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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There are no "It's a new car!" doors here. I watched Sweden's head epidemiologist on Fareed Zakaria GPS on Sunday. (I like Zakaria and I don't care what anyone thinks of that.)

Pertinent text:

"ZAKARIA: Can you explain the death rate? Because you have in Sweden a death rate that is a good bit higher than in your neighboring countries, though as we pointed out not compared to the worst countries in Europe but why do you think - was there - you know, did this kind of - is this an unintended or accidental occurrence or is it, you know, is it a cost you had to pay?

TEGNELL: It's certainly an unintended occurrence. It's not something we counted on. Not something we wanted. There are two different reasons for this. One is that actually our incidence in Sweden has been much higher than in neighboring countries. We're quite sure about that. Our testing capacity has been limited. And I think the number of people in Sweden that has been infected so far has been quite a lot greater than our neighboring countries. That's one part of the answer.

The other part is an unfortunate number of introductions of the disease into our elderly in Sweden that caused a very high level of mortality in those places. And that's been very unfortunate. But a large part of our mortality has taken place in those institutions."

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../fzgps.01.html

Specifically, one third of deaths (most of which are coming from Stockholm) are in nursing homes:

"That same week there were numerous reports in Sweden’s national news media about just how badly the country’s nursing homes were starting to be hit by the coronavirus, with hundreds of cases confirmed at homes in Stockholm, the worst affected region, and infections in homes across the country.

Since then pressure has mounted on the government to explain how, despite a stated aim of protecting the elderly from the risks of Covid-19, a third of fatalities have been people living in care homes."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...virus-strategy

This is comparable to the US, where 20% of cases are from nursing homes: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-c...g-homes-2020-4

It's a used diaper, no doubt. But these ultra high death tolls seem to have many common features. Quite advanced age, co-morbidities, density of location. This diaper seems, for reasons beyond my pay grade, a lot smellier in NYC, and nursing homes everywhere, than anyplace else.

Any setting where people live in close proximity and share services is going to be a hotbed for contagion. Dorms, prisons, military barracks and ships, cruise ships, hospitals, nursing homes -- all have been trouble. Hospitals are the best at limiting spread because they have people who worry about that sort of thing in ordinary times. Of those hospitals and nursing homes have the most vulnerable populations, for obvious reasons. If you can care for yourself, you try to avoid assisted-care facilities.