Swedes out enjoying a day in the sun in the middle of the pandemic. You’ll see this photo in every Marxist article that takes shots at Sweden’s COVID response.
Sweden took a right turn in response to COVID and didn’t lockstep with the authoritarian mandate by economically crippling their country, and the Marxist propagandists, i.e. the American news media, have been punishing them ever since. In true Marxist propagandist fashion, they have tried to steer your focus to the two pimples on Sweden’s ear (see my essay (link) regarding this style of news). They compare Sweden’s COVID record to only Norway, Finland, and Denmark, conveniently forgetting about the rest of the European nations.
Sweden has always been in the middle of the European pack with regard to its COVID19 statistics. A few European nations like Germany have had dramatically fewer numbers of COVID deaths, but most are in a similar range and many have been worse: United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium to name a few that have worse stats. When comparing Sweden to New York, a similar sized political unit, Sweden has been stellar. Well, compared to New York, every entity looks good, because New York has been the worst in the world. Texas, who the media also loves to vilify, is spiking, but it would have to continue at this level for about a decade to be as bad as New York cumulatively.
Getting back to Sweden, about a month ago the nitwits in the media were all giggling that Sweden had failed in its effort to gain herd immunity. So what is herd immunity? By now many people have begun to understand it. The news media is the exception. They’ve begun to call it the herd infection theory. Actual theory of herd immunity originally was used to determine the vaccination rate needed to protect a herd, and it is not the percent of the herd that gets infected.
Sweden’s infection rate has now turned sharply downward. Deaths run less than 10 a day and often are zero.
[Sweden Life Returns to Normal]
However, in the absence of a vaccine, it was thought that herd immunity could also be achieved if sufficient numbers of people became infected and developed antibodies. When the early Italian data was analyzed, it became clear that people below 55 years of age and who had no comorbidities were not badly affected by COVID, and as with all contagions, people who get the disease will develop antibodies to it-similar to what would happen had they been vaccinated against it. Given that there is no vaccine, Sweden’s epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, theorized that less vulnerable people could interact with each other so long as you protected the more vulnerable people. Eventually the stronger members of society would develop the antibodies and essentially the disease would cease to be transmitted. At that point the more vulnerable could come out from their shelters and mingle with the rest of society without danger of being infected. In short, it could be possible to achieve herd immunity without a large numbers of deaths.
When Sweden’s failed to reach herd immunity in mid-May, the Marxist media pounded Sweden for not going along with the other nations. They even suggested that there was great discontent among the citizens of Sweden over this.
COVID death rates in various European nations and the US.
I wonder how it is now, because it appears that Sweden is approaching something like herd immunity. It’s infection rate has dropped to less than 100 per day and deaths are less than 10 per day, and some days there are none. New York and Italy seem to be in the same place, but have gotten there with a much greater loss of life.
Just like the Marxist propagandists fallaciously went after Sweden, now they have gone after Texas, Florida, and Arizona, who were always a bit lukewarm on the economic shutdown. I heard on the nightly news yesterday the phrase “record high deaths.” Uninformed boobs who depends on these liars for information are being convinced that the epidemic in the South is worse than it has been anywhere in the world. Not so, New York holds the world record in daily deaths and it is unlikely that Andrew Cuomo will ever lose that record. And to the chagrin of the propagandists there are hopeful signs of a turn down in Texas, Arizona and Florida.
Is it possible that all of these places are heading toward a state of semi-herd immunity? I say semi, because it appears that the disease will linger along at low levels, not fully disappearing but continually impacting a small number of people. I am without knowledge of epidemiology, but I have to say that this is low infection state is mathematically reasonable.
[Digging into the COVID Data (YOUtube link)]
I don’t think you can apply the herd immunity formula directly to people, because in a herd of livestock, each animal is fairly identical in behavior; they mingle like inert molecules in the air. Humans are different. Some are gadflies and bounce around from party to party, spreading the disease, and other are introverts and hardly go anywhere. Once all the gadflies develop antibodies, you’ve pretty well shut down the major avenues for infection. The introverts can still get infected, but they aren’t going to spread it very rapidly, so you might have a slow burn that goes on a long time before it fully extinguishes.
Is New York really 3 times as bad as Italy? I’m afraid so. With that kind of record you would think that the NY Times would stop talking about Sweden, Texas and Florida, a steer their criticism closer to home. Another way to look at this is to think where the United States would be on it if New York were a separate country and not included in our stats. We would be at about 328.
If there is such a thing as winner here, then who is it? It’s certainly not the Marxist media, who have demonstrated that not one of them is a thinking human. Their stories are near carbon copies, with zero original thought or perspective. This is because they all are given the same set of talking points, or maybe they all just receive the same fax and are told they cannot change more than three words.
Sweden admits that they blew it in the protection of the vulnerable, otherwise their death numbers might be half. The fact is, that everyone blew the protection of the vulnerable, but the worst were Italy, which just got blindsided, and New York, which has an incompetent governor. Unfortunately, the news media has been ordered to make a hero out of him, or none have the nerve to point out his horrid failings, or they don’t have the brains to sort it out. In every case, they are equally useless.
Hi very interesting here.