Sadly, most of what I've read on the situation in the UK today lends support to un's contentions, dramatic as they are. i.e. It's quite possible that Herd Immunity (which amounts to sacrificing the old and weak for the sake of the young and strong) was never really taken off the table, but is just being done more gradually.

The issue of carehomes has just started showing up on the radar today after deaths in a carehome in Scotland. This might blow up into a storm for the government, but I expect they are confident that most homes are infected now, so they won't have to come to the rescue, just claim that they tried, or blame it on a delay in ppe provision or something.

The issue of carehomes has just started showing up on the radar today after deaths in a carehome in Scotland. This might blow up into a storm for the government, but I expect they are confident that most homes are infected now, so they won't have to come to the rescue, just claim that they tried, or blame it on a delay in ppe provision or something. — Punshhh

Not tested, and therefore not counted in the infection rates or the death rates. Old people don't count. When did you say that radical change of policy was again?

But they're really going to start testing health workers quite soon, as soon as possible, really quite a lot of them - maybe even 10 % a day, eventually, and then they might start testing carers, and then possibly providing them with PPE. - well some sort of mask anyway. Really, as soon as possible. Working their little socks off they are, even getting the queen to gee us up and remind us how we won the war.

Old people don't count. When did you say that radical change of policy was again?

23rd March, I meant the lockdown, up until then the policy was just to let the virus spread freely, well apart from hand washing (Lady Macbeth).

well apart from hand washing (Lady Macbeth). — Punshhh

:rofl: Always a popular political ritual, and hand wringing too. Roman origins I believe.

That didn't last long.

Sweden's administration is changing it's course, doesn't go anymore with the "lax restrictions & herd immunity" - policies, but wants go the same road as every other European country. Has to still get the changes passed in the parliament. So likely Swedes will have similar restrictions as everybody else.

So that didn't take much time, actually, roughly two weeks. But I guess they started to get afraid of the death rate compared to their neighbors.

Deaths in Nordic countries now:

Iceland: 4
Finland: 25
Norway: 62
Denmark: 161
Sweden: 373

Now the Swedes might be sorry about getting rid of their Strategic wartime/crisis materiel: Sweden either donated to other countries or simply threw away first-class equipment and kit of 50 field hospitals which included 630 ventilators.

included 630 ventilators. — ssu

They were probably archaic. The lungs of a COVID person become fragile. You need a good computer controlled vent to avoid doing more harm than good.

I wonder if the Swedes did modelling or just succumbed to pressure from hospitals.

So if we are talking about a threat that may kill tens or hundreds of times more people, why think the power structure would have to change? What difficulty is there to understand that pandemics are a threat? — ssu

States are in charge of public health. The federal govt. just assists. I guess FEMA would have to be given a new directive and increased authority.

So maybe part of the reason the US is sluggish is jurisdictional stuff.

Is it largely media hyper?

In some countries saying coronavirus is illegal, how is the rate of disease in their country?

coronavirus is illegal — wiyte

What?

a country in the Middle East, Turkmenistan.

What?

Exactly.

As predicted: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/398284

Maybe I am the new Nostradamus! :yum:

From the same article :

This is not actually the case.

The European Commission has proposed a programme to protect jobs and workers affected by Covid-19 to the tune of €100bn (£85bn; $107bn).

It also announced a €50m aid scheme for Italy to provide medical equipment. The European Central Bank has promised a €750bn stimulus package to help keep the eurozone afloat. — Article

The discussion is about the method of financing and what conditions to attach to any funds released above and beyond what the EU is already making available. The wealthier EU countries aren't against helping Spain and Italy in principle and they will help, it's a matter of how. This is why the "corona bond", eg. the much maligned euro sovereign backed bond is actually on the table as an option when a lot of countries had been against it before.

Meanwhile, goods and services are being shared; Germany is taking care of French, Dutch and Italian patients and now that the Dutch have it under control we will be able to take part of that burden as well in the near future.

Since they're sovereign states though, the comparison with the USA is totally irrelevant to begin with.

Well, this naturally happened some time ago, but they did have first class equipment, not something from the 1960's. Especially with medical equipment armies tend to have them up to date. The rifles etc. can be old, but not the medical materiel. Hence the equipment would be up to date if the system had been continued (like here). It wasn't. Sweden literally disbanded it's huge wartime army for which it had, unlike Finland, all the equipment in needed to the last pair of skis.

(A Swedish field hospital in Göteborg in 2018. They do still have some, which are now used in Stockholm and are waiting for patients.)

I guess FEMA would have to be given a new directive and increased authority. — frank

Something that might likely happen. Or for example, Homeland Security takes a central role in this as the issue of handling a pandemic likely isn't just left to FEMA (which is already under the United States Department of Homeland Security).

Maybe I am the new Nostradamus! :yum: — Benkei

At least you are very lucky in accurate timing. But :up:

How often do i need to get lucky to make you a believer in my predictive powers?

4 times more. With no hazy or incorrect predictions.

Then I'm a believer. :wink:

The utter incompetence of the federal government, no longer possible to deny without one coming off as a total miscreant, must instead be excused by shifting blame downwards. It's simply the new narrative that's at work right now, which NOS is dutifully relaying. — StreetlightX

Let's see, Trump started with blaming all the other countries, and foreigners, for America's problems, when he was first elected. Now he's blaming all the internal actors. states and municipalities. If things don't straighten themselves out quickly, America may never be great again. Oh, I almost forgot, he's supposed to be the leader of the country, and the one assigned with the task of straightening things out. Maybe his good buddy Putin will give some assistance. But Putin does nothing for nothing, and the actual cost would remain a secret.

Deaths rising 12% and the rate of infections rising also quickly. Sweden is leading the Nordic countries in infections and deaths by any measure. — ssu

We have to be careful when speaking about different nation strategies so that we don't just interpret good or bad based on a statistical number that doesn't really show the whole truth. It's easy in these times for people to just recite numbers or do their own interpretations of statistics, even not knowing themselves that they do.

We have to account for more factors, like that Sweden was almost a month earlier in their curve than the other Nordic countries, that we hade a large number coming back from a vacation week in northern Italy just as the breakout happened there, that we've had the unluck of spread within elder communities and homes, that our testing has been lower compared to other countries meaning the statistical percentage deaths against confirmed cases becomes higher than nations with higher testing numbers.

We will actually not know anything about which strategy is working best until all factors are accounted for in all nations after the crisis is over. It's dangerous to rule out or praise strategies in any direction when the statistical analyses are done by people without any knowledge of analyzing statistical data.

I see media outlets, people without education (at all or not in the area of expertise) all making their own interpretations of statistical data on a daily basis and it's one of the main reasons of spreading panic. One day we have a country doing great and then they're not and people are confused.

If we are to do something like calculating who's actually doing good and who's doing bad in this crisis, there has to be a much more rigorous and scientific approach to the data we have. Anything else risks spreading misinformation and chaos.

That’s a shame. I think that was the last hope for a less authoritarian, herd immunity approach.

If we are to do something like calculating who's actually doing good and who's doing bad in this crisis, there has to be a much more rigorous and scientific approach to the data we have. Anything else risks spreading misinformation and chaos. — Christoffer

Absolutely. We're lucky we can compare notes and depend on one another to give accurate data. For all the spit-balling, we're actually a pretty enlightened world.

We have to account for more factors — Christoffer

Indeed. A very major factor is testing policy, and related hospitalising policy. If, like the UK, you make it a policy not to test people in care homes but only those in hospital, and also not to admit inmates of care homes to hospital, Your figures for both infection rate and death rate are going to look better than they are in reality. As long as tests are selective and rationed, figures are somewhat unreliable. They don't even want to test the hospital staff for fear of causing a panic...

Anything else risks spreading misinformation and chaos. — Christoffer

I think we have to take the risks though, because we need to do things even if they are not all the best things. Doing nothing, I am sure has a bad statistical outcome. It looks like Germany is doing a rather good job, so if you haven't a better idea, let's do what we can of what they do.

I think we have to take the risks though, because we need to do things even if they are not all the best things. Doing nothing, I am sure has a bad statistical outcome. It looks like Germany is doing a rather good job, so if you haven't a better idea, let's do what we can of what they do. — unenlightened

I agree that action is still better than inaction. However, problems arise when the mass influences decision making and the mass form their base of knowledge on faulty analysis of statistical data, dramatized news media with simplified writing and the entirety of post-truth behavior around knowledge.

In times of crisis, we need philosopher-kings and not demagogues. Even if we don't know whether or not Sweden's approach to this crisis will pay off, both short and/or long term, I still find it refreshing that the government give the populistic populus the finger and let the experts and scientists show them the way. It's a rarity today when most politicians act as demagogues and the decisions are based on calming the populus rather than fighting the virus spread.

Are you Swedish?

In times of crisis, we need philosopher-kings and not demagogues. — Christoffer

I'll vote for that in any old time, but unfortunately we are particularly well endowed with demagogues just now. It is a time to value truth and honesty amid a constant stream of bullshit and lies. I think we can do a little bit of sieving here, but actually the populous has to be kept calm too, and for that governments need to earn some trust with some honesty, not keep pretending things that people would wish for. Oh for a politician who can say 'I changed my mind, because I think I was wrong before'. I think a lot of the populous could respect that.

Yes, but I'm not defending or condemning the current approach to the national handling of the crisis, because at the moment there are far too many unknown factors in the statistics which makes any interpretation heavily biased or plain wrong. As I said, I don't think anyone at this time can praise or criticize a certain nation's strategy because we have so little data to make such a conclusion.

What we can conclude though, is that leaders and politicians who make bad decisions when there's room for good ones, is objectively bad in terms of public health. Some nations create a business around breathing masks instead of supporting wherever they are needed, which is objectively bad. Making money on masks at this time can be argued through a libertarian point of view as justified, but no one gains from having the virus spread around, not even the ones doing a profit on masks, so it's an ouroboros point of view that doesn't hold up in any kind of long term perspective.

I completely agree with your sentiment. It is a very fluid and dynamic situation and the lack of data makes predictions difficult.

But I do think we can (and should) criticize approaches that deny citizens their basic civil liberties and throw the global economy to the wind. Sure, that approach may work to stave off a pandemic or to prop up our inadequate healthcare systems, but the unintended consequences of such actions may end up being far worse.

I think we can do a little bit of sieving here, but actually the populous has to be kept calm too, and for that governments need to earn some trust with some honesty, not keep pretending things that people would wish for. — unenlightened

The biggest problem with the balancing act of keeping the populus calm and at the same time informed is that media is doing such a poor job. This is the problem with the kind of privatized media that do news based on where their funding comes from instead of informing the public based on knowledge and careful rhetoric. News dramatize and pushes emotion when emotions are the last thing we need governing how people should act through this and it's not a foundation for taking responsibility as a citizen.

Media today lacks the intelligence to inform the public in a good way. If reporters aren't pushed by who's funding them, they often lack the attributes to actually inform the public. Like the old saying: "if you read the news you're misinformed, if you don't read the news you are uninformed." It's media's fault that the public act with such panic and misinformation as we have institutions that provide lacking and badly interpreted data to a populus even less capable of handling that data. A big sign of this is how many youtubers who are scientists, or channels carefully going through data and the scientific information provided by publications, manage to handle the populus concerns much better than official news. But then you run into the problem of the lack of "markings" which channels and people online who truly are trustworthy.

The bottom line is that media can be blamed for a lot of the bad things that have happened, but we still need media in order to spread the things people need to know. I just wished the media could fire every journalist or personal who push uneducated dramatized bullshit into the publics eye, while highlighting journalists who are wise, educated and have good authority and rhetoric to bring necessary information to the public while minimizing the risk of misinformation and riling up emotions.

But as long as news media is a business before anything else, we will never have that.

But I do think we can (and should) criticize approaches that deny citizens their basic civil liberties and throw the global economy to the wind. Sure, that approach may work to stave off a pandemic or to prop up our inadequate healthcare systems, but the unintended consequences of such actions may end up being far worse. — NOS4A2

If Jefferson had the order right: Life comes before liberty because without a life, there is no liberty to be had. Without civil liberties, there is no pursuit of happiness. But you still need that life there first. How bad does it have to be then, for any intervention? Let's say Ebola was highly contagious and airborne, would it be acceptable then? Also, global economies ultimately depend on a more-or-less healthy population. Without the healthy population, you have an economic collapse anyways as everyone is sick in hospitals- organizations that would have no measure of help in your scenario.

It is a weird utilitarian calculus to try to boost a future economy but not help those who are dying now. Apparently the golden rule idea doesn't apply to government, only crass utilitarian ones that calculate current death with economic depressions. Depressions do indeed hurt people, but usually they don't lead to outright death. Poverty does suck as a close second though, that I'll admit, but it is second.

But I do think we can (and should) criticize approaches that deny citizens their basic civil liberties and throw the global economy to the wind. Sure, that approach may work to stave off a pandemic or to prop up our inadequate healthcare systems, but the unintended consequences of such actions may end up being far worse. — NOS4A2

I think it's a delicate balancing act. People who can't see more than five days ahead scream of quarantining everything in society, shutting down everything and people who see far but aren't in groups who will suffer much from the virus argue for not shutting down anything. I think that keeping the curve down is a priority and in the cases where that needs to happen fast, there have to be much harsher restrictions.

There are also some interesting factors here. Sweden's approach is basically based on the notion that the people here, for the most part, listen to experts and scientists more than in many other nations. We also have a culture that already has social distancing built into it to some degree. So leaving the country semi-open with the recommendation that people stay at home and work from home as much as they can, actually works. How well, that's for the times to tell, but comparing this to a nation like Spain (which I have a contact in who's given me some grounded info on it), they continued social-cultural behaviors far into the spread of the virus, kissing on cheeks etc. This can also factor into why the spread there is so massive. Not a singular reason, but one of the reasons.

So cultural differences in how people behave in day to day life can also dictate how harsh the restrictions need to be in order to contain the spread of the virus. The balancing act can be a very complex question to solve and I don't think there's any good answer that is right for every nation; it's up to everyone to handle the situation out of the complexity it has, therefore discussions on which strategy is best between different nations become a bit fruitless.