Winnie the Flu

[beyelzu]

As for their policy being bad - yes, it was. But it wasn't exceptionally bad.

Plenty of countries made mistakes, but Sweden still is against masks. Most experts didn't agree with Sweden's approach and they seemed to have at times bought into the sort of covid denialism that comes out of the Hoover institute (assuming lethality at .1 percent and thinking they would get to herd immunity etc)

Their outcomes may not have been exceptionally bad, but their policy was/is.

[Dragar]

You remarked above about wondering what Sweden's outcome would have been with Norwegian policies. The counterfactual I'd be interested in would be Norway or Denmark with UK policy.

[Miisa]

I think you might still not be fully appreciating the natural local tendency for distancing, which Sweden thought would be enough alone while avoiding other measures in order to attempt to have a minimal impact on the economy. The Nordics, as a rule, have done well thanks to using both the official measures and restrictions as well as encouraging the standard distancing.

Sweden has a larger percentage of people of foreign descent than its neigbours, which also had a significant effect, again much more than anyone anticipated.
The common explanation for that is socio-economics, but based (admittedly anecdotally) on who I know who has been sick and who in my work and shopping trips I see not wearing masks, I believe the cultural/behavioral differences have a much larger part than is commonly stated.

[beyelzu]

Miisa offhand do you know roughly how many more people of foreign descent Sweden has relative to the other countries?

I mentioned it before, but given how multigenerational houses in California helped keep covid going, and an assumption on my part of such living arrangements among foreign descended residents, that could have effected things.

Here it was exacerbated by the fact that many essential workers lived in such arrangements.

[ChuckF]

We are done. He got Pfizer, I got Moderna.

Pfizer
Dose 1: Mild arm soreness starting around dose +12h, disappearing within a day or two. Basically like a flu shot.
Dose 2: Low grade fever (~101 F) and fatigue starting about +12h. Managed fine with acetominophen. Slept the following day. Completely resolved by +48h except for a bit of arm soreness that went away within another day or so.

Moderna
Dose 1: Barely noticeable arm soreness that lasted maybe a day. Nothing else.
Dose 2: Possibly mild fever/chills +12h (or maybe I was just cold - got another blanket and went back to sleep), which self-resolved without acetominophen. +24h-36h I felt run down and had a headache similar to a caffeine withdrawal headache. I slept most of the day and felt great when I woke up. Arm was a kinda stiff but not really sore. I had a pretty ugly but painless rash/swelling around injection site, about 2" in diameter when I woke up. That resolved by +72h and I just had a bruise there.

So basically a day or two of mild flu symptoms that disappear suddenly and completely.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Does percentage of single family households matter? Probably. What's the effect size? I've no data on that, so I don't disagree with the assertion, just the weight of its implication.

I don’t know the size of the effect.

I’m assuming it’s significant as it multigenerational households were a source of covid growth here in California and one can see how theoretically it would be highly advantageous.

It is however an assumption.

I think it likely that Scandinavia has advantages over much of Europe and that’s why they are doing so well. Cultural like Miisa talks about and the high percentage of single generation houses are one of those advantages.

It’s also not lost on me that the United States is doing worse than Sweden.

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

Plenty of countries made mistakes, but Sweden still is against masks. Most experts didn't agree with Sweden's approach and they seemed to have at times bought into the sort of covid denialism that comes out of the Hoover institute (assuming lethality at .1 percent and thinking they would get to herd immunity etc)

Their outcomes may not have been exceptionally bad, but their policy was/is.

I have a theory about why I - and probably other leftish Americans - find Sweden's policy approach to be so upsetting, in a way that we are not distressed by bad policy in the UK or fucking disastrous non-policy in Brazil.

I don't know much about Sweden except that it is stable, fairly prosperous with a developed state and social policies. I don't spend much time thinking about it. It's not that I don't care, just that I never really had much reason to worry about the Swedish constitution or public health. The only way I could really model what I was reading about Sweden was through the lens of the complete horror of Trump COVID policy here.

Trump policy was essentially politicizing a fixed externality (the virus) to create exploitable social division. The outcome was - and continues to be - needless death. This was obvious to any non-Trump huffer. So when Trump and Atlas and associated criminals were able to point to Sweden, even if they were lying constantly, the inevitable induction is that Sweden made the same set of choices that the Trump regime made. I don't think that's true, and I think the circumstances in Sweden are probably very different. It is more likely parallel evolution towards a common bad policy. But it's hard to convince my reptile brain of that.

Though I am convinced that Brazil is where the US would be had Trump won or had his failed putsch succeeded.

[Miisa]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

Miisa offhand do you know roughly how many more people of foreign descent Sweden has relative to the other countries?

It is surprisingly difficult to compare, as Swedish stats for immigrants like to include anyone born there but who has both parents born abroad, whereas Finnish stats considers anyone born here as Finnish. But my quick Wiki estimates are that Finland and Norway has 5-10% of the population of exclusively foreign descent, whereas that number is around 10-20% for Sweden. The Swedish numbers are, however, to a much larger extent people from more obviously different cultural backgrounds (largely the Near and Middle East), whereas Finland's non-natives are mostly Russian or Estonian.

As you say, the multigenerational living arrangements are more common in many other places, and as this is reflected also after immigration that absolutely would worsen the spread and therefore the figures within those populations.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Miisa

I think you might still not be fully appreciating the natural local tendency for distancing

Hence the memes and comics about 2m social distancing being so upsetting - people can't wait to get back to the usual 5m.

[Miisa]

These?

Real picture of a Finnish bus stop before Covid. pic.twitter.com/I5af00b5WK

— Leo Sammallahti (@Sammallahti) May 15, 2020

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[JoeP]

Also this:



And this:

[beyelzu]

Do y’all remember the Florida woman who refused to wear a mask and then coughed intentionally in a cancer patient’s face?

She got a month in jail.

"Her children didn't create this problem and her husband didn't, and she talked about how it changed her world and she was getting nastygrams on Facebook and things of that nature and they can't go to their country club or wherever," Ruth said. "But I have yet to see any expression, or a significant expression on her regret about the impact it had on the victim in this case."

Florida woman who coughed on cancer patient gets 30 days in jail

[beyelzu]

For those 65 and under, getting the coronavirus once provided roughly 80% protection against reinfection. But for people 65 and older, it provided only about 47% protection against getting COVID-19 again, further highlighting how dangerous this disease can be for older adults.

The First Big Study On COVID-19 Reinfection Is Here. Here's What It Means. | HuffPost Life


When I combine this knowledge with the partisan divide of vaccine acceptance.

In a mid-March CBS/YouGov poll, one-third of Republicans gave a definitive “no” to the question of whether they’d get vaccinated — still a minority, but higher than the share of refusers among any other racial, generational or gender-based demographic group. That survey also asked people who said they will not or might not get the shot to select their reasons for turning it down . The most commonly chosen reason, across partisan lines, was a feeling that the shot was “still too untested” — 58 percent of those who weren’t sure they’d get the vaccine, including 61 percent of Republicans, chose that as a rationale. Other factors were more uniquely partisan: Thirty-five percent of the Republicans who were unsure whether they’d get vaccinated said that they were “just not concerned about coronavirus,” reflecting larger polarization on the seriousness of the pandemic.

More And More Americans Say They’ll Get Vaccinated — But It’s Still Unclear Just How Many Will | FiveThirtyEight

I am left thinking that covid will almost certainly be endemic and that we will see covid deaths trickle in for some time to come in the Covideracy.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Kelowna martial arts gym refusing patrons who have been vaccinated, wear masks – Kelowna Capital News

[Ari]

for their own health and safety face masks are not permitted. Not the face mask wearers health and safety, no, the bystanders health and safety. Them thar masks, they jump out at ya, suffocating anyone they can reach!

Hand washing after sneezing or using the loo is also “expected” but no where does it say required, so I can only presume their equipment is just encrusted in snot.

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

I am left thinking that covid will almost certainly be endemic and that we will see covid deaths trickle in for some time to come in the Covideracy.

There's a big difference between getting reinfected and getting ill.

I can imagine see booster shots being needed every year, but I don't think we're doing lockdowns again (for covid, anyway). I agree it will never go away - but when was this an expectation? We can count the previous viruses we've eradicated on one hand.

[beyelzu]

We literally have vaccines that can render it non lethal.

The fact that I expect an ongoing death toll because of a partisan divide over vaccine acceptable is troubling to me.

It’s not that I think we can eradicate SARS-CoV-2, it’s that I expect continued deaths from it.

I could have phrased that better.

And yes, there is a difference between being sick and being infected, but I’m concerned about what that means for herd immunity.

I agree that we are probably done with large lockdowns, certainly.

[Miisa]

The lack of herd immunity is my main worry too, especially because of what it means for those who cannot be vaccinated, they rely on the selflessness of the rest of us.

Those who can be vaccinated but don't are selfish freeloading leeches that should be condemned to hellfire. I don't care if they are apprehensive or lazy or scared of the vaccine (because we all are), those are excuses that don't measure up.

[Ari]

Burning Man has yet to announce whether there will be a festival this year but it has leaked that vaccination will be required if they do. As you might guess, the drugs, party and white-woo crowd is in the process of losing their shit over this clear discrimination. It’s great!

Either way it will be a paltry experience as multiple large camps have announced they won’t be attending this year, for a variety of reasons, including that it takes a full year of planning and donations to get things together.

As appropriate gathers start to happen again there’s going to be an interesting clash between the partiers that just couldn’t wait and held covid spreading events, and those that didn’t.