Is Sweden Doing the Right Strategy with COVID-19?
4/29/20
The strategy being used against the coronavirus in Sweden is very different than the strategies being used in other parts of the world, regarding COVID-19. Could they have the right idea?
INTERESTING VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2J…
Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government (he hired Anders Tegnell who is currently directing Swedish strategy), the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
Timestamps
0:08 Sweden coronavirus strategy
1:00 What is herd immunity?
2:06 The second wave of infection
Today we’re going to talk about how Sweden’s strategy regarding COVID-19. In Sweden, they aren’t under any lockdowns or quarantines.
In Sweden:
• The healthcare system is not at full capacity
• The schools are open
• The restaurants are open
• They are practicing social distancing
• They have banned groups of over 50
Sweden has the lowest number of ICU beds in all of the Nordic countries. It also appears that the number of deaths per day from the coronavirus in Sweden has gone down.
Herd immunity is basically a situation where there are enough people exposed to a virus to build immunity against that specific pathogen.
There are these things called B cells that are apart of the acquired immune system, and they make antibodies. Antibodies are very specific to a certain microbe. For example, when your body makes antibodies to COVID-19, they will wait until the next time you’re infected with COVID-19, and they will neutralize specific microbes associated with it.
The theory is that with herd immunity, there will not be a massive spread of the virus. People become infected, then immune. They make antibodies, and then things are back to the way they were again.
What Sweden tried to do was avoid the second wave of infection. The rest of the world that’s under lockdown will eventually have the lockdown lifted. Then, people are exposed to the virus again, and there could be a second wave of infection.
Should we keep going with this cycle?
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