Sweden did a lot better in Q1. It was the only western European country with positive growth, and it vastly outperformed everybody else. I expect they'll also outperform the rest of Europe in subsequent quarters, but this will remain to be seen. The death toll in Sweden is completely in line with its neighbors. This is evident when you look at All Cause Mortality. Their definition of "with covid" deaths is far more generous than their neighbors, so comparing the numbers from worldometers is not apples-to-apples.
My analysis suggests Sweden is very close to herd immunity, and they won't have a second wave. The countries that haven't reached herd immunity yet can choose between locking down in perpetuity or dragging out the process for no gain. There is no vaccin and the virus can't be contained or exterminated. People in the west won't put up with a totalitarian China style lockdown.
The research on mask effectiveness is still very contradictory. The health organizations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland all claims masks don't work, as did the CDC and WHO. Research clearly indicates some viral load is blocked by masks, but there aren't any studies that connect mask use with actual infection rates. We don't even know to what degree asymptomatic infections are a thing. I suspect a large percentage of infections happen because symptomatic people refuse to stay home, and anecdotal evidence from superspreading events supports this.
Deaths in the US are trending down and will continue to trend down in 95% of counties. There will be hotspots here and there in places that didn't get hit in the last few months, but there won't be a second wave. You see deaths doubling from here, I think that's exceedingly unlikely.
I do not operate with "all cause mortality". I look at the excess death in April May, and in Sweden is so much higher it is not a serious conversation to even dispute that.
Epidemiologists look at annual deaths cumulative from the start of the flu season, exactly because we care about total mortality and not about noisy spikes in the data. And that picture looks completely different: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcTV1OmWsAE3kAs?format=jpg&name=...
Remember that 2018 and 2019 were unusually mild flu seasons, so many people had already outlived their actuarial life expectancy when covid hit.
I do not play in creative accounting. There is a visible by naked eye large bulge of excess death in April and May in Sweden, which exctly equal to number of counted covid deaths, and same for Norway - a much smaller bulge, exactly equal to number of death from Covid. What you are engaging in is exactly kind of accounting caused credit crunch in 2008.
Sweden did a lot better in Q1. It was the only western European country with positive growth, and it vastly outperformed everybody else. I expect they'll also outperform the rest of Europe in subsequent quarters, but this will remain to be seen. The death toll in Sweden is completely in line with its neighbors. This is evident when you look at All Cause Mortality. Their definition of "with covid" deaths is far more generous than their neighbors, so comparing the numbers from worldometers is not apples-to-apples.
My analysis suggests Sweden is very close to herd immunity, and they won't have a second wave. The countries that haven't reached herd immunity yet can choose between locking down in perpetuity or dragging out the process for no gain. There is no vaccin and the virus can't be contained or exterminated. People in the west won't put up with a totalitarian China style lockdown.
The research on mask effectiveness is still very contradictory. The health organizations of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland all claims masks don't work, as did the CDC and WHO. Research clearly indicates some viral load is blocked by masks, but there aren't any studies that connect mask use with actual infection rates. We don't even know to what degree asymptomatic infections are a thing. I suspect a large percentage of infections happen because symptomatic people refuse to stay home, and anecdotal evidence from superspreading events supports this.
Deaths in the US are trending down and will continue to trend down in 95% of counties. There will be hotspots here and there in places that didn't get hit in the last few months, but there won't be a second wave. You see deaths doubling from here, I think that's exceedingly unlikely.