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I don’t believe the text of the article supports your headline.
Agreed. It is a pet peeve of mine because a number of people don’t get past the headline, and even readers who do get into the article are predisposed to a mistaken conclusion.
That’s what I’ve been saying from the beginning…. forget this shutdown nonsense and let herd immunity do it’s job! All virus’s, the swine flu, the bird flu, etc, have eventually died because herd immunity robbed the virus of new hosts!
Forcing us all into isolation defeated herd immunity and so after lockdowns were lifted, the virus had lots of new hosts to attack.
This is not rocket science. (But it IS science!)
Kudos to Sweden for doing it right and shame on Queen Gretchen for doing it wrong.
Great Job Bill,but I’m convinced
That The Gov Proactivity
Was the best chance for Michigan and Saved Lives.
Look at the South and West in the USA!
She Saved A lot of Lives.
Mr. Petersen’s Comment requires certain responses.
Most viruses have not “died” because of herd immunity. What about the flu and common cold viruses? Viruses mutate, and herd immunity is not in any way assured. Major threats of late, including MERS, SARS, Ebola, etc have NOT been allowed to run wild. The traditional measures of testing, tracing, and quarantining have stopped these early, so they were not allowed to spread. The human cost could have been severe, especially for Ebola. The affected countries, including the US, jumped on these immediately, so few deaths arose. Unlike the COVID virus which was allowed to spread largely unchecked until it got a strong toehold, because “it will just disappear, it will be so beautiful when it does”. These viruses did NOT die out due to herd immunity !
The bird flu never came near being a pandemic. Overall, only a few hundred humans died from it. As to the swine flu, less than 13,000 died from it. Neither one of these was nearly as severe and lethal as COVID-19. For the swine flu, a vaccine was deployed quickly, within 6 months of the initial case. We are still some distance away from a vaccine yet for COVID, and the threat of mutation is high, rendering any vaccine as problematic. These viruses did NOT, repeat NOT, die out because of herd immunity ! Many billions of people are still susceptible to them.
Finally,the countries which have been most successful in knocking COVID down are those which jumped on it immediately, such as: Taiwan (0.03 deaths for each 100,000 citizens), Vietnam (0.03 per 100th), China (0.34 per 100th), New Zealand (0.45 per 100th), Singapore (0.48 per 100th), South Korea (0.61 per 100th), Japan (0.97 per 100th), etc. These countries locked down almost immediately, and implemented comprehensive testing, tracing, and quarantining procedures. If a “hot spot” does arise, they deal with it immediately. Accordingly, life has returned to near normal in these countries.
On the other hand, the US, which basically ignored the problem entirely for about 2 months and then suffered from paralysis in most of the country, and never locked down in a number of areas, has a death rate of 54.93 per 100,000 citizens !!! Too little testing too late, never an effective tracing system, etc. The US has the 11th worst death rate in the entire world. Of the major counties, only the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, and Brazil have a worse rate than we do. And, other than Brazil, they had it strike earlier than we did (giving us more time to prepare, which we wasted). Further, they dealt with it more miserably than even we did.
Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell,has admitted that his policies caused far too many unnecessary deaths. He admits that the country should have moved toward steps other nations took.
It certainly appears that the major countries in Asia got this right while we failed to follow science and let the politicians flounder around, with Washington especially afraid to do something which might make the economic numbers look unfavorable. At least some of the states, like Michigan, took steps early when they were among the hardest hit.
I’m pretty sure Anders Tegnell still stands by his approach, to suggest otherwise is misleading to the point of a lie.
Stop picking on Sweden for getting their epidemic response right.
His science worked better the DimWhitmer’s.
This Comment relates to the erroneous headline to the interview.
Mr. LaMore is correct–the facts and even the text of the article do not support the incendiary and misleading headline.
See Comment above for the facts.
Thank you, however, for addressing this important area, about which most should be more familiar !
While there the populations and the geographies of Sweden and Michigan are very similar, there are two critical areas where they decisively differ: Sweden is very ethnically homogeneous compared to Michigan and the Swedish political culture is much more homogenous and harmonious than that of America.
The latter cannot be overlooked. Sweden ranks among the least corrupt / most trusted governments according to several independent, nonpartisan world indexes (consistently in the top five among 200 countries, whereas America usually ranks in the 20-30 range. . .still very good). As such, the Swedish people generally ‘buy in’, cooperate with, and trust their government (pay their taxes, even at higher tax rates) in pulling off such a ‘herd mentality’ experiment.
One could argue, of course, that there is a relationship / correlation between Sweden’s ethnic homogeneity and its homogenous political culture (the same also exists for its Scandinavian neighbors, Denmark and Norway). . . but that is a topic for another day!
Trouble with the US., is all our number’s are phonier than a 3dollar bill! There’s to much money thrown at Covid deaths and to many Corona virus’s that our medical people count all as Covid-19, once again for the money. If you die in a car accident don’t be surprised if on your tombstone it say’s, Covid-19, $RIP!
MONEY TALKS AS B.S. WALKS!