Sweden Ends Its Pandemic Experimen

[Shawnster]

Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment is over.

 

After a late autumn surge in infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, the government has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures. 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-a-holdout-from-covid-19-restrictions-sweden-ends-its-pandemic-experiment-11607261658

 

So much for that.  Looks like the Swedish way didn't work after all. 

[Thesauron]

Don’t believe everything you read. 90% of Sweden really has no large problems at all. However, Stockholm does. Just like New York, London and Paris have had serious issues despite more severe lockdowns.

The ‘clampdown’ did not begin last month, but has been active since March. It has been adjusted from time to time, and continues to be adjusted. It is also now adjusted depending on the spread in the local area.

[Shawnster]

https://www.foxnews.com/world/swedens-pandemic-experiment-ends-spiking-coronavirus-cases

 

Another link not behind a paywall

[Bob]

7 hours ago, Shawnster said:

Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment is over.

 

After a late autumn surge in infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, the government has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures. 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-a-holdout-from-covid-19-restrictions-sweden-ends-its-pandemic-experiment-11607261658

 

So much for that.  Looks like the Swedish way didn't work after all. 

Interesting.

 

Well, States like California, which never really reopened, and the UK, which went into a second lockdown, all had massive surges in cases, which proves the lockdown "experiment" failed as well.

 

I think when you look at two contrasting approaches, one with full lockdown and without a full lockdown, and see neither method slowed COVID, it means no one has any idea how to control it.

 

When dealing with a novel virus, there are no experts and all approaches are basically experiments.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bob

[Bob]

In fact, California, a lockdown-centric state, had almost 30k new infections yesterday, surpassing Texas for the most cases in the county at nearly 1.4 million cases. Texas is second and they are not pro-lockdown.

 

No one has a clue on how to deal with COVID, short of a vaccine. I think acknowledging that fact is loooooooooong overdue, considering the massive surge in cases in places under heavy lock down and those that are opened. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bob

[Shawnster]

16 minutes ago, Bob said:

Well, States like California, which never really reopened

Guess this depends on what one means by reopen.  My worldly family in California seemed to be carrying on like normal with their Halloween trick-or-treating and their "Friendsgiving" Thanksgiving meal.  

 

Anyone reading this living in California?  What's it been like there this summer and now?  Can you get restaurant take-out?  How locked down is the state?

[Bob]

10 minutes ago, Shawnster said:

Guess this depends on what one means by reopen.  My worldly family in California seemed to be carrying on like normal with their Halloween trick-or-treating and their "Friendsgiving" Thanksgiving meal.  

 

Anyone reading this living in California?  What's it been like there this summer and now?  Can you get restaurant take-out?  How locked down is the state?

Well, I think "open" means you can patronize all business, even with capacity limits. I would say "partial reopening" means some, but not all business can have patrons. Full lockdown is basically a stay home order.

 

My State has been under a partial reopening for 2 weeks (dine-in closed, and so are theaters, bowling alleys etc) and cases didn't decrease, and its been extended 12 days. 

 

No one has a clue. They're just trying anything at this point. Throwing stuff against the wall. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bob

[Qapla]

If I am not mistaken, I think New Zealand did a "true" lockdown and they did not have the initial results many places did and they have not a a new surge, either.

 

Perhaps some of the JWT members here can shed light on the situation and how NZ is doing.

 

[Bob]

13 minutes ago, Qapla said:

If I am not mistaken, I think New Zealand did a "true" lockdown and they did not have the initial results many places did and they have not a a new surge, either.

 

Perhaps some of the JWT members here can shed light on the situation and how NZ is doing.

 

Yeah bro.

 

New Zealand is basically an isolated island, and only has 5 million people living there. 
 

So they never got seeded like places that attract millions of infected tourists (US, UK, for example). 
 

If they got seeded like we did, it’ll be the same there. Trying any and everything with basically little to almost no effect. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bob

[hatcheckgirl]

52 minutes ago, Bob said:

Yeah bro.

 

New Zealand is basically an isolated island, and only has 5 million people living there. 
 

So they never got seeded like places that attract millions of infected tourists (US, UK, for example). 
 

If they got seeded like we did, it’ll be the same there. Trying any and everything with basically little to almost no effect. 

Bob, not even remotely in the ball park, my brother. New Zealand, like Australia, had governments that acted quickly and closed borders. Then locked down to get rid of community spread. Then tested extensively and contact traced until they were sure as is humanly possible there was no more spread. And effectively quarantined incoming nationals returning from overseas. Then they opened up. This is what has to be done.
 

Unfortunately, countries like the US didn’t have that sort of compliance and too many conflicting ideas and bad leadership, and basically it got out of hand. But nothing can be done about that now. I hope for you all bearing the brunt of government mismanagement that you maintain your spiritual stamina to endure. 
 

In countries that have managed the pandemics with lockdowns, covid has been able to be kept at bay. Yes second waves have happened, but as the Melbourne and Auckland lockdowns have shown, it worked. Again. It’s a heavy toll and yet no other choice exists for now. 
 

But ultimately covid won’t be gone for a long time. Until Jehovah‘s righteous kingdom comes. 

[califlorican]

1 hour ago, Bob said:

Interesting.

 

Well, States like California, which never really reopened, and the UK, which went into a second lockdown, all had massive surges in cases, which proves the lockdown "experiment" failed as well.

 

I think when you look at two contrasting approaches, one with full lockdown and without a full lockdown, and see neither method slowed COVID, it means no one has any idea how to control it.

 

When dealing with a novel virus, there are no experts and all approaches are basically experiments.

Are you in California? People here have been acting like things are back to normal for months now, since the stay at home order ended back in May/June. Restaurants and bars were packed, gyms open and running, shopping malls and Costco with no limitations on capacity as far as I could tell- it was definitely not "locked down" at all. I'm scared to even go to Costco at this point. I'm so glad they had to go back down to 20% capacity starting today, and closed down all restaurant dining and bars. I'm not sure why anyone would think CA never really reopened. It was very much open, unfortunately. We're back to a stay-at-home order starting last night, with no mixing of households allowed, but I don't think people will actually do as instructed.

 

It's one thing to say there's a lockdown, a whole other thing to actually follow the recommendations. If people aren't following them, obviously cases will go up. Doesn't matter if the government has issued a stay at home order; a lot of people have just been ignoring it and doing what they want, sadly. The reason China is doing much better now than they were at the beginning of the year is likely because the government was VERY strict on locking down- no choice in the matter for their citizens. 

 

I also don't think it's fair to say there are no experts with this virus. Yes it's novel, but transmission is still the same as other coronaviruses, just much more contagious. If you look at what the CDC recommended for SARS and MERs, it was basically the same preventative measures as COVID.  

[califlorican]

2 hours ago, Shawnster said:

Guess this depends on what one means by reopen.  My worldly family in California seemed to be carrying on like normal with their Halloween trick-or-treating and their "Friendsgiving" Thanksgiving meal.  

 

Anyone reading this living in California?  What's it been like there this summer and now?  Can you get restaurant take-out?  How locked down is the state?

This summer was horrible. Restaurants were able to open for outdoor dining, and our entire downtown area was packed. No social distancing at all. Movie theatres and gyms opened up at limited capacity, and stores that previously had limits for capacity no longer did. 

We just entered another stay-at-home order as of last night, with all restaurants (other than takeout/delivery), indoor gyms, playgrounds, movie theatres, barber shops, etc. closing again. We are not allowed to meet with anyone outside of our household, not even outdoors. This will last until January 4th.

 

I'm really hoping people will actually follow the order and not go away for the holiday. SFO airport had 60,000 people pass through their airport during Thanksgiving, which means tons of people are still traveling. It's just crazy to me. 

[Thesauron]

Bob, not even remotely in the ball park, my brother. New Zealand, like Australia, had governments that acted quickly and closed borders. Then locked down to get rid of community spread. Then tested extensively and contact traced until they were sure as is humanly possible there was no more spread. And effectively quarantined incoming nationals returning from overseas. Then they opened up. This is what has to be done.
 
Unfortunately, countries like the US didn’t have that sort of compliance and too many conflicting ideas and bad leadership, and basically it got out of hand. But nothing can be done about that now. I hope for you all bearing the brunt of government mismanagement that you maintain your spiritual stamina to endure. 
 
In countries that have managed the pandemics with lockdowns, covid has been able to be kept at bay. Yes second waves have happened, but as the Melbourne and Auckland lockdowns have shown, it worked. Again. It’s a heavy toll and yet no other choice exists for now. 
 
But ultimately covid won’t be gone for a long time. Until Jehovah‘s righteous kingdom comes. 

Same thing happened in Iceland. They were protected, not because of any testing or isolation they did, but because they are a rather remote island.

[Sequoia]

One reasons lockdowns haven't worked in many cases is many people don't follow the law.

[Bob]

6 hours ago, hatcheckgirl said:

Bob, not even remotely in the ball park, my brother. New Zealand, like Australia, had governments that acted quickly and closed borders. Then locked down to get rid of community spread. Then tested extensively and contact traced until they were sure as is humanly possible there was no more spread. And effectively quarantined incoming nationals returning from overseas. Then they opened up. This is what has to be done.
 

Unfortunately, countries like the US didn’t have that sort of compliance and too many conflicting ideas and bad leadership, and basically it got out of hand. But nothing can be done about that now. I hope for you all bearing the brunt of government mismanagement that you maintain your spiritual stamina to endure. 
 

In countries that have managed the pandemics with lockdowns, covid has been able to be kept at bay. Yes second waves have happened, but as the Melbourne and Auckland lockdowns have shown, it worked. Again. It’s a heavy toll and yet no other choice exists for now. 
 

But ultimately covid won’t be gone for a long time. Until Jehovah‘s righteous kingdom comes. 

Well, I’m pretty close I believe. However, this was discussed in the other thread so I won’t repeat it here. 

 

 

[Bob]

6 hours ago, Thesauron said:

Same thing happened in Iceland. They were protected, not because of any testing or isolation they did, but because they are a rather remote island.

Yes, tourism drove the heavy seeding in the US and Europe. No one goes to Iceland or New Zealand. And the isolation of those places allowed extraordinary control over who gets on the island and who gets off. 
 

What protected them was geography and circumstance. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bob

[Bob]

6 hours ago, califlorican said:

Are you in California? People here have been acting like things are back to normal for months now, since the stay at home order ended back in May/June. Restaurants and bars were packed, gyms open and running, shopping malls and Costco with no limitations on capacity as far as I could tell- it was definitely not "locked down" at all. I'm scared to even go to Costco at this point. I'm so glad they had to go back down to 20% capacity starting today, and closed down all restaurant dining and bars. I'm not sure why anyone would think CA never really reopened. It was very much open, unfortunately. We're back to a stay-at-home order starting last night, with no mixing of households allowed, but I don't think people will actually do as instructed.

 

It's one thing to say there's a lockdown, a whole other thing to actually follow the recommendations. If people aren't following them, obviously cases will go up. Doesn't matter if the government has issued a stay at home order; a lot of people have just been ignoring it and doing what they want, sadly. The reason China is doing much better now than they were at the beginning of the year is likely because the government was VERY strict on locking down- no choice in the matter for their citizens. 

 

I also don't think it's fair to say there are no experts with this virus. Yes it's novel, but transmission is still the same as other coronaviruses, just much more contagious. If you look at what the CDC recommended for SARS and MERs, it was basically the same preventative measures as COVID.  

I spent some time in Southern California in July, vacationing.

What I saw was universal masking, and people being careful. I didn’t dine in though so I can’t speak for that. 

[Bob]

7 hours ago, JW2017 said:

One reasons lockdowns haven't worked in many cases is many people don't follow the law.

The "law" has to actually make sense, be consistent, and are in line with science for it to be reasonably followed. This is the world not the organization. For example:

 

- You could protest in the streets for months about "social justice", arm-in-arm, no social distancing, yelling, by the hundreds of thousands, yet, anti-lockdown protest were deemed "super spreader" events and morally wrong and condemned by the same people who promoted BLM protests. You can't expect people to follow that sort of anti-science hypocrisy.

 

-The CDC now says to wear a mask even with members of your own household. Yet, you cannot socially distance at home, and people who live together share common areas like kitchen and bathrooms, beds and bedrooms. That makes no sense and it makes mask-wearing at home pointless.

 

- Some States are basically making it a misdemeanor CRIME to be outside your home even by yourself, without a mask on. A mask is designed for indoor or close contact situations, not walking your dog alone in a park.

 

People understandably recoil at that sort of nonsense that places are making legally binding now.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bob

[Bob]

7 hours ago, JW2017 said:

One reasons lockdowns haven't worked in many cases is many people don't follow the law.

Oh and I forgot to mentioned the lawmakers aren't even following their own laws. So how can they expect the people to?

 

Denver mayor branded a HYPOCRITE for travelling over Thanksgiving (msn.com)

 

Newsom apologizes for French Laundry dinner amid COVID-19 - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

 

Austin Mayor Is Latest Official To Not Practice The COVID-19 Precautions They Preach | HuffPost

 

Attitude reflects leadership.

 

 

[Shawnster]

19 minutes ago, Bob said:

The "law" has to actually make sense, be consistent, and are in line with science for it to be reasonably followed. This is the world not the organization.

Maybe for worldly people who do not respect law and authority.  Witnesses prove its possible to obey laws while disagreeing with them.  

 

21 minutes ago, Bob said:

You could protest in the streets for months about "social justice", arm-in-arm, no social distancing, yelling, by the hundreds of thousands, yet, anti-lockdown protest were deemed "super spreader" events and morally wrong and condemned by the same people who promoted BLM protests. You can't expect people to follow that sort of anti-science hypocrisy.

What law are you referring to here?  You've not stated anything about a law.  You do site hypocrisy in belief and actions, but didn't mention a law. 

 

Further, citing protests as examples, while common this year, is really demonstrating the opposite.  Protests by definition, are in opposition to the established order.  Laws, by definition, are made to support the established order.  The result is protests are on the opposite side of the law (even when the protest is legal /protected free speech)

 

26 minutes ago, Bob said:

The CDC now says to wear a mask even with members of your own household

CDC recommendations are not laws. The CDC is not a legislative organization. 

 

27 minutes ago, Bob said:

Some States are basically making it a misdemeanor CRIME to be outside your home even by yourself, without a mask on. A mask is designed for indoor or close contact situations, not walking your dog alone in a park.

Source, please 

 

27 minutes ago, Bob said:

People understandably recoil at that sort of nonsense that places are making legally binding now.

Except for the vague unsourced comment about wearing a mask while outside walking your dog alone, you did not share any examples about contradictory yet legally binding laws. 

8 minutes ago, Bob said:

Oh and I forgot to mentioned the lawmakers aren't even following their own laws. So how can they expect the people to?

Now, this is a statement I can agree with.  In order to expect others to follow laws, the leaders must abide by those same laws and lead by example. 

[Bob]

7 minutes ago, Shawnster said:

Maybe for worldly people who do not respect law and authority.  Witnesses prove its possible to obey laws while disagreeing with them. 

You actually left out the critical portion of my quote:

 

”This is the world not the organization” .

 

...clearly saying that we are obedient even if we don’t agree. 

[Thesauron]

I think that when we entered into this situation, nobody knew what to do, exactly. Did you? Nor did the politicians, and experts were far from united. Do masks help? It depends on what studies you look at. Is a lockdown sure to slow down or stop the spread? And are we willing to take the consequences? Will an extensive lockdown damage the economy so badly that it will take a very long time to perhaps recover? A lot of things had to be considered.

[Shawnster]

4 hours ago, Bob said:

You actually left out the critical portion of my quote:

 

”This is the world not the organization” .

 

...clearly saying that we are obedient even if we don’t agree. 

But, as Witnesses, we are also trained to be in subjection to the worldly governments.  Yes, the world can't be submissive even if you paid them.  We, on the other hand, are more than willing to comply with any directions that do not violate Bible standards. 

[Qapla]

2 hours ago, Thesauron said:

Will an extensive lockdown damage the economy so badly that it will take a very long time to perhaps recover?

 

The same could be said of wars ... yet, there have been two world wars and numerous other wars since - and even the US has been more than willing to participate in such wars at the expense of their own and other nations economies. The possibility of economic devastation has not stopped nations from participating in wars.

 

The world did recover from the economic devastation of the two world wars ...

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Qapla

[califlorican]

7 hours ago, Bob said:

I spent some time in Southern California in July, vacationing.

What I saw was universal masking, and people being careful. I didn’t dine in though so I can’t speak for that. 

Oof. CA is a huge state, so one area can’t speak for the whole state. Huntington Beach/Orange County has been known to refuse wearing masks. Oakland and SF have been doing a good job too, but the small town we live in and other small towns near us (and there are a lot of them)- not so much. It honestly doesn’t matter if many areas are doing as they’re meant to when the rest of the population isn’t. It’s just sad all around.