Covid, Sweden and the Myth of Herd Immunity.
I see that Michael Brown, our resident Holocaust/Twin Towers/Covid Denier, has taken to posting vague, unattributed charts, entirely out-of-context, to try to "prove" his claim that Sweden didn't have a lockdown, and so had far fewer deaths.This is a complete lie.1. While Sweden didn't impose a total national lockdown, it did take some measures, such as closing schools and universities and banning gatherings of more than 50 etc. Meanwhile, local authorities imposed further restrictions. More generally, Swedes themselves voluntarily self-isolated and practised enhanced hygiene measures as "good citizens" in a popular social democracy. Further, as a highly developed country, they readily embraced Work From Home, and as analysis of real-time credit card use and travel passes showed, greatly reduced their travel and shopping.2. Nonetheless, despite the above and the fact that they have a highly developed health service, however you measure it, they have some of the worst death rates in the developed world, CONSIDERABLY worse than their Nordic neighbours.For example, the current number of Covid Deaths per Million of Population is as follows:United Kingdom - 672SWEDEN - 577France - 515Denmark - 122Finland - 64Norway - 52https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/3. There are emerging any number of authoritative studies, incl from Sweden itself, which show that their approach has been pretty disastrous, eg:https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/how-finland-kept-covid-19-in-check-and-protected-its-economy-1.4364512https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/28/facebook-posts/sweden-mostly-open-has-higher-covid-19-death-rate-/(Of course all the above pre-supposes that you you take 5 minutes to google the subject with an open mind - a process clearly alien to nutjob conspiracy theorists like Brown, who are entirely impervious to reason, facts, evidence or indeed basic honesty should such concepts challenge their pre-conceived obsessions.)3. "Herd Immunity" in the context of Covid is a myth, which has not happened, indeed cannot happen.For as Sarah Pitt, Fellow of the Institute of Bio-Medical Science at Brighton University recently pointed out in an episode of BBC World Service "Science in Action", in the entire history of Mankind, Herd Immunity has never developed for any virus in the absence of an effective vaccine:https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cszh10 (18 mins 30 secs in)And once more, even a perfunctory search will demonstrate that that is so, eg https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/herd-immunity-and-covid-19-experts-warn-against-letting-things-rip/ar-BB1aqR9rhttps://inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity-explained-less-immune-reinfection-rates-738484https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/10/natural-herd-immunity-mentality-cannot-stop-coronavirus-weak-vaccine-cvd/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/18/covid-herd-immunity-funding-bad-science-anti-lockdown
Richard Cathcart ● 2195d155 Comments ● 2074d