Sweden attains herd immunity?

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Must be nice to ignore all the proven measures taken against the virus that have resulted in a reduction in transmission and just be able to say "Rona goin' down. Gotta be dat herd munity"

And if you want to change the metric to deaths, Spain is at 619 deaths per mil. Sweden is at 575. Spain had a new outbreak after the virus was under control. What happened to Spain's herd immunity?

Outbreaks are outbreaks. If Sweden has herd immunity, so should Spain, even accepting deaths as a measure of spread (which is not correct as Germany kept deaths very low thanks to superior medical interventions).

What everyone is calling herd immunity is really just a limit to the number of stupid people there are who ignore social distancing and spread the virus. Texas implemented mandatory masks at the end of June and closed bars. Cases peaked within two weeks. Arizona closed bars and gyms around the same time. Cases peaked within two weeks. But we are instead supposed to believe that measures that actually reduce transmission have no effect and instead it is herd immunity even though seroprevalance shows nothing even close to herd immunity?

claiming herd immunity would happen at 20% is stupid.

claiming herd immunity occurs around 600 deaths/million..and then pointing out that new york got to 1700 deaths/million is stupid. (if it's all out of our hands and just herd immunity...how do you explain that beyond your 'NY leadership is dumb' argument?)

don't listen to this guy.

huh what wrote:

Sweden has only had a handful of deaths in all of August. This was always the plan: accept that a certain amount of death was inevitable, frontload the pain and death in the spring, be immune by summer while the rest of the world drags it along for months and years.

Compare Sweden against Norway. How could it be that Norway only lost a few hundred and still manages to controll the virus while in Sweden the numbers are more then 5000?

Current stats:

U.S.: Daily Death Rate: 1000+

Mask use: 53%

Social Distancing (mobility): -25%

Sweden: DDR: 3

Masking: 2%

Mobility: -20%

Finland: DDR: 0

Masks: 1%

Mobility +15%

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

Precious Roy wrote:

The answer is simple. Sweden does not have herd immunity.

"Tegnell, the Swedish epidemiologist, claimed that up to 30% of the country’s population could be immune to Covid-19."

I'll trust a scientist over a lawyer.

facts and reason wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

The answer is simple. Sweden does not have herd immunity.

"Tegnell, the Swedish epidemiologist, claimed that up to 30% of the country’s population could be immune to Covid-19."

I'll trust a scientist over a lawyer.

Didn't they say this back in May? Well, for Stockholm at least:

great, so you're comparing two countries with fairly high death rates (granted, some western european countries still have overall higher rates than the US due to their initial high numbers, but not for long, since they aren't continuing to stack up bodies like the US is...).

maybe look for guidance from the countries that have actually kept deaths low.

The answer, of course, is that Texas, for example, does have herd immunity, at least

in the big cities now. That is why cases and deaths are going down--it isn't

any change in behavior over that time.

Ding ding! Every major outbreak is followed by falling cases. Liberals attribute this to the areas adopting SD and masks, but it is also explainable as a product of the early-stages of herd immunity.

First I think we can both agree that people in Texas are generally stupid.

It's actually for that reason that you're probably wrong. Texas' decrease in cases is very likely to be caused by widespread immunity among the population. You say that the poster you're responding to is ignoring all the details regarding the measures put in place to reduce transmission, but you're talking about Texas. Do you think Texans, who even now, largely believe the virus doesn't even exist, suddenly decided to take precautionary measures? Even with mask mandates, Texans don't wear masks. They NEVER listen.

It is far more likely that the population allowed the virus to circulate to the point that the bulk have been exposed, than it is that they all suddenly decided to grow a brain and engage in proper social distancing and mitigation measures.

Spain is not remotely a good example. Spain did NOT take Sweden's approach. They had a massive outbreak, then locked down aggressively to stop it for multiple months. They've relented, and suddenly they have another outbreak, which makes perfect sense. Not enough of their population was hit the first time around.

In the case of Sweden, they refused to lock down, and let their very well-developed healthcare system (substantially better than Spain's) deal with the fallout. That is not remotely similar to what Spain did. It makes perfect sense that Spain should have a second wave while Sweden did not.

Variations in deaths per mil is due to the demographic of the region and how well you protect the super vulnerable. If you protect the 1% of the super vulnerable you get a lower deaths per mil. If you send COVID patients to live with the most vulnerable then you get to go on your brother's primetime CNN show and talk about how awesome you are.

What is the obsession with tests and positives? That is only a function of how much testing was being done when the virus was spreading. The US has done way more tests per population than any large country, except for Russia which lets just say has highly suspect numbers. Of course we'll have more positives if we had lighter measures and did more tests.

Isn't it funny. When the antibody tests first started and you didn't like the results you said there were too many false positives for them to be accurate. Now as it has scientifically been shown how much the antibody tests underrepresent the infected in a region you are treating it as if it is gospel. When one of the hysteria narratives gets destroyed we just move the goalpost.

they just seem to have killed all their fragile people up front.

AlIen53 wrote:

Love it how all you right wingers went from:

"Sweden is a dump and is over-run with crime and illegal immigrants"

to

"Sweden is a beacon of freedom and is the best country in the world"

overnight.

What's your point? People have different opinions on different aspects of Sweden's policy. And you don't?

AlIen53 wrote:

Clown World Resident wrote:

What's your point? People have different opinions on different aspects of Sweden's policy. And you don't?

My point is that all the LR trolls paint Sweden with a very broad brush and have flip-flopped based on the talking points that their right wing talking head of the day is spouting.

So you're saying people change their opinions when new information comes out. Apparently you stick with your beliefs regardless of changing facts.

AlIen53 wrote:

Love it how all you right wingers went from:

"Sweden is a dump and is over-run with crime and illegal immigrants"

to

"Sweden is a beacon of freedom and is the best country in the world"

overnight.

The left has the same reaction in reverse:

"Swedish Social Democracy is a heaven on Earth, and is so kind to take in the refugees and provide a new home!"

"Sweden has it all wrong and is ruthlessly killing it's old people!"

YMMV wrote:

AlIen53 wrote:

Love it how all you right wingers went from:

"Sweden is a dump and is over-run with crime and illegal immigrants"

to

"Sweden is a beacon of freedom and is the best country in the world"

overnight.

The left has the same reaction in reverse:

"Swedish Social Democracy is a heaven on Earth, and is so kind to take in the refugees and provide a new home!"

"Sweden has it all wrong and is ruthlessly killing it's old people!"

Exactly. People can have different opinions on Sweden's migrant policy and Sweden's covid policy. But apparently this is too complex for the fake-Aiien53 guy.

Precious Roy wrote:

1.) Why is Brazil still seeing high levels of infection after two months when it is at 17,000 cases per mil?

2.) The answer is simple. Sweden does not have herd immunity.

1.) Who cares about infections? That is what you call a soft metric. 99.7% chance that if you get infected, you recover.

2.) Why Yes, they do, Roy, they really do, and good on them.

What is the difference between a "massive outbreak" in Spain and the outbreak in Sweden? If herd immunity is achieved by getting a certain number of people infected, why does Spain not have herd immunity after a "massive outbreak" but Sweden does after a far less extensive outbreak?

And from someone who actually lives in Texas, I can tell you that people are definitely wearing masks everywhere in public. I have been in grocery stores in Houston, the burbs and out in more rural areas like Livingston, Freeport and Beaumont. I went into my office yesterday at around lunch time to pick up a few things. Downtown Houston is dead. The food court in my building usually has a few hundred people packed in during lunch with long lines. It was pretty much empty with less than half of the vendors open. The garage in my building was about as full as it is on a weekend. Pretty much anyone who can work from home is working from home.

Also, Texas' decrease in cases is not very dramatic. We had over 6k new cases yesterday. The seven day moving average has been above 5k cases a day for three months. Texas has about three time the population of Sweden. Sweden saw about 600-700 new cases a day with a peak at above 1000 when testing was significantly expanded. Texas is more than double that load on a per capita basis. Testing in Texas has generally been poor, ranking about 40th in the US for testing rates.

The FDA pretty much stood on the sidelines and let all sorts of vendors put out antibody tests without verifying whether they were accurate. And people like John Ioannidis were using antibody tests from selective populations to come up with inflated seroprevalance estimates to support claims that IFR was lower that it really was. There are good seroprevalance tests out there that are accurate that are being used to track how far the virus has spread. Even Sweden's Tegnell has admitted that the virus has only reached about 30% of the population, well short of the 70% needed for herd immunity.

The reality is that Sweden does not have herd immunity. Just look at what the real scientists are saying.