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by Gwypaas
2273 days ago
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Not really, the data they communicate that they are basing their decisions on are the number being admitted to ICU per day. Which actually has been decreasing in Sweden and is a hard fact you can't deny. Since everyone really sick will end up there. Not the unknown number, which you might catch a percentage of the general population by testing. Sweden has now started anti-body tests on general populations to try to get more correct statistics across the whole population. So yes, testing is amazing and super important in the early phase, i.e. Korea when it was fairly localized and contact tracing worked well enough. When community spread is there in several places all you can do is limit the it according to the models. |
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ICU admissions, as you say is a 'hard figure' of what matters, in some ways, yes I agree, I see what you are trying to say.
But what you are saying is like "We shouldn't count the Nazis coming across the border, let's just count the number of people they kill, that's all the data we need"
1) 'fewer ICU admissions' is absolutely not a hard fact (!), because the number of confirmed cases is growing quite a lot in Sweden [1], it's absolutely inevitable that many of them will end up in the ICU. Sweden Covid cases are growing rapidly, borderline exponentially. ICU cases will 100% increase unless Swedes are literally superbeings.
2) Other kinds of data are really important in terms of planning and modeling. This is the most existential crisis since WW2. Wouldn't it make sense to test as extensively as possible? Surely, the cost must be some kind of factor, but the alternative is an economic meltdown.
I don't think they have an excuse: 'rapidly expanding and pervasive testing' should be high on the agenda of every nation facing this crisis.
In fact, I think that cheap, pervasive testing will be one of the ways we can lift these lockdowns and get people back into the community.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/