Last week’s post (Part 1) addressed the Biblical model with regards to pandemics or infectious diseases.
As we saw, that model requires quarantine of the sick but not of the entire population.
There is a country that has followed that model. It is a country that long ago abandoned its Christian and Biblical heritage, but that, in this case, whether knowingly or not, has been following the Biblical model pretty closely.
That country is Sweden.
Sweden and the state of Michigan each have populations of about 10 Million people. Michigan has followed a draconic lockdown, which has spurred protests in the capital city of Lansing. Sweden has not resorted to any lockdown, the only developed country which has not followed the example set by the rest of the world. Michigan has over 3,300 deaths; Sweden has a thousand less than Michigan.
If you prefer comparing against neighboring countries, which did impose lockdowns, the results are comparable when taking population densities and other factors into consideration. Two California emergency room physicians in the front lines of this pandemic were interviewed last week and addressed comparisons between Sweden and Norway (links below).
Let us take a look at the model that Sweden has been following.
In the first place, Sweden has not mandated the closing of anything. Everything is voluntary. If the businessman wants to stay open, he may stay open. If the lady wishes to eat in a restaurant, she may eat in a restaurant. Schools, churches, and cities continue open. Warnings have been issued addressing the aged, advising they should stay inside, especially during times of high contamination, since the aged are the ones most affected.
If someone gets sick, they are asked to quarantine or to go to a hospital until well.
The police do not go about arresting or penalizing anybody for going shopping, or enjoying a day in the park, or just going for a ride in a car or on a bicycle.
Of course, Sweden has been criticized, attacked, mocked, and despised.
Why?
Could it be that the experts in other countries do not like it when they are contradicted? Two weeks ago, a group of 22 “scientists” attacked the officials of Sweden’s department of health, demanding the Swedish government discard the directives of that department and impose the measures all the other countries have imposed. They implied that the Swedish population had been willfully deluded by ignorant authorities and by an epidemiologist who has been seduced by his sudden fame.
Wow. It’s not nice to contradict “experts.”
A French journalist may have let the cat out of the bag when, while interviewing a Swedish epidemiologist, he said, “…it’s almost as if we want Sweden to fail because then we’d know the fools are they and not us.” [the quote is a paraphrase; I cannot find the original source]
But, leaving polemics behind, let us take a look at the results thus far.
The development of the contamination and the illnesses and deaths has been following the Swedish medical predictions pretty closely. Their models differed dramatically from the English models, to which the great majority of the governments of the world submitted. Their initial numbers have since been substantially reduced because they were exaggerated numbers to begin with.
Sweden counts each death as a Covid-19 death if the deceased had the virus, even though they know that the virus is not necessarily the cause of death for all who die and test positive for the virus. In other words, someone might die of cancer but if he had the virus, they count the death as a Covid death. Sweden does it so in order to be consistent with the majority of countries (and states) which have been categorizing their deaths in like manner.
Daily deaths are about 80 but have been decreasing. More will die in the coming weeks and months, but the mortality rate has been much less than the alarming predictions of 80 Thousand to 90 Thousand that were supposed to have died by summer.
The contamination rate has also been decreasing. The hospital situation is acceptable. The English models (to which most other countries adhered) anticipated that there’d be 8 Thousand to 9 Thousand patients requiring intensive care. The actual numbers are a fraction of that: 530. The hospitals are not overwhelmed.
Sweden did not buy the “flatten the curve” meme.
The Swedish department of health is expecting that the country will develop a “herd immunity” against the virus. This is something that would not be easy to develop in other countries who have, in effect, quarantined the entire population. For now, this expectation cannot be proved. But, going forward, when the other countries proceed to “loosen” their lockdowns, we shall see how acute the next “waves” of contamination in those countries will compare to Sweden. For now, some Swedish medical researchers believe that 40 percent of Stockholm’s population has had the virus and the herd immunity will be achieved by end of May. This too has not been proved, but if it turns out to be so, then the Swedes will be in a far better situation than the rest of us.
Of course, the Swedish economy has suffered: GDP is expected to decrease by 4% and unemployment is expected to hit 9%. But that compares extremely positively against the economic reality of other countries who’s numbers are far worse. For example, England’s GDP decrease is expected to be 13%, or more than triple the Swedish drop.
In sum, it would have been far better to have followed a model more aligned with the much maligned Bible, where the aged and the sick would have been placed in quarantine; where we would have had a better chance of achieving herd immunity; where the models predicting catastrophic (“apocalyptic”) death rates would have been scrutinized more closely and would have been seen to have been greatly exaggerated (in fact, historically, those models have never been very accurate).
It is not unwise to seek our guidance from the Word of God.
Below you will find a link to one of the articles addressing the Swedish experience from The Spectator (London).
Also, further below, you will find two links to a presentation before the press given last week by two California doctors who are in the front lines of the fight against the virus. The interview is about 62 minutes long and is excellent.
This presentation is now at 4.7 Million views.
“We’ve never seen it where we put the healthy in quarantine.” The first link is about 50 minutes long; the second is about 12 minutes. Very informative and very valuable. These two emergency room physicians also compare the results between Sweden and Norway. In addition, they talk about the immune system.
“Academics and reality are two different things.”
“When I write a death note, we are being pressured to add Covid…even when we think that the death had nothing to do with Covid.”
They allude to the Bible’s requirements for quarantine.
It is fascinating to listen to the journalists’ questions. In effect they tend toward: dare you question the wisdom of Dr. Fauci?
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-swedish-experiment-looks-like-it-s-paying-off
Dr. Erickson COVID-19 Briefing
Dr. Erickson COVID-19 Briefing, Pt. 2