lockdown Archives - Independent North

Latvia plans ‘lockdown’ from October 21

On: October 19, 2021

Latvia will be in “lockdown” for a month from Thursday as the government tries to bring the coronavirus situation under control and relieve pressure on the healthcare system, Latvia’s public broadcaster LSM reported on Monday. New restrictions include non-essential store closures and a curfew between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.Continue Reading

Experts consider summer lockdown messages unsuccessful

By: Christian Jukka

On: March 27, 2021

In: News

An unvarnished and direct tone but hardly effective in the current situation, Vootele Päi, consultant for communication group Corpore, said. This kind of “twitching” suggests that those in charge of crisis management are panicking and on the verge losing control and a sense for reality. “The prime minister’s messages willContinue Reading

Kristo Erikson: Middle-aged people with severe cases arriving in ICUs

By: Christian Jukka

On: March 5, 2021

In: News

Head of the Intensive Care Center of the North Estonia Medical Center (PERH) Kristo Erikson says that Estonia should impose a lockdown as the country is on course for a situation where hospitals will no longer be able to help everyone in need. How serious is the situation in hospitalsContinue Reading

Yet as with so much of the data relating to COVID-19, proponents of the policy say that reading the data is a matter of perspective. Sweden may be faring comparably better in terms of excess deaths -- those greater than the usual number of deaths expected in a certain time period. Experts say excess deaths can indicate whether policies intended to combat the pandemic have unintended consequences, such as delaying treatment for other ailments and is an important measure of the overall efficacy of policy. While still performing worse than other Nordic countries on data from Eurostat, the official European Union statistics agency, and the University of Oxford, shows that Sweden recorded 7.9% excess deaths last year compared to the years 2016-19, according to the independent health news site Dagens Medicin. That means that the country had the 23rd lowest annual excess deaths out of 30 European countries -- lower than the U.K. (15.1%), France (10.4%) and Spain (18.9%). Sweden also has a lower number of coronavirus deaths per million than those countries, all of which have gone under strict lockdowns during the pandemic. Pointing to the recent excess mortality studies, Nils Karlson, an economist and political scientist who jointly wrote an op-ed last year in Foreign Affairs entitled “Sweden’s Coronavirus Strategy Will Soon Be the World’s,” is more optimistic. “There was some recent figures showing that if you count excess mortality, Sweden is one of the best countries in Europe,” he told ABC News. “And one of the reason is, of course, that we didn't get the flu, just the ordinary flu, because we wash our hands. We have social distancing. We didn't have as many car accidents. You know, all kinds of other stuff that that affects us didn't happen this year.” The resistance to lockdown, he said, is based on the idea that they are “unsustainable,” he said, and Sweden’s strategy takes into account not just economic factors, but all aspects of public life. While acknowledges the COVID death toll was too high, he said: “You have to keep society open not only for economic reasons, but also for critical public functions to to function, like hospitals, schools and so on. Schools are still open for younger kids... Otherwise, it's remote learning. But I think it has worked fairly well.”

Sweden has avoided a COVID-19 lockdown so far: Has its strategy worked?

By: Christian Jukka

On: March 2, 2021

In: News

Sweden’s novel approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic has drawn both praise and fierce criticism, not just inside the Scandinavian country, but across the Western world. The country has so far resisted going into lockdown, unlike the rest of Europe, even during the peak of its second wave over Christmas.Continue Reading