For all practical purposes, the covid-19 epidemic is over in Sweden. Almost certainly herd immunity has been achieved in Sweden irrespective of any antibody test results. Testing is usually only for IgG antibody and the herd can become immune via IgA antibody or cellular mechanisms that are not detected by the usual testing. __ Source
Those who are hanging their hopes on a universally safe, effective, affordable, and available vaccine are several cards short of a full deck.
Research shows that meaningful group immunity could be as low as 10 – 20%, rather than the much higher levels often quoted by media. Unfortunately, current antibody testing cannot tell us who is immune to the Chinese SARS-2 virus from Wuhan. This conundrum points back to the only nation that seems to have ridden the pandemic into the ground, Sweden:
Sweden did not close its schools. Other than stopping gatherings of more than fifty people, the Swedish government left decisions of closing businesses, using masks, and social distancing to the Swedish people. The government encouraged the use of masks and social distancing, but there were no requirements and there were no penalties for those who declined to follow the advice. Mortality attributed to covid-19 hit a peak value of 11.38 deaths per day per million population on April 8, 2020. This mortality was matched on April 15, and mortality has decreased since then. Daily mortality has been less than one death per day per million population for the previous eighteen days. Cases are very low. For all practical purposes, the covid-19 epidemic is over in Sweden. Almost certainly herd immunity has been achieved in Sweden irrespective of any antibody test results. Testing is usually only for IgG antibody and the herd can become immune via IgA antibody or cellular mechanisms that are not detected by the usual testing. Whether covid-19 will reappear this next fall or winter remains to be seen.
The pandemic had already established itself outside of China by sometime in January 2020 — long before Dr. Fauci or other public health “experts” had begun to grow even slightly uneasy about what was coming. It was already too late to stop the pandemic by conventional means before the “authorities” realized there was a problem.
COVID is especially harsh for older people, and those who are already sick with life-threatening disease. Young and healthy people seem to ride out the infection with mostly minimal impact. It is similar to the Hong Kong flu in many ways — except during the Hong Kong flu pandemic up to 4 million people died, a large number of those being children and young adults. The famous music festival “Woodstock” took place smack in the middle of the Hong Kong flu pandemic, and nobody even blinked!
But we live in the age of wilting snowflakes, where every little thing triggers everybody into paralysis and a cowardly secretion. There is no better indication that we are living in an Idiocracy than our societies’ reaction to this pimped up Chinese pandemic.
… data clearly show that relative to the outbreak’s first two months, the rate at which people are dying has fallen significantly in countries around the world, including the United States. Doctors have discussed how treatments have reduced the average length of hospital stays and given those who are hospitalized a much better chance of surviving. As the development of treatments continues, we can only expect that metric to improve.
As for children, the risk of illness and death is very low, which has driven CDC Director Robert Redfield’s candor about the importance of reopening schools.
In stark contrast, the Spanish Flu of 1918 proved much more vicious and indiscriminate. A CDC estimate puts worldwide infections at 500 million, with total worldwide deaths at 50 million and U.S. deaths at some 675,000. Seniors were particularly vulnerable, as they are to COVID-19.
Unlike the COVID-19 pandemic, mortality was also high among young children. That flu also killed many healthy people aged 20 to 40, a group that has not suffered large numbers of COVID-19 deaths.
Lockdowns Have Been Worse than a Failure
New York killed tens of thousands of people with its lockdowns, confining infected people tightly inside nursing homes and private homes where the spread was appalling — affecting those who were most vulnerable to severe morbidity and death.
Lockdowns not only killed people immediately, they will be killing people for years after they eventually collapse from their own toxic imbecility and obsolescence — from the long-term economic damage. And the people that lockdowns “saved?” They stand a good chance of dying anyway, when the virus bounces back into susceptible populations that were never protected by herd immunity because the lockdowns prevented it.
Intelligent people can make mistakes. But in the cases where such poor decisions were made out of political calculation… well, we’re gonna need a lot more guillotines.
During the more deadly Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968 and 1969, life went on pretty much as normal. But that was almost 3 generations ago, enough time for both cultural decline and a certain degree of dysgenic decline. The cultural decline shows no sign of slowing — unless someone devises an effective way to “drain the swamp.” And the dysgenic decline appears to be accelerating, thanks in large part to the ongoing cultural decline.
Based on the mortality metric, it’s not … accurate to say yet that the coronavirus is worse than the flus of 1957 and 1968. __ Source
Dimwitted politicians and journalists drone on about this “potentially lethal virus,” as if they were talking about a vicious and ruthless killer beyond what we have seen before. But every pathogen is potentially lethal under the right circumstances. We are not living in wonderland, Alice. We are living in a world swimming in viruses. Viruses outnumber everything else by 10 to 1. And we do not understand viruses — either those that occur naturally, or those that have been given a boost, as in the Wuhan SARS-2 CoV. But we are learning. Unfortunately, the ongoing decline in human intellect and character make it much more difficult than it should be.
Lockdowns Did Not Prevent Deaths… Only Delayed Them
The data suggest that lockdowns have not prevented any deaths from covid-19. At best, lockdowns have deferred death for a short time, but they cannot possibly be continued for the long term. It seems likely that one will not have to even compare economic deprivation with loss of life, as the final death toll following authoritarian lockdowns will most likely exceed the deaths from letting people choose how to manage their own risk. After taking the unprecedented economic depression into account, history will likely judge these lockdowns to be the greatest policy error of this generation. Covid-19 is not going to be defeated; we will have to learn how to coexist with it. The only way we can learn how best to cope with covid-19 is to let individuals manage their own risk, observe the outcomes, and learn from mistakes. The world owes a great debt to Sweden for setting an example that the rest of us can follow. __ https://mises.org/wire/why-americans-should-adopt-sweden-model-covid-19
Worldometers Sweden Mortality from COVID 17 August 2020
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
Nobody Remembers
The only reason anyone will remember this Chinese pandemic is because of the disastrous media/political over-reaction, which will cause far more devastation than the virus alone ever could.
No one remembers that in December 1968, Apollo 8 commander, Frank Borman, was struck down with H3N2 while in orbit, on his way to the moon. It is forgotten that he caught this from President Lyndon B Johnson, whom he met before embarking on the mission. President Johnson and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, both had the disease while in the White House. Hospitals were overrun. New York City’s blood bank was depleted, which forced hospitals to cancel both elective and life-saving surgeries. Absenteeism in the workplace was up by 50 per cent. In Europe, garbage collectors in West Germany were burying bodies because the undertakers couldn’t keep up with the demand. Corpses in Berlin had to be stored in subway tunnels. __ Life Goes On
Most people who are infected with the Chinese virus from Wuhan either do not know they were infected — they have no symptoms — or their symptoms are vanishingly slight, like a cold or mild flu. These asymptomatic or very mild cases — the majority of infected — do not seem to spread the virus readily. Similarly, young people who are infected do not seem to get seriously ill or to spread the virus easily — except when confined for long periods of time in confined spaces with no precautions. The average age of death from this coronavirus is between 75 years and 85 years.
About 8,000 people die in the US each day from all causes. Even with significant inflation of COVID death counts, the coronavirus death toll is a mere fraction of the total as the pandemic from the Chinese virus continues to kill the slowly diminishing numbers of susceptible — largely old and infirm — persons. The same is true of global mortality, with about 155,000 dying every day — roughly 5,000 – 6,000 of them from Chinese coronavirus.
More rapid herd immunity could have blunted this “slow death” we are seeing, but lockdowns prevented such group immunity from forming. Prolonging the pain seems to be the preferred approach of today’s pseudo-intellectual elites in the age of Idiocracy and cultural/dysgenic decline.
More:
The movie “Idiocracy” is not just a satire, it’s a preview. Watch it free at archive.org, or download it free and watch it at your leisure. Warning: It may portray levels of stupidity that you do not wish your children exposed to. Much like CSpan coverage of the US Congress.
Curious readers may want to review this Al Fin Next Level posting from 22 March 2020. Five months ago we were saying things about this pandemic which have later been shown to be true — but which were being censored by large websites and information gatekeepers at the time.
Thanks to a Chinese virology lab, this Wuhan coronavirus is easily spread to humans. And thanks to its lineage, this virus is capable of triggering an ARDS-like pulmonary reaction in susceptible persons, sometimes leading to death. And thanks to the Chinese CCP government, this virus had already spread to the western world and propagated itself beyond conventional epidemiological control measures long before western authorities were aware of what had already happened. Considering an infection fatality rate of 0.25% overall (or less), looking back in time and considering a policy of total economic lockdown in reaction to this particular virus, is insane. But continuing to persist in this insane policy is outright criminal.
We’re gonna need a lot more guillotines.
More yet:
Some people can still think —
al fin next level 