If the COVID-19 pandemic subsides in a few weeks, months before alarmists affirm it, they will most likely turn around without delay and welcome the glittering social distancing controls they have imposed on the world. They will claim that their heroic recommendations have avoided far from a general calamity. Unfortunately, they will be wrong; and Sweden, which has virtually no social distancing, will most likely divert them.
Many others are quick to discredit Sweden’s approach, which relies more on calibrated precautions and isolation of the most vulnerable than on enforcing a total lockdown. While gatherings of more than 50 people are banned and the best schools and schools are closed, Sweden has kept its borders open as have its kindergartens, number one schools, bars, restaurants, parks and shops.
President Trump has no use for Sweden’s nuanced approach. Last Wednesday, he spectacularly defamed him, saying he had heard Sweden “try, and they saw scary things, and without delay they went to shut down the country. “He and the public fitness experts who told him this were wrong on either issue and had more doubts about his approach. Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former lead epidemiologist and now an adviser to the Swedish Health Agency, said other countries “have taken hasty policy measures” that are not justified. through the facts.
In the rush to lock down nations and, as a result, tear apart their economies, no one has addressed this undeniable but imperative question: How do we know that social isolation controls disease?And even if they are responsible for some infectious outbreaks, do they work for COVID-19?And even if they work for this novel coronavirus, do they want to be deployed at a certain level of the epidemic?Or do they close the barn door after the horses are gone?
In theory, less physical interaction can reduce the rate of new infections. But without a smart understanding of how long the remnants of the COVID-19 virus remain in the air, water, and touch surfaces, even this is speculative. Without reliable data on the proportion of the population that has already been exposed to and effectively fought the coronavirus, the price of social isolation controls will have to be questioned. It is conceivable that the quickest and safest way to “flatten the curve” is to allow other young people to combine normally while forcing only the frail and unhealthy to remain isolated.
In fact, it’s the first time we’ve quarantined other healthy people besides those who are in poor health and vulnerable. As Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, wrote in The Spectator last week: “The theory of lockdown, after all, is quite specific, deeply intolerant and, so far, unproven. It is not Sweden that is conducting a massive experiment. It’s everybody. “
We asked those undeniable questions of many infectious disease physicians, epidemiologists, mathematical disease modelers, and other intelligent, knowledgeable professionals. Genuine evidence (let alone evidence) to put millions of other people in a highly invasive and restrictive block. With no end in sight and nothing to prevent the blockade from being reimposed at the whim of public health officials. Is this rational?
When asked what evidence was available on the usefulness of quarantine and social isolation, academics pointed the finger at sending the Diamond Princess cruise ship, with 700 passenger cases of COVID-19 and 8 deaths. But the shipment is an artificially designed and densely filled container. of humans that bears little resemblance to life situations in the top countries.
The other main evidence academics cite is the course followed by the 1918 swine flu, which swept the world 102 years ago and was not a coronavirus. Philadelphia did not practice social distancing during the 1918 pandemic, but St. Louis did and had a decreased death rate than Philadelphia. But how does this apply in the current crisis?In addition to the post-hoc, ergo propter hoc nature of the argument, a key difference was that soldiers returning from World War I in Europe and carrying the swine flu virus may simply not fly nonstop from Paris to St. They were to land at East Coast ports like Philadelphia. So it’s no surprise that soldiers with health issues rested and recovered while spreading the virus on the East Coast, and stepped forward before continuing. to St. Louis and other inland cities.
Basing the entire architecture of social distancing on the evidence of the 1918 swine flu makes no sense, especially when that architecture is causing the destruction of the lives and livelihoods of most of the American population.
But advocates of social isolation are frantically grabbing the world’s shutdown. They resent that there is a country in the world that has not closed its doors and socially isolated its population. This bothers them because when this coronavirus outbreak is over, they would probably like to conclude that social isolation has worked.
Sweden bravely failed to pass a serious quarantine and, as a result, did not force its citizens into lockdown. “The strategy in Sweden is to focus on social distancing between known risk groups, such as the elderly. use evidence-based measures,” Emma Frans, an epidemiology doctor at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, told Euronews. “We try to adapt everyday life. The Swedish plan is to implement measures that you can practice for a long time.
The challenge with lockdowns is that they “exhaust the system,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s lead epidemiologist, told the Guardian. “You can’t block it for months, it’s impossible. ” He told Britain’s Daily Mail: “We can’t kill everyone. “Our Services. And the unemployed are a wonderful risk to public health. That’s something to think about. “
If social isolation worked, Sweden, a Nordic country of 10. 1 million people, would see the number of COVID-19 cases skyrocket to tens of thousands, surpassing the numbers of Italy or New York. To date, there have been 401 deaths from COVID-19 reported in Sweden.
The good news is that in the Swedish ICU census, which is updated every 30 minutes across the country, admissions to all ICUs in the country have been strong or down, and have been for the past week. At that time of writing (according to recently available data), the majority of ICU cases in Sweden today are elderly and 77% have underlying conditions such as center sickness, respiratory disease, kidney disease and diabetes. In addition, there has not been a single pediatric case. extensive care or death in Sweden, both for the benefits of school closures elsewhere. There are only 25 ICU admissions for COVID-19 among all Swedes under the age of 30.
Sweden is increasing herd immunity by refusing to panic. With social isolation not easy, young Swedes have spread the virus, usually asymptomatically, as a general flu season is intended to take place. They will generate protective antibodies that will do so more and more. It is difficult for the Wuhan virus to succeed and infect frail and elderly people who have serious underlying conditions. Rate a general flu season (in 2018, for example, about 80 per million population).
Compare this to the scenario of Switzerland, a small and similar European country with a population of 8. 5 million. Switzerland practices strict social isolation. However, Switzerland reports 715 cumulative deaths from the Wuhan virus to date, with a death rate nearly double Sweden’s figure. What about Norway, a Nordic country that has an open 1,000-mile border with Sweden, with a language and culture very similar to Sweden’s?? Norway (population 5. 4 million) has fewer deaths from COVID-19 (71) than Sweden, but a particularly high rate of ICU admissions for coronavirus.
On Friday, one of us spoke to Ulf Persson at his workplace at the Swedish Institute of Health Economics. He said everyone he knew was calm and stable, behaving more cautiously than usual, following government-imposed social controls, such as a limit of 50 people. for meetings and only service sitting in bars and restaurants. Persson estimates that the Swedish economy will fall by around 4% due to global economic shutdowns. But that’s nothing compared to the Great Depression unemployment ratings of 32% that the U. S. Federal Reserve has been able to do. U. S. St. Louis recently screened for the United States.
Nature has this, folks. We have been dealing with new viruses for countless generations. The most productive way is to allow other young, healthy people, those for whom the virus is rarely fatal, to develop antibodies and herd immunity to protect other frail and health-ill people. Over time, it will become clearer that social isolation measures such as those in Switzerland and Norway achieve very little relief in the event of death or illness, even if they fail in local and national economies, increasing misery, pain, death and illness for other reasons like those of other people. Lives are disrupted and the long run is destroyed.
John Fund is a columnist for National Review and has reported on Sweden. Joel Hay is a professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. A writer of more than six hundred peer-reviewed articles and clinical reports, he has collaborated with the Swedish Institute of Health Economics for nearly 40 years.