Coronavirus Open Thread 2022

I’m repeatedly baffled by the complete refusal of our elected leaders to rein in these clowns - and indeed seem to be collaborating in their madness. While the CECC might tenuously be able to claim emergency jurisdiction on the basis of the Pandemic Law (by misclassifying death by cancer/heart disease/accidents etc as “COVID deaths”) there is absolutely no legal basis for them claiming continued jurisdiction over the country on the basis that humans get diseases.

And in any case this claim:

“masks have a considerable preventative effect on other respiratory diseases”

is dubious at best. It’s true that there’s been a dip in (e.g.) seasonal flu, but there are other explanations that don’t involve magical masks.

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They do, because certain countries’ citizens are not angry enough in large numbers.
Still a sheeple society for some.

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Indeed. The Law is whatever people are prepared to accede to.

Of course, it helps enormously if the government has spent two years preparing the psychological terrain.

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Yep, Taiwan has lived in a bubble. Brain-washed that such a bubble would keep a virus at bay. I’ve stated before, that Taiwan would eventually have its “Native American Indian smallpox moment” when COVID-19 (smallpox in 1500s in N. America) stakes its claim to the island and ravishes it. Yet, the #s are just like any other country. Oh well, cannot change Taiwanese sheeple characteristic. Thank God my wife has come full-circle on this virus. She was pro-Taiwan for all its actions. Now for half a year realizes it’s all been bull-sheet after undergoing all kinds of stupid rules based on a virus kill rate of nearly the seasonal flu.
Oh well. Let the other side argue that a death averted is a life worth saving. In my opinion, bull. As others have noted. Where have been the PSA about being healthy, exercising, taking vitamins C and D? zilch. Big pharma wants this virus. It doesn’t want it iradicated.

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Up to the end of 2021, anyone who had tested positive for COVID-19 and died was listed as a COVID-19 death, he said.
This year, however, COVID-19 deaths are being listed only as those that can be directly attributed to the disease, Chou said.
As of June 8, the deaths of 553 people who had COVID-19 were ruled as unrelated to the disease itself, according to Chou.
He said that 39 of them were either suicide or accidents, and in 227 cases, COVID-19 was not listed as the cause of death on the death certificates.

Yeah. Sweden. Winning.

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19,000 deaths actually isn’t bad at all considering they never locked down or closed their borders.

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Sweden’s a relatively small country, only ten million people. They’re haven’t performed as badly as the United States or United Kingdom, but significantly worse than other countries that you’d think are about equivalent.

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There is no useful information in that ‘19,016’ figure. We don’t know who those people were or the circumstances of their deaths. There is a more comprehensive discussion here:

Even if we take it at face value, that’s an apparent “of or with COVID” death rate of 0.2% over 2.5 years, equivalent to 0.08% annually. In reality Sweden saw a one-off increase (1.6-sigma) over the 5-year average during 2020, which is 90%+ unlikely to be due to chance. However their statistics also show deaths confined almost exclusively to the 70+ group (just like most countries) suggesting that relatively few life-years were lost.

Crucially, Sweden has not experienced the economic, social, psychological and ill-health problems that have led to a persistent increase in death rates in other countries during 2021/22, which is disproportionately affecting much younger people. COVID hit them, and then it was over.

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Sweden was hit hard in the early days. It’s difficult to imagine anyone recommending its policies in the future given what we have seen happen.

EDIT: Plus what @lostinasia posted above, with much greater precision!

Guy

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For your reference, this article from Uppsala University. Disregard at your own risk.

Guy

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The most common long-term symptoms were loss of smell and taste, fatigue, and respiratory problems.

I’m pretty fatigued with it too, despite not having had it (AFAIK).

I’m calling it “long non-COVID”.

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My post Covid symptoms have been really positive. I’m the slimmest I’ve been for decades and I feel fantastic. I hope it becomes long Covid.

Sweden was a major success story that was at turns ignored, or attacked with flimsy evidence.

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I was not responding to your lifestyle. I was responding to finley’s breezy assertion of absence, which is demonstrably untrue, unless you wish to object to the findings presented by the people at Uppsala.

Guy

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Those results were self-reported, correct?

The findings in the article I cited were compiled by “researchers at Uppsala University, Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet.”

If you object to their methodology, perhaps you could present your critique.

Guy

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Loss of sense of taste and smell can’t be much of an issue with Swedes anyway. I suppose they’ll miss out on that fermented fish thing they eat.

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Yes, plus fatigue and respiratory problems. You know, things that Swedes are famous for.

Guy

I usually wait for studies from their rival university: Downnsala

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I don’t have much of an opinion about long COVID - it seems like a complicated field. The subjective reporting is an issue though, as @TaipAmy noted (and also the authors themselves - “Limitations of the study include the possibility of recall bias and the subjective rating of symptoms.”).

There was an NIH study published last month looking for biochemical/immunological markers of long COVID, which essentially found nothing despite their best efforts. The study is summarized in this blog post:

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/search-long-covid

If there is a physiological/biochemical/immunological cause for “long Covid”, we have not seen it yet. This was a very thorough search, but it turned up nothing in those categories. . .

Follow-up post here:

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/long-covid-long-other-things

I have gone back and forth on these issues myself, and I know I’m not alone in that. That Nature Medicine review linked to in the last paragraph notes, as have many other observers, that the general symptoms of post-infection syndromes tend to be similar, and similar to others that have been grouped under the headings of chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and others. These are reported not only after Lyme disease, but after dengue, West Nile, Ebola, giardia, and more, and the common symptoms include fatigue (and difficulty with exertion), unrestorative sleep, difficulty concentrating, musculoskeletal pain, and general flu-like symptoms that come and go in severity. This commonality leads to two broad schools of thought: “this is a disease with a similar etiology brought on by immune response”, and “this is not a disease”. If you look at the side effects most commonly reported in clinical trials - and particularly the side effects reported in the placebo groups - you can come across fairly similar lists. It is very, very hard to pin this stuff down.

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