SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Austria, Swiss, Norway, Denmark, Finland, US States, Germany... everyone is moving to a “Swedish model” now anyway, just more slowly.
Soon enough all countries will be, because as I’ve argued all along, without a vaccine there is no other way.
Curve is flat in Sweden, I believe all of Europe can live with this virus and behave responsibly to keep the curves flat now we truly know how serious it is.
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Changing lockdown phase =/= moving to the Swedish model. The Swedish model is defined by the lack of action in the initial days of the virus. Its completely disingenuous to suggest that countries are moving to the Swedish model, by that logic, every single country in lock down would eventually adopt the Swedish model, what an incredible testament to the Swedish approach that would be :rolleyes:
 
Arruda said:
@BootsyCollins @africanspur

You are damn right that my response is emotive, and it couldn't be otherwise. "Swedish model" and similar nonsense is growing like the plague here in my country due to a crazy man that has espoused a similar approach non-stop, and starts to get a gigantic following with hashtags like #letsgoout or similar.

We live in an era were people don't acknowledge their ignorance anymore, everyone has to take a position on any subject because they read about it on facebook, and now we have to deal with the voice of a Computer Science engineer getting louder than all doctors combined. His fans will never back down, nor will him, even when every thing he says is counter-argued by stronger evidence or his short-term predictions are shown wrong time and time again.

It's this type of blindness that brought us the likes of Trump. It's a growing trend fueled by social media, people pick a side on things they know nothing about and they will stick to it until the end like if it's a football club. Whoever thinks this problem is limited to the "deplorables" should think again. It's affecting everyone else, regardless of political inclination or the subject at hand.

I'm arguing this nonsense with some of my own family members, who know fully well I was far ahead of the curve on Covid-19 knowledge, and who know very well my qualities and limitations as a doctor. Suddenly I have to debate non-sense like the Swedish model with them, when just 6 weeks ago everyone was terrified of becoming like Italy - which we would have, had we taken just one or two more weeks to start confining and distancing ourselves.

Anyone from the UK should feel relief they narrowly avoided a catastrophe of gigantic proportions due to guys like those experts from Sweden, yet many seem happy to get back to square one.


Swedish results so far are miserable.
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Right but as I said, I hope people actually making the decisions don't look at this topic emotively because it is far more complex than some are willing to admit.

With respect, is this not what you are doing right now? From my understanding, you are a doctor (as am I) yet we clearly have some differing views on this. Being a doctor does not automatically make you right on this topic, just as being a non-medic does not automatically make you wrong. Being a doctor certainly does not make us experts on it either. As far as I'm aware, the people leading the Swedish response are themselves expert epidemiologists, not froth at the mouth simpletons.

Seemingly, some of the animosity towards the 'Swedish model' comes from the fact that people are linking it to idiots in their own countries. That isn't the Swedes' issue, nor should they make policy decisions based on idiots in the USA, UK, Portugal or elsewhere.

Its funny, I find myself taking seemingly diametrically opposed views on this topic with different people. Because I actually don't advocate their model myself. It does bother me though when people are speaking with utter authority on a topic that literally nobody on the world can speak with utter authority on because so many things about it are still novel and unknown to us. We don't know what will happen when we relax lockdowns properly. We don't know the effects on the economy, which have a huge impact on health and healthcare provision. We don't know whether people will get re-infected, whether they have lasting immunity, whether we'll make a successful vaccine or cure. We...just don't.

Swedish results so far are miserable if looking at it solely from a narrow prism of mortality. There are of course so many other factors at play, many of which also play into morbidity and mortality long term. What may seem initially like the right or wrong plan may turn out differently. As to whether Sweden does better with this long term or not, we will have to see. Until then, we can't be saying with utter confidence one is right and the other wrong.

I can understand why you'd get emotional, having those discussions with friends and family. But that is not how policy decisions should be made.

Personally, I couldn't care less about my freedom right now, as I'm having to leave the house for work anyway and I live with my wife and kids. My life is not quite so drastically different than before so it doesn't impact me that much personally when lockdown is lifted.
 
Pexbo said:
Changing lockdown phase =/= moving to the Swedish model. The Swedish model is defined by the lack of action in the initial days of the virus. Its completely disingenuous to suggest that countries are moving to the Swedish model, by that logic, every single country in lock down would eventually adopt the Swedish model, what an incredible testament to the Swedish approach that would be :rolleyes:
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I call bullshit on lack of action by the way, a shit load was done here, just not full lockdown. They have just argued all along that full lockdown was unnecessary as it is all about flattening the curve and that has clearly been done here without full lockdown. They have argued that this strategy is long term, and can be kept up until next year if need be.

Sweden has 3 of the 6 biggest cities in all of Scandinavia, if the “lack of action” was a problem, why are the other 2 Swedish cities in that top 6 list doing so “well”?
 
africanspur said:
Swedish results so far are miserable if looking at it solely from a narrow prism of mortality.
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Not only that @africanspur, to call them “miserable” you have to also look at it long term and believe other countries will do better once restrictions are eased. You have to consider that this virus is likely to be around for at least a year, probably longer and imagine that countries who “started well” will continue to do so out of lockdown.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The geographic/demographic/connectivity variations are known in advance, though. Hence you could argue that a country like England should have shut down earlier/more aggressively than the likes of Ireland or New Zealand. And the fact that the opposite happened has been a big factor in your grim statistics.

My main beef with inter-country comparisons has always been the different way in which data is collected. Completely pointless comparing cases between two countries, only one of which does any kind of extensive community testing. Likewise comparing deaths when one country records only covid deaths in hospitals. Then there’s the way that per capita analysis favours big countries, with mortality rates diluted by regions the epidemic has not yet reached (hence the US has relatively low deaths per million, despite being an absolute train wreck) In a smaller country the epidemic can spread to every corner in a couple of weeks.

I do agree that luck plays a part, mind you. Just a handful of superspreaders can create thousands of infections downstream. So there’s a fine line between success and failure.
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Oh for sure, I totally agree. Don't get me wrong, I have a list as long as my arm about everything the Tories have done wrong in this pandemic, starting with their very essence as a party. Their slow action has made things worse than they should have been. Again, we can't necessarily compare like for like (not least due to London) but the best comparison for me would probably be Germany. At every single step in this ordeal, they've shown better leadership, communication, grasp of the science we do have and general mobilisation of their resources. Its been night and day (though I understand even they are having issues with PPE)!

And totally agree with the second paragraph! Remember reading a few articles about how angry many Cornish were at the influx of rich Londoners coming down to wait out the pandemic in their holiday homes....but of course potentially spreading it to an area of the UK not exactly overflowing with young healthy people or ICU beds.....That shouldn't really have been possible.
 
It seems like people think we live just as normal in Sweden. We dont, the only difference from most countries is that we are recommended to keep a distance, not forced. Like WHO pointed out today.

Alot of places are closed and mass gatherings are forbidden.
 
Considering the care home figures go back to March 2nd, and the experts were talking about figures in the 20k range, I was expecting worse to be honest. A lot worse. I was expecting to come home to an increase of about 15k, if I'm being honest.

I'm thankful the number is less than expected and any deaths are tragic, of coure. But I am quite pissed off. I think the government have botched this reporting, now.

The lockdown was implemented for the main goal of protecting our NHS and ensuring they were coping with the pandemic. Since the lockdown began, the focus has been (rightly so) on the NHS - hospital admissions, hospital deaths and the pattern surrounding both. We have been told time and again by the government that once we know the NHS is stable and coping well, we can consider the next stages.

So up until today, the public had a visual representation of this. Daily reported hospital deaths. Easy to compare them to the day before, the week before, to see a pattern emerging. Are we improving? Has lockdown done the job it was supposed to do?

Up until today, we could see that the answer was Yes, especially in the past few days compared to this time last week (and the week before, and so on).

We can't do that anymore, because the daily figure will now include care home figures and we don't know whether the hospital situation is improving, still plateauing or getting worse. The care home figures should be reported as their own entity - a separate fight, so to speak.

What a great way to get the public as a united front. Especially when we're in such a crucial stage where 50% more traffic on the roads suggests a lot of people have stopped complying. Take away the only visual representation they had of the NHS situation which they directly relate to lockdown and their future.

Its either another incompetent, stupid decision or I suppose it might be deliberate - give them bigger numbers, scare them back indoors. Personally, I don't think the fear factor is going to make much difference going forward on a lot of people, maybe 2-3 weeks ago but not going forward.

Anyway, I'm off for food, this has done my skull in this evening.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I think the point is that every country has to do a balancing act between letting life and businesses continue as near to normal as possible while ensuring their health service isn’t overwhelmed. Sweden’s health service is far from overwhelmed and their economy hasn’t contracted as sharply as neighbouring countries with more drastic measures (I think? Would actually like to see evidence of this? @Regulus Arcturus Black)
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Apparently the IMF currently expects a GDP growth of -6.8% for Sweden in 2020 while it expects -6.5 for Denmark and -6.3 for Norway. Obviously the results could look very different in the end but I thought it was interesting that they don't expect any great results from Sweden.
 
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BootsyCollins said:
It seems like people think we live just as normal in Sweden. We dont, the only difference from most countries is that we are recommended to keep a distance, not forced. Like WHO pointed out today.

Alot of places are closed and mass gatherings are forbidden.
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Aye, it's mad. We haven't seen the missus grandma since mid March, poor thing, misses her grand daughter terribly. Our neighbours on both sides are devastated for the same reasons with their grandkids. The city (Stockholm) is something of a ghost town in comparison to "normal", even parkrun is cancelled and only 30 people usually turn up to those.
At Easter we had 10% of the normal travel.
Both myself and the missus celebrated big birthday's.... alone.

My company is fecked, I mean fecked, and it's just one of very very many. I can't even tell you how many people I know who have lost job or been furloughed.

Another thing I'd add is just to ask people to use Occam's razor when considering Sweden to other countries.

Sweden: 244 deaths /million population
1319 deaths in Stockholm, Scandinavia's most populous area.
Only 192 deaths in Gothenburg County (Västa Götaland)
Only 62 Malmö in County (Skåne)

Ireland: not updated today but 235 deaths /million population

Belgium: 647 deaths /million population

Now Ireland and Belgium locked down, that hasn't stopped their numbers being comparable or in Belgium's case, much worse. Is that because "Sweden did better" or because "Belgium did worse", or does that fact that Ireland's deaths have continued to rise during lockdown and yet Gothenburg and Malmö are still extremely low for big cities simply tell us that it's more likely the biggest variable here with deaths SO FAR is the amount of virus that existed already in that country/those cities in late Feb/March when the World realised what was happening in Italy.

Stockholm, unlike all of the other big cities in Scandinavia, had half term in week 9: 24th Feb - 1st March, and as we know, Swedes love to ski. All other big cities in Scandinavia had half term in week 7 or 8, including the 2nd and 3rd largest Swedish cities which so far are doing extremely well.

Surely occam's razor tells us then that parts of Ireland, all of Belgium, and Stockholm, had a massive dose of the virus in late Feb/early March, way more than Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Malmö :confused:
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Not only that @africanspur, to call them “miserable” you have to also look at it long term and believe other countries will do better once restrictions are eased. You have to consider that this virus is likely to be around for at least a year, probably longer and imagine that countries who “started well” will continue to do so out of lockdown.
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There’s two potential upsides to the Swedish approach.

1. Reaching herd immunity sooner. We’ll get an idea if this is working will when Sweden (and neighbour countries) get serology results back. Have to say I’m sceptical on that one. Maybe a % or two in it. Which is a huge number of sick people for a very marginal gain. Hope I’m wrong.

2. Taking less of an economic hit. Obviously it’s still very early but how is Sweden doing in comparison to other Scandi/Nordic countries? Unemployment. GDP drop predictions etc. I’d be very curious about that one.

I guess less of a lockdown means better mental health too. Which is important but very hard to quantify. That might be another hidden upside. Going to be interesting to see how it all pans out anyway.
 
Edged even a bit closer to normality today as our government decided that travel restrictions between municipalities do not apply from tomorrow onward. Which I feel like is a bit of a silly decision to do right before a holiday weekend, because now everyone will presumably visit their families, but whatever, this always has been a weird restriction.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Aye, it's mad. We haven't seen the missus grandma since mid March, poor thing, misses her grand daughter terribly. Our neighbours on both sides are devastated for the same reasons with their grandkids. The city (Stockholm) is something of a ghost town in comparison to "normal", even parkrun is cancelled and only 30 people usually turn up to those.
At Easter we had 10% of the normal travel.
Both myself and the missus celebrated big birthday's.... alone.

My company is fecked, I mean fecked, and it's just one of very very many. I can't even tell you how many people I know who have lost job or been furloughed.

Another thing I'd add is just to ask people to use Occam's razor when considering Sweden to other countries.

Sweden: 244 deaths /million population
1319 deaths in Stockholm, Scandinavia's most populous area.
Only 192 deaths in Gothenburg County (Västa Götaland)
Only 62 Malmö in County (Skåne)

Ireland: not updated today but 235 deaths /million population

Belgium: 647 deaths /million population

Now Ireland and Belgium locked down, that hasn't stopped their numbers being comparable or in Belgium's case, much worse. Is that because "Sweden did better" or because "Belgium did worse", or does that fact that Ireland's deaths have continued to rise during lockdown and yet Gothenburg and Malmö are still extremely low for big cities simply tell us that it's more likely the biggest variable here with deaths SO FAR is the amount of virus that existed already in that country/those cities in late Feb/March when the World realised what was happening in Italy.

Stockholm, unlike all of the other big cities in Scandinavia, had half term in week 9: 24th Feb - 1st March, and as we know, Swedes love to ski. All other big cities in Scandinavia had half term in week 7 or 8, including the 2nd and 3rd largest Swedish cities which so far are doing extremely well.

Surely occam's razor tells us then that parts of Ireland, all of Belgium, and Stockholm, had a massive dose of the virus in late Feb/early March, way more than Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Malmö :confused:
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Can’t speak for Belgium but we had a shitload of people coming back from ski trips infected after half-term holidays in February (with another load of people hitting the slopes leading up to the long weekend of St Patrick’s Day)

...and don’t get me started on deaths per capita with small vs large countries. I’m like a broken record on that one!
 
Pogue Mahone said:
2. Taking less of an economic hit. Obviously it’s still very early but how is Sweden doing in comparison to other Scandi/Nordic countries? Unemployment. GDP drop predictions etc. I’d be very curious about that one.
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Less of a hit than Denmark and Finland for sure, Norway is just so rich so that's another story.

Sweden is headed to recession though, just like most of the other countries. Massive unemployment already, it's why the idea that "we sit here pretending the virus doesn't exist" has always been the biggest bullshit argument.
The argument was always a pragmatic one here, "what will lockdown achieve longterm"?:

• It will flatten the curve
Sweden: We believe we can do that without lockdown. So far, they are correct.

They would never close national parks like they have in the UK, or ban kids from going and playing outside, because they weigh the risks and believe that the risk of transmission in those areas is so low, that affecting kids' athletic habbits can have terrible long term effects, and that closing parks can have massive mental effects for everyone. Locking people in their houses around the World has already lead to an incredible rise in domestic and child abuse.

I feel that in the rush to flatten the curve, other countries have concentrated so much on Covid-19 that they've completely lost touch will the possible long term effects of their policies, or have they even considered how much spread certain measures are even preventing, like the closures of national parks? Or maybe cancelling an entire season of athletics for children?
 
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Very disillusioned with the very poor questions from journalists today and yesterday after that damning number of excess deaths in the ONS report on Tuesday. Absolutely nobody stepped up to challenge them on that.

I did have a chuckle at @Arruda’s serious suggestion that doctors, i.e. GPs, should be high on the list of those we listen to in order to strategise this problem and the implication that non-clinicians couldn’t possibly have any skills or insight to leave them better placed.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Another thing I'd add is just to ask people to use Occam's razor when considering Sweden to other countries.

Sweden: 244 deaths /million population
1319 deaths in Stockholm, Scandinavia's most populous area.
Only 192 deaths in Gothenburg County (Västa Götaland)
Only 62 Malmö in County (Skåne)
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This is a decent point, particularly compared to some of more dense countries in Europe, but I'm not sure it Stockholm having such a massive amount of deaths means that Västa Götaland is entirely off the hook. It's still got only a handful fewer deaths than the entirety of Norway. Skåne is more impressive.

Also, I wonder if people realize that Norway, which has been quite successful in halting the spread of coronavirus, hasn't been as locked down as many other countries in Europe. Many different kinds of shops have still been open, and even restaurants have never been shut down completely (though many chains or individual restaurants shut themselves down). I bet the biggest difference between Norway and Sweden has been the school system, which has been completely shut down in Norway (and is being slowly re-opened now, along with many of the services which had been shut down such as hairdressers and the like).

This isn't or shouldn't be a question of complete shutdown or no shutdown at all.

Edit: I should say, one more difference might be in travel restrictions. I don't know Sweden has done it, but in Norway anyone entering the country has to spend 14 days in quarantine. This was instituted quite early in Norway's stage of infection, first targeted (specific areas in Northern Italy and Tirol to begin with, then everywhere but the Nordic countries), and then universally. Hell, many Northern counties instituted their own quarantines for people travelling in from the south of the country. There's barely any infection anywhere that isn't Oslo these days (and Oslo is declining heavily), and there's barely been any at all in the north (which isn't very densely populated, of course).
 
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Apologies if already posted:

 
nimic said:
This is a decent point, particularly compared to some of more dense countries in Europe, but I'm not sure it Stockholm having such a massive amount of deaths means that Västa Götaland is entirely off the hook. It's still got only a handful fewer deaths than the entirety of Norway. Skåne is more impressive.
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How many deaths in Oslo @nimic ?

Edit: 57, just discovered the VG link.

But let's not forgot that Västa Götaland has 1,725,881 people, Oslo kommun just 666 759.
 
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Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Aye, it's mad. We haven't seen the missus grandma since mid March, poor thing, misses her grand daughter terribly. Our neighbours on both sides are devastated for the same reasons with their grandkids. The city (Stockholm) is something of a ghost town in comparison to "normal", even parkrun is cancelled and only 30 people usually turn up to those.
At Easter we had 10% of the normal travel.
Both myself and the missus celebrated big birthday's.... alone.
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Yeah, same here. We talk on facetime with the kids grandparents and shop for them, but they have not hugged their grandchildren for months now. Our youngest had her 3 year old birthday with no guests.

Our oldest daughter was supose to have her gradutation party tomorrow. Now its just nothing, she just has her hat. At least she is sencible and understand its for the better for everyone, and dont complain.
Neither do we.

Its all small things compared to the bigger picture, but we really miss the small things. Like having friends over for dinner, go to the movies or taking the kids to grönalund.
So as we know, life is far from normal in Sweden.

Btw, saw you wrote you lived north of Stockholm. I do to:)
 
BootsyCollins said:
Yeah, same here. We talk on facetime with the kids grandparents and shop for them, but they have not hugged their grandchildren for months now. Our youngest had her 3 year old birthday with no guests.

Our oldest daughter was supose to have her gradutation party tomorrow. No its just nothing, she just has her hat. At least she is sencible and understand its for the better for everyone, and dont complain.
Neither do we.

Its all small things compared to the bigger picture, but we really miss the small things. Like having friends over for dinner, go to the movies or taking the kids to grönalund.
So as we now, life is far from normal in Sweden.

Btw, saw you wrote you lived north of Stockholm. I do to:)
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Sigtuna mate.

The graduation thing is absolutely devastating, especially when you understand what a big deal it is here, one of the most amazing days of a teenagers life, or a person's entire life I'd imagine.
Absolutely gutted for them :(

Seems you have similar experiences to me and 99% of other people live in Sweden, I find it crazy to consider that most of the World think we're just carrying on like normal.
 
legolegs said:
Apparently the IMF currently expects a GDP growth of -6.8% for Sweden in 2020 while it expects -6.5 for Denmark and -6.3 for Norway. Obviously the results could look very different in the end but I thought it was interesting that they don't expect any great results from Sweden.
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Interesting. Thanks. Although I reckon GDP predictions are about as reliable as the predictions about total mortality. I’d be really curious to see how the economies compare over the last several weeks.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
How many deaths in Oslo @nimic ?
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I have repeatedly tried and failed to find even remotely up-to-date (or even any at all) statistics for cases and deaths on a regional basis. I know they exist somewhere, since they've been referenced at least by the media and I am sure the health authorities. Oslo has definitely fared the worst, and these days it's pretty much only Oslo with any significant spread. I couldn't say what proportion of the deaths are in Oslo, but there have been some deaths all over the country at least.

I edited my post while you were replying btw.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Less of a hit than Denmark and Finland for sure, Norway is just so rich so that's another story.

Sweden is headed to recession though, just like most of the other countries. Massive unemployment already, it's why the idea that "we sit here pretending the virus doesn't exist" has always been the biggest bullshit argument.
The argument was always a pragmatic one here, "what will lockdown achieve longterm"?:

• It will flatten the curve
Sweden: We believe we can do that without lockdown. So far, they are correct.

They would never close national parks like they have in the UK, or ban kids from going and playing outside, because they weigh the risks and believe that the risk of transmission in those areas is so low, that affecting kids' athletic habbits can have terrible long term effects, and that closing parks can have massive mental effects for everyone. Locking people in their houses around the World has already lead to an incredible rise in domestic and child abuse.

I feel that in the rush to flatten the curve, other countries have concentrated so much on Covid-19 that they've completely lost touch will the possible long term effects of their policies, or have they even considered how much spread certain measures are even preventing, like the closures of national parks? Or maybe cancelling an entire season of athletics for children?
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The kids athletics is a sore one for me. My son is 11, plays for a good team and has been a joy to watch for the last year (after years freezing my arse off on the sidelines, watching absolute shite). Him not playing any football any more this year has killed me.

From what you say the Swedish approach is nowhere near as radically different as a lot of people think but if they let their kids play sports that’s something I could definitely get on board with. I really hope we get a scientific consensus soon about kids. Are they a significant transmission risk or not? I’m hearing a lot of smart people say that they may not be. If kids can play sports, go to school and hang out with grandparents I reckon most of society would handle “lockdown“ for as long as it takes.
 
legolegs said:
Apparently the IMF currently expects a GDP growth of -6.8% for Sweden in 2020 while it expects -6.5 for Denmark and -6.3 for Norway. Obviously the results could look very different in the end but I thought it was interesting that they don't expect any great results from Sweden.
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Worth mentioning that Norway has the sovereign wealth fund to draw on, which means that it's probably easier for Norway to mitigate the long-term effects than almost any other country. Or at least try. The other Scandinavian countries are wealthy and well-run in the typical Scandinavian fashion, but they don't have that. Interesting that the numbers are so similar, I guess some things are unavoidable.
 
Pexbo said:
Changing lockdown phase =/= moving to the Swedish model. The Swedish model is defined by the lack of action in the initial days of the virus. Its completely disingenuous to suggest that countries are moving to the Swedish model, by that logic, every single country in lock down would eventually adopt the Swedish model, what an incredible testament to the Swedish approach that would be :rolleyes:
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There is actually no such thing as "Swedish model". The only "model" is lockdown, it just so happens that Sweden have not felt the need to implement that model yet.

There are only two logical reasons to go into lockdown -

1. to buy time until a vaccine or treatment is found and ready to go. Any country (I don't believe there are any) that entered lockdown for this reason would have been stupid and naive.

2. to flatten the curve if it's been estimated that there is a risk of medical services and resources being overrun by the virus

Sweden, like all countries discounted option 1 and evaluated that for them option 2 was not and to this point has not been necessary. Other countries are not on the verge of re-opening society to similar levels to that of Sweden because they think the numbers are now on a permanent sliding scale downwards and going to continue until the virus goes away. They're doing so because they've either a) realised they pulled the trigger too early b) realised the limitations and lack of longevity in a lockdown state c) think that the lockdown has done it's job and that for now the curve is flattened enough to loosen restrictions. C being the decision Sweden arrived at and have stayed with to this point.

There are probably some countries that entered lockdown before it reached the point where it was actually necessary. I think UK may be one of those and that brings it's own problems as you are going to have a lot of people rebelling against authority coming from several different camps once lockdown is ended. You are going to have the group who are angry because they felt it unnecessarily impinged their civil rights, you're going to have morons that think lockdown is over means a return to life as it was before, you're going to have people angry because the lockdown was ended at all when people are still dying and you're going to see all of these groups clashing and the result being a split nation when what's most and still needed is for everybody to be singing from the same sheet. Good luck getting near enough the required level of buy-in to a second lockdown when Joe Bloggs will be of the mind "the last one didn't work" or "just open the fecking pub man, they've been closed for months now and it's done no good".
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’m hearing a lot of smart people say that they may not be. If kids can play sports, go to school and hang out with grandparents I reckon most of society would handle “lockdown“ for as long as it takes.
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https://zoonosen.charite.de/fileadm...s-of-SARS-CoV-2-viral-load-by-patient-age.pdf

Hanging out with grandparents could be a problem. Children just as infectious.

Regulus Arcturus Black said:
They would never close national parks like they have in the UK, or ban kids from going and playing outside,
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Just to note there's many parks and other areas open in UK and people are encouraged to go out, kids play outside etc. Spain locked the kids in for 6 weeks.
 
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Bullhitter said:
There are only two logical reasons to go into lockdown -

1. to buy time until a vaccine or treatment is found and ready to go. Any country (I don't believe there are any) that entered lockdown for this reason would have been stupid and naive.

2. to flatten the curve if it's been estimated that there is a risk of medical services and resources being overrun by the virus
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I think Norway very specifically went for #1 here. There was some early talk of flattening the curve, but that strategy was quickly discarded in favour of actually stopping the spread of the virus. And it's been largely successful. As the country is now being slowly re-opened the authorities expect there to be a slight increase which needs to be closely monitored, but there is no great uncontrolled spread of the virus in Norway right now.
 
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