Why Americans Should Adopt The Sweden Model On COVID-19

 ZeroHedge

Conclusions

The data suggest that lockdowns have not prevented any deaths from covid-19. At best, lockdowns have deferred death for a short time, but they cannot possibly be continued for the long term. It seems likely that one will not have to even compare economic deprivation with loss of life, as the final death toll following authoritarian lockdowns will most likely exceed the deaths from letting people choose how to manage their own risk. After taking the unprecedented economic depression into account, history will likely judge these lockdowns to be the greatest policy error of this generation. Covid-19 is not going to be defeated; we will have to learn how to coexist with it. The only way we can learn how best to cope with covid-19 is to let individuals manage their own risk, observe the outcomes, and learn from mistakes. The world owes a great debt to Sweden for setting an example that the rest of us can follow."

 

Dan-gerous Will the virus outwit Dan Andrews?

 Spectator Australia

Seemingly ignorant of all this, Daniel Andrews thinks he can eradicate coronavirus but, like the Hellespont, it won’t do what people tell it to. Unable to locate the microscopic virus and unable to explain how shutting down the economy will stop it spreading, Andrews is instead punishing the people of Victoria by taking their freedoms and destroying their livelihoods. Sadly, we have no Artabanus in Australia. The clearest warning came from a professor of epidemiology at the University of Oxford, Sunetra Gupta. In early July, she called Australia’s approach ‘selfish’ and ‘self-congratulatory’, going on to say that ‘there is no way lockdown can eliminate the virus’. A cursory glance at the coronavirus figures around the world will show that there is no correlation between house arrest, shop closures, and a reduced spread of the disease. So why does Andrews continue to implement failed policies? ......In Australia, a disease of the mind, causing panic, bondage, and conformity, will harm more people than the coronavirus. We will become tillers of the soil, turning our masked faces away from each other while the king who brought us to ruin sits in his palace eating grapes."

Kiwis’ bitter fruit

 Spectator Australia

That said, the problems with the Kiwi ‘try to eradicate’ approach are legion. To name just a couple, tourism constitutes somewhere between 6 and 20 per cent of the NZ economy, depending on how many indirect benefits and how much of the travel sector you count. Pretty hard to mimic 17th century Japan, with borders closed to all the world’s potential infectors and still have anything much left of those industries. In effect, then, the Kiwis are betting the farm on a vaccine. Meanwhile, the looming economic carnage is going to carry in its wake a less well-funded health care system, plenty of indirect deaths, massive inter-generational unfairness and a hobbled private sector.

At the same time, up in Sweden they look to be as close to herd immunity as anywhere on the planet. And don’t let anyone blow smoke in your eyes, the Swedish economy has weathered this virus better than most anywhere (save Taiwan) in the Western world.

 

History to 'vindicate Swedish COVID-19 strategy'

 SkyNewsAustralia

Sky News host Rowan Dean says the effectiveness of the COVID-19 herd immunity strategy implemented in Sweden and Switzerland “should put the fear of God into every politician in this country”. Some emerging reports seem to endorse the herd immunity strategy utilised by Sweden, which has now recorded far fewer deaths per capita than the United Kingdom while maintaining basic freedoms and a far milder recession. Former Swedish State Epidemiologist Professor Johan Giesecke warned a major lockdown would simply destroy the economy and leave the population without herd immunity and permanently vulnerable to future COVID-19 outbreaks. Mr Dean also examined Switzerland and its use of the drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) which is currently banned in Victoria and Queensland as a coronavirus treatment. He said “Switzerland briefly banned the drug after the Lancet claimed it was killing people” but quickly re-instated the drug when the article was withdrawn by the journal. According to a study done by John Hopkins University during the weeks preceding the ban on HCQ in Switzerland the fatality ratio index for Switzerland fluctuated between 3-5 per cent. “Will history record that not only was the destruction of our economy completely pointless but preventative treatments using drugs such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin in combination with others were sitting there right under our noses all along?” Mr Dean said."

Sweden Hits COVID-19 "Triple Whammy": No Lockdowns, Low Deaths & Minimal Economic Damage

 ZeroHedge

Perhaps the biggest example of the Western media's inherent biases surrounding its coverage of Sweden's approach to tackling COVID-19. Plenty of media outlets decried the country's "massive" fatality rate compared to its lockdown-favoring neighbors, but failed to add the context necessary to see that the difference was only a couple thousand deaths, and that Sweden's per capita mortality rate was still lower than Britain's, and other countries that favored lockdowns.

When Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden's strategy, said during an interview that he would have done things "differently" if given a second chance, the Western press, including the NYT, rushed to frame this as an admission of guilt for failing to order the types of restrictive lockdowns seen in other European countries. Tegnell later clarified that this isn't what he meant at all.

What's more, in Sweden, deaths have declined nearly to zero. And since the country's economy has remained open this whole time, there's little risk of resurgence when whatever minimal restrictions are still in place are finally lifted."

 

Lockdown Restrictions Are A Test To See How Much Tyranny Americans Will Accept

 ZeroHedge

To be clear, it's not only the pandemic being exploited as leverage to conjure these situations. The leftist riots are another example of a bought and paid for crisis that is being used in an attempt to convince half of Americans that breaking constitutional principles and instituting unprecedented government power is somehow an acceptable sacrifice. The riots and the virus response work hand-in-hand; one is created to get leftists to demand totalitarianism in the name of public safety, the other is created to get conservatives to demand totalitarianism in the name of public safety.

The solution always ends up being totalitarian government.

 

Is there a politician ‘with the spine to tell the truth’ on COVID-19: Alan Jones

SkyNewsAustralia 

Australians are sick and tired of dictatorial politicians promoting a climate of fear and alarmism over the coronavirus says Sky News host Alan Jones. Mr Jones said politicians “never cite the figures, which prove they are either ignorant or duplicitous”. “Today, Daniel Andrews seems unhappy with the decline in numbers, so he has ordered more testing in regional areas where there are no COVID cases”. Mr Jones also said NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian “is the high priestess of alarmism”. Mr Jones reiterated the point made by the World Health Organisation that 99 per cent of coronavirus cases are mild. “In Australia, it has cost us so far, $360 billion, plus, for 361 deaths. “A billion dollars per life. “And in all of Australia, 25 million people, 51 are critical, 43 in Victoria (and) eight in the rest of Australia”. “And this is a pandemic? Is there a politician with the spine to tell the truth”. 

The New Zealand Prime Minister has been singularly obsessed with eliminating the virus from the island. In this video I discuss the consequences of her actions and compare it to what Sweden did.

 Tont Heller

The New Zealand Prime Minister has been singularly obsessed with eliminating the virus from the island. In this video I discuss the consequences of her actions and compare it to what Sweden did. (YouTube)

 From the comments:

ulazygit 3 days ago

As a New Zealander, I confidently confirm the majority of us do NOT subscribe to comrade Jacinta’s megalomaniac approach to destroying the economy of my country. Whilst it’s true that 250k people are jobless directly as a result of her virtuousness, many more, including me (working in the food industry) are now jobless too. Her socialist agenda and self-congratulating obsession of ‘beating a virus by locking it out’ has suckered in many desperately frightened people, whipped up by a communist-leaning media. The sooner she and her cronies are gone, the better, but I fear the political propaganda being spread prior to our GE this year will see this destructress back in power, putting more people into poverty and lockdown to control any objection to this madness."

 

Ivermectin treatment is a ‘real killer of coronavirus’: Professor

SkyNewsAustralia
Gastroenterologist Professor Thomas Borody says Ivermectin used in conjunction with two other drugs is making it look like “corona is very simple to kill”. The drug is Federal Drug Agency and World Health Organisation approved; it is widely used for parasitic infections and is being cited and prescribed as treatment against the deadly coronavirus. “It has very few side effects, and is a real killer of coronavirus,” Professor Borody told Sky News host Chris Kenny. (YouTube)

COVID-19 treatments are ‘staring at us in the face’ but have been ignored

SkyNewsAustralia
Mr Smith pointed to a treatment for coronavirus which has already been tested on patients with close to 90-100 per cent success rate involving a concoction of three drugs: Ivermectin, Doxy-Cycline, and Zinc. He also spoke of the lack of government funding into a potential vaccine developed by Flinders University in Adelaide. “We have treatments for this virus starring at us in the face, but they’re being ignored.” (YouTube)

'I must call Prime Minister Scott Morrison to account': Andrew Bolt

SkyNewsAustralia
He said there should be "tougher rules to make sure infected people do not leave home, much faster testing of people ... and better protection for the aged, which the Morrison government and the Victorian government failed so miserably to provide". "And then, yes, social distancing for the rest of us, but then open up. Let kids to go school, let Victorians visit each other again, let shops open". Mr Bolt also said hydroxychloroquine "could be our best cure in the worst pandemic in our generation" and is a drug which the Prime Minister has been "blind" to in combating the virus." (YouTube)

Big Pharma's 'Narrative' Is Failing

ZeroHedge

WHAT THE AMERICA’S FRONTLINE DOCTORS GROUP SAID:  

1. They believe that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for Covid-19.

This is the claim made by several of the speakers, including Dr. Immanuel, based on their own clinical experience, as well as on multiple published studies. Many of those studies are listed here, and here.

2. State licensing boards are using their power to forcibly prevent people from having access to this drug.

According to Dr. Gold, many states have empowered their pharmacists to not honor prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine to be used in treating Covid-19. This, she says, is unprecedented:

“It has never happened that a state has threatened a doctor for prescribing a universally accepted safe generic cheap drug off-label.”

Meanwhile, says Gold, the drug is available over the counter in many other countries, including Iran and Indonesia, where it can be found “in the vitamin section”.

3. There is a coordinated campaign to discredit and suppress information about the drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for Covid-19:

“If it seems like there is an orchestrated attack going on against hydroxychloroquine,” said Dr. James Todaro, “it’s because there is.”

Dr. Todaro is speaking from experience. He was the co-author of a March 13 white paper arguing for the use of hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19. The paper was made public on Google Docs, received a lot of attention, and was then removed–without warning–by Google. (It has since been put back up.)

4. The World Health Organization  halted its trials of hydroxychloroquine based on a blatantly fraudulent study that relied on data that it appears never even existed.

Bear in mind that this is the authority upon which YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has said she bases her company’s policy on “misinformation”.
The WHO later resumed trials after independent investigators discovered the problems and the study’s authors retracted it.

5. We should be able to have a free and open discussion about this.

Dr. Dr. Joseph Lapado from UCLA, sums it up:

“We’ve been using (hydroxychloroquine) for a long time. But all of a sudden it’s been escalated to this area of looking like some poisonous drug. That just doesn’t make sense… At the very least, we can live in a world where there are differences of opinion about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, but still allow more data to come, still allow physicians who feel they have expertise with it to use that medication, and still, you know, talk and learn and get better at helping people with Covid-19.”