Cyprus-Forum.com

[Kikapu]

A couple of interesting articles in the DT last week.

“Two died due to UK lockdown for every 3 the virus”. Stats during this pandemic do your head in.

“Lockdown supporters cannot bear the thought that Sweden got it right”.

I’d post them but - what’s the point?

It’s not as if people voted to have lockdowns or not. It was a decision taken by individual governments based on scientific studies to impose lockdowns or not for their own countries. One size does not fit for all, nor will it fit in the future under similar pandemics, should we have another one.

Well now, that is a Straw Man argument straight out of The Book of ErLOLZ!

I don't think anybody has even mentioned on here before about Lockdown being voluntary or not...

The debate has been 'is Lockdown an appropriate response for the flu-like outbreak...?

I seem to remember you being in the 'Lockdown is essential camp' and also 'Sweden will crash and burn without Lockdown' camp...?

Also, didn't you say something akin to 'Let's wait for the Q2 figures and see how well Sweden has done"...?

Coronavirus: Sweden's economy hit less hard by pandemic

Sweden, which avoided a lockdown during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, saw its economy shrink 8.6% in the April-to-June period from the previous three months.

The flash estimate from the Swedish statistics office indicated that the country had fared better than other EU nations which took stricter measures.

The lockdowns were very appropriate at the time as it served it’s purpose and have no regrets or complaints that choice having been made.

As for Sweden’s 2nd quarter results, it is actually worse than the EU’s by -0.3% from the results in the 1st quarter when you compare the differences from the two.

........EU......................... Sweden
2nd quarter -11.9% ..............-8.6%
1st quarter -3.2%...............+0.4%
Difference= -8.7%...............-9.0%

[Londonrake]

I’m confused (a fairly normal state of affairs with all this pandemic stuff ).

Shouldn’t your EU figure be -15.1% and Sweden’s -8.2%?

See what I mean - about all these stats?

[cyprusgrump]

I’m confused (a fairly normal state of affairs with all this pandemic stuff ).

Shouldn’t your EU figure be -15.1% and Sweden’s -8.2%?

See what I mean - about all these stats?

It is the sound of moving goalposts that is getting to you...

...you have to remember that black is white and white is black if it meets their narrative...

...or lying as it is sometimes known...

[Kikapu]

I’m confused (a fairly normal state of affairs with all this pandemic stuff ).

Shouldn’t your EU figure be -15.1% and Sweden’s -8.2%?

See what I mean - about all these stats?

Simple answer is a “NO”, because CG wanted to show me how much better Sweden was going to do in the 2nd quarter vs. the EU, because Sweden did not have a lockdown. It turns out, it was almost a wash and lockdown/no lockdown was not a factor in the 2nd quarter as everyone got shafted because of the coronavirus. CG had high hopes to show that ONLY lockdowns were bad for the economy. I knew better otherwise, because in the global economy, no country on their own can maintain their economy as normal if the rest of the world had shut down for a while.

[Londonrake]

An announcement in the UK this morning. 730,000 jobs lost in the first 4 months of the pandemic. The chickens are beginning to come home to roost.

[cyprusgrump]

I’m confused (a fairly normal state of affairs with all this pandemic stuff ).

Shouldn’t your EU figure be -15.1% and Sweden’s -8.2%?

See what I mean - about all these stats?

Simple answer is a “NO”, because CG wanted to show me how much better Sweden was going to do in the 2nd quarter vs. the EU, because Sweden did not have a lockdown. It turns out, it was almost a wash and lockdown/no lockdown was not a factor in the 2nd quarter as everyone got shafted because of the coronavirus. CG had high hopes to show that ONLY lockdowns were bad for the economy. I knew better otherwise, because in the global economy, no country on their own can maintain their economy as normal if the rest of the world had shut down for a while.

You are wrong of course but then we have come to expect that...

Lockdown supporters cannot bear the thought that Sweden has got it right

Sweden has fulfilled the same role during the Covid-19 crisis as Argentina fulfils in every World Cup. It’s the team which everyone – apart from the natives themselves, naturally – wants to get beaten. This has been especially true in the liberal US press, which has taken time off from berating Donald Trump to publish lengthy pieces on the supposed failure of the Swedish approach. “The Swedish government didn’t enforce social distancing,” began the Washington Monthly, for example, in May when Sweden briefly had the world’s highest death rate from the disease. “It’s now paying the price – in lives and GDP.”

Even neighbouring Nordic countries – normally peas in a pod – have taken against Sweden. When Denmark and Norway re-opened their borders to the world they initially left out Sweden. Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who has acquired a rock star image among some of his countrymen, is seen as a maverick by many abroad.

It’s not hard to see why politicians, officials and many others around the world need Sweden to fail and to fail spectacularly. If the Scandinavian country is not seen to suffer for its failure to lock down its population and close down much of its economy then citizens in other countries are going to start asking awkward questions.

For a while it looked as if Sweden might well fail spectacularly. While other, locked-down countries saw their rates of new infection plummet and gradually unlocked, infections in Sweden remained stubbornly high. Economic projections suggested that Sweden was going to suffer a deep recession anyway. All those needless deaths, it seemed, and Swedes were still going to lose their jobs.

Then came July, and a reminder that lockdown is no long-term solution to a pandemic. Infection rates began to creep up in countries which had locked down – first Spain, then Germany, France, Belgium. Some have been going to into selective second lockdowns. All they had really done by incarcerating their populations for weeks is sweep the virus under the carpet for another day. Sweden, by contrast, has as yet seen no second wave.

Meanwhile, the Swedish economy has surprised on the upside. Last week, its economy was revealed to have shrunk by 8.6 per cent in the second quarter – cataclysmic by normal standards, of course, yet in the circumstances it counts as a triumph. GDP across the Eurozone shrank by 12 per cent, with Spain’s economy plunging by 18 per cent quarter on quarter. Britain’s GDP figures won’t be out until next Wednesday, but we will be doing very well if we don’t out-shrink Spain. At one point the Office of Budgetary Responsibility was penciling in a 35 per cent plunge for the UK in the second quarter.

The Myth That Lockdowns Stop Pandemics

“There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread. It is hard to imagine that measures like those within the category of social distancing would not have some positive impact by reducing transmission of a human respiratory infection . . . However, the evidence base supporting each individual measure is often weak.”

Decades of evidence corroborates this. In 1969, a group of men overwintering in Antarctica experienced a spontaneous respiratory virus outbreak during their 17th week of isolation. Similarly, COVID-19 appeared on an Argentinian naval ship on the 35th day of its voyage, following a 14-day isolation of captain and crew.

[erolz66]

There are those who understand that we do not and can yet know for certain if Sweden's approach is the better one. This group includes me and Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden's approach, who said as recently as yesterday

How this will play out in the long run, we don't really know yet, and I think it's more uncertain now than it was

Then there are those who claim to know and to have always known that Sweden's approach is the better one. People like cyprusgrump, who also claimed

When the virus dies out (as it is doing rapidly almost everywhere)

Yet when you look at global daily deaths or global confirmed positives today neither of them show any sign that the virus has been rapidly dying out almost everywhere since June 24th.

cgwrong2.PNG

cgwrong3.JPG

For those who continue to laud Sweden's approach here is a comparison for you

Sweden deaths to date per million people - 566.23
New Zealand deaths to date per million people - 4.5

Sweden GDP growth quarter 2 2020 -9.5%
New Zealand projected GDP growth quarter 2 2020 -5%

Sweden on going social distancing restrictions like max gathering size of 50 people.
New Zealand currently has no social distancing restrictions at all internally. None.

[erolz66]

sweden-daily deaths.JPG

Sweden total covid deaths to date - 5,766 or 566.23 per million population.

nz-dailydeaths.JPG

New Zealand total covid deaths to date - 22 or 4.5 per million population.

These are the facts to date. Of course the 'anti lockdown' advocates, with their certainty than not locking down is the right approach will ignore this reality. They have to ignore it. It totally undermines their inane and simplistic mantra that lock down is bad.

Facts.

New Zealand having implemented a swift and comprehensive temporary lock down has achieved a death rate per million pop more than two orders of magnitude less than Sweden has achieved. That is one hundred times less death from covid in New Zealnad compared with Sweden. It is also on course for a GDP contraction in Q2 of half the drop Sweden has recorded. It currently, unlike Sweden, has no restrictions internally at all. Less death, less economic impact and no ongoing internal restrictions. That is what the facts show to date yet 'anti lockdown' fanbois like CG just ignore these facts. How utterly predictable.

[Londonrake]

Somebody’s watching.

Ardern has just ordered a lockdown in Auckland, after an unexplained outbreak there.

[Get Real!]

"The Myth That Lockdowns Stop Pandemics"

The myth that you and that idiot of an author, have a functioning brain...