No, I think he's just saying that there should be a clearly publicly stated goal of gov actions that include uncertainties, cost, and benefits. I fully agree with that. For example, if you remove all restrictions, the goal is to fully return to normal. The uncertainties are future variants might come back and bite us hard, that we don't know if Omicron provides immunity (it probably doesn't provide any immunity to future variants at all - one of the bad news about it), that we still don't fully understand long covid, the benefit is most of society can be back to normal, the cost is X # of death (among older, among immunocompromised, among unvaccinated, among vaccinated), Y # of long covid, .... The known is vaccination provides very strong protection to Omicron against severe illness, does not provide robust protection against infection. The somewhat known is you likely will be infected once to twice a year with Omicron (assuming no new variant to displace it).... so on. Goals are probably pretty easy to communicate. Uncertainties, costs, and benefits are much harder.
When you say gov do you mean federal or state? The issue is that each state sets policy, so these things exist but there are 50 of them which is why its so confusing. Also the virus doesn't stay static so that gov'ts can do a lot of these types of projects. It's evolving, information is changing, and so forth. There is also a lot of politicization going on. I guess it's a great goal, but what specifically would this look like and how often would it need to be updated given changing info? Do you tell the public that you are winding things down when there is uncertainty? How do you manage risk of a new variant or when there is still much unknown? Public health policy is a whole field in and of itself. I seriously doubt the gov't is trying to have bad communication - and surely there must be one of the 50 states that is doing it right? Why doesn't he give an example?
At all levels. It's very challenging with a new virus that changes fairly quickly and significantly. But you state that as part of the community - the unknowns. And yes, here in the US with local making decisions more than federal, it can be a box of chocolates of info. But at min, I think they all need to communicate goals, uncertainties, cost, and benefits. You definitely should tell the public what the uncertainties are when you are winding down or adding new restrictions. Uncertainties aren't a reason for inaction but it's a reason for clear communication. Not only is it honest, but it also gives everyone a sense of how confident these decisions are and room for maneuver when thing changes, and they will change. I believe he's Danish and I think he did give an example of the stated goal (a law that stated what the goal was) for his country. I don't follow Denmark that much so not sure if they clearly state the uncertainties, cost, and benefits.
They could certainly communicate the uncertainties but I seriously doubt that would placate anyone. People are frustrated and understandably so. And I think it's worth analyzing why govts and public officials are taking the approach they do. We forget that we live in a litigious and blame society - where if something goes wrong you get second guessed, fired, or even sued. I think this pushes public officials to take the most cautious path in order to minimize risk in terms of lives loss and also minimizes something blowing up in their face.
Don't think placating anyone should be the goal. Certainly, anyone with political agenda wouldn't care and probably would take advantage of it. Can't worry those folks too much. It's about communications and I think there are real advantages to doing that. First, it's ethical and honest. Could we just stop there? When you state your uncertainties well, you likely cover the reason why your policy decisions blow up if it does. It isn't that you weren't aware or not planned for it, but you know but still decide - with the public knowing about it. Decisions made with a vacuum of inputs or without public knowledge of your goals and risks (behind closed door) provides more room for - why the hell did you do that, you lied, you don't know what you are doing...
There's a science to the dissemination of health information. They word things very carefully to incorporate uncertainties. If for example, a public agency says, "you should wear masks, but we are uncertain the work" - that would be a useless advisory. The usually express their uncertainly by the strength of the language in their recommendation. In terms of timing, it would only add frustration if public health officials gave probabilities as to when someone might or might not occur. People just don't digest information well like that. Simple is always best. "For the time being, we recommend x". That's it. The uncertainty is already packed into that statement without adding complexity that doesn't really tell you anything more. If you need the public to do x, don't add a bunch of junk around it. Where they could do a better job is in explaining their rationale better. Why do we need to wear masks while we walk from the entrance of a restaurant to the table? Does this really provide any kind of benefit - answering those kinds of questions would do a lot more to help people buy in.
Australia has half the infections and 1/10th of the deaths (per capita) compared to Sweden. The point of the restrictions was to buy time - to understand the disease, to develop therapeutics and vaccines, etc. It worked perfectly for them - they delayed their outbreak until the virus had weakened and they had vaccines. Sweden got a bunch of people killed in the interim. And Australia "lockdowns" meant that Australians were free to do everything and even be maskless like 90% of the time - the other 10% they went into hard lockdowns to kill small outbreaks and then went back to normal life. That said, Australia is a difficult comparison because it's highly isolated and can do things differently than mainland countries. A better comparison would be Sweden's neighbors: Sweden: 234,000 cases / milllion; 1640 deaths / milllion Norway: 201,000 cases / million, 282 deaths / million Finland: 108,000 cases / million, 400 deaths / million Even Sweden admitted their strategy was a failure and put up more restrictions recently - more strict than the US and other places have now. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidn...es-the-situation-requires-it/?sh=1de5104505eb A month ago: The Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson has announced a new series of coronavirus-related national measures as Sweden grapples with an increased burden on its healthcare system. From January 14, all licensed premises must close by 11pm, with seated service only and a limit of 8 people in a group. There are also new restrictions on public gatherings and events, which will impact anyone hoping to travel to an event in Sweden in the coming weeks. ... Homeworking for all who can. Licensed bars and restaurants must close at 11pm, limit groups to 8 people, and implement seated service only. Public events are limited to 50 people. Above this number, a Covid-19 certificate is required for entry, fixed seats are required and groups of up to 8 people must be kept apart. Other proposed measures such as a lower capacity limit on private events require amendments to regulations and will be introduced at a later date. Previous measures have been extended, including limiting long-distance public transit to essential travel only and the use of face masks when many people travel together. ... In addition to this testing requirement, the ban on non-essential travel to Sweden from outside the EU/EEA remains in place until January 31, although there are several exemptions.
That tweet is rather disingenuous. The date captures most of 2021, not 2020 like the tweet said. In addition, the data range selected also removes about half of the 2nd surge in Sweden. Sweden had their surge earlier than their neighbor by about 3 weeks. Sweden's 2nd peak occured around Jan 1st 2021 while Denmark's peak occurred around Jan 22nd 2021. So more of the deaths are captured in Denmark due to the truncation date. Another important distinction is that many many more people died in Sweden in the first wave in 2020 than Denmark. About 23 per 100k died from covid in Denmark from the beginning of the pandemic to 1/1/2021 while 95 per 100k died in Sweden in that time period. Having the lowest death rate in 2021 isn't that impressive when many of those people had died in 2020 instead. Denmark still has less than half of the deaths per capita (covid deaths according to Worldometer) overall as compared to Sweden. It'll be interesting to see see how
The argument goes both ways, of course. That's why making early assessments or picking random timeframes can be misleading. But overall, Sweden basically had NO excess mortality since the pandemic started. Some countries, like Australia, had below average mortality - but at what cost - and we will see how it evens out over the next few years.
Hmm... when compared with the countries closest to Sweden... Norway, Finland, and Denmark, seems they all have much lower mortality rates. Why?
No idea, but they all had lower excess mortality rates than many other countries with much, much stricter mandates. Norway, Finland and Denmark were all not quite as liberal as Sweden, but much more so than most other countries as well. Peru for instance is one of the countries with the very strictest lockdowns and measures and they have some of the worst excess mortality. Probably has more to do with the quality of the healthcare system, age of the population, obesity rates, etc.
So Peru is the best comparison, because, well, because they had a strict lockdown? Different continent, different culture, different socio-economic system, different just about every way possible. Certainly don't want to compare the three neighboring countries which have significantly lower death rates...
"significantly lower death rates" - we'll have to see how it plays out in the longer term. Sweden's population might have better long-term immunity, who knows. In any case, if that graph is correct, we are talking something like 50/100,000 excess death vs. 15/100,000 or something like that. Not that significant, if you ask me. Bulgaria looks like 800/100,000, that's what I would call a significant difference. The fact remains that Sweden did better than a ton of countries with much stricter mandates and measures. Florida's age-adjusted covid deaths are very similar to California's, and much better than those of New York - states with much stricter mandates and measures. These are just facts.
That is certainly the case when you have a public that trusts and follows a public health order. We no longer have that. We have a very skeptical public that reaches out to Twitter and social media for input. It's no longer enough to just say do X. You need to try to provide enough prudent information in the hope that the public would buy into doing it. Without doing so, that vacuum is filled by social media and we all know how wonderful that is. Maybe also think of it as a pre-emptive defense against misinformation and attacks.
More to the point, we have a public that has been confused by a rapid partisan-driven deluge of misleading and downright false dialog delivered through social media (twitter, youtube, facebook) and some traditional news sources (fox, oann) that have created an increasingly confused and skeptical audience. Who knows what future impact this will have as other health risks get politicized and future generations become even more at risk. Thanks trump.
