For months, we were told that Sweden was a pariah that its refusal to join with other states in destroying its economy by imposing a lockdown would result in mass deaths and serious illness running into tens of thousands. Even at the end of April, Michael Roberts was saying that Sweden could suffer up to 65,000 deaths from COVID19 as a result of not locking down. But, it was all an hysterical fantasy. Sweden has made liars of them all.
According to the latest data available from Statista, for July 17th, the number of deaths in Sweden has not surged to 65,000 or any of the other ridiculous projection, but to just 5,609. What is more, that is the same number of deaths as for the previous day, i.e. zero new deaths. The day before that it was just 1, with similar figures in the days prior to that. Its not the first time Sweden has had zero new deaths per day. It has done so on several days over the last month, and, in fact, over that month and longer it had reduced the number of deaths to single figures or at least low double digits. Essentially, Sweden has eradicated the threat of deaths from COVID19, whilst Tory lockdown Britain continues to see deaths in the hundreds.
What is more, because Sweden never locked down, it does not have a problem of coming out of lockdown. There is not going to be any surge or second wave of deaths in Sweden, as a result of any such easing, therefore. By contrast, everywhere that imposed lockdown, or that attempted to stifle spread by extensive test, trace methods are seeing infections and deaths rise rapidly as soon as they come out of those conditions, and that is likely to be even more damaging as they try to reimpose them.
Sweden has made liars of all those catastrophists, and all those that claimed that the best or even only way of dealing with COVID19 was by imposing lockdowns. In Britain the Tory lockdown has cratered the economy, causing the worst economic slowdown in 300 years, and causing debt levels to rise astronomically, way above anything seen in the 2008 Financial Meltdown. Its catastrophic effects will be felt, and suffered by the most vulnerable for decades to come, impacting them far more than anything that needed to have been suffered from COVID19 had it been dealt with correctly. Yet, the Tory lockdown crisis, having imposed this economic catastrophe did not even work in its own terms. Britain has had one of the worst records for COVID deaths in the world, despite imposing one of the harshest and longest lockdowns! The mortality rate for COVID, in Britain, is more or less double that in Sweden! In Sweden, the 5,609 deaths represents just 0.056% of its population, again disproving all of those claims that the mortality rate form COVID was going to be around 1%. In other words, those claims were out by a factor of 20, just as the claims that the total number of deaths globally of 45 million, have been out by a fact of around 100!
Of course, Sweden has suffered because other countries with which it trades followed the insane and illogical policy of a blanket lockdown that the Tories imposed in Britain, and that had the inevitable effect of destroying economic activity. No country is an island economically, and so Sweden also suffered because its trading partners destroyed their own economies needlessly.
After 2008, the Tories supported by their Liberal puppets, attacked Labour for the global financial meltdown, even though it was clear that Labour had no real responsibility or control over that global crisis. The most that could be said is that the roots of that crisis went back to the 1980's, and the deregulation polices introduced by Thatcher and Reagan that started the astronomical inflation of asset prices, and financial speculation that led to the bursting of the bubbles, and that after 1997, New Labour continued those same Thatcherite policies confusing rising asset prices with the increase in real wealth, and thinking that this delusion could continue for ever. But, the real responsibility lies with the conservative ideology that was behind that, and with the Thatcher government that tied Britain into that economic model, just as it lies with the Reagan government that did the same in the US. The idea that the crisis was down to Labour profligacy was just an outright lie, because Labour had budget deficits only half those of the Thatcher/Major period, until the financial meltdown gripped the world. The borrowing was simply to bail out the banks and financial institutions that went bust.
But, the economic crisis caused by the Tory lockdown is entirely the responsibility of the Tory government, and those that backed its policy of locking down the economy. The lockdown did not stop deaths from COVID19, as a comparison with the performance of Sweden shows, and now, as attempts to lift that lockdown are made, the number of deaths rises again, because herd immunity has not been created amongst the wider population, whilst no measures have been taken in the intervening period to enable an effective isolation of the 20% of the population actually at serious risk from the virus. In the meantime it will be another year before an effective vaccine is rolled out.
The Tory lockdown has caused the biggest economic catastrophe in 300 years, and that catastrophe is entirely of the Tories own making, unlike the situation in 2008, which the Tories opportunistically, but, from an electoral perspective, highly successfully, blamed on Labour. This catastrophe is much worse than 2008, it is entirely of the Tories own making. Labour should not let them get away with it. Labour should ensure that the Tory lockdown crisis is pinned fairly and squarely on them. The Tories as a result of this catastrophe should never be trusted with running the economy or the country ever again.
Interesting stat in article re mortality in UK and Sweden. FT data as of 21 Jul suggests it's pretty similar - cumulative deaths per million: UK 680, Sweden 554.9 and, for comparison, Finland 59.5, Norway 48.
ReplyDeleteWhile deaths in Sweden may be minimal now, isn't it now the worst country in Europe for COVID19 infections?
ReplyDeleteAnd while the UK may have seen one of the longest lockdowns in Europe, many countries had harsher lockdowns: for example Italy closed all non-essential businesses (including construction), while Italy and Spain banned outdoor exercise (except for walking dogs).
Most proponents of lockdown in fact argue that the UK's lockdown was so long precisely because it was too late and not stringent enough!
John,
ReplyDeleteThose stats look about right to me. And, the UK's relative position improved as its death toll has slowed. The point is that, now the UK is still seeing deaths in the hundreds whilst Sweden is seeing effectively zero. And, as the UK lifts lockdown, the deaths will inevitably rise again as they are doing elsewhere in those conditions. Sweden will see no rise, because it has no lockdown to lift! The reasons for the lower figures for Norway and Finland has been given before. They have tiny populations that are spread over large areas. 92% of deaths, and of serious illness comes from those aged over 60, with more than 50% from those aged over 80. That is why the concentration of deaths is seen in care homes and hospitals. Sweden has more concentrated populations, and larger care homes, which is where its deaths have been concentrated.
Hi, thanks for clarifying - good point re UK lifting lockdown cf Sweden with no lockdown. Apologies but still struggling with the population stats. Population(m): Finland 5.6, Norway 5.5, Sweden 10.1. Density(km2): F 16.6, N 17, S 22.5. Urban population(%): F 85.3, N 82.6, S 87.3.
ReplyDeleteGeorge,
ReplyDeleteWho cares about infections? Its deaths and serious illness that matter. Given that 80% of people that get Covid19 are asymptomatic a high rate of infection is a good thing, because it means that herd immunity is quickly developed. That is what used to happen with childhood illnesses. All that matters is ensuring that those that might be seriously ill or die from infection are isolated and protected from it, until such time as either herd immunity develops naturally to kill off the virus, or else a vaccine is produced so as to create artificial herd immunity.
Britain had one of the harshest lockdowns in terms of social activity. And, Sweden has shown the argument that an earlier lockdown in Britain would have saved lives to be false. If it were true then Sweden which had no lockdown at all would, as all the catastrophists, hysterics and opportunists claimed, have seen huge numbers of deaths and serious illness. It didn't, and hasn't. Instead, Sweden has had less deaths and serious ill-health per capita than has Britain!
And, there is a simple reason for that. Covid19 is a virus that seriously affects less than 20% of the population. It is a disease that is highly concentrated on those aged over 80, and to a lesser degree those aged over 60. 92% of all deaths and serious ill-health from COVID is amongst this cohort. They are also concentrated in care homes and hospitals. Around a third of all COVID deaths in Britain are people in Care homes. The real story of COVID19, therefore, is not, and never has been about lockdown or not lockdown, because Sweden which had no lockdown performed better than Britain which did, and countries like Spain that locked down, are now seeking spikes as they come out of lockdown.
The real story is that COVID19 is a virus that attacks the elderly, who are more than 1000 times more likely to die from it than are the young. It is a story of deaths of those elderly citizens in care homes and hospitals, where they were not adequately isolated or protected. It is a story of the failure to provide adequate PPE for care and health workers, and so of the spread of the virus to other vulnerable groups, including the elderly receiving care in their homes etc.
The lockdown was an irrelevance to that, and continues to be so, as there is still no adequate isolation and protection of the elderly and sick that comprise the 20% of the population at risk, and as a new wave erupts as the ineffective lockdown is lifted, so that the infection rate rises once more.
John,
ReplyDeleteLooking at bald stats is misleading, but even on the ones you have given it can be seen that not only does Sweden have a population more or less double that of its neighbours, but it is also more densely populated. In fact, the density figure is misleading because the Swedish population is not evenly spread, but concentrated in the South of the country. Percentage figures for urban populations are misleading, because the Swedish population is double that of its neighbours, so the absolute numbers living in urban areas are more than double, especially given the uneven spread of population.
Further analysis of that is given here, in the responses to comments, along with other data and analysis. I would recommend some of their other posts on the issue too, though not their overall politics. The main point here is that COVID19 is a virus affecting the elderly, and in Sweden the deaths have reflected that being of the elderly concentrated in Swedish care homes that are generally much larger and more concentrated in urban areas than are those of their neighbours.
One interesting piece of data in those exchanges was as a result of lockdowns, according to Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, an estimated 265 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by year’s end.”
ReplyDeleteBoffy,
ReplyDeleteIs it not facile to blame the UK's care home system for its high death toll, given that in most European countries other than Italy care home residents were an even higher proportion of the total dead?
I suspect other factors would be poor hospital hygiene (due to cleaning being contracted out to the lowest bidder, as it was less publicised by the media than metrics like numbers of beds or waiting times), the gutting of the public health infrastructure by Cameronite austerity, and even the UK's high obesity rates.
Incidentally how much do you think the UK left's general enthusiasm for early and draconian lockdowns is down to the fact that most of the bad decisions that contributed to the UK's high death toll (AIUI there were absolutely loads of them, and none were obviously terrible when considered in isolation) were made before Boris Johnson became PM, so that pretty much the only thing a hypothetical Labour government taking office in December 2019 could have done better would have been to bring in an earlier and harsher lockdown (for essentially the same reason as New Zealand, when they realized that unlike Australia they'd screwed the pooch on test/track/trace)?
George,
ReplyDeleteI think the point is that COVID is a virus that mostly affects the elderly, and care homes are places where elderly people are concentrated in environments where viruses can spread, unless proper isolation procedures, use of PPE etc. is in place. That is why Sweden, which has large care homes had higher deaths than its Scandinavian neighbours. Its not a matter of UK care homes v foreign care homes, but that COVID is a virus that kills old people. Its also why hospitals are another centre for such deaths, because they have a higher proportion of old people - and particularly old sick people - which is why Italy saw large numbers of deaths, because early on, the virus got into its hospitals and spread.
I don't think that's down to hospital hygiene, but to a lack of adequate isolation protocols. MRSA was partly hygiene, but also partly lack of such protocols. MRSA and C-Diff were almost exclusively NHS phenomena, there were no , or at least minimal cases in private hospitals, BUPA hospitals etc, so I don't think it can be put down to state v private provision. Also European socialised healthcare is largely provided by non-state owned providers, and did not have those problems. A lot comes down to overcentralised, NHS bureaucracies, and bad management.
I've previously set out why I think the Left has adopted the position it has. It was driven by a combination of opportunism and catastrophism. On the one hand opportunism, because they said Trump/Johnson/Cummings are deniers, so we must be ardent proponents of COVID as an existential threat that requires the most dramatic, most visible response. They saw it as an opportunity to simply bash Johnson et al for not being tough enough, acting soon enough. Its easy meat. Trouble is, when Johnson et al introduce lockdowns, and o the things you say they should have been doing, where do you go? You can only say, you should have acted sooner, you should have been harsher, you should have infringed liberties, you should have destroyed the economy to an even greater degree!
But, this last point also plays into another strand. That is large sections of the Left have this crazy, Malthusian/catastrophist mentality whereby they are continually expecting and praying for "The Next Recession" (the URL, for Michael Roberts' Blog), because they have this crude economic determinist mindset, which goes back to Varga's Law and beyond, which beleives that in order to get workers to revolt, you need an economic crisis, and the more severe the economic crisis the more likely, and greater the revolt. It is nonsense. Trotsky had to argue against that view back in the 1920's, and showed that generally economic crises, and certainly stagnation put workers in a weaker position and strengthens the position of reactionaries. Its only when there has been a long period of growth during which workers have become strong that a sudden crisis can lead them to revolt, and even then its not clear that such revolts are positive rather than simply a defensive reaction.
But, for all of that section of the Left the idea of the government running the country into an economic crisis is seen as a positive, because they expect some revolt to arise out of it, whereas all experience tells us that it will be creation that will be strengthened. And, another element of that is that for all those like Michael Roberts who has been predicting that an economic crisis was going to happen next, or in a few months, for every year now for at least the last five years, a crisis which ha just as assuredly fail to come, it at least allows them to have been right once, even though that economic crisis has been deliberately self inflicted by a political act of government by imposing lockdowns, and has had nothing to do with underlying economic conditions, and still less with Marx's Law of The Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, which Roberts claims is the sole cause of capitalist economic crises!!!
Boffy
ReplyDeleteIt's not a matter of UK care homes v foreign care homes,
My claim was the exact opposite: if other European countries had lower death tolls than the UK, and had a higher proportion of those deaths in care homes, then that implies that the UK's specific failings were nothing to do with the care home system!
That is large sections of the Left have this crazy, Malthusian/catastrophist mentality whereby they are continually expecting and praying for "The Next Recession" (the URL, for Michael Roberts' Blog), because they have this crude economic determinist mindset, which goes back to Varga's Law and beyond, which beleives that in order to get workers to revolt, you need an economic crisis, and the more severe the economic crisis the more likely, and greater the revolt.
The Great Depression (whose main political beneficiaries were not the left but the German and Japanese fascists) should have already demonstrated this!
But it seems that even Michael Gorbachev fell victim to this view: in the "Communism" episode of the "Big Ideas That Changed The World" documentary series, he narrated:
"Until Marx, most philosophers had thought poverty was accidental. But Marx said poverty was a deliberate creation of the capitalist system – and now he suggested a solution. Eventually, Marx said, workers would be made so poor that they would have nothing to lose – they would rise up and seize control. And a new kind of society would result: a communist society in which everything would be owned communally. It was a beautiful idea. The reality of communism was to be very different."
I actually brought this up before on Phil's "The Sick Man of Europe" blog post, but you didn't seem to respond there...
George,
ReplyDeleteI don't think your argument in relation to care homes follows. For example, if Europe has fewer people in care homes, because it has a culture of extended families, particularly in rural areas, where old people are cared for by their children, and provided they are properly isolated - in the kind of way I have said all along the 20% should have been isolated - then you will have a lower total death toll, for the simple reason that more of the 20% will have been isolated from the virus and potential death. But, that doesn't mean that older people/sick people in Europe who WERE in care homes, would not then die in the same way thy have in Britain, and that these would also then form a larger proportion of deaths than they do in Britain.
But, the events of the last few days, again shows that the lockdown strategy does not work. As was indicated in the comments on the Redline post I linked to, Belgium which had a hard lockdown strategy has had very bad morbidity stats, but as I have said all along based upon the statements of epidemiologists and virologists that stood out against the Imperial bandwagon effect, a lockdown can only work, if either a) test and trace can quickly isolate those infected, so that the virus dies out - as you can do with something like Ebola for example, but not something that is as highly contagious as the coronavirus, which is why it causes the common cold to spread rapidly, especially when, as with COVID19, it is asymptomatic for about 80% of the population - or b) you can quickly produce and roll out a vaccine. None of these options is possible.
The only way to stop its spread is by developing herd immunity, which is what a vaccine does. But, a vaccine is a year away, and by then the virus may have mutated, for people in the 20%, it may produce a less powerful anti-body effect, unlike with flu vaccine, and so on. The only effective strategy is the development of herd immunity amongst the 80%, so that the virus cannot spread, and so dies out. But, the opportunists seized upon the term "herd immunity", which has been a perfectly well accepted term amongst scientists until now, and made it into a weapon with which to beat Johnson et al. It was a totally opportunistic tactic to seize upon the optics of a term that the majority of people did not understand, and make it sound like something sinister with all of the nonsense about social Darwinism and so on, whereas the opposite is the case, where you focus on isolating the 20%. The opportunists seized on this line of attack for short term political point scoring, and in the process undermined the only potential means of actually killing off the virus in a relative short time.
On catastrophism, I have been writing about it for 20 years, and arguing against for longer than that, back to the 1980's. I don't read Phil's blog avidly, partly because its clogged up with all of the inane ramblings of its resident troll. But, mainly because I have too much of my own writing to do.
For example, if Europe has fewer people in care homes, because it has a culture of extended families, particularly in rural areas, where old people are cared for by their children, and provided they are properly isolated - in the kind of way I have said all along the 20% should have been isolated - then you will have a lower total death toll, for the simple reason that more of the 20% will have been isolated from the virus and potential death. But, that doesn't mean that older people/sick people in Europe who WERE in care homes, would not then die in the same way thy have in Britain, and that these would also then form a larger proportion of deaths than they do in Britain.
ReplyDeleteOK, so it sounds like what you're saying is that the difference between the UK and mainland European death rates is largely accounted for by elderly victims who didn't live in care homes but were nevertheless dependent on professional care workers (who presumably were the ones who infected them, either because they were asymptomatic or because lack of sick pay forced them to work anyway)?
That's an interesting hypothesis, especially given that one factor in why older non-metropolitan Britons are so staunchly Tory (and Brexity) is because they resent their own children for moving away to the big city. Have those other European countries run their economies in a different way that preserved rural job opportunities and thus lessened youth flight to cities?
Another question: how much risk do you think it is that the rush to fully reopen the economy (and restore normal social interaction) may result in an insufficiently-tested vaccine being rolled out for the masses? IIRC the modern anti-vax movement has its origins in the United States in 1976, where an unsafe swine flu vaccine caused Guillain-Barré syndrome.
The only effective strategy is the development of herd immunity amongst the 80%, so that the virus cannot spread, and so dies out. But, the opportunists seized upon the term "herd immunity", which has been a perfectly well accepted term amongst scientists until now, and made it into a weapon with which to beat Johnson et al. It was a totally opportunistic tactic to seize upon the optics of a term that the majority of people did not understand, and make it sound like something sinister with all of the nonsense about social Darwinism and so on, whereas the opposite is the case, where you focus on isolating the 20%.
Wasn't the notion that the government was maliciously encouraging the virus to kill off those whom it saw as a burden on society (the "social Darwinism" label isn't quite accurate as they are well past reproductive age, nor was their any suggestion that they are genetically inferior) only possible precisely because COVID19 deaths are overwhelmingly people who were already old and sick?
George,
ReplyDeleteOn care homes. No what I'm saying is that in Europe, there is a culture of extended families, especially in rural areas. So old folk are cared for by families - who in rural areas also probably have less social contact so the virus spreads more slowly (also possibly why spread in Africa has been slower) - and this may be one reason for lower overall deaths, given that deaths are concentrated amongst the elderly (everywhere). But, for those in Europe who are in care homes the death rate may be the same as in UK (adjusting for size of homes etc. as noted in relation to Scandinavia) but, with an overall lower death rate in Europe, the death rate in care homes would then appear higher than in the UK. As Europe pulls out of lockdowns the fact that the virus is still there and no herd immunity has been created, simply, as I said from the start, means it flares up again, and unless you have isolated the 20% - now made harder because of the length of time this has been going on - increases in infection will result in increases in deaths amongst the 20% once more. I said this was inevitable from the start.
Also, workers are being told to go back, including those in the 20%. My youngest son who has been working from home perfectly well, because he works in media production and CGI, who suffers periodically from asthma is one of them, and again this is harder to resist, because there has not been the focus on isolating the 20% effectively from the start.
On vaccines, Wodarg wrote early on about his experience with the WHO of vested interests amongst those promoting armageddon scenarios who had financial interests in provision of testing kits and so on. There seems to me a risk that vaccines may be tested on younger healthier people amongst whom it seems to produce strong anti-body results, but without adequate testing amongst the elderly - you wouldn't want to kill old people by vaccinating them! But, then as a result either the vaccine may kill old people, because they don't produce a strong anti-body or white blood cell response, or else it will only produce a weak response so that they have to be vaccinated every few weeks, or else it gives them no effective immunity. This is the reverse of with flu vaccines. It would mean vaccinated the 80%, not the 20% to kill off transmission. But, that means you still need to isolate the 20% until that is accomplished. In the meantime the same effect could have already been obtained by the development of natural herd immunity!
From a Tory perspective, why would you? The old - and sick largely in decaying towns - are their core voters! The old, also have a lot of stored wealth in property, and savings that they use to finance consumption, without which a large part of the economy depends. No, the social Darwinism tag, simply used ignorance of what "herd immunity" actually means as an opportunist way of attacking Tory "callousness". It was short-term political point-scoring as an alternative to developing an independent principled socialist response. As I've also written it also reflects the Left's continued infatuation with the state as the solution to all problems.
On care homes. No what I'm saying is that in Europe, there is a culture of extended families, especially in rural areas. So old folk are cared for by families...
ReplyDeleteIsn't that pretty much what I was saying too: that old people in Europe are less dependent (due to extended family assistance on professional care workers, and therefore less likely to be infected by them?
What I'm wondering is how extended families have been able to endure longer in rural mainland Europe, and not be torn apart by the dearth of rural job opportunities as they have been in Britain? Is agriculture in mainland Europe less mechanized than in Britain?
From a Tory perspective, why would you? The old - and sick largely in decaying towns - are their core voters! The old, also have a lot of stored wealth in property, and savings that they use to finance consumption, without which a large part of the economy depends.
Arguably the death of old property owners might be a net benefit for the Tories, if their propertyless offspring (who currently vote Labour) inherit the property and turn into Tories as a result.
George,
ReplyDeleteI don't think so. You said of Europe,
"the difference between the UK and mainland European death rates is largely accounted for by elderly victims who didn't live in care homes but were nevertheless dependent on professional care workers."
I'm saying not cared for by professional care workers but by family members.
In Europe, there is still a lot of direct production of food. Read Engels' The Housing Question about how in Germany that meant that industry became more evenly spread across the country. In 2010, a lot of Spanish workers in towns and cities went back to families in the countryside, when they lost jobs, because it was possible to at least grow your own food. Many of the Spanish properties I looked at had large plots of land, where it was still possible to grow most of your own food, or were given over to oranges and lemons, or olives, or nuts, which could be sold and exchanged for other commodities. Britain never had that heritage. The closest we have is allotments.
On property owners the same argument was put by Blissex and its wrong. Firstly, if the existing property owners die, much of the property will be put up for sale, because it will be necessary to liquidate the value so as to apportion it to their offspring. At a time when commercial property value are catering by 30% and more, when large numbers of EU migrants are leaving, and not being replaced so that the demand for rental property is declining, and when rising interest rates, and unemployment means that mortgage payers will be selling up in distressed conditions similar to 1990, a load of property put on the market by the estates of dead old people would result in property prices collapsing rapidly.
That would, of course, benefit all the younger people who currently can't buy, as well as more middle aged people who can't move up to better properties, because of inflated house prices, but I don't see how that then helps the Tories. In the later 1950's, and into the 1960's, when the continued post war boom meant that labour supplies began to run short, despite employing lots more married women, and wages rose, many more people bought houses as a consequence, but those affluent workers still associated themselves with working-class values, and voted Labour, as Goldthorpe et al demonstrated, in their Affluent Workers studies which rubbished the embourgeoisement theory.
"I'm saying not cared for by professional care workers but by family members."
ReplyDeleteYes, that's how I was interpreting you: that the difference in death rates was accounted for by rural elderly people who need living assistance but aren't living in care homes – such people are usually cared for by family members on the Continent, but in Britain they often depend on professional care workers (and were prone to be infected by them, given inadequate PPE) because their offspring have moved away to cities.
So the more fundamental difference then is that it easier to live off the land on the Continent than in the UK, meaning less pressure to move to the city in search of employment? Is this because agricultural land is more financialized in the UK?
IIRC the EU's Common Agricultural Policy was motivated in part by the observation that small farmers had been a key electoral constituency for Hitler's Nazis, and was designed to ensure that they would never again get desperate enough to resort to such extreme politics. Could the difference be that the UK didn't benefit from this for domestic political reasons? Lots of urban Britons were very fixated on cheap food imported from Commonwealth countries: this was a key factor in the 1975 referendum's OUT campaign.
Good point on how mass deaths of the old would trigger a house price crash (the worst nightmare for Tories, if it happens when they are in office): I hadn't realized that!
George,
ReplyDeleteThere is a different history and culture in Europe in respect of the land viz Engels on The Housing Question. In the Industrial Revolution, workers in Britain quickly became dispossessed of land after the introduction of machine industry. Land is monopolised by big landlords, and farming is industrialised. In Europe, workers retain large gardens/small holdings, peasant agriculture continues on a larger scale.
Also, in much of Europe, renting is far more common than owner occupation. That means that the property market is less prone to bubbles and busts in prices. High house prices have been the basis of high land prices, meaning landowners hold on to land speculatively, builders build pokier houses with less garden on high density sites, which both mitigates against any kind of food production, and against extended families. Britain has the smallest houses in Europe. If you don't have the space, you can't accommodate parents to look after them, and indeed, when kids grow up, there is not enough space for them, encouraging them to move out, which also has the effect of causing additional housing demand, which inflates house prices. That is one reason we have 50% more houses pre capita today than in the 1970's, and yet demand relative to supply means we are told that there is not enough supply, and house prices are 20 times what they were in the 1970's, or about 4 times in inflation adjusted terms.
And there was I thinking I was alone on the far left in being opposed to this insane lockdown. Good to know there's real critical thinking out there! You can't put the class struggle on pause anyway (which is what a lockdown entails if you abide by it), and i dont seem to remember Lenin and co. applying any sort of lockdown in 1918.
ReplyDeleteBoffy, have you accidentally deleted the tags associated with this post?
ReplyDeleteGeorge,
ReplyDeleteNot that I'm aware. It could be something to do with the new Blogger being introduced that was supposed to have occurred last month.
Aside from the care homes situation, aren't there two other reasons why Norway had a much lower Covid death toll than Sweden?
ReplyDelete1. Norway's past two flu seasons were much worse than Sweden's, meaning that fewer very old and frail Norwegians had survived to contract Covid in the first place, and
2. Most European countries were seeded with the Covid virus by skiers returning from half-term holidays in the Italian Alps. Norway likely had far fewer such holidaymakers, because Norway's mountainous terrain means that its skiing enthusiasts had much less need to travel abroad in the first place, as there were ample suitable locations in their own country.
There are undoubtedly many such reasons. On the first, its suggested that UK deaths have been higher because last year there were fewer flu deaths. But also just the fact that Norway, Denmark and Finland have such tiny populations, even compared to Sweden, is a factor. It will be interesting to see how they fare compared to Sweden in the second wave, given that Sweden appears to have developed herd immunity in the Summer, whereas they have not.
ReplyDeleteJust found this article, in which Johan Carlson (the General Director of Sweden's Public Health Agency) mentioned that about a million Swedes (roughly 10% of the country's population) travelled abroad during February and March.
ReplyDeleteGiven that apparently less than 1% of Norwegians or Danes were abroad during the same time period, would that not be a more likely explanation for why Sweden did so much worse than its neighbours, than the (relatively lenient) lockdowns of Denmark and Norway?
Quite probably. As I've said, before, you have to drill down into the peculiarities of different countries. The same applies with other relatively closed countries such as those in East Asia. But, also as I've said before, looking at mortality rates from that early period - and their distorting effect on average mortality rates - is facile, because it is what outturns are like that counts, in something that is endemic.
ReplyDeleteSo, as I said early on, higher mortality rates in Sweden early on might well be reversed by the end of the pandemic. The mortality rate in Sweden is basically not changing, so as mortality rates in the rest of Europe, and amongst it near neighbours, rise, so Sweden is seen to increasingly outperform them. All of Sweden's neighbours have seen big rises in infections, and although Sweden has also seen rises in infection, a) some of this can be because of false positives, because tests pick up dead viruses, in people who have actually achieved immunity, b) Sweden is not seeing the corresponding rise in hospitalisation or mortality rates that other countries are experiencing. Whatever the official estimates might say, it seems clear that Sweden has achieved at least a degree of herd immunity, so that mortality rates are not rising, combined with the fact that it seems to have used the interim to deal with the question of focusing on protecting the vulnerable particularly in care homes and hospitals, which as everywhere else was actually the source of its early deaths. Other countries have failed to do that, because they have continued the mantra about the need for lockdowns because of claiming everyone is vulnerable. If you try to isolate everyone, you actually end up isolating no one.
The fact that Denmark has had the problem with the virus mutating in mink, is a consequence of trying to suppress transmission, and so slowing the process of herd immunity. Lockdowns in the short-term slow the spread of the virus, by trying to isolate everyone. They do nothing to kill the virus, the most effective way of which is to allow those not affected by it to contract it, and so develop herd immunity, so that it cannot spread, and dies out. In Denmark, the virus simply continued to spread but more slowly, and as with any organism, the longer it is in existence, the more chance it has to mutate. The forms of virus that are best able to survive in the conditions it finds itself in, are self-selected, as per natural selection, and prosper, thereby encouraging a new strain of that type to develop.
Cont'd
Cont'd
ReplyDeleteSo, in Denmark, strains that were able to leap from humans to animals, here mink, and back have been self-selected. There seems evidence that strains able to leap to cats and dogs, and back might also have been developing. Lockdowns also encourage strains that are able to live for longer inside and outside the body to develop. So, for example, its been found that viruses are not transmitted from hard surfaces or things like letters and parcels, as was originally thought, but that might not continue to be the case, because any viruses able to survive for longer in such environments, and then be picked up, will have natural advantages according to natural selection.
Lockdowns, by spreading out the period during which transmission occurs, so as to reduce the number of infections at any one time, does nothing to kill the virus, but simply gives it longer to mutate, and for these different strains of virus to be self selected to deal with the conditions of lockdown. That means that, as with flu, or other forms of coronavirus that cause the common cold, all that will have been done is to create and expanding number of strains so that any single vaccine will not be able to deal with them all. That is why we have to have a cocktail of flu vaccines in the annual jab, for example, which itself for that reason is not 100% guaranteed to protect you against the particular strain you come in contact with. Lockdowns were bad short-term fixes that have simply caused a much bigger long-term problem.
Again, its likely that Sweden by developing a degree of herd immunity, will have both limited the number of these mutated strains in circulation in its country, and created some degree of immunity against them, because the development of natural immunity means the body's own immune system, will be better able to develop the appropriate immune response to any new strains it comes in contact with.
Could you add the "COVID19" label to this post?
ReplyDeleteYep.
ReplyDelete