COVID 19 - Coronavirus

[SveNitoR]

Really? There's no large increase in hospitalization in Sweden at all. In the summer there's been a slight uptick in cases in the hospital, but nothing major. The biggest projected risk was that doctors and nurses have a majority of their vacation in summer, and therefore that an increase in cases at the same time could lead to severe problems. It turned out to not end up like that, though.

There's also stress among hospital staff in Sweden, but I believe it's been better the last half year or so.

Regarding post covid health problems I don't think I heard that one in eight get problems, but long term health effects are quite common after severe infections. The difference now, I think, is magnitude and frequency, due to a lot of people getting quite severely ill in a short period of time, and the lung and smell function being a lot more noticeable than other longer term effects after most other infections.

 

[Couchpotato]

Long term damage well..it sucks. Imaging walking a few blocks or going up stairs, and sounding like your a smoker. Wheezing and gasping for air because your lungs are damaged.

 

[Myrthos]

There are numerous studies on long COVID citing different numbers, like 1 in 5, 1 in 7, etc. Including the effect of long covid on children. This study is what I was referring to. It is a Dutch study, where the patients were already tracked before COVID happened, which gave them a good view on what new symptoms emerged because of COVID. The study has been published in The Lancet. There are quite a few more symptoms that they note than just smell and lung functions.

The current viruses are said to be milder, but there are also different ones around and that can lead to re-infections. There are also studies claiming that with every infection your immune system might be better resistant to that specific virus version, but it is also weakened. If you get infected again, which is very possible these days, it might lead to an infection with a bigger impact.

As to the increase in hospitalization. A year ago we were still partially in lockdown, so the virus had less chance to infect people, as a result infection rates were low during summer. I don't think Sweden did a lot in the area of lockdowns anyway.
If I am not mistaken the illness of hospital staff in The Netherlands is a double digit number. That is a very high number.

 

[SveNitoR]

Yes, there are more symptoms, I just meant that those symptoms (lungs and smell/taste) impact life in a much more obvious way than general tiredness, tingling or aches which are common after other infections. A lot of people have long term effects after influenza, but we rarely talk about it since it is less obvious and just something expected.

Yep, there was no lockdown at all in Sweden. High schools and universities had distance schooling for a while, and most work places had people work from home. There was a higher spread (and mortality) in Sweden initially due to this, but it has more or less evened out now.

It would probably have been a good idea to have harsher measures in the beginning, but after the first months of the pandemic it seems like it made little difference. Last summer saw very little spread in Sweden as well, so I doubt lockdown or not had much to do with it, at that time at least.

Sweden is also not very densely populated, so outside of large cities, I'd guess the spread is a lot slower compared to many other countries.

 

[Myrthos]

Yes, there are more symptoms, I just meant that those symptoms (lungs and smell/taste) impact life in a much more obvious way than general tiredness, tingling or aches which are common after other infections. A lot of people have long term effects after influenza, but we rarely talk about it since it is less obvious and just something expected.

I know people who have been tired for months in a row, with not being able to do much of anything, besides lying in their bed or on a couch. Not being able to smell is in a completely different ballpark when it comes to quality of life.
The same goes for the tingling feeling, or small fiber neuropathy. Having this disability for longer periods for time, some have it for a year or more, is really something that also has a big impact on quality of life.

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

I believe I have long covid. I got covid right at the start here in the U.S. in my last job, I drove into the first quarantined town I'm aware of in the American Southwest that was having its own local epidemic and was knocked flat alone in a hotel room for 2 days.

I get tired all the time, so does 1 of my 2 dogs, which is totally out of character for a retriever born to fetch a ball. He would do it all day if you let him. Now, maybe twice. For me, I get head rushes all the time. They've improved some. It's not unusual for me to pause while walking down a hall to lean against a wall for 10 seconds, as I regain my faculties. There was a stretch a while back where I couldn't even take a shower without sitting down in the middle, which was an entirely new experience for me. That hasn't happened in a while. *knocks wood*

I'm going to help my mom clean my uncle's house tomorrow. He's a health-food nut and an all-natural healthy kind of guy, as well as an old guy these days. He did smoke for a lot of years before he came to these conclusions about his health, but he also quit a lot of years ago. He never got the vaccine or the badass covid that found me easily enough, but he got one of these new variants. It landed him straight in the hospital. Turns out, he had the beginning stages of emphysema without even knowing it. Covid tore his lungs the hell up. He recently got released to some kind of halfway house, but he'll likely be sucking on oxygen tanks the rest of his life

 

[Redglyph]

In Belgium it's mostly back to normal, the mask is only mandatory in medical environments and in drugstores (drugstores and medicament delivery are strictly regulated here, you can't just open a drugstore like a regular shop). Other than that, all restrictions are gone except the PCR required to enter the country.

There are still new cases but it's more in the background, and they are milder cases too.

We had the opportunity to take 2 (free) shots last year, then 2 more at the beginning of this year but it has never been mandatory (which I find stupid).

I've heard cases of long-term exhaustion and even limb amputation as a consequence of the virus infection. It's a nasty thing.

 

[SveNitoR]

I know people who have been tired for months in a row, with not being able to do much of anything, besides lying in their bed or on a couch. Not being able to smell is in a completely different ballpark when it comes to quality of life.
The same goes for the tingling feeling, or small fiber neuropathy. Having this disability for longer periods for time, some have it for a year or more, is really something that also has a big impact on quality of life.

I didn't mean that those problems are easy, but that they were quite common before and often hard to find the cause. There are quite a few diagnoses with similar symptoms where we do not know the cause or the trigger. To lose the sense of smell or become winded constantly is not that common, and therefore easier to suspect covid to be the cause.

I'm not trying to minimize the impact or suffering, only point at reasons why I think it is being acknowledged a lot. And I think it is very good, because there are so many people who have similar problems since a long time before covid and the medical science hasn't prioritized them. Maybe we will get more answers what happens when people get these long term effects and what can be done about it.

 

[SveNitoR]

In Belgium it's mostly back to normal, the mask is only mandatory in medical environments and in drugstores (drugstores and medicament delivery are strictly regulated here, you can't just open a drugstore like a regular shop). Other than that, all restrictions are gone except the PCR required to enter the country.

There are still new cases but it's more in the background, and they are milder cases too.

We had the opportunity to take 2 (free) shots last year, then 2 more at the beginning of this year but it has never been mandatory (which I find stupid).

I've heard cases of long-term exhaustion and even limb amputation as a consequence of the virus infection. It's a nasty thing.

The short term problem with mandatory vaccinations is of course the balance between being free to choose over your own body, and the risk to other people. There's also a lot of research showing that trying to force people makes them contrarian even when decently positive beforehand.

I think it is a lot better to try to have vaccines part of national programs where people get scheduled automatically and need to cancel if they don't want it.

 

[Redglyph]

The short term problem with mandatory vaccinations is of course the balance between being free to choose over your own body, and the risk to other people. There's also a lot of research showing that trying to force people makes them contrarian even when decently positive beforehand.

I think it is a lot better to try to have vaccines part of national programs where people get scheduled automatically and need to cancel if they don't want it.

Maybe it's better not to push people to far, indeed. They already had a part of their freedom removed with confinement and curfews. But I'm used to think globally as when we had mandatory vaccinations to eradicate dangerous diseases. Of course they were DNA-based so it was easier to justify (no mutation making a vaccine less efficient).

 

[JDR13]

I get tired all the time, so does 1 of my 2 dogs, which is totally out of character for a retriever born to fetch a ball. He would do it all day if you let him. Now, maybe twice.

So Covid can actually affect canines? I hadn't heard of this until now.

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

I don't know. This is my personal theory.

But the timing is right. Could be Valley Fever, too, which is common enough around here. I know big cats in zoos have caught covid before. Some other animals, too, I think.

Edit:
You got me curious enough to actually look, JDR. While I trust the CDC about as much as my ex-wives, here's what they say about it. Close contact? Yeah, I embarrass the hell out of myself when I first see my boy Murphy.

 

[Ripper]

Sweden is also not very densely populated, so outside of large cities, I'd guess the spread is a lot slower compared to many other countries.

I remember talking about the Swedish response at the time, and saying that it probably couldn't be compared to our situation, where the population of London is almost the same as the whole of Sweden. I think the same approach here would probably have been disastrous.

In the other threads we were talking a bit about moderation, and on that score I was quite hardline about what I saw as the propagation of clueless conspiracy theories. That's fully open to criticism, of course, but the way I saw it, if you're trying to get people out of a burning building, and someone is blocking the staircase saying "Ah, but what if this is all an illusion," you may have to say 'that's all fine, but right now, get the fuck out of the way.'

 

[SveNitoR]

I remember talking about the Swedish response at the time, and saying that it probably couldn't be compared to our situation, where the population of London is almost the same as the whole of Sweden. I think the same approach here would probably have been disastrous.

In the other threads we were talking a bit about moderation, and on that score I was quite hardline about what I saw as the propagation of clueless conspiracy theories. That's fully open to criticism, of course, but the way I saw it, if you're trying to get people out of a burning building, and someone is blocking the staircase saying "Ah, but what if this is all an illusion," you may have to say 'that's all fine, but right now, get the fuck out of the way.'

I agree. Part of the difficulty of comparing approaches to the pandemic is that the demographics are different.

I know one large reason Sweden got a lot of severe cases initially, was because Sweden didn't respond quickly to people returning from vacation to the Alps, as it was starting to spread a lot there. This likely made quite a large difference initially, when compared to how the other nordic countries responded.

Regarding getting people who are impeding out of the way, I agree it can be warranted if not doing it leads to very bad consequences. A problem this time were the many unknown factors of covid-19, so how big a risk the conspiratorial people caused was hard to quantify.

Edit: As an aside, I've been thinking a bit about where reasonable suspicion and scepticism crosses over to paranoid and conspiratorial behavior. I have no good answer, other than the fact that facts and arguments disproving the conspiratorial theory make zero difference (they can even strengthen the beliefs) once it's become a conviction.

 

[Redglyph]

Sweden is also not very densely populated, so outside of large cities, I'd guess the spread is a lot slower compared to many other countries.

A friend of mine who's living there also mentioned that Swedes were naturally keeping more distance than other countries in Europe (figuratively as well as literally), illustrating it like this:

​

I don't know to what extent this is still true, I suspect there was a touch of self-derision. When I went there, people were friendly and welcoming enough.

 

[Myrthos]

That distance is going to be a bit difficult keep in the bus

 

[Taluntain]

All regulations are gone in The Netherlands. In the meantime the amount of children in the hospital with Covid have tripled from the same period last year. There are more infections as last year in general as well and the hospital staff is breaking down, because of the high percentage of illness amongst the staff, a still high number of Covid patients and a huge backlog of treatments. Next to that a lot of hospital staff decided to do something else, where it pays better, the hours are better and the risks aren't that high.
In the meantime still 1 out of 8 people get long covid, even with this 'milder' version. And with more infections compared to last year, one could consider this a serious issue.

However, in my country we are dealing with it by ignoring it and not communicating about it. Great plan.

We got a new government recently that labelled itself "Freedom Movement" (cringe warning signs there) and though they didn't have a particularly anti-vaxxer program, it turned out soon enough that the new PM was basically an anti-vaxxer and quickly started giving out typically intelligent anti-vaxxer statements such as that we have natural remedies for covid in the form of vitamin D* and sea water. So it's all good, according to him.

But hey, at least he didn't start telling everyone to stock up on horse paste.

Honestly, when you have idiots like that in charge of the government and a health minister that does his bidding, the results are as you would expect them to be. Basically, anyone who takes covid seriously is on their own as the official government stance is to treat it the same as any other disease. The only difference is, the infection numbers here currently are still low enough that the healthcare system can handle it. But I'm pretty sure that that's going to change in the upcoming colder months.

*Vitamin D is beneficial when it comes to coping with a covid infection if you have proper levels of it before getting infected. It is not a cure and it does not really help if taken post-infection, according to the research I've read on the subject.

 

[SveNitoR]

A friend of mine who's living there also mentioned that Swedes were naturally keeping more distance than other countries in Europe (figuratively as well as literally), illustrating it like this:

View attachment 4230​

I don't know to what extent this is still true, I suspect there was a touch of self-derision. When I went there, people were friendly and welcoming enough.

This is quite accurate, as long as it's possible without getting too far from the bus stop. If someone is standing under the roof, it's considered a little too close to also get under there, unless it's raining a lot.

@HiddenX In busses people also try to sit at least a few seats away if possible, even before covid. It works well outside of bigger cities and the most usual starting and ending times of school and work. So, yeah it doesn't really work well inside the bus most of the time.

In normal conversation we usually keep 1.5 to 2 meters (~5-7 feet) distance, even with friends and family.

But, we are still mostly kind and helpful, just a bit socially careful and untrained in socializing with strangers.

 

[SveNitoR]

We got a new government recently that labelled itself "Freedom Movement" (cringe warning signs there) and though they didn't have a particularly anti-vaxxer program, it turned out soon enough that the new PM was basically an anti-vaxxer and quickly started giving out typically intelligent anti-vaxxer statements such as that we have natural remedies for covid in the form of vitamin D* and sea water. So it's all good, according to him.

But hey, at least he didn't start telling everyone to stock up on horse paste.

Honestly, when you have idiots like that in charge of the government and a health minister that does his bidding, the results are as you would expect them to be. Basically, anyone who takes covid seriously is on their own as the official government stance is to treat it the same as any other disease. The only difference is, the infection numbers here currently are still low enough that the healthcare system can handle it. But I'm pretty sure that's going to change in the upcoming colder months.

*Vitamin D is beneficial when it comes to coping with a covid infection if you have proper levels of it before getting infected. It is not a cure and it does not really help if taken post-infection, according to the research I've read on the subject.

What country are you from? There's a similar political "movement" in Sweden, but they are so far on the fringe that almost no one knows of them (yet...).

 

[Taluntain]

Slovenia, it's referenced in the article I linked.