Keegan99 said:

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Excellent news.

It definitely seemed like back in March and April, politicians were trying to one up each other by shutting down more and more stuff to show they cared more than the state/city next to them. In hindsight, it would have been best if the CDC would have come out with recommendations for States and Cities that said something like "If the area ICUs are X% full from Covid, consider reducing indoor dining to Y%." We shut things down way too fast across the country. NY and NJ back in April were probably the only areas that should have ever considered total shut down. There are times other parts of the country should have considered reducing capacity and encouraging social distancing, but the whole country didn't need to shut down at once.

I think the idea of letting each state determine their own response was probably right, but there should have been more guidance from the federal government about what to do when. It also didn't help that when NY shut down, media and other politicians were getting on other states for also not shutting down, when there really was no reason for a place like North Dakota to do anything. Leaving it up to each state seemed to more mean, each state fend for themselves.

I also agree, it doesn't help when you've got politicians and media personalities shutting everything down, and making a big scene, but then they are going about and doing their regular day and just enjoying the fact they no longer had to deal with traffic on the way to their hairdresser. It's no wonder everyone distrusts the media and elected officials. They've definitely earned that distrust.

NICARAGUA 4,533 Cases, 158 Deaths
HONDURAS 103,102 Cases, 2,823 Deaths
COSTA RICA 123,223 Cases, 1,546 Deaths

https://covid19.who.int/region/amro/country/hn

I don't know how germane to this discussion that this might be, but to me I have always felt that Nicaragua was the country to watch in this hemisphere as a bellwether. Reason being is that the health care system for the poor is really bad and they basically had -0- shutdown and not near the panic that their neighboring countries did. Look at the stat differences, although obviously not accurate.

Nicaragua obviously under counted deaths and cases, by a good amount. But from people there who I am close to and business contacts, they have not had mass deaths in the street nor the piling up of the sick at the hospitals. Mentioned earlier on this thread was the average age of the country, and that is a factor, but does not explain the differences between the neighboring countries.


I opened the plant in Nicaragua that made this face mask (I kidded them that it didn't work well) and during the height of the pandemic they worked a helluva lot, about 1,200 people.They were making about 70K dozen masks a week. They had 9 known cases and during the last 6 months they have had 2 employee's die, none of the confirmed cases died. Now, that is not a terrible oddity as sad as it may seem as every year they tend to have 2 to as many as 8 deaths within their facility for varied reasons.

I spent 11 years in Nicaragua at different stints and the one thing that I believe, again personal opinion, that makes a big difference is that I bet that not more than 15%, if that, of the population has access to AC on a daily basis. That factory that made the mask, pure open air with lots of ventilation. As are all the malls, most restaurants, and most homes. Also the government didn't provide the amount of testing that other countries did and tests were limited to those that were actively sick, unless done privately.

There were plenty of tragedies and issues there, make no mistake. But the poor ass country has chugged on and is not in utter disarray either, that is my point.

RGV AG said:

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NICARAGUA 4,533 Cases, 158 Deaths
HONDURAS 103,102 Cases, 2,823 Deaths
COSTA RICA 123,223 Cases, 1,546 Deaths

https://covid19.who.int/region/amro/country/hn

I don't know how germane to this discussion that this might be, but to me I have always felt that Nicaragua was the country to watch in this hemisphere as a bellwether. Reason being is that the health care system for the poor is really bad and they basically had -0- shutdown and not near the panic that their neighboring countries did. Look at the stat differences, although obviously not accurate.

Nicaragua obviously under counted deaths and cases, by a good amount. But from people there who I am close to and business contacts, they have not had mass deaths in the street nor the piling up of the sick at the hospitals. Mentioned earlier on this thread was the average age of the country, and that is a factor, but does not explain the differences between the neighboring countries.


I opened the plant in Nicaragua that made this face mask (I kidded them that it didn't work well) and during the height of the pandemic they worked a helluva lot, about 1,200 people.They were making about 70K dozen masks a week. They had 9 known cases and during the last 6 months they have had 2 employee's die, none of the confirmed cases died. Now, that is not a terrible oddity as sad as it may seem as every year they tend to have 2 to as many as 8 deaths within their facility for varied reasons.

I spent 11 years in Nicaragua at different stints and the one thing that I believe, again personal opinion, that makes a big difference is that I bet that not more than 15%, if that, of the population has access to AC on a daily basis. That factory that made the mask, pure open air with lots of ventilation. As are all the malls, most restaurants, and most homes. Also the government didn't provide the amount of testing that other countries did and tests were limited to those that were actively sick, unless done privately.

There were plenty of tragedies and issues there, make no mistake. But the poor ass country has chugged on and is not in utter disarray either, that is my point.

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I also assume (and this is stereotyping) but the countries that have done relatively well in this don't have near the amount of morbidly obese people as many of the countries that have done poorly

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I also assume (and this is stereotyping) but the countries that have done relatively well in this don't have near the amount of morbidly obese people as many of the countries that have done poorly

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Probably that, but they skew younger, too.

Agreed

Sweden is fine. No metrics that matter show anything else.

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I also assume (and this is stereotyping) but the countries that have done relatively well in this don't have near the amount of morbidly obese people as many of the countries that have done poorly

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That is probably a very viable assumption. That is one thing, Nicaragua compared to say Mexico, the amount of fats is way less, as people do not have the money to eat the processed stuff and fatty meats, nowhere near as much fast food. I lived there in two different stints, the first time I lost 30 pounds over the course of year, and I ate as much as I wanted of the things I wanted. I was the walking and absence of processed foods. Second time I moved back there after about 2 years in the states and Mexico, I again lost about 15 pounds.

It's important to really understand what has happened in Sweden. Why did it drop early, why is it rebounding, what worked and what didn't.

Pretty much everyone knows that different climate areas on earth experience flu season at different times. Yes, coronaviruses are classified as part of the ILI spectrum of illnesses/viruses that are tracked. They hit colder climates first (dry air, inside and out). Sweden is pretty far north of the equator. ILI waves track weather patterns.

It's not rocket science, but it is an ignored fact by so many.

Their cases are going up the same time as everyone else.

Nevermind, I can't read

It's almost as if we are examining the wrong variables. Countries with lockdowns have not statistically faired better than those that didn't. Countries and states that kept schools open fair no better or worse than those that closed them. Some countries with strict mask mandates have done better than others and some have faired worse than Sweden and Denmark which have low mask usage. Belarus has more or less done nothing and reports low incidence of transmission and death. Is climate controlling? Obesity? Age of population? Population density? It will be interesting to see the final studies in retrospect.

NicosMachine said:

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It's almost as if we are examining the wrong variables. Countries with lockdowns have not statistically faired better than those that didn't. Countries and states that kept schools open fair no better or worse than those that closed them. Some countries with strict mask mandates have done better than others and some have faired worse than Sweden and Denmark which have low mask usage. Belarus has more or less done nothing and reports low incidence of transmission and death. Is climate controlling? Obesity? Age of population? Population density? It will be interesting to see the final studies in retrospect.

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This is the critical thinking that we needed in this thread.

Sweden's cases started going up at the same time as everyone in Europe.

Shouldn't those countries - with more restrictions - have seen lesser infection rates? What's the deal?

TheMasterplan said:

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NicosMachine said:

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It's almost as if we are examining the wrong variables. Countries with lockdowns have not statistically faired better than those that didn't. Countries and states that kept schools open fair no better or worse than those that closed them. Some countries with strict mask mandates have done better than others and some have faired worse than Sweden and Denmark which have low mask usage. Belarus has more or less done nothing and reports low incidence of transmission and death. Is climate controlling? Obesity? Age of population? Population density? It will be interesting to see the final studies in retrospect.

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This is the critical thinking that we needed in this thread.

Sweden's cases started going up at the same time as everyone in Europe.

Shouldn't those countries - with more restrictions - have seen lesser infection rates? What's the deal?

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There's a ton of variables to consider that really make it not that simple. Population density, prevelance of the virus before international travel shut down, public transport utilization, current population immunity levels, weather and climate, social distancing and mask utilization, etc.

Again to imply that Sweden did it right based on the current data set without normizing for these variables is such a limited frame of reference. The best comparisons would be Finland and Norway for attempting to normalize the discussion to just "shutdowns". Does anybody want to argue today that those countries are doing worse than Sweden today? They both have a tiny fraction of Sweden's cases today and they have had much more government action than Sweden did.

Ihme is projecting a very bad Jan and Feb for Sweden. Finland and Norway may just be able to kick out the wave far enough for the vaccine to stop the worst of it.

Gordo14 said:

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TheMasterplan said:

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NicosMachine said:

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It's almost as if we are examining the wrong variables. Countries with lockdowns have not statistically faired better than those that didn't. Countries and states that kept schools open fair no better or worse than those that closed them. Some countries with strict mask mandates have done better than others and some have faired worse than Sweden and Denmark which have low mask usage. Belarus has more or less done nothing and reports low incidence of transmission and death. Is climate controlling? Obesity? Age of population? Population density? It will be interesting to see the final studies in retrospect.

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This is the critical thinking that we needed in this thread.

Sweden's cases started going up at the same time as everyone in Europe.

Shouldn't those countries - with more restrictions - have seen lesser infection rates? What's the deal?

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There's a ton of variables to consider that really make it not that simple. Population density, prevelance of the virus before international travel shut down, public transport utilization, current population immunity levels, weather and climate, social distancing and mask utilization, etc.

Again to imply that Sweden did it right based on the current data set without normizing for these variables is such a limited frame of reference. The best comparisons would be Finland and Norway for attempting to normalize the discussion to just "shutdowns". Does anybody want to argue today that those countries are doing worse than Sweden today? They both have a tiny fraction of Sweden's cases today and they have had much more government action than Sweden did.

Ihme is projecting a very bad Jan and Feb for Sweden. Finland and Norway may just be able to kick out the wave far enough for the vaccine to stop the worst of it.

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I agree it's more complicated. That was my point as well as Nico's.

Sweden shouldn't be compared to Finland and Norway. Sweden should be compared to the studies by "experts" who said Sweden would have 90k deaths in June if they kept up with their strategy. Cases aren't that only thing that should be taken into account - ability to live one's life should also be part of the equation.

There have been multiple prognosticators, "experts" and "projections" that have turned out to be complete BS. I don't know why you continue to put any validity into them.

More evidence of this:

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Last May, The New York Times warned that lifting state lockdowns could raise nationwide COVID-19 deaths above 3,000 a day by June 1. The actual number was about 700.

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I did look at your Norway and Finland comparisons and their cases are going up at the same time as Sweden's. So I'm not sure how that proves anything in regards to spread.

TheMasterplan said:

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I did look at your Norway and Finland comparisons and their cases are going up at the same time as Sweden's. So I'm not sure how that proves anything in regards to spread.

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They are going up. As is expected due to seasonality. Did you compare the magnitude of the increase of cases instead of just a trend? That was the comparison.

IHME has been massively wrong on Sweden every update since April.

Again, look at Nicaragua as a more representative, to the US, comparison. They are playing at doing stuff against the virus and the country is charging ahead as full speed as their dumbasses can, and the deal is not going off the rails. The age of the population may be factor, but the lack of quality medical care more than negates that.

There were no lockdowns and currently there are not draconian measures taking place and the country is not falling apart with stacks of dead in the street.

The staunchest Covid deal there is that they have very stringent rules for entry into the country, but the reason that they are doing that is to control opposition to the ruling party and to make money on the whole deal.

Gordo14 said:

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ORAggieFan said:

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IHME has been massively wrong on Sweden every update since April.

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Really. They very accurately predicted this explosion of cases a few months ago when all of Texags had decided they had reached herd immunity.

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How'd this Sweden prediction for IHME go?

Or this one?

The thing about IHME is they don't publish their past forecasts. They memory hole them. So unless you save screenshots, it's difficult to see just how bad these "experts" have been.

It's interesting that Sweden's deaths spiked at the end of November and have dramatically fallen off since, but their new cases continue to rise.

Keegan99 said:

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Gordo14 said:

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ORAggieFan said:

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IHME has been massively wrong on Sweden every update since April.

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Really. They very accurately predicted this explosion of cases a few months ago when all of Texags had decided they had reached herd immunity.

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How'd this Sweden prediction for IHME go?

Or this one?

The thing about IHME is they don't publish their past forecasts. They memory hole them. So unless you save screenshots, it's difficult to see just how bad these "experts" have been.

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Going back to their march forecasts when people still didn't know much about how this would go, when the dynamics of human interaction were changing rapidly, and all of Texags thought that Sweden was at herd immunity to discredit every forecast they ever make is kinda pathetic.

And that's also wrong. If you click on the COVID19 downloads tab you can see every single update they have ever made. But there's just no way to access the old data.

Gordo14 said:

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Keegan99 said:

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Gordo14 said:

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ORAggieFan said:

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IHME has been massively wrong on Sweden every update since April.

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Really. They very accurately predicted this explosion of cases a few months ago when all of Texags had decided they had reached herd immunity.

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How'd this Sweden prediction for IHME go?

Or this one?

The thing about IHME is they don't publish their past forecasts. They memory hole them. So unless you save screenshots, it's difficult to see just how bad these "experts" have been.

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Going back to their march forecasts when people still didn't know much about how this would go, when the dynamics of human interaction were changing rapidly, and all of Texags thought that Sweden was at herd immunity to discredit every forecast they ever make is kinda pathetic.

And that's also wrong. If you click on the COVID19 downloads tab you can see every single update they have ever made. But there's just no way to access the old data.

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Yet those people forecasting are still in power and never adopt any sense of humility with their forecasts. Last I checked there were not "experts" claiming they didn't know much about the virus. And everyone going on about these so-called "experts" have been chastising and lecturing those who choose to question them.

For them to re-earn trust they need to admit they were wrong, admit their forecasts influenced policy based on faulty data and re-evaluate their method.

When they do that and report it (along with the media), we can get back to trusting them.

Gordo14 said:

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TheMasterplan said:

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I did look at your Norway and Finland comparisons and their cases are going up at the same time as Sweden's. So I'm not sure how that proves anything in regards to spread.

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They are going up. As is expected due to seasonality. Did you compare the magnitude of the increase of cases instead of just a trend? That was the comparison.

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Why would we compare the magnitude and not the trend?

RGV AG said:

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Again, look at Nicaragua as a more representative, to the US, comparison. They are playing at doing stuff against the virus and the country is charging ahead as full speed as their dumbasses can, and the deal is not going off the rails. The age of the population may be factor, but the lack of quality medical care more than negates that.

There were no lockdowns and currently there are not draconian measures taking place and the country is not falling apart with stacks of dead in the street.

The staunchest Covid deal there is that they have very stringent rules for entry into the country, but the reason that they are doing that is to control opposition to the ruling party and to make money on the whole deal.

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Do Nicaraguans know they are underserved minorities?