Sweden says it will end Covid restrictions, joining other European nations.

[brooklynite]

Source: New York Times

STOCKHOLM — The Swedish government will lift most Covid restrictions next week, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden announced on Thursday. The move adds Sweden to the growing list of European nations, including Denmark and Norway, that are scrapping pandemic protocols even though new cases continue to soar in Europe.

Starting on Feb. 9, there will be no limit on how many people can gather at restaurants, sports stadiums, and other events, according to Lena Hallengren, the minister of health and social affairs. People will no longer be required to work from home. And travel restrictions on visitors from other Nordic countries will be relaxed.

“The pandemic is not over, but we are headed into a new phase,” Ms. Andersson said at a news conference on Thursday.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/world/europe/sweden-announces-end-covid-restrictions.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

[SunSeeker]

1. What "new phase"? The one where we welcome death?

[relayerbob]

3. Planetary depopulation

I suppose that's one way to stop global warming

[brooklynite]

10. This is the kind of over-reaction that makes it hard to build public support

Mortality numbers are not that high. In the US, it's 0.2% of the population. In Sweden its 0.15%

[SunSeeker]

16. OFFS. We are closing in on 1 MILLION DEATHS.

At this point, 93% of them are unvaccinated idiots, but we're still losing around 2,400 Americans EACH DAY to covid. You think that's "not that high"??


https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths_7daydeathsper100k


Being appalled by this death toll is not "overreaction." Keep your fucking right wing talking points to yourself.

What "public support" are you talking about "building"? Public support for WHAT? Ignoring the death toll?

[Cha]

22. Yeah, I say we can

react how it moves us when hearing illogical news such as this.

My sister in Asheville NC got it.. it was bad but she's better Thank Goodness!

Continue Staying Safe!💙

[SunSeeker]

23. You stay safe too, Cha!

[Cha]

25. Trying.. I got some

really good fitting masks that are different colors & designs .. so whatever mood I'm in that day.. keeps it more interesting for me.

Aloha

[LiberalLovinLug]

11. Pandemic to Endemic

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59970281

What's changing is our immunity. The new coronavirus first emerged two years ago in Wuhan, China, and we were vulnerable. It was a completely new virus that our immune systems had not experienced before and we had no drugs or vaccines to help.

The result was like taking a flamethrower into a fireworks factory. Covid spread explosively around the world - but that fire cannot burn at such high intensity forever.

There were two options - either we would extinguish Covid, as we did with Ebola in West Africa, or it would die down but be with us for the long term. It would join the swarm of endemic diseases - such as common colds, HIV, measles, malaria and tuberculosis - that are always there.
infographic showing pandemic, endemic and epidemic disease patterns

For many, this was the inevitable fate of a virus that spreads through the air before you even know you're sick. "Endemicity was written into this virus," says Dr Elisabetta Groppelli, a virologist at St George's, University of London.

"I am very optimistic," she says. "We'll soon be in a situation where the virus is circulating, we will take care of people at risk, but for anybody else we accept they will catch it - and your average person will be fine."

[SunSeeker]

19. We don't really have a "choice" when 35% of our population refuses to get vaccinated.

The unvaxxed idiots have forced their choice on us.

[Celerity]

13. We have had far lower restrictions anyway, and since the beginning in early 2020 until now we have

a total of 10 total school age (5-19yo) deaths (and we basically never shut the schools down, other than some high schools in 2020 for a few months) from Covid (US pop adjusted that would be around 330), and for the bottom half age-wise of the population (so a little over 5 million) we have had 103 deaths, which would be like the US having 3.400 total deaths for the youngest 166.5 million people since the start of the pandemic.

see

Folkhälsomyndigheten (our public heath service)

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa


Until Omicron, almost no one wore masks, now like maybe 10-15% do, and that is dropping.

Our vax rate is also much higher than the US, despite not vaxxing 12 and unders.

so no

"new phase"? The one where we welcome death?

is not happening, barring some new ultra killer variant (and if a variant comes along that fucks Sweden, Norway, Denmark. etc up, dog help the US).

The Nordics (and most other advanced nations) are also VASTLY healthier nations anyway than the US. We have nothing remotely like the percentage of overweight, obese, morbidly obese, and diabetic/pre diabetic, etc etc people that the US has. Almost no nations do, other than Mexico and soon perhaps the UK, some tiny Pacific island nations (most with links to the US), and maybe a very few others.

[SunSeeker]

20. By throwing in the towel on spread suppression, new variants are guaranteed.

And Sweden threw in the towel pretty much on day 1. That is why they have so many more deaths, per capita, than the other Scandinavian countries who instituted lockdowns and implemented mask wearing in the early days of the pandemic, unlike the Swedes.

[Celerity]

24. It happened becuase we bollocksed up the elderly care homes and the scattered site housing

early on (we have far more open rules for decades than Denmark, Norway, Finland, etc) and had huge waves in our vastly bigger immigrant sectors, due to different social norms and living densities.

Btw, Norway and Denmark never instituted mask wearing until 5, 6 months deep into the pandemic, and when they did it was only for certain areas, like public transportation.

Since the beginning, when we (Sweden) had crazy high deaths per million rates, Norway and Denmark have gained on us.

We were first or 2nd highest deaths per mil in the world for brief period, have been in the 40's and 50's (now 57th and dropping)

We had around 24 times Norway's rate in the first several months at peak difference, now we are 6.9 times higher

We had around 15 times Denmark's DPM rate, now it is only around 2.4 times higher than Denmark's

It has been ages since I have written on it, but back in the day I wrote about it (comparisons and underlying reasons) all in great detail.

Many here on DU would have went utterly bonkers (especially about the lack of masking and social distancing indoors) walking around Copenhagen and Oslo for most of the pandemic. They so did not stay in lockdown mode for long, other than the beginning (which I do FULLY admit we should have as well, BUT our instrument of government (a form of a constitution) is far less authoritarian than Denmark's and Norway's are in terms of what the Riksdag (Swedish parliament) can do in terms of granted powers.)

[BigmanPigman]

2. Meanwhile Germany, Turkey, Russia

are all seeing new highs daily. It ain't over yet, folks. Another variant is probably mutating right now. In another 3-4 months we'll see it spread.

[orleans]

4. ... the "cryptic lineages" ... (the name makes me shiver)

Last January, a team of researchers searching for the coronavirus in New York City’s wastewater spotted something strange in their samples. The viral fragments they found had a unique constellation of mutations that had never been reported before in human patients — a potential sign of a new, previously undetected variant.

For the past year, these oddball sequences, or what the scientists call “cryptic lineages,” have continued to pop up in the city’s wastewater.

There is no evidence that the lineages, which have been circulating for at least a year without overtaking Delta or Omicron, pose an elevated health risk to humans. But the researchers, whose findings were published in Nature Communications on Thursday, still have no idea where they came from.

“At this point, what we can say is that we haven’t found the cryptic lineages in human databases, and we have looked all over,” said Monica Trujillo, a microbiologist at Queensborough Community College and an author of the new paper.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/health/coronavirus-wastewater-new-york.html

[Tomconroy]

5. Drastic restrictions like in China certainly work but we wouldn't

tolerate that sort of thing in the West. I'm not sure there is much real evidence that european countries with mandatory restrictions did any better than european countries without them in dealing with Omicron. Maybe there is such evidence, but I haven't seen it.
There is evidence that vaccinations made a big difference in avoiding hospitalizations and deaths though.

[LiberalLovinLug]

12. Yup. If we didn't have so many idiots, a-holes, and misinformation trolls

And nearly everyone in the world was happy to line up and be vaccinated, and it was available for them, it could have been wiped out.

From my link above in post 11:

There were two options - either we would extinguish Covid, as we did with Ebola in West Africa, or it would die down but be with us for the long term.

[cinematicdiversions]

6. Vaccinations make a difference. Not a lot of evidence on the other fronts however.

As much as some hate to admit it, strict restrictions are not really beneficial at this time compared to cost. Particularly, since the hospitalizations and deaths are focused on those that are unvaccinated.

Before effective vaccinations, the restrictions made sense. Now they make a lot less sense.

[Lonestarblue]

8. You're right. The key is being fully vaccinated and taking precautions.

I have three shots and wear a KN95 mask when I’m out. I still would not choose to attend a rally or a concert with thousands of people at the present, but we all know the risks now and can mostly protect ourselves. Unfortunately, the ones who refuse the vaccination will continue spreading Covid and it will turn into a year-round version of the flu. The pharmaceutical companies will develop annual booster shots based on the latest variant, and those of use who believe in science will continue to get the shots and likely be protected from serious illness. Some of those who refuse the shots will likely also have light cases, but many more of them will die. Their choice at this point.

[SunSeeker]

21. Wrong. There is a TON of evidence that mask wearing stops covid spread!

We have seen that the efficacy of public mask wearing is largely supported by epidemiological and ecological data, as well as models. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118


The problem is, idiots won't wear masks, and posts like yours aren't helping!

[IronLionZion]

7. The old viking traditions of seeing who survives

Last edited Sat Feb 5, 2022, 09:49 AM - Edit history (1)

while some of them just don't make it. Sacrifices must be made...human sacrifices.

[brooklynite]

15. Based on current statistics. 99.85% of the Swedish population.

[SunSeeker]

18. That's still 16,153 DEAD Swedes out of a population of 10.35 million.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

And we all know those official death numbers are a substantial undercount.



But hey, let it rip! Learn to love death and be happy!

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

9. Countries with tiny populations, 5.4M for Norway, 5.8M for Denmark and 10M for Sweden, states sizes

Our states are doing the same thing now, life goes on, the herd will be culled, its natures way.

[cadoman]

14. Sweden has been the anti-science outlier

Dunno what got into their water but I guess they hate life?

[truthisfreedom]

17. Up to 95% vaccinated with two doses

In Sweden.