In the Coronavirus Fight in Scandinavia, Sweden Stands Apart

[wrbtrader]

Mathematical models were used to determine how many lives would be lost with no lockdown versus how many lives would be lost because of a lockdown.

I posted data about such much early in the pandemic and do not care to post it again.

Yet, I will say the following that I copied...

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Governments across the world are relying on mathematical projections to help guide decisions in this pandemic. Computer simulations account for only a fraction of the data analyses that modelling teams have performed in the crisis, Ferguson notes, but they are an increasingly important part of policymaking.

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My only issue with mathematical models is that they don't predict how the world will react after lockdowns and restrictions are removed and its something I discussed before...

• Increasing unemployment rate, decreasing GDP, increasing crime rate, increasing mass shootings, increasing suicides / mental illnesses and many other things.

Those models did not predict which of the above will occur and which will not. Each country has different dynamics and some countries were using models by other countries.

• Pandemics are evolving during the pandemic and there are no 00% answers. The unexpected will happen and the expected will not happen.

Governments public health policy use models to determine which will have the better outcome...to take action or not take action. As for Sweden...not sure what model they used but I'm sure they didn't blindly follow one man's plan...the plan of Tegnell.

They did not think they would have excessive high mortality rate, they underestimated the infection rate among of vulnerable such as the migrant workers, healthcare workers, ethnic communities, citizens with underlying medical conditions.

I don't know what mathematical models that Sweden used but whatever they used...they were wrong and have now admitted it was failure...

• Admitted by Tegnell himself, admitted by Sweden's Public Health Agency, admitted by Sweden's King and other government officials.

That's all in the past now and only an idiot will keep debating about "what could / should have happen" had countries done something different.

Sweden did it differently and they lost. The ironic part...they still ended up using "strict restrictions" to manage Covid with the help of vaccinations soon after they admitted Natural Herd Immunity had failed without actually admitting they were using Natural Herd Immunity policy.

• Sweden now see the results in their declining Covid numbers...vaccination herd immunity and strict restrictions were in fact the right choice but too many died that didn't need to die for Sweden realized what worked.

Its comical to see people constantly debating here @t Elitetrader.com as if the person they're arguing / attacking is the person that's actually making government policy.

It is hilarious to watch certain people behave as such in the Political threads. Anyone remember the idiot @Turveyd from the other Sweden thread. He would often debate with me and say "you're killing people in the U.K., you're taking away our liberties".

Excusez-moi !, I don't live in the U.K. nor do I know anyone in U.K. government or health agency....I make no healthcare policy decisions in the U.K.

wrbtrader

Correction to something I stated above...

Sweden has not yet reached vaccination herd immunity. Currently, about 22% of the population are fully vaccinated. I had implied they did reached vaccination herd immunity as one of the reasons their Covid infections / hospitalizations / ICU numbers have been declining.

Reality, Sweden's declining numbers begin after they imposed strict restrictions in many hotspot areas of Sweden, publicly encourage mask wearing in those hotspot areas and ramped up contact testing to help them to identify the problem areas with Covid so that their citizens can "voluntarily self-quarantine" without any mandates with the exception of the strict restrictions.

Back in December 2020...

According to mortality analyses from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (here), the case fatality rate in Sweden is 2.6% -- higher than that of neighboring Finland (1.6%), Norway (0.9%) and Denmark (1.0%), as well as the United States (2.0%). As a country, Sweden has had 66.76 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 7.23 in Finland, 6.28 in Norway, 14.59 in Denmark, and 82.72 in the United States.

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I'm not sure what the above mentioned country mortality numbers are today...to lazy to look up the info for now what I see as a useless debate now.

The fact, Sweden is now doing much better but so are their Scandinavian countries. In fact, it had briefly caught up with one of its Scandinavian neighbors but it may have been because it occurred when the data out of Sweden wasn't properly reaching "Our World In Data" whereas it was for the other Scandinavian countries.

I'll be watching closely to see if there will be any arrests involving the Sweden Public Health Agency because a few of their high ranking employees had removed their elderly parents from the nursing homes prior to the nursing homes being ravaged with Covid in Sweden.

In trading terms...it would be call using insider information to benefit from that the public does not have access to just yet. Simply, Sweden Public Health Agency knew what was about to happen and they gave no warning to the public except to save their own elderly parents.

wrbtrader

 

[UsualName]

Correction to something I stated above...

Sweden has not yet reached vaccination herd immunity. Currently, about 22% of the population are fully vaccinated. I had implied they did reached vaccination herd immunity as one of the reasons their Covid infections / hospitalizations / ICU numbers have been declining.

Reality, Sweden's declining numbers begin after they imposed strict restrictions in many hotspot areas of Sweden, publicly encourage mask wearing in those hotspot areas and ramped up contact testing to help them to identify the problem areas with Covid so that their citizens can "voluntarily self-quarantine" without any mandates with the exception of the strict restrictions.

Back in December 2020...

According to mortality analyses from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (here), the case fatality rate in Sweden is 2.6% -- higher than that of neighboring Finland (1.6%), Norway (0.9%) and Denmark (1.0%), as well as the United States (2.0%). As a country, Sweden has had 66.76 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 7.23 in Finland, 6.28 in Norway, 14.59 in Denmark, and 82.72 in the United States.

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I'm not sure what the above mentioned country mortality numbers are today...to lazy to look up the info for now what I see as a useless debate now.

The fact, Sweden is now doing much better but so are their Scandinavian countries. In fact, it had briefly caught up with one of its Scandinavian but it may have been because it occurred when the data out of Sweden wasn't properly reaching "Our World In Data" whereas it was for the other Scandinavian countries.

I'll be watching closely to see if their will be any arrests involving the Sweden Public Health Agency because a few of their high ranking employees had removed their elderly parents from the nursing homes prior to the nursing homes being ravaged with Covid in Sweden.

wrbtrader

Covid is declining began as the temperate zone countries entered into spring. It is my belief, and science is still out on this, that Covid is seasonal like the flu. Other people legitimately disagree and still others don’t think we have enough data to determine either way.

Anyhow, yes, a lot of the decline here in the US and around the world is due to vaccinations but there is also a seasonal link whether it be less indoor gathering or the virus does not transmit well in the warmer seasons is still not known.

 

[gwb-trading]

Covid is declining began as the temperate zone countries entered into spring. It is my belief, and science is still out on this, that Covid is seasonal like the flu. Other people legitimately disagree and still others don’t think we have enough data to determine either way.

Anyhow, yes, a lot of the decline here in the US and around the world is due to vaccinations but there is also a seasonal link whether it be less indoor gathering or the virus does not transmit well in the warmer seasons is still not known.

Keep in mind that the higher spread in warmer climates (e.g. Florida) occurs when everyone goes inside for AC to avoid the summer heat (at least in nations where AC is common).

Currently Florida is one of the three states in the U.S. where COVID cases are increasing -- despite vaccinations. They were up over 14% last week and even more in the week that ended Sunday.

 

[wrbtrader]

Covid is declining began as the temperate zone countries entered into spring. It is my belief, and science is still out on this, that Covid is seasonal like the flu. Other people legitimately disagree and still others don’t think we have enough data to determine either way.

Anyhow, yes, a lot of the decline here in the US and around the world is due to vaccinations but there is also a seasonal link whether it be less indoor gathering or the virus does not transmit well in the warmer seasons is still not known.

I think people are just being more careful this second time around as the countries re-open. It's still fresh on our minds what happen the 1st time after re-opening from lockdowns and/strict restrictions...

There was an explosion of Covid deaths, infections and hospitalizations that prompted many of the poorly inform to blame it on the lockdown when in fact the lockdowns was very successful...the problem was in the re-opening and this time around...

Overall, people are listening to the science and of course...we now have vaccinations as a weapon against Covid.

As traders...we should easily understand when the reward outweighs the risk...it's a good trade to take even though there will be some losses.

wrbtrader

 

[wrbtrader]

Keep in mind that the higher spread in warmer climates (e.g. Florida) occurs when everyone goes inside for AC to avoid the summer heat (at least in nations where AC is common).

Currently Florida is one of the three states in the U.S. where COVID cases are increasing -- despite vaccinations. They were up over 14% last week and even more in the week that ended Sunday.

Could this be due to a more infectious variant...the Delta variant ?

I wonder now how Texas is doing with Covid considering they're going thru a recent heat wave. But then again, maybe Texas would be the exception because they have the energy problem with ERCOT in which people would be financially scared to run their air condition units.

Hopefully this time Texas will properly execute "rolling blackouts" to protect their residences and the vulnerable at home instead of the prior problems of not doing such.

wrbtrader

 

[gwb-trading]

Sweden introducing Vaccine Passport on July 1st.

Here’s what we do and don’t know about Sweden’s Covid-19 vaccine pass
https://www.thelocal.se/20210616/heres-what-we-do-and-dont-know-about-swedens-covid-19-vaccine-pass/

Sweden's government and eHealth Agency on Wednesday presented plans for a vaccine pass to facilitate travel within the EU.

The vaccine pass will be in place across the EU from July 1st, meaning that travellers who are vaccinated can use this to avoid other restrictions within the EU such as requirements for negative tests or quarantine.

In order to get the Swedish version, you will be able to apply for the pass from July 1st at the website www.covidbevis.se. This requires a digital ID, such as BankID, but the website will also have instructions on how to apply using a paper form, for people without the digital ID.

At a government press conference announcing the developments, ministers emphasised that although the pass will facilitate free movement within the EU, it is still important for all travellers to research rules and restrictions in their destination country before departure.

To begin with, the pass will only show whether or not you have been vaccinated against Covid-19, and how many doses of the vaccine you have received – it is up to each individual country to decide if they will accept travellers with both doses or only one. In the future, the eHealth Agency plans to expand the system so that the pass can also show a recent Covid-19 test result or proof of recently catching and recovering from the disease. Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren said these should be added in by around mid-July.

The Local’s editor Emma Löfgren asked if people vaccinated in Sweden who do not have a personnummer will get the pass.

“To register in the vaccine registry, you either need to have a Swedish personnummer or a coordination number [samordningsnummer]. So if you do not have a Swedish personnummer, you need a coordination number in order to receive the certificate and from July 1st, you also must use the manual method, as the technical solution is not built yet for those using a coordination number. But they can, as mentioned, use the form instead,” said Annemieke Ålenius from the eHealth Agency.

We asked what applies to people without either number, who are given a reserve number rather than either of the other two, but could not get an immediate clarification. Ålenius said reserve numbers are given out on a regional level and are not part of a central system, so this would be examined in future weeks. “We’ll take this question on board and get back to you,” she said.

People who have received one vaccine dose overseas and the second in Sweden will be eligible for the pass, and the key thing is to make sure the vaccine provider is aware of your first dose when you get it (you should take the documentation you have, showing the type of vaccine you received) so that your second dose is marked as such.

But when it comes to Swedish residents who received both their doses outside the EU, Ålenius said Sweden had not yet taken a decision on whether vaccine passes would be issued to these people.

“We will have to come back to this issue, let me just say that if one has been vaccinated abroad they most likely will have systems in place there to facilitate this. We will return to the issue,” said Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren, who added that the pass would only be issued to people who had been given those vaccines also approved for use in the EU.

 

[wrbtrader]

Sweden introducing Vaccine Passport on July 1st.

Here’s what we do and don’t know about Sweden’s Covid-19 vaccine pass
https://www.thelocal.se/20210616/heres-what-we-do-and-dont-know-about-swedens-covid-19-vaccine-pass/

Sweden's government and eHealth Agency on Wednesday presented plans for a vaccine pass to facilitate travel within the EU.

The vaccine pass will be in place across the EU from July 1st, meaning that travellers who are vaccinated can use this to avoid other restrictions within the EU such as requirements for negative tests or quarantine.

In order to get the Swedish version, you will be able to apply for the pass from July 1st at the website www.covidbevis.se. This requires a digital ID, such as BankID, but the website will also have instructions on how to apply using a paper form, for people without the digital ID.

At a government press conference announcing the developments, ministers emphasised that although the pass will facilitate free movement within the EU, it is still important for all travellers to research rules and restrictions in their destination country before departure.

To begin with, the pass will only show whether or not you have been vaccinated against Covid-19, and how many doses of the vaccine you have received – it is up to each individual country to decide if they will accept travellers with both doses or only one. In the future, the eHealth Agency plans to expand the system so that the pass can also show a recent Covid-19 test result or proof of recently catching and recovering from the disease. Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren said these should be added in by around mid-July.

The Local’s editor Emma Löfgren asked if people vaccinated in Sweden who do not have a personnummer will get the pass.

“To register in the vaccine registry, you either need to have a Swedish personnummer or a coordination number [samordningsnummer]. So if you do not have a Swedish personnummer, you need a coordination number in order to receive the certificate and from July 1st, you also must use the manual method, as the technical solution is not built yet for those using a coordination number. But they can, as mentioned, use the form instead,” said Annemieke Ålenius from the eHealth Agency.

We asked what applies to people without either number, who are given a reserve number rather than either of the other two, but could not get an immediate clarification. Ålenius said reserve numbers are given out on a regional level and are not part of a central system, so this would be examined in future weeks. “We’ll take this question on board and get back to you,” she said.

People who have received one vaccine dose overseas and the second in Sweden will be eligible for the pass, and the key thing is to make sure the vaccine provider is aware of your first dose when you get it (you should take the documentation you have, showing the type of vaccine you received) so that your second dose is marked as such.

But when it comes to Swedish residents who received both their doses outside the EU, Ålenius said Sweden had not yet taken a decision on whether vaccine passes would be issued to these people.

“We will have to come back to this issue, let me just say that if one has been vaccinated abroad they most likely will have systems in place there to facilitate this. We will return to the issue,” said Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren, who added that the pass would only be issued to people who had been given those vaccines also approved for use in the EU.

Vaccination Passport is a great solution regardless if its Sweden, European country, North America country, South American country, Asia-Pacific country or wherever.

People that are vaccinated have the right to be with those they trust that have also been vaccinated. In contrast, those that do not believe in vaccines as in the not vaccinated...they can hang out with others that are not vaccinated or not travel because they're high risk to the health of others...

High risk because travel is how variants cross from one country to another country.

Vaccine Passports will become a new black market and people are already being arrested for selling / making fake vaccine passports (cards).

• https://thehill.com/changing-americ...2086-california-man-arrested-for-selling-fake

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/05/06/fake-covid-vaccine-cards/

wrbtrader

 

[gwb-trading]

This is the end result for your government leadership when it causes 10X the COVID death rate of your direct neighbors while tanking the economy worse than your neighbors in pursuit of a failed "natural herd immunity" strategy.

Swedish government toppled in no-confidence vote
Sweden's parliament has passed a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.
BBC - https://tinyurl.com/cb8upewx

A total of 181 of the 349 MPs voted in favour of the motion, with 51 abstentions. It is the first time in Swedish history that a prime minister has been ousted in such a vote.

(More at above url)

 

[gwb-trading]

What a joke of study... you put up.


Some states like CA which locked down, did better than Florida and Texas in the measures we wish to consider.... but we better not look at MI or NY because... well they are different.


Here is a study which indicated Florida outperformed CA in many areas.

https://www.aier.org/article/the-florida-versus-california-showdown/

'Lockdown' states like California did better economically than 'looser' states like Florida, new COVID data shows
https://www.aol.com/news/lockdown-states-california-did-better-153025114.html

Like seemingly everything else in America, the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked its fair share of bitter, polarizing debates: over masks, over distancing, over vaccines.

Lockdowns are no exception. One assumption many Americans seem to make is that the more a government limits gatherings, mandates masks, restricts business activity and advises residents to stay at home, the more economic damage it will do.

Among the loudest of these voices is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who raised his national profile by allowing bars and restaurants to operate at full indoor capacity during America’s horrific holiday surge, then effectively banned mask mandates once Florida started to recover — all in the name of supporting business.

“She’s a lockdown lobbyist,” DeSantis recently said in reference to Democrat Nikki Fried, one of his 2022 gubernatorial opponents. Speaking at a New Smyrna Beach restaurant, DeSantis said Fried “would have had this business shuttered for the whole year. They would be out of business if Fried were governor.”

Yet for much of the past year, some experts have quietly advanced a counterargument: that economic activity is mainly affected by the rising and falling severity of the pandemic itself — not the relative strictness of the measures implemented to mitigate it. In fact, these experts argued, nonpharmaceutical interventions, or NPIs — a set of 20 government responses such as business closures, mask mandates and stay-at-home advisories that Oxford University rates according to stringency — can have an economic upside. The more the virus seems to be under control, the more eager people will be to participate in the economy.

Last week, this argument got a boost with the publication of a new report by economists at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to the latest quarterly UCLA Anderson Forecast, not only did big states with more stringent COVID measures end 2020 with fewer infections per capita, they also tended to post better economic growth numbers last year than states with fewer restrictions.

In other words, California’s economy actually fared better than Florida’s.

Yahoo News: Is it now fair to say that so-called lockdown states performed better economically than so-called looser states during the 2020 pandemic?

Jerry Nickelsburg: That is correct. We generally view economic performance through the lens of gross domestic product. On average, GDP declined in 2020, and it declined everywhere. But those declines were smaller in states with more stringent nonpharmaceutical interventions than states with less stringent NPIs.

That’s the opposite of the conventional wisdom. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is telling voters, in effect, “I saved the economy by opening bars and banning masks.” What made you suspect that the prevailing narrative — this idea that there’s a trade-off between public health and the health of the economy — might be wrong?

It was something that we started to see in Scandinavia. It's something we saw in the 1918-19 influenza pandemic as well. It seemed to be more than just a fluke.

When you say “something,” what do you mean?

The evidence suggested that policies that are good for people’s health during a pandemic — like NPIs — are not necessarily bad for the economy. There might even be a positive correlation. But early on, we did not have any 2020 pandemic data to answer that question. So it was open for debate.

But now we have that data.

Now we do.

Yahoo News spoke with economist Jerry Nickelsburg, the director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, to find out more.

Walk us through what it says.

The states that were considered for this analysis are basically the states that produce most of the U.S. GDP — states with a population of 5 million or greater. We found two things. First, California had more stringent interventions and a lower infection rate than either Texas or Florida, two states to which it’s often compared. Yet California also performed better with respect to GDP than either Texas or Florida. Second, the same pattern showed up across all big states: On average, the ones with more stringent interventions had both better health outcomes and better economic outcomes.

How do we know this has anything to do with COVID restrictions? Couldn’t it just be a coincidence — that some state economies were better suited to weather this particular storm, regardless of how stringent their interventions were?

To be sure, states have different economic compositions. But that’s one reason we didn’t include small states like North Dakota. Even though it had very poor health outcomes, North Dakota can do very well in terms of GDP when oil prices go up, because of the dominance of petroleum production in the value of goods and services produced there.

In contrast, large states typically have more diverse economies. And when you line them up according to their interventionist policies, you find that states that intervened more heavily tended to have fewer COVID cases per capita and smaller declines in GDP.

There were two outliers: New York and Michigan. Both had stringent NPIs but lost a lot of ground in terms of GDP. Why?

Michigan was all about supply chain interruption in the automobile industry. This had nothing to do with interventions. Factories were forced to close for part of the year.

What about New York? In the report you write, “Perhaps the economic performance [there] has more to do with remote work than the pandemic per se.”

We don’t know the answer. It may be that because of “work from home,” many New York employees were working from New Jersey or Connecticut or even Florida, and spending their money there.

Someone like Gov. DeSantis would disagree with your conclusions, and one argument he would make is that if restrictions are so great, then why is California’s unemployment rate 8.3 percent while Florida’s is 4.3 percent? Is that a fair comparison?

It’s true that if unemployment is your metric, California has a very high rate relative to Florida. But people who dropped out of the labor force because of COVID — either because they contracted it or because of concern for themselves or their families — are not counted in the unemployment rate. Likewise, there’s evidence that states that opened up earlier may have reduced their employees’ hours because fewer people were coming through the doors; the reduction in hours per employee was 4.2 percent in Texas versus 1.1 percent in California. So unemployment is actually quite complicated, and you can’t really rely on it.

[The UCLA report also suggests that “the answer lies in the structure of the California economy.” In California, “sectors with a high degree of human contact” — that is, “leisure and hospitality, education, retail trade, and health care and social services” — contributed only “0.3 percentage points to annual GDP growth over the decade preceding the pandemic.” But last year, “they accounted for 75 percent of the state’s job losses.”

Meanwhile, the sectors driving growth in California — “information, professional and business services, manufacturing and financial services” — weren’t hit nearly as hard. That helps to explain the discrepancy between the state’s unemployment rate and its overall economic performance. UCLA expects “many of those lost jobs to return.”]

What about 2021? California has kept many of its restrictions in place for the first half of the year. Florida has not. Yet due to vaccination, cases have been going down in both states for months now. Does that change anything?

The data we have for 2020 is pretty conclusive. The data for the 1918-19 pandemic is pretty conclusive. The data for Scandinavia is pretty conclusive. So far, the data says that with NPIs, there's no trade-off between better health outcomes and better economic outcomes. I don’t expect that to change.

 

[gwb-trading]

Sweden postpones its Covid-19 vaccine target again
https://www.thelocal.se/20210624/sweden-postpones-its-covid-19-vaccine-target-again/

Back in December at the start of the vaccination programme, Sweden’s Health Minister said the country expected to have offered all eligible adults the Covid-19 vaccine before Midsummer, June 26th.

Ahead of Midsummer weekend, Sweden has offered a first dose to slightly over half the adult population after delays in vaccine deliveries, and now expects all adults will have been offered their first dose by September 19th at the latest. The announcement was made by Marie Morell, head of healthcare for Sweden’s Municipalities and Regions (SKR), at a press conference with state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.

The main reason for the latest change is reduced deliveries from Pfizer/Biontech, which sent more doses than expected in June but are now scaling back the amount they can deliver in line with their agreement.

Up until June 24th, a total of 4,507,250 people had been reported as having at least one dose of the vaccine, based on what regions have reported to the national vaccine register. That equates to 55 percent of the adult population, of whom 2,721,752 (33.2 percent) have received both doses.

All the vaccines being used in Sweden require two doses to be considered effective.

The vaccine rollout is managed at the regional level, which means different age groups are being offered the vaccine in different regions, though all have now opened up to Phase 4, which includes adults aged under 65 who do not belong to a Covid-19 risk group. As of Monday, one region (Norrbotten) was offering the Covid-19 vaccine to all adults over 18, while elsewhere the threshold ranged from 25 to 45 years.