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Topper wrote: ↑Mon Apr 06, 2020 12:58 pm

Per wrote: ↑Mon Apr 06, 2020 12:17 pm Boris now in intensive care.

Dominic Raab is in charge.

Working on his own Brexit.

I now know one fatality. Not here, Belize.

Think this thing has been circulating for a long long time and something changed and it mutated to what is. I got real sick in late Oct early Nov. The worst flu I have ever had. Had a hard time breathing and was spitting up a lung every 5 seconds. Fever, sore throat, body aches, night sweats, the whole thing. Took over 2 week to get over it, another two to feel normal and another month to feel fully recovered. Then this thing hits and I get mild symptoms. Lasted 5 days and mild.

I think this might explain why some people get nothing or mild symptoms. Why some can be spreaders while showing no symptoms. My theory anyway, one that is gaining traction as they start the process of tracing it back.

I also think if they tested everyone we would see the rates drop considerably. The death rate and serious infection rate that is. I think it is far more widespread than we may want to believe. However its the fact everyone gets hit at once and in clusters that makes this so bad. Every year there is at least one out break in a seniors home in Canada that leads to a lot of deaths. Its that this sucker is hitting everyone at once and we cant keep.

Hockey Widow wrote: ↑Mon Apr 06, 2020 7:12 pm Think this thing has been circulating for a long long time and something changed and it mutated to what is. I got real sick in late Oct early Nov. The worst flu I have ever had. Had a hard time breathing and was spitting up a lung every 5 seconds. Fever, sore throat, body aches, night sweats, the whole thing. Took over 2 week to get over it, another two to feel normal and another month to feel fully recovered. Then this thing hits and I get mild symptoms. Lasted 5 days and mild.

I think this might explain why some people get nothing or mild symptoms. Why some can be spreaders while showing no symptoms. My theory anyway, one that is gaining traction as they start the process of tracing it back.

I also think if they tested everyone we would see the rates drop considerably. The death rate and serious infection rate that is. I think it is far more widespread than we may want to believe. However its the fact everyone gets hit at once and in clusters that makes this so bad. Every year there is at least one out break in a seniors home in Canada that leads to a lot of deaths. Its that this sucker is hitting everyone at once and we cant keep.

Not an impossible theory by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe similar to the Spanish Flu we are actually already on the second go around with this critter.

Apart from the actual physical toll and the casualties caused directly by this pandemic, it will also wreak havoc with the economy, and indirectly cause even more casualties due to landing a great number of people in dire poverty as businesses go belly up and shut down.

This is one of the reasons that Sweden has not been willing to go into a complete lockdown. Our Public Health Agency takes a long term approach and fears that too drastic measures may cause more deaths long term than just trying to slow the spread without closing work places.

Which approach proves more effective remains to be seen. This virus is a new phenomenon, and we haven't been in a similar situation since the Spanish flu, and society was completely different back then.

The good news from our front is that Sweden's economy is very robust at this point, which makes it easier for the government to address economic issues. This may come as a surprise for those who subscribe to the propaganda spread by Russia and the Alt Right, stating that Sweden is falling apart at the seams. Let's take a little look at some basic economic indicators, using the USA, Canada and Germany as comparissons:

GDP per capita (PPP), IMF 2020 estimate:
USA (#10) $ 67,426
Sweden (#15) $ 55,989
Germany (#17) $ 55,306
Canada (#20) $ 52,144
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... per_capita

This is a category wherer the USA excels. The nine countries ahead of them are (apart from Ireland, Norway and Switzerland) mainly smallish city-states like Qatar, Singapore, Luxembourg and Kuwait. Sweden is not that far behind though, and ahead of other stable ecomomies like Germany and Canada.

Real GDP growth, average 2013-2018:
Sweden 2.71
USA 2.24
Canada 2.13
Germany 1.70
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... rowth_rate

The really high and really low growth rate are typically both in developing countries. Really high, because they start from such a low level, if they are doing well, and really low because their economy is tanking, if they're not doing so well.
Typically you want to try to stay above 2% in a stable economy. When you go below that, the economy starts to stagnate.

Debt to GDP ratio (IMF data from 2018):
Sweden 37.23%
Germany 56.93%
Canada 88.01%
USA 106.70%
https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... onal-debt/

Swedish law requires that budgets are balanced, and both our right and left wing governments have worked hard on debt reduction to keep the economy healthy. This means that in a time of crisis, like this, we can afford to borrow and hopefully spend our way out of this crisis, without getting ourselves too deep into debt. American governments (after Clinton) have tended to undertax and overspend, in the case of Bush and Trump, because of political conviction, in the case of Obama to deal with the financial crisis caused by Bush, and therefore they already have a substantial debt burden to deal with going into this crisis. Obviously never read that bible part about the seven fat cows and the seven skinny ones.

Employment rate, age 15-64, 2018 OECD:
Sweden 77.5%
Germany 75.9%
Canada 73.5%
USA 70.7%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... yment_rate

People keep talking about unemployment figures, but they only show how many are looking for jobs. They don't include those who have given up or never even tried. And all countries tend to use different cute definitions of unemployment to keep the numbers artificially low. The employment rate instead simply divides those employed by the total population in that age group and thus gives a better picture of the inefficiencies in a country. Granted, I prefer the Eurostat numbers, that only look at the 20-64 age group, as those under 20 should usually be in school, but that's the same in all these four countries, so it doesn't really disturb the comparisson.
Either way, what you can see is that a substantially larger part of the population in the USA are not self supporting. And that is before the layoffs caused by corona began....

Poverty rate (portion of people living on less than half the median household income) OECD 2015-2019:
Sweden 9.3%
Germany 11.3%
Canada 11.6%
USA 21.2%
https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm

Now, these are relative numbers, but they show that inequality is greater in the USA than in the other three countries. Far more people have problems making ends meet there, which is logical considering that their welfare institutions are far weaker than in typical western democracies, and that is much harder for someone from a poor background to get a good education and move up the ladder then it is in Canada, Sweden or Germany.
In absolute numbers, looking at the percentage of people living on less than USD 5.50 a day, the USA has 2% and the other three have 1%.
Either way, this means that the layoffs caused by corona are likely to hit much harder in the USA than in the other three countries, as there is already substantial poverty to deal with, which makes it harder to pinpoint the needs of those losing their jobs now.

Btw, that Ireland is now firmly planted among the top nine countries in the world when it comes to GDP per capita is in part because they joined the EU and in part because of Brexit.

Since they are an English speaking country with cheap labour available and situated within the European Union many American and Asian companies have chosen to have branch offices and even assembly plants there, which helps boost the Irish economy. They have gone from being one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of the richest (per capita, that is).

And Britain leaving the EU has strengthened this trend as many US and Asian companies have now relocated their European head offices from London to Dublin.

Per wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 4:55 am

Since they are an English speaking country with cheap labour available and situated within the European Union many American and Asian companies have chosen to have branch offices and even assembly plants there, which helps boost the Irish economy. They have gone from being one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of the richest (per capita, that is).

The double Irish with a Dutch sandwich is a tax avoidance technique employed by certain large corporations, involving the use of a combination of Irish and Dutch subsidiary companies to shift profits to low or no-tax jurisdictions.

One category Sweden is leading the USA in(and the world for that matter) is COVID deaths per million.

Cornuck wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:12 am

Per wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 4:55 am

Since they are an English speaking country with cheap labour available and situated within the European Union many American and Asian companies have chosen to have branch offices and even assembly plants there, which helps boost the Irish economy. They have gone from being one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of the richest (per capita, that is).

The double Irish with a Dutch sandwich is a tax avoidance technique employed by certain large corporations, involving the use of a combination of Irish and Dutch subsidiary companies to shift profits to low or no-tax jurisdictions.

Ireland, an EU have not existing on subsidies.

Such a role model.

Virus hunters now saying that they do not believe C-19 started in the wet markets of Wuhan. They are now tracing cases as far back as Oct 2019. Sporadic cases that didn't spread. They still believe it came from bats although not proven but believe it may have started late Oct early Nov from farmers. Farmers in China use bat poop for fertilizer. Their hypothesis at this point is that that was when this sucker made the leap, perhaps by first spreading from the fertilizer to a farm animal to a farmer. They are tracing sporadic outlier cases in the farm land. At some point they believe that it then began to spread in Wuhan but over 40% of the early cases there had no contact with the wet markets. So they don't think the virus originated there but was brought there by someone already infected.

They are concerned enough with this hypothesis because if true it means the virus could be sitting in farmers fields just waiting to erupt again. What they don't know is what was the trigger that caused it to become so lethal and spread so easily. But they are testing more tissue samples and reviewing more suspicious deaths as afar back as Aug 2019. So this thing could have been silently spreading for 6 or more months when something mutated.

Dr. No and his guano mine.

The Brown Wizard wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:20 am One category Sweden is leading the USA in (and the world for that matter) is COVID deaths per million.

San Marino 942.9
Spain 279.2
Italy 273.3
Andorra 271.8
Belgium 140.8
France 136.52
Netherlands 108.96
United Kingdom 79.15
Switzerland 67.48
Luxembourg 65.5

Sweden 47.23

USA 33.2

Well, we do at this point in time have more covid-19 casualties per million than the US, but we’re not in the top ten in the world, and I’m pretty sure the US will catch us pretty soon.
Not to mention the disasters we are going to see in the third world once the virus starts to spread...

But hey, it’s not a competition.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tota ... er-million

Israel Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, who previously claimed that the coronavirus was “divine punishment against homosexuality,” has tested positive for the virus.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressi ... r_facebook

Divine justice...!

Per wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 1:17 pm

The Brown Wizard wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:20 am One category Sweden is leading the USA in (and the world for that matter) is COVID deaths per million.

San Marino 942.9
Spain 279.2
Italy 273.3
Andorra 271.8
Belgium 140.8
France 136.52
Netherlands 108.96
United Kingdom 79.15
Switzerland 67.48
Luxembourg 65.5

Sweden 47.23

USA 33.2

Well, we do at this point in time have more covid-19 casualties per million than the US, but we’re not in the top ten in the world, and I’m pretty sure the US will catch us pretty soon.
Not to mention the disasters we are going to see in the third world once the virus starts to spread...

But hey, it’s not a competition.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tota ... er-million

I stand corrected.

I would agree with you about the USA passing you in kill ratio except for the bizarre rogue policy currently in practice over there.

*Unless you guys change direction and join the rest of the developed world in adopting an isolationist approach of course

Per wrote: ↑Tue Apr 07, 2020 1:17 pm Not to mention the disasters we are going to see in the third world once the virus starts to spread...

I know the first death in Belize. Completely fucked up. Worked at City hall in one city, lived in another city across the country and commuted daily. Working with the public was part of his job. Became symptomatic, reported it, was told it was nothing to worry about and couldn't be COVID 19 because he had no contact with case #1 (he is #4). A few days later is incapacitated, taken to three hospitals and one clinic before anyone would finally see him. Isolated in a tent on the hospital grounds with no plumbing available to him. Dead two days later. Wife also has a job interacting with the public

Think of the poverty reduction.