Asked my MD about the bottom line with Covid 19 from his perspective today-his reply

YMMV wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

Sweden does not have herd immunity.

.

You show your ignorance with this absolutely unqualified statement. NO ONE, even top researchers, currently know with any certainty what the threshhold for covid-1984 herd immunity is and who has reached it or not. I personally suspect that Sweden has attained it (certainly they had ideal conditions for doing so), but it will be 9 months minimum before we can state either way even as a good guess, much less the blithering certitude which you evidence here.

You have no scientific insight or training and are posting worthless tripe.

I personally suspect that an 82 year old bald guy with no friends, who spends all of his time shouting on a running website, probably isn't that clued up on the subject matter either.

Can't confirm yet, but I'm sure we'll have all the answers in a few hours once you drag yourself out of bed and get your teeth in.

Sweden kept K-8 open. Sweden is seeing about 300 or so new cases a day as you point out but their hospitalizations are down to almost nothing and ICU beds are empty. Both their Viking neighbors, the Norse & Danes, are seeing some increases in cases also. Belgium & Spain are seeing huge increases in daily cases and remember Spain even went to a Wuhan-style lockdown. So, I wouldn't be so critical of the Swedes when there's plenty of other European countries that haven't done so well.

And back in the Spring, models predicted that Sweden's ICUs would expire before May and approximately 96,000 people would die from COVID-19 by July if strict mitigation action wasn't taken Well...it looks like the "experts" were off by 91,000! Lol.

Tegnell says Sweden has acquired herd immunity. They have no mask mandates and most everything is open:

"Dr Soo Aleman has been both on the front lines of the Covid-19 epidemic as a senior physician at Stockholm’s leading Karolinska hospital, and on the research side, as Assistant Professor at the Karolinska Institute."

Dr. Aleman believes herd immunity has been established through T-cells:

She quit her job ? Why didn't she just shop for another doctor?

DanM wrote:

Infection fatality rate is 0.6%. Out of 1,000 infections, 6 people will die.

1.3% for ages 60 to 69.

4.6% for ages 70 to 79.

25% for age 80 and over.

Can i see it for the younger people?

What made me lose it today about the dishonesty about this pandemics - and I do think it's a pandemic that is serious but one that is way overhyped in the media- is that a study came out saying Covid-19 is as lethal as the 1918 flu.

What?

THe 1918 flu killed 50 million when the world population was 1.8 billion. Covid-19 hasn't even killed 1 million now and the world population os 7.8 bilion. On a per capita basis, Covid-19 would need to kill 216 million to be equal to the 1918 flu .

So that't the leadine. If you read closely, they then say basically that the two disesease are equally lethal - but we have better medicine now. I just don't believe thats the difference but who really cares - all we should really care is bout the end result, the number of deaths.

Anyways, let's assume verything they right is true., a key thing they ignoring is the fact that the 1918 flu was very deadly to the young. This is the opposite. When a young person dies a lot of life years a are lost. When an old person dies hardly any life years lost. THe 1918 flu was WAY worse in terms of life years lost.

I'm not saying that it's fine when an old person dies. But if we had two equally lethal diseases and one wiped out the old and one whiped out the young, the reality is the one that wiped out the young should be viewed as way worse. So this study is just fearmongering to an amazing degree.

It’s not “fear mongering” because it kills a different population than the Spanish Flu. These are still human souls being lost. Thousands every day. You can justify not taking it seriously however you want but your take is about as laughable as this far right message board posing as a running website.

People have been out to discredit Sweden from the start because it did not fit their narrative. When looking at cases in Sweden now you have to recognize their daily testing has doubled since May which despite this their daily totals have been cut in half. But their hospital and death totals have been steadily declining since May. Meaning A the spread has been slowing and B the spread is now among the less vulnerable populations. The only real measure they have taken is the limitation of gatherings over 50 people. There have been no policies implemented since April that would account for drop, it is clearly slowed spread due to a level of herd immunity. The media who has total ignorance of Science and has railed the herd immunity concept in Sweden based on low antibody positives without understanding how terrible of a marker antibody tests are since many never develop detectable levels and they often disappear within weeks.

Some have even suggested Swedens July holiday is the reason for the slowed spread which is absurd because serious cases have been consistently declining for months. Plus who goes on holiday and just locks down at home with their family. There is a very simple explanation and it is herd immunity. There will be no new wave or out of control spread in the fall or any other time because they've built the immunity. This same trend can and has been repeated in other regions. In a country as big as the US, roughly 28 times more people you will not seem this exact same curve as different places got spread of the virus at different times. But at a locality level like New York City where they locked down after the spread occurred you can see a very similar trend.

Sweden absolutely could have slowed the spread by taking a different action. But they asked themselves the question is it worth doing for a virus of this magnitude and decided no.

zxcvzxcv wrote:

We don't need to ask anyone about it. The information's all out there. 167,000+ have died of COVID in the U.S. with over 700,000 dead worldwide, almost all since late March.

Those deaths attributed to COVID have occurred in the past five months. On an average year, 1.2 million Americans would have died in the past five months. Assuming about 20% of the US has had COVID at this point (which is in line with what antibody studies are telling us), that would mean that 240,000 of those deaths (or more than what has been counted) could reasonably be counted as COVID deaths using the CDC standard that anyone who has ever had COVID is considered a COVID death. Considering that 50% or more of deaths have been people in nursing homes where people typically only live five months should make you question the legitimacy of those numbers (how many of those deaths are people who would have died in this time frame anyhow?).

Those numbers are here. I found this paper useful because it is economic research that is easier to understand than the typical public health biostatistics.

From July, 2020, so it's fairly recent:

Physical in early August. PCP said the same regarding flu season being less severe this year due to the masking and social distancing. Kind of gave off the vibe that COVID is something but it's not the everything.

An Oldie But A Goodie wrote:

My doctor told me to lose weight by running 3 miles per day and to check back in with him in a month.

When I called him, he asked how things were going.

I told him "Good. I've lost a few pounds but I'm 90 miles from home. How long should I keep this up for? My wife is starting to wonder when I'm coming home"

After my last physical my doctor gave me 3 months to live. I told him I couldn't pay my bill he gave me another 3 months.

Would it be incorrect to say that on or around November 4th the COVID issue will get about as much attention as the amount of gas needed to run a piss ant sized motorcycle around the inside of a cheerio?

wtf is he saying that over 65 is the least affected...very suspicious...

that's a lot of mathematical mental gymnastics when we have trends for the excess mortality rate over the last 5 months that actually indicate COVID related deaths are undercounted. It doesn't have to be theoretical and made up percentages - it's pretty obvious how deadly this spring and summer have been.

and to everyone else discounting the value of older citizens - do you guys seriously not know a person in their 60s or 70s that you would very much like to see stay alive awhile longer?

There have been significant excess deaths related to our reaction to COVID. There has been heavy increase in deaths due to violence, suicide, drug abuse, etc. But the biggest is the deaths that occurring because people are not seeking medical treatment due to fear of catching COVID if they do. There has also been a severe mental health and isolation toll on elderly folks who were very vulnerable that contributes to an early death. There have been many scientific studies showing how sharp rises in stress and isolation can contribute to increased deaths in the elderly population.

It is so ridiculous that we have completely effed up the world economy and scared the hell out of most of the population then people say, oh look what COVID did, without acknowledging that some of the negative things going on driven by our response to the virus, not the actual virus.

For those of you who dont believe my doctor said this, well, just stay in your basement the rest of your life. Keep in mind, his statements are all RELATIVE TO THE FLU.....

So I guess it depends how serious you take the flu when you interpret his statements

Im just going to bring this up in case it’s been forgotten:

COVID-19 is a highly contagious virus.

2% of 300 Million is 6 Million

Correct, analysis done in the US points to a severe undercounting of COVID related deaths simply by comparing against other years

I also find the years/life analysis appalling. I wonder if a person”s recent newborn or wife acquired a rare desease they would still talk about the total life years lost “analysis”, being a case of one makes it irrelevant or overblown

Let me know when you have even a little bit of evidence that suicide, violence, heart attack/stroke and drug abuse deaths are up over the last 5 months to account for the excess mortality.

I never said all excess deaths were accounted for by non-Covid causes, just a portion. Some of the excess deaths are COVID. But saying that COVID is underestimated because there are more excess deaths than the total number of COVID deaths is wrong because there has been a documented increase in the deaths from other causes. You can find documented support for this at the link below.