Drowning in Coronavirus Research, Part 29

There are a few islands of sanity in the world, not many, but a few.  The province of Ontario must recognize that the research shows that people with asymptomatic illness aren’t a significant risk to transmit the disease.  So it is allowing people working in critical jobs, like food production, who test positive, but don’t have symptoms to be at work, as long as they can be isolated and otherwise take precautions.  (Ontario Article)

And speaking of islands of sanity, here is a breakdown of Sweden’s deaths from coronavirus. (Sweden Article) Looks at lot like Minnesota and the US.  People 70 and over represent 90% of all deaths and most had 2 or more other diseases.  80 to 89 year-olds comprised 41% of deaths and ages 90 plus were 26%.  Those under 70 with no comorbidities were 3% of all deaths.  52% of those 70 and over who died lived in a care home and 27% were received home care.  The 2018-19 flu season was unusually mild in Sweden and 3000 fatalities from respiratory viruses in a year is not unusual, so there may have been a number of people who would have succumbed in a normal flu year who died with coronavirus. And the article shows a number of other causes of death that kill far more Swedes than coronavirus has.

Here is a view from a physician on how the UK handled its coronavirus response, which was pretty similar to how other countries did.  (UK Article)  He says that the lockdown will kill more people than the virus.  He said the worst possible response would be to lockdown people with no risk while putting people with the virus in nursing homes and that is exactly what the UK did.  Sounds a lot like NYC as well.  He pointed out that younger people are more at risk of dying from many other things.  He also expressed concern about the economic costs and the effect of that on health.

The New York Times carries a story on Norway opening up gyms and finding no infections at all afterwards.  (NYT Story)   About 3800 people who were gym members were split between a group allowed to go back and a group not permitted to go to the gym.  The gym goers were asked to wash their hands, they did not have to wear masks and they stayed 3 feet apart for most activities, but 6 feet for high intensity ones.  There were no coronavirus cases among the gymgoers.  So open up the gyms too.