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COVID-19 resurges in reopened countries; Wuhan sees first cluster in a month:
The World Health Organization on Monday called for continued vigilance as several areas that have eased lockdown restriction began to see a resurgence in COVID-19 cases—and the United States begins unbuttoning as well.
The Chinese city of Wuhan—where the pandemic began last December—saw its first cluster of cases in at least a month. The city began reopening in early April.
The cluster was just six cases: an 89-year-old symptomatic man and five asymptomatic cases. All of the infected lived in the same residential community.
[...] NPR's Emily Feng reported from Beijing that "The rise of such hard-to-detect asymptomatic cases has alarmed public health authorities in China, who have ramped up contact tracing and testing efforts."
China state media announced Tuesday that it has ordered all residents of Wuhan—roughly 11 million persons—to be tested within the next 10 days.
Likewise, the mayor of Seoul shut down bars and restaurants over the weekend—just days after South Korea had eased restrictions and allowed businesses to reopen—due to a spike of 86 new COVID-19 cases. Authorities identified a 29-year-old who visited five nightclubs and a bar while infected with the virus, sparking an outbreak of at least 54 cases, according to NPR. The uptick also led South Korean officials to delay the reopening of schools.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @09:45PM (59 children)
Meanwhile, in Sweden and Belarus the promised catastrophe entirely failed to happen.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DimestoreProstitute on Wednesday May 13 2020, @09:49PM (1 child)
Sweden isn't the model situation everyone's claiming it to be.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:33PM
Sweden records highest number of coronavirus deaths for three weeks as it announces plan to hire 10,000 more nursing assistants after pandemic exposed care home failures [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @09:58PM (4 children)
Georgia is also still waiting for the impending disaster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:26AM (3 children)
Soviet or American?
(Score: 2) by Kitsune008 on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:50AM (2 children)
What?
You do realize that the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and Georgia has been an independent, sovereign country since 1990, don't you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @03:43AM
It lives on in Portland OR.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:34AM
Tell that to South Ossetia.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by martyb on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:03PM (51 children)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ [worldometers.info]
27,909 cases so var;
19,478 currently active;
and 3,460 deaths.
Is that what you want to call a success?
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:15PM (44 children)
From the same site: [worldometers.info]
Sweden has 343 death per million population, is doing better than the UK (489 deaths per million pop.) of Spain (580/million)
US is only 13th - can do better - with 257 deaths per million people - but is early days, so you can (and most likely, will catch up)
"success" is probably all the countries with fewer than 50 dead per million people,
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:34PM (8 children)
Social distancing, like in Sweden, and isolating the infected, were the primary virus-fighting measures there. No lockdowns, no mandatory masks even. Still, apparently it worked.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:39PM (5 children)
so something working in one country, but not in another, suggests other things were at play.
Do they respect rules more, and actually abide by them? Is this a result of being a former Soviet state? [wikipedia.org]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:12PM (2 children)
Rīga municipality values historical architecture and cityscape, so even 10-storied buildings are few and far between; and in other municipalities, land is cheap enough for not needing to build high, nor to build houses close to one another.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:35AM (1 child)
Drawing data from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density [wikipedia.org]
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries [worldometers.info]
Rank Country Pop/km^2 Deaths/ 1 million
32 United Kingdom 280 489
51 Italy 200 514
68 France 123 415
85 Sweden 23 343
89 Spain 93 580
145 United States 34 257
I don't see much correlation with population density. Could be more abstract concepts like "architecture style". Could be worth putting in more countries. Might be worth counting "peak density" rather than average density (i.e. "lots of people in cities and sparse countryside" is probably equivalent to just "lots of people in cities"). Needs a statistician...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:50PM
Total population density of the country isn't really applicable. You need city or county level data to accurately compare. NYC has a lot more than 34 people/square km.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:18PM (1 child)
Or maybe they are culturally more inclined towards the well-being of society as a whole, unlike a certain "give me liberty or give me death, me me me and fuck everybody else" nation that shall remain unnamed.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @12:06AM
Or is it your personal quirk?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:45PM
Yes let's copy Sweden - except for the bits they get wrong obviously. Let's copy Somalia for those bits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @02:24AM
Latvia for the Latvians. From what I know, this is a very cohesive population, lots of shared roots so they really look out for each other. I'll bet distancing was practiced by nearly everyone across the country (unlike my neighborhood where some jerks still have yard parties). Also, Riga isn't exactly a choice jet set destination, so it's likely the country didn't have a lot of international travelers to jump start infections (just the opposite of NY City).
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 14 2020, @04:39PM
Graph shows Sweden’s coronavirus death toll rapidly increasing compared to other countries [independent.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 14 2020, @06:03PM
Which is right about where all of Sweden's neighbors are at.
Denmark has suffered 55 deaths per million, while Finland’s rate is just 13 - with both nations implementing strict early lockdowns in an effort to limit the spread of the pathogen. [independent.co.uk]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pav on Friday May 15 2020, @12:26AM (30 children)
Sweden went full neoliberal 10 years ago. They privatised hospitals, schools, aged care etc... Bernie Sanders is pretty out-of-date in his rhetoric. Going into this crisis Sweden already had a healthcare crisis. They were sacking thousands of doctors and nurses, not to mention having scandals in their aged care facilities eg. they weren't changing adult daipers to make more money. Sweden now has the SECOND WORST number of hospital beds in Western Europe... but guess who's the worst? The UK. Oh, and Swedens private healthcare system has simultaneously become the most expensive in Western Europe which it certainly wasn't before. (BTW, Swedish schools went from challenging for #1 in the world with Finland and Korea to being #20 of 28 in the OECD, though they've somehow managed to limp back into being a little better than average ie. into the top 10... though their teacher morale has become the worse in Western Europe).
The geniuses who came up with this privatisation binge after it had already failed pretty much everywhere else then came up with this "no lockdown" strategy... probably so that if things went to crap they could say the bad numbers weren't an apples to apples comparison, and was merely a failure of a novel strategy and not a failure of their largely privatised healthcare system. BTW, Germany by comparison has the best served population in Western Europe... and only behind South Korea and Japan worldwide, and even though their infection rate has been feirce they've been keeping more infected people alive. Meanwhile the Swedish government has been gaslighting Swedes by saying the Swedish population is a more regimented and well behaved population... uniquely suited for this "no lockdown" strategy.... a nice pat on the head there. I guess that means if you complain you aren't a "good Swede".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 16 2020, @01:54AM (18 children)
Like where? Just don't ape California, and you've made it halfway there already.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday May 17 2020, @02:44AM (11 children)
California? I think you mean the USA. My country (Australia) is on its way down too, but at least we can mount a semi-effective response to a pandemic (even if it was because the conservatives haven't downgraded our public health infrastructure quite as fast as the UK, and because our current prime ministers job was in danger because he half arsed the bushfire disaster).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 17 2020, @03:21PM (10 children)
A key thing to remember here is that public infrastructure can't be better, if the economy can't support it. A lot of this privatization is driven by a sort of political triage - keeping the more popular public stuff, privatizing what can be privatized, and discarding the rest.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday May 18 2020, @01:42AM (9 children)
Swedens healthcare became more expensive and less effective after privatisation... though it seems I posted my reply (full of links etc...) in the wrong place (previous level).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 18 2020, @05:04PM (8 children)
What privatization? Instead, I read stuff (see page 111) like:
That study dates from 2017.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday May 18 2020, @10:32PM (7 children)
So it has the efficiency of the US military then?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @08:26AM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @09:47AM (5 children)
By certain metrics, and when squinted at the right way only 10% of the UKs NHS has been privatised also... except the "public" parts have been forced to outsource their clinical front ends, pathology, equipment maintenance, IT, the list goes on. It's a license to print money, and this private sector drag is painted as public sector waste... and it has certainly turned the NHS into a failure relative to the rest of Western Europe. The same thing is happening here in Australia although we're not as far along in this neoliberal-managed decline. The more sensible and honest Germans put public and private healthcare in a seperate head-to-head matchup, with the private sector failing miserably with only ideological diehards now willing to waste their money on it. I haven't dived into the Swedish numbers specifically, but Swedish healthcares dive tracks the privatisation drive nicely just as in the UK and more recently Australia. Correllation does not equal causation, but from their rising costs and declining metrics after their privatisation drive it's a fair assumption that Sweden has the same termites sinking the more civilised parts of the anglosphere (though I can't speak for Canada).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @06:30PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @08:26PM (3 children)
BTW, because public healthcare won a fair fight in Germany the righties busied themselvesfixing that [thetimes.co.uk]. They're closing and or privatising hospitals in the public system even during the pandemic so they can move to the less effective but more profitable Swedish and NHS model. It's no wonder Asia has pulled ahead in healthcare also.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @08:40PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @09:35PM (1 child)
OK, free market libertarian and/or libertarian [wikipedia.org] then.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:10PM
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday May 18 2020, @01:38AM (5 children)
Worse? The rationale was the welfare state cost too much... and that BS actually flew because previous to this the unions lost control of the biggest tabloid in Sweden (Aftonbladet) so there was no counter narrative. After the privatisation was done the right wing across Europe was excited [theguardian.com], deeming it a success out of the gate, and a shining example for more privatisation in eg. the UKs NHS. Swedish healthcare costs soared [statista.com] to become the most expensive in Europe while bed numbers dropped [statista.com] even far beyond previous cuts to be the second worst in Western Europe... the worst being the stealth-privatised and chronically underfunded (by Western European standards) [europa.eu] NHS in the UK. Things were so bad going into the crisis that mothers giving birth were being flown to Finland to give birth because of a lack of hospital capacity [thelocal.se]. If being cheaper and more effective previous to privatisation is "worse" I'd like to borrow your crack pipe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2020, @05:25PM (4 children)
Counter narratives won't turn this pig into a swan. In other words, only the unions had an interest in continuing that state of affairs. No wonder it lost.
Consider your "excited" link (guardian story about the "lessons" of private healthcare):
So it wasn't very privatized at the time of that story (2012). and as I noted in another post [soylentnews.org], there still wasn't much in the way of privatization as of 2017. On your healthcare to GDP link, 7.4% (in 2000) to roughly 11% (in 2018) (about 60% of which came in a single year change from 2010 to 2011) is not soaring healthcare costs.
What makes you think it would be better otherwise? As I see it, little change actually happened from your alleged privatization. Something else is going on. I see that Sweden has had a decline [statista.com] in hospital beds since 2000, consistently since 2000. The surge in healthcare costs didn't even cause a noticeable change in that decline.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @08:28AM
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:06PM (2 children)
So unless a hospital is privatised from the roof to the slab that's the only privatisation that counts? That rhetoric actually worked here for a decade or so until electorates started becoming aware that falling efficiency was not just due to funding cuts but to "stealth privatisation" ie. pathology, front end clinical services, equipment maintenance, IT etc... IBM has actually been banned from submitting tenders for any more government contracts in my state because of failing to deliver even the barest fig leaf to justify their billions of drain on the public system, with the electorate forcing action. Still, despite that the US system has half the financial efficiency and almost universally worse outcomes except for number of MRI machines (which gets hyped in your media apparently, and repeated by US free marketeers, which would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:13PM (1 child)
You haven't established that significant privatization has occurred in the first place. Meanwhile we still have that it's irrelevant to Sweden's response to COVID-19.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:42PM
That's why people now often talk about "single payer" instead of public healthcare... it's no longer actually publicly provided healthcare. Hint for the particularly slow : it's because much of the infrastructre has been privatised.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @08:45PM (10 children)
As an aside, I think we've established that Sweden hasn't gone full neoliberal.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:09PM (7 children)
For Sweden having their system white-anted by "steath privatisation" (despite more explicit privatisation failure) is the definition of full neoliberal.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:17PM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @11:36PM (5 children)
In that case perhaps the US government should nationalise all your health care providers and insurers while keeping everything superficially the same then.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:14AM (4 children)
Because that works, right? Some changes are so fundamental, you can't keep things even superficially the same (which BTW doesn't mean much).
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:57AM (3 children)
Perhaps they could, I don't know... give free healthcare to the jobless, and a tax break to everyone else in July. You'd love it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:02AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:42AM (1 child)
You wanted the tax break to go straight to the top? In that case your system already suits you just fine.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:37AM
(Score: 2) by Pav on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:13PM (1 child)
Ask a Brit about Blairs stealth privatisation and they'd probably call it "full neoliberal" even if the tactic wasn't balls-out enough to immediately get a share of the blame for dropping NHS standards.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 19 2020, @10:16PM
So what? Just because a hypothetical, ignorant Brit has an opinion doesn't mean I should take it seriously.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:04AM (1 child)
Do you know the only country with fewer hospital beds per 1000 in Western Europe? The UK. Spain is close to the bottom also. Those countries have suffered stealth privatisation, and it's at a pretty advanced stage. The country with the most beds? Germany (although it pays the same amount per person as Sweden). I'd say the results are pretty expected.
BTW, Germany is in the process of closing and privatising hospitals even through the pandemic.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:48AM
"user pays".. and if there isn't a hospital close enough, user... doesn't quite die? [smh.com.au]
Oh, look - hospital is not efficient - let's privatise (oops, that doesn't work [abc.net.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:26PM
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525530/sweden-death-rate/ [statista.com]
Do remember that people do die. From a multitude of causes. They did die in 2019, do die in 2020, and will continue to die in 2021. The bad-bad-bad 3.5 thousand attributed to COVID is what the grim reaper gathered there in Sweden in a fortnight, in a regular year. Not at all anything like the promised "exponent", "millions dead", "overwhelmed hospitals", "bodies on the streets", etc, etc, etc - or is it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @10:50PM (4 children)
Think about this logically. Estimates suggest that this virus may have an infection fatality rate of around 0.5%. In a population that begins with essentially no immunity, the virus can spread through the population until enough immunity develops that each infected person subsequently infects less than one new person on average. That's what herd immunity is. Let's be honest, we're not going to be able to find everyone who's infected and isolate them until they either die or are free of the virus. Short of developing a vaccine, herd immunity is the only other outcome with any real chance of occurring.
The death rate varies depending on age and underlying medical conditions, meaning that older and sicker populations will be affected worse. We can't really control those factors. But there are other factors that we can control. There is reason to think that being exposed to a lower dose of the virus will result in a less severe infection. We can influence that with things like social distancing and wearing masks, so presumably that death rate could be modulated a bit below 0.5% if less people get severe infections. And we can prevent the healthcare system from becoming overloaded. That means ensuring there are enough hospital beds for everyone who needs to be hospitalized and enough ICU beds for everyone with severe infections. We also want to make sure that people with other serious medical conditions can also receive proper treatment during this pandemic, because that can prevent other deaths. And we can use testing and contact tracing to control the rate at which the virus spreads through the population.
We can't be confident that a vaccine will be available anytime soon. Candidate vaccines for SARS resulted in issues like immune hypersensitivity. We're also cutting corners with clinical trials. It would be great to have a vaccine, but I think we should expect that herd immunity will be the result. Measuring success probably depends on the mortality rate once the pandemic is over. We may have some idea of success based on the state of the healthcare system during the pandemic, which will influence the overall mortality rate. As per the data displayed by IHME, Sweden's need for ICU beds has remained fairly close to the amount of ICU beds available. And they haven't come close to exceeding the total number of hospital beds available.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:25PM (2 children)
I thought herd immunity have been ruled out [abc.net.au]? Of course IANAMD, maybe you are and know something the experts don't.
Keep in mind Australia ABC is not American ABC, they are unaffiliated nor as far as I know affliated with any political parties like the news channels in the US.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @11:36PM
That strategy does not work for children in any real disaster, no reason to expect it work any better for adults when applied countrywide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2020, @03:13AM
Ruled out as a strategy for the present time by politicians in Australia, not by scientists, or for other countries, or even if the situation changes. Even that article admits that other countries will end up going the herd immunity route. They might be making the right choice for Australia for today, but one major outbreak could change everything. And certainly nobody is claiming "herd immunity isn't possible," that's not what that is saying at all.
(Score: 1) by chr on Saturday May 16 2020, @10:32AM
> As per the data displayed by IHME, Sweden's need for ICU beds has remained fairly close to the amount of ICU beds available. And they haven't come close to exceeding the total number of hospital beds available.
I think the above is a little misleading, i.e. the part about "...haven't come close...".
Sweden increased the number of available ICU beds, roughly a doubling IIRC. If this had not been done, the number of ICU beds would have been less than the number needed. Around the 12th of May, there were 162 more patients than the original capacity of the intensive care system. The principle is illustrated here https://youtu.be/1hqolTXqzMk?t=868. [youtu.be] It's from the daily briefing from Swedish government agencies (note: by public servants, not politicians). The labels in the diagram are in Swedish, but I think you'll understand anyway. A few seconds before the diagram is shown, the presenter has given the number I mentioned above (162).
Also note that some patients on a national level have had to be transported between (health care) regions in order to receive an ICU bed. Partly because of varying capacity in regions, and partly because Covid-19 is very unevenly spread in Sweden, with roughly half in the Stockholm region. There's been significant, and newly developed, coordination between the different regions to optimize e.g ICU beds. Note that an "ICU bed" besides e.g. ventilator actually also includes having a number of necessary drugs available, as well as skilled staff.
So Sweden's strategy, like so many other countries, has been to flatten the curve, while at the same time increasing the ICU capacity to be able to meet the predicted need. It's worth repeating that without using _both_ social distancing measures and increasing the number of available ICU beds, there would have been a shortage of ICU beds.
The way I see it, Sweden is walking a fine line between on one hand trying to reduce the infection rate (i.e. gain time), protect people belonging to risk groups (reduce deaths) and increase health care capacity, while on the other hand avoiding to needlessly shutting down parts of the society where the effect isn't judged to be worth the cost. Or where it's even counter productive, like shutting down schools/day care for small kids that would have prevented a significant fraction of the health care staff from working.