former advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force) and Sunetra Gupta (co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration) favor looser measures in order to preserve civil liberties and to attain herd immunity as a byproduct. Sweden figures in all this because of its largely voluntary approach to quarantining and social distancing. Indeed, for much of 2020, Sweden’s strategy was spearheaded not by politicians but by a health official, Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency of Sweden. In advocating for a light-touch approach, Tegnell noted in September 2020 that controlled spread of the virus over the population should provide Sweden with greater protection in the second wave vis-à-vis its Nordic neighbors, who opted for conventional strategies. Thus, the cost of a high death rate in the first wave would be more than offset by the benefit of a low death rate in the second wave. So, has this hypothesis been upheld? Were the voices championing individual liberties correct all along? No. If they had been correct, then during the second half of 2020, excess mortality in Sweden—from all causes and not just COVID-19—should have ticked lower in comparison to that of the other Nordic countries. In fact, no such thing happened. During weeks 46 to 52 of 2020, Sweden’s standardized excess mortality rates were persistently above the “normal range” (Figure 1, above). By contrast, all of Sweden’s Nordic neighbors combined had just three instances of excess mortality outside the “normal range” during weeks 36 to 52. In terms of actual COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants, Sweden has done no better than the U.K. and the U.S. for much of the so-called second wave (Figure 2, below). Hence, the data for the final few months of 2020 contradict the individualists’ case. Faced with such sobering statistics, champions of a hands-off approach should respond with humility. Yet, instead of adapting their hypothesis to fit the facts, they twist the numbers in order to suit their beliefs. For example, Tegnell claimed in December 2020 that Sweden’s immigrants have been “driving” its higher death rate. However, on a national TV appearance, Tegnell provided no evidence to back up this statement. Others, too, have misleadingly cited Sweden’s relatively high percentage of foreign-born residents to make a case that Sweden did not fare too badly if you take into account the fact that the country has a higher proportion of more-vulnerable people than its immediate neighbors. In making this argument, though, some cited figures as high as 25 percent for Sweden’s foreign-born population. But, this 25 percent estimate includes not only the foreign born but also people born in Sweden to two foreign-born parents. In fact, just 13.9 percent of the Swedish population is born outside the EU, EEA, and U.K., according to Eurostat. This is a critical distinction because only immigrants from low-and-medium-income countries tend to have the kinds of jobs and lifestyles that make them more vulnerable to infection. Furthermore, consider the Norrland region in northern Sweden. Immigrants from outside the EU/EEA/U.K. constitute 8.2 percent of its population, not far off the 6.6 percent share seen in the neighboring Nordic countries. Yet as of 29 November, Norrland had a COVID-19 death rate that was 4.8 times higher than the average in those Nordic countries. During the so-called second wave (weeks 45 to 48), the discrepancy was starker still: Norrland’s COVID-19 death rate then was over six times as high as the neighboring Nordic countries’ average. All of which suggests that policy—not demographics—explains the outcome. Some on the right have long trotted out Sweden as a job-killing, high-tax nanny state. Although there was scant empirical evidence for such a caricature, it conveniently suited a particular worldview. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, some civil libertarians and others have serendipitously found Sweden’s laissez-faire public-health strategy amenable to their ideology and rushed to embrace it while again brushing aside other facts. If these people insist on using Sweden as an exemplar when debating governance, then may I suggest that they take a look at the country’s environmental policy? At €110 per metric ton of CO2 emitted, Sweden’s carbon tax is the highest in the world. More important, there is empirical evidence that the carbon tax has, indeed, reduced CO2 emissions from transportation. In this domain, Swedish authorities have long acknowledged the obvious: that laws and regulations do affect human behavior. They further recognize that polite entreaties to firms and households to curb CO2 emissions would not work. The reason for this ineffectiveness is that the cost that an individual consumer incurs for using fossil fuel is lower than the cost that society bears. If you want people to behave in a way that reflects the full cost of their actions to society, then you must change incentives. This is true whether you are dealing with environmental policy or with a public-health crisis. In a world where data are widely available, evidence-based best practices and not ideology should inform public policy. Framing the discourse in any other way is disingenuous at best and a willful obfuscation at worst. The author is a professor in the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis, Aalto University, Finland.
I'm actually surprised Sweden's Covid infection numbers have increased so much above Europe numbers and the United States numbers to considering they have the same problems as all the shown countries involving a large number of their population are paying less attention to Covid health recommendations for the past month of so plus the constant barrage of misinformation / disinformation about Covid (e.g. government way to take away the rights of the people, Covid is not real, Covid is no worst than the Flu). This could become a big problem as in they see the statistics too. As stated before, that 7000 is their threshold to take more action. The question will it be a lockdown as their next action against the spread of Covid ??? wrbtrader
Nordic neighbors again...but vs Europe Sweden did very well. Sweden saw lower 2020 death spike than much of Europe - data https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-spike-than-much-of-europe-data-idUSKBN2BG1R9