Norway health chief: Lockdown was not needed to tame Covid

3,900 Views | 29 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by FrecklesDad
Squadron7
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Quote:

Norway is assembling a picture of what happened before lockdown and its latest discovery is pretty significant. It is using observed data hospital figures, infection numbers and so on to construct a picture of what was happening in March. At the time, no one really knew. It was feared that virus was rampant with each person infecting two or three others and only lockdown could get this exponential growth rate (the so-called R number) down to a safe level of 1. This was the hypothesis advanced in various graphs by Imperial College London for Britain, Norway and several European countries.

But the Norwegian public health authority has published a report with a striking conclusion: the virus was never spreading as fast as had been feared and was already on the way out when lockdown was ordered.


LINK
Keller6Ag91
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Yep. As the facts continue to come to light here, we should argue the same.

Heck, if we had actually put our nursing homes on lockdown for a period of time, we could've cut the death toll from COVID by almost half in the US.
Gig'Em and God Bless,

JB'91
GAC06
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Important to learn from our mistakes. End the ongoing lockdowns and do better in the fall if there's a resurgence.
jenn96
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GAC06 said:

Important to learn from our mistakes. End the ongoing lockdowns and do better in the fall if there's a resurgence.

This can't be emphasized enough. We made the choices we did in March based on the data we had - which was incomplete - out of caution. I didn't have a problem with it because we truly didn't know how bad things could get. But now we have a lot more data and we know who the most vulnerable populations are - not just by age but geographically - and can apply special measures to protect them while easing and removing restrictions for everyone else.
Federale01
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I find that a bit hard to believe when looking at the numbers of hospitalization and deaths in this country. The leveling of the death curve pretty much mirrored the lock downs we instituted. I would have a much easier time believing it spread much faster than we thought, more people have had it than we believed asymptomatically, and it is far less deadly than we thought it was.



Plus, we see reports like this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/05/21/at-least-54000-us-deaths-could-have-been-avoided-if-lockdown-came-two-weeks-earlier/#b2bd1d142f10 which indicate lockdowns were effective in halting the spread. There are so many conflicting reports at this point.
Federale01
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DP
Federale01
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TP?
CDub06
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I'm certainly not against our reopening and it's possible that we'll find out our restrictions were too harsh. But that article isn't going to convince me either way.

They are speaking about Norway's population and numbers and she states that some measures were required, but a complete lockdown probably wasn't. The United States is a different animal altogether.
Squadron7
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CDub06 said:

I'm certainly not against our reopening and it's possible that we'll find out our restrictions were too harsh. But that article isn't going to convince me either way.

They are speaking about Norway's population and numbers and she states that some measures were required, but a complete lockdown probably wasn't. The United States is a different animal altogether.

Norway's "two weeks" is metric?
GAC06
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CDub06 said:

I'm certainly not against our reopening and it's possible that we'll find out our restrictions were too harsh. But that article isn't going to convince me either way.

They are speaking about Norway's population and numbers and she states that some measures were required, but a complete lockdown probably wasn't. The United States is a different animal altogether.


And different parts of the United States should have had different reactions. Texas isn't New York
Fitch
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Certainly an interesting take.

I share the sentiment with some of the above posters - each country's case is unique, and demands unique solutions. Norway is ~75% the population of Houston, spread out over an area about that of California. Sweden is not terribly different.

This does seem to reaffirm each US state needs to be managing their own situation rather than the federal gov't...Texas just has the good fortune to be the size of 5 states in one... I think Harris County (Houston) is larger than something like 25 other states.
CDub06
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I agree 100%.

And that makes my point. If we don't think the response for New York and Texas should be the same, then we certainly can't expect Norway's reactions to hold true for the United States (or Texas) ((or whatever county you represent)).

I mean, this is refreshing candor from Norway, but it doesn't really mean anything for us (or Britain as the article argues).
Keller6Ag91
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The key point of this is WHO the virus affects. People with weak immune systems....elderly with cormorbidities.

The susceptible should have self isolated (as they should now) and we should have opened up 4-6 weeks ago.
Gig'Em and God Bless,

JB'91
Fitch
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No...it attacks just about everyone, with seemingly random presentations. The two groups mentioned are just some of those more prevalent in the fatality lists.
MemorialTXAg
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Keller6Ag91 said:

The key point of this is WHO the virus affects. People with weak immune systems....elderly with cormorbidities.

The susceptible should have self isolated (as they should now) and we should have opened up 4-6 weeks ago.


Who the virus affects has been known long before a first case was announced in the us or Europe. In fact it's perhaps the ONLY thing that was apparent from day 1 and still holds true today. It's shocking that even now, there isn't a concerted effort to address that. Anywhere.
murphyag
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I still wonder what is going to happen with all of the obese and overweight people in Texas once everything opens back up completely and life gets back to normal. Their risk of Covid complications is supposedly as high as that of the elderly and immunocompromised. For their sake, I hope that isn't the case.
jenn96
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No Pressure said:

Keller6Ag91 said:

The key point of this is WHO the virus affects. People with weak immune systems....elderly with cormorbidities.

The susceptible should have self isolated (as they should now) and we should have opened up 4-6 weeks ago.


Who the virus affects has been known long before a first case was announced in the us or Europe. In fact it's perhaps the ONLY thing that was apparent from day 1 and still holds true today. It's shocking that even now, there isn't a concerted effort to address that. Anywhere.

Florida made keeping COVID out of nursing homes an absolute priority, creating a statewide response team to monitor outbreaks and catch clusters early, and refusing to allow COVID postive patients back in nursing homes (contra to standard Medicare practice of getting the elderly back to nursing homes as soon as possible). They also made sure nursing homes got PPE along with hospitals and prioritized testing for nursing home patients and workers. And it worked; despite being one of the most open states throughout the last 3 months, the deaths in nursing homes are not nearly as high as they are in other high-population states. By targeting the absolute highest-risk population and actually providing resources, money and people, Florida state officials saved thousands of lives in their state.

Obviously it's a lot harder to protect individuals who are obese but live and work in the community, but a lot of lives can be saved in absolute numbers by protecting nursing and assisted living homes. It can be done.
beerad12man
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Fitch said:

No...it attacks just about everyone, with seemingly random presentations. The two groups mentioned are just some of those more prevalent in the fatality lists.


That's like saying the flu attacks everyone just because a few under age die or get really sick as well. Generally speaking, no, it doesn't attack everyone. The percentages simply don't suggest that.
Keller6Ag91
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Fitch said:

No...it attacks just about everyone, with seemingly random presentations. The two groups mentioned are just some of those more prevalent in the fatality lists.


It does NOT attack everyone. There are exceptions to the rule (that are played up by the MSM to spin up fear), but this holds pretty well. Almost half the US deaths are nursing home related. We all need to get our heads out of our rears and look at the real numbers that the media doesn't want to discuss.
Gig'Em and God Bless,

JB'91
Jet Black
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Fitch
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Well certainly didn't mean to throw out a controversial point.

To clarify, there is nothing to suggest innate immunity in the general population to this bug. Given it's novel, 100% of people are susceptible to catching it. With the flu, you'll have some percentage of people that have already experienced some strains and have developed immunity.

Best guess by the CDC is that ~35% will be asymptomatic. That's one form of presentation.

For the other 2/3 of us, cases may vary from barely noticeable headaches and tiredness, to the worst flu you've had but not needing a hospital, to hospitalized and fully recovered or "recovered" with permanent diminished organ function, to death.

The population distribution for those latter results skews strongly to the older - absolutely. But if you'll follow the distribution curves for positive cases, they match the population distribution right on. To use Texas as an example, 50% of the identified cases are between 20-50 years old.

Hospitalization by age information is much harder to come by, but I have personally seen enough anecdotes from docs here and spoken to nurse friends at different hospitals who have co-workers on ECMO or a ventilator to acknowledge that young people are being hospitalized by this bug too, and that youth may save your life but does not imply immunity.

Final thought -- I don't watch what passes as news these days. It's all crap designed to get your eyeballs and cable dollars.
Fitch
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Now multiply that big bold number by 328,000,000.
Bruce Almighty
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Fitch said:

Now multiply that big bold number by 328,000,000.


Why? This isn't going to infect every single person in the country.
Fitch
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Agreed. But that's how you calc max downside. You can pick the back off percentage from there - say 70% for herd immunity.
GAC06
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Why not multiply by 350,000,000 then? Maybe more people will move here or people will get it twice. Sure we all know it won't happen but it's important to forecast scenarios we know won't happen. I learned that reading this board.
Fitch
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That sort of ignores the point a seemingly low percentage is being misconstrued as conclusive proof this is NBD, when simple math demonstrates a small number multiplied by a really big number is still a big number.

My thing is this: data is neither inherently positive or fear mongering. It's always subject to interpretation and debate. I prefer to look at data points for relevant risk evaluation and not throw stock in shouting heads or ideology.
GAC06
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Telling someone to multiply the IFR by the total population is either fear mongering or ignorance.
Fitch
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I'll pick ignorance and call it a night. Cheers~
Keegan99
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Quote:

To clarify, there is nothing to suggest innate immunity in the general population to this bug. Given it's novel, 100% of people are susceptible to catching it.


There is quite a bit to suggest this.

Namely, that the curves seem to be following the same general 2-3 month pattern everywhere, irrespective of lockdowns, with no second waves as yet, and infections slow to a trickle well before a substantial percentage of the population is infected.

I would suggest watching


Fitch
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Thanks for sharing - I'll listen when I get some time later.
FrecklesDad
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Bad or incomplete data! This is the same thing as so called "climate science"! It is bad science!
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