Ever locked down: Sweden no, Israel yes
Vaccination rate: Sweden 42%, Israel 62%
Population: Sweden 10.2 mil, Israel 9.1 mil
Ever did mask mandate: Sweden no, Israel yes
Deaths with Covid last 6 weeks: Sweden 15, Israel 71
Deaths with Covid per 100k: Sweden 143.8, Israel 67.9
It is about control… they got the world and this country to dance like a monkey and they will continue to have the monkey dance…
The idea that 71 deaths in 6 weeks in a 9+ million population is starting discussions of mass lockdowns, masking, travel bans, etc is pure insanity. Sweden does promote supplementing with Vitamin D, which is something our government needs to do and still needs to do and emphasize. Most hospitalizations with severe complications have been people with low vitamin D and low glutathione levels. 
If Biden really cared about Black Lives he would give them free Vit D and also to Latinos for over 50 international studies have revealed people with low Vit D ( blacks and dark skin people can’t produce Vit D) have poorer outcomes when infected with Covid-19.
The problem is in the U.S. people are just really bad at analyzing numbers. I can use the same data as a left winger and conclude the exact opposite. 600k and maybe a 10% increase in deaths YoY isn’t enough to justify anything we’ve done for the past 1.5 years. Especially when you factor in most of those deaths are pulled forward from future years because it’s all old and unhealthy people. Our public unfortunately rewards action and there was too much institutional power pushing fear and policies to prevent any of it.
Pretty sure population density isn’t the same in Sweden as it is in Israel, where they are living on top of each other (my assumption.)
Sweden has an overall higher per capita COVID death rate. Like 2x as high. (~1400 deaths per 1 million versus ~700 deaths per 1 million). The last 6 weeks might be a trend in the right direction for Sweden, or it might be cherry picking.
Fictitious numbers in = fictitious numbers out
How do you guys actually think these numbers were collected?
Here are some links to some random number generator, just as helpful.
https://www.random.org/
You’ve been wearing your mask in your house havent you?The graphic tells where it’s from. I invite you to do your own research. There have been 400k total deaths in India, which means 99.97% have survived and acquired natural immunity (much more powerful than that afforded by the vax) How can you watch India statistics where is no modern hospitals or ways for people to reach the hospitals, those numbers are likely crap, for god sake they drink water from Gange river but u probably don’t know. Whatever skew you think is going on in the data, they were reporting the same death rate in May, but now Israel has spiked up while India continues a steady decline. What’s your hypothesis to explain that?
Yeah, they achieved natural herd immunity, and they are now in great shape because of it … And most of India’s cases/deaths are from one small rogue state following WHO protocols. Others are more like Delhi (pop 30m) following the Joe Rogan one…True, although any herd immunity didn’t really help Kerala state, India after the May surge horror, being the only Indian state now not using the IVR med kit protocol, but instead followed the west WHO protocols. Your information is both out of date and misleading. First of all India is one of the youngest countries in the world so using the full 1.4 billion in the denominator is not comparable to Western countries.
The proper way to look at vaccination based immunity is to look at % of the adult population with at least one dose. 540M Indians have received at least one dose and that
is 62% of all adults and 39% of the whole country. 
If you believe anything any government tells you about this scamdemic, you will believe anything . But I dont know how to read, use logic, or think for myself so I rely on what the eXpErTs sAy Clown face. Vaxx-people don’t get that if so many people in India already have Delta, maybe they are protected with their immune system from Delta.
What if natural immunity works…
Arguing over numbers is a futile exercise. Even if the numbers are 100% accurate, there isn’t a single data point that justifies our new technocratic, command and control society.
Saying Sweden’s death rate is 2x as high. You’re talking about 8k total deaths difference and one society is free and the other is not
Israel has been leading the world in vaccines. They started sooner and have the highest number of their population vaccinated. Physicians in India did not abandon their patients if they got Covid. They treat their patients EARLY. Because they used Ivermectin….just like in Peru….look at their data. The death numbers got down after India allowed ivermectin medicine. Joe Rogan is big in India
Israel’s Back in Lockdown While Swedish COVID Deaths Are Plummeting. Here’s Why
Swedish Health Minister Lena Hallengren tells Haaretz why her country never imposed a full lockdown, and why public trust in the government is a vital component of fighting the coronavirus STOCKHOLM – Back in April, many worldwide thought the Swedes had lost their minds. As country after country shuttered its schools, shopping malls and restaurants due to the coronavirus pandemic, Sweden decided to take another approach. Haaretz.com – Zoom with Haaretz: How Israel’s COVID failure led to a second national lockdown | Facebook
Despite the Scandinavian country’s death toll reaching a peak of about 100 a day by mid-April, many Swedes were still going about their daily lives, face masks were not recommended and rarely used, young children were still going to school, and no “coronavirus hotels” were set up for infected but asymptomatic individuals.
And though many businesses took a hit – because Sweden relies heavily on its export trade – most remained open and gradually started to rebound. It’s not as if Sweden did nothing at all to combat the virus. High schools and universities switched to online learning, most cultural, entertainment and sports venues closed, and the general population was asked to maintain hygiene and social distance, avoid traveling wherever possible, and to stay home when symptoms appeared.
Zoom with Haaretz: How Israel’s COVID failure led to a second national lockdown. The event will take place on Wednesday, September 23 at 7 P.M. Israel time, noon EDT. https://zoom.us/j/91630216874
But there was clearly a major difference between the Swedish way and that of the rest of the world. Besides legal restrictions prohibiting gatherings of over 50 people or visitors at hospitals and retirement homes, most were recommendations rather than legal decrees. Fines, police enforcement, mobile phone tracking and curfews were deemed unnecessary.
Despite this, most Swedes observed social distancing and the infection rate finally began to drop. Last week, Sweden carried out over 140,000 tests, with 1.2 percent coming back positive. The country currently has one of the lowest infection rates in Europe.
The shocking deception of Israeli scientists pushing the COVID-19 Swedish model‘Stupid, scandalous, all because of Bibi’: In quiet Tel Aviv suburb, rage over Israel’s second lockdownSweden is the key coronavirus test case in preparing for a second waveWhile the curves are clearly flattening, the government isn’t wasting time. After a traumatic spring, it’s doing its best to learn from its initial mistakes by improving testing capabilities and boosting the economy.
It’s a stark contrast to Israel, which has just become the first country to enter lockdown for a second time. Yet Sweden’s health minister, Lena Hallengren, told Haaretz that it’s not just about having or not having a lockdown.
“It’s true we didn’t have lockdowns [in Sweden], but we did have lots of changes in society – and the most crucial thing is having long-term measures,” she said. “Without a lockdown, restaurants, bars, trains and buses have to be adapted with regulations – legally binding or recommendations. You have to always maintain distance, have signs, information, sanitizing, washing hands: all that has to be in place. We can see that you can’t lock down the virus forever, and you always have to consider the price that society pays.”
Falling mortality rates
Different countries’ success rates in handling the coronavirus has become something of a “sport” in the past six months, a table reflecting the global “winners” and “losers.” Given its outlier approach, Sweden has come under particularly close scrutiny: initially, it drew harsh criticism and was used as a cautionary tale; now, it’s presented as offering a slightly more sustainable model than repeatedly going into lockdown. But Hallengren is careful not to make any comparisons.661.2K
The Federal Reserve will start dialing back its ultra-low-interest rate policies this year as long as hiring continues to improve, Chair Jerome Powell said Friday, signaling the beginning of the end of the Fed’s extraordinary response to the pan
“We’ve said since the beginning of the pandemic that this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” she said. “It’s not a competition and there’s no point saying who the winner is. It’s far too early and too dangerous to compare week-by-week mortality rates. Different countries were hit differently; they have different structures and relations with their authorities, they test in different ways and have different kinds of data and information. In the long run, we all need well-functioning societies. We should learn what there is to learn from others, point less fingers and try to keep up with long-term recommendations,” she added.
So far, some 5,800 people in Sweden have died due to COVID-19, mainly as a result of the virus spreading in Sweden’s nursing and care homes in the spring.
“In the worst week of April, we had 845 new cases of infection in elderly care facilities. Last week we had 17,” Hallengren reported. “Our mortality rates have also fallen radically. We don’t have excess mortality and in August, the rates were below normal [yearly] figures.”
Hallengren also tried to look beyond the headline figure concerning COVID-19 deaths. “One [southern] region in Sweden, Östergötland, recently conducted a study investigating all cases of elderly patients who died infected from the coronavirus,” she said. “In only 15 percent of the cases was it concluded that COVID-19 was the direct cause of death. In 15 percent [of cases], the real reason was another illness or medical condition, and in 70 percent of cases COVID-19 contributed to death due to underlying conditions or the health status of the patient.”
The health minister said her government is analyzing why the coronavirus hit Sweden so badly, especially in comparison to its Nordic neighbors, and is taking long-term measures to tackle possible new local outbreaks.
Scenarios are being prepared by government authorities and financial resources allocated to address unemployment and support the health care system, as well as those in elderly and mental health care. “The outbreak of COVID-19 is not, and has never been, a narrow health issue for the infected people,” Hallengren said. “It’s a broad issue affecting all parts of society.”
When quizzed on Sweden’s “no lockdown” policy, Hallengren said that although a total lockdown was never imposed, remote work, online studying in high schools and universities, and restrictions on entertainment venues affected the country’s citizens.
“It was certainly not ‘business as usual’ in Sweden,” she said, rebutting a common claim, “but we needed to have a functioning society. That’s why we made an active decision not to close preschools and elementary schools. If you close schools, how do you enable people to work at the care homes, hospitals, and police and emergency forces? How do you keep the pharmacies, commuter trains and food stores running and open?
“We decided to lean on experts and the available knowledge at the time,” she explained. “We knew children were not severely affected and not the ones spreading the virus. This was proven by looking at the number of people on sick leave. Teachers working at preschools and schools were not sicker than other groups in society.
“We need to fight the virus, we need to protect vulnerable groups,” she continued. “But we need to make sure that the measures can be kept for a long time in a functioning society.
“Swedish people have high confidence in government authorities,” she added, “so with transparency and a lot of quantifying information, we created a strategy based on taking the right measures at the right time and in the right part of Sweden.”
How do you respond to allegations that Sweden sacrificed its older population for the sake of the economy?
“That criticism is unfair and untrue. Of course we never sacrificed anyone. We tried our very best, as I suppose other countries did, to protect lives, to stop the virus spreading in society and to protect the vulnerable groups.
“The care homes have been an extremely difficult and sad part, but they are very specific – people living there are extremely old, fragile and sick. We created a government commission to find out what happened, who did what and what we can learn from this.
“In Sweden, care homes are not just facilities for older people; they provide health care. We have 1,700 such homes and about 85,000 people live in them. Fifty percent of them live in these homes for only six months – that’s how old, fragile and multi-diseased their situation is. If you get COVID-19 or even the flu into these homes, it’s a matter of life and death.”
Retirement homes were generally perceived to be the weakest link in Sweden’s coronavirus strategy. But there’s another part of it that others could benefit from: decision-making based on expertise rather than politics.
“We [political decision-makers] are thinking people and we’re responsible for the decisions we make,” Hallengren said, “but our authorities wouldn’t be independent if we’d sometimes decide to follow the experts on disease prevention and disease control, and sometimes not to do so. You don’t have experts and expert agencies just to have them. You have them to listen to them, and take what they know into consideration,” she concluded.
Sweden COVID: 1,133,449 Cases and 14,656 Deaths – Worldometer (worldometers.info)
Israel COVID: 1,117,596 Cases and 7,205 Deaths – Worldometer (worldometers.info)
Coronavirus Around The World: Brazil, Israel, SwedenMICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We’re going to turn now to check in on three countries where leaders had, at some point, claimed to have the right strategy to contain the coronavirus only to see the pandemic take a larger toll than they had anticipated. For that, we are joined now by NPR’s Daniel Estrin in Israel, NPR’s South America correspondent Philip Reeves, who covers Brazil, and reporter Maddy Savage in Sweden.
So, Maddy, I’m going to start with you. Early on, Sweden took an approach to this pandemic that was just different from that of most similarly situated countries – so social distancing, yes, but no shutdown of the economy, hoping that as part of the process, the country would achieve some sort of herd immunity. How did that turn out?
MADDY SAVAGE, BYLINE: Yeah. There’s no getting away from the fact that Sweden ended up with a death rate several times higher than its Nordic neighbors – looking at the latest figures from John Hopkins University (ph), 54 deaths per 100,000 people. That’s ahead of the U.S., where it’s 40 deaths per 100,000 people. But if you compare it to other European countries like the U.K., Italy, Spain or Belgium, who all had strict lockdowns, their figures are worst.
I think where Sweden really failed was in its strategy to protect the elderly, the most vulnerable. Fifty percent of deaths have taken place in care homes. And in terms of the herd immunity, it wasn’t the overall goal, but it was something that scientists predicted would happen. And we aren’t seeing very high levels of antibodies in the population here. And we’re also seeing more science and research suggesting that it’s unclear what will happen in the future with those who do have antibodies.
MARTIN: So are Swedish leaders acknowledging that they didn’t get their strategy quite right?
SAVAGE: Swedish leaders have admitted that things went wrong in terms of the death toll, specifically in elderly care homes. But I think what’s important to point out here is that it’s the public authorities, the scientists employed by the state – they’ve really been the front – the forefront of this crisis. And there wasn’t a huge amount of political debate at the beginning.
But as the death toll has turned out to be a lot higher than predicted, as debates have continued globally about why Sweden’s been doing things differently, there started to be a lot more concern and criticism. And the Swedish government has launched a coronavirus commission to look into how things were dealt with at a local, regional and national level.
MARTIN: So, meanwhile in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has been downplaying the threat from COVID-19 from the beginning. And yet, the virus has hit the country very hard. And this week, Bolsonaro himself tested positive. So, Philip, what’s been the reaction to that development?
PHILIP REEVES, BYLINE: Well, it wasn’t really a surprise. As you mentioned, I mean, he’s made a point of flamboyantly ignoring social distancing. Not only that – actually subverting it. Even when he went live on TV this week to confirm that he’d tested positive, he took his mask off. His opponents see the fact that he’s now infected as proof that he’s reckless and irresponsible, a danger to people’s lives and entirely incapable of handling this crisis. But there’s also some speculation that Bolsonaro might try to turn this to his advantage.
If it turns out that he only has light symptoms and he emerges relatively unscathed, he could use himself as an example that, you know, what he’s been saying all along is true – that regardless of the fact that COVID-19 has killed more than 70,000 Brazilians so far, that this virus really isn’t all that serious and that most people will be fine, especially if they’re like him, fit and healthy, and especially if they take hydroxychloroquine, a drug that he ardently believes in, even though most medical experts, not to mention the World Health Organization, do not.
MARTIN: And what about the economy in Brazil? Brazil has one of the largest economies in Latin America. How has the pandemic affected that?
REEVES: Well, Michel, the country’s facing the deepest recession since records began. The Brazilian government’s pouring in billions to avert collapse. A chunk of that’s going on emergency payments to support low-paid informal workers. There are some 50 – 40 million of these. They have – many of them haven’t been earning a dime in the last few months.
And meanwhile, you know, foreign capital is pouring out of the country, and foreign investment pouring out of the country in vast sums. It’ll take years, Michel, to recover from this, and a lot of people are going to suffer in the process.
MARTIN: So let’s go to the Middle East now, where earlier this week, Israel’s top public health official resigned, claiming leaders ignored her warnings and reopened the country too quickly, driving a new surge of COVID-19 cases.
So, Daniel, could you pick it up from there? What’s the latest?
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Well, Israel has one of the world’s fastest infection rates at the moment. In just one month, Israel went from around a hundred cases a day to a thousand cases a day. It’s really a remarkable reversal because at the start of the pandemic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was praised. He imposed lockdowns. He flattened the curve. He shut down Israel’s borders very quickly. And his performance, his handling of the pandemic, helped him secure a new term in office.
The problem was that he opened Israel too quickly. He allowed big wedding parties, and that drove up infections this summer. And now Israelis are looking towards Europe, and they’re seeing Europeans starting to open up, starting to travel within the EU. And they’re jealous because the EU doesn’t want Israeli tourists now. And unemployment is at 20%, so Israelis are really not happy.
MARTIN: And, Daniel, you also cover the Palestinian territories. What about the situation there? Does it mirror that in Israel?
ESTRIN: It does. Palestinians also relaxed their lockdowns in the West Bank, and then cases shot up. And officials there say that about 80% of the new cases came from weddings and funerals.
The first wave of cases this winter was, in large part due, to Palestinian day laborers working in Israel and catching the virus in Israel. This current wave is inside the West Bank itself, and these infections coming from weddings, mostly from this one area, Hebron, where there have been these enormous weddings with, like, 3- or 4,000 guests at each wedding, which is the tradition there. And now wedding parties are banned in the West Bank and also in Israel.
MARTIN: So let’s go back to Sweden now. Maddy, you were telling us that the response in Sweden really was led by health authorities. It had not been politicized to this point. Now, as I understand it, the health minister is warning about a second surge of COVID cases. Are the authorities there considering changing tack and perhaps taking the measures that other countries took, like locking the country down?
SAVAGE: I think from all the press conferences I’ve watched and debates that have been had here, I think it’s very unlikely that Sweden will go into a strict lockdown because the whole point of its measures, its strategy, was to change social behaviors to last in the long term. It wanted to avoid the effects of going in and out of lockdown.
But I think a lot will depend on how Swedes behave in the coming months. It’s summertime here, as in North America. Travel restrictions have recently been lifted so that people can go everywhere. They’ve been told not to mingle, not to make new friends while they’re on holiday.
But some of those concerns from the health minister have come from the fact that it’s been reported not all people are doing that, especially in hot spots for holiday-makers, especially amongst young people. So I think whether there is a second wave will partly depend on that.
MARTIN: Phil, let’s go back to Brazil. How – is there any sign that the Bolsonaro government is changing course in response to this ongoing crisis? There is no sign that any measures they’ve taken have abated this crisis at all. Are there any signs of changing course in any way?
REEVES: It’s difficult to answer that question because there’s been no coordinated national response to this pandemic. You know, since the pandemic began, Bolsonaro’s lost two health ministers. They disagreed with his approach. Now he’s got an army general standing in in that job. He has stuck to his line, which is that the cure – locking down the economy – does more damage than the illness itself.
But the line taken by Brazil’s governors and mayors is different, and they are the ones who matter in many ways because they’re the ones legally empowered to enforce quarantines. At the beginning, they closed towns and cities and urged everyone who was able to to stay home. Now they’re opening up again, and they’re doing that even though the virus in roughly a third of Brazil’s states is getting worse.
MARTIN: And finally, Daniel, are the Israeli and Palestinian officials taking any steps to try to keep this new surge in cases from continuing to grow?
ESTRIN: Yes. Palestinian officials have imposed a total lockdown again. So they’ve closed businesses, and the economy is really hurting in the West Bank. Palestinian officials also can’t really provide a good stimulus program to help people. And in Israel, there are local lockdowns of areas with outbreaks. I was just driving by a whole neighborhood in Jerusalem that’s closed off with police tape. And all gyms and bars are closed, events are called off.
But there’s another problem that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s dealing with, which is that a recent poll shows that Israelis are losing trust in his ability to handle the pandemic and to help the economy because for the last month, while cases were rising, he was doing something very different. He was talking with the White House about annexing parts of the occupied West Bank this month.
And that didn’t happen. And Israelis didn’t really care about that issue much anyway because 20% of them are unemployed. And this evening, unemployed Israelis are staging a big demonstration right here in Tel Aviv, where I am. And Netanyahu hurried to promise them a new stimulus program. He met with protest organizers. But they’re going on with this demonstration. And so Netanyahu now is focused on trying to block a protest movement against him.
MARTIN: That was NPR’s Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv, NPR’s South America correspondent Philip Reeves and reporter Maddy Savage in Stockholm.
Thank you all so much for talking to us today.
ESTRIN: Thanks, Michel.
REEVES: You’re welcome.
SAVAGE: Cheers. Bye-bye.
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