June 28,from Deborah:

Here are my speculations only:

In Sweden, deaths dropped off when vaccinations began for the most elderly and fragile, but then they hit a plateau and didn’t budge for quite some time, before dropping off again. I think the final drop off was just this seasonal virus fading out. I wonder if that baseline of deaths will reappear in the fall when the virus picks up speed again. They addressed this in one press conference - some people are just too fragile, even vaccinated, to fight off the virus.

I wonder what the exact co-relation is between ICU and deaths. There should be a relationship of course, but I think ICU tends to be relatively “younger" people (average early 60s) and deaths are older people (average 80s). Many of the older people never make it to the ICU. The last wave spread mostly among the 20-40 year old crowd - so, mild cases - plus those around 60 could get vaccinated, plus natural immunity … but the spread was high, there were lots of cases, so older people who did get it could still die, although at lower rates because of the vaccine.

I believe Canada is a few weeks behind Sweden – spring comes earlier here, as does winter, so I think for a respiratory virus the graph shifts by a few weeks.

They have announced that the vaccine will be available for all 16 & 17 year olds in the fall. How they can do this when the EU hasn’t come out with guidance about the myocarditis issue, seems shocking to me, although one clue is that this policy aligns neatly with our Scandinavian neighbours (ie. politics again). As much as I admired Tegnell, and felt thankful for avoiding the worst excesses of covid-hysteria, I’m losing it for him on the vaccines. :-/ And the passive, bored journalists never challenge him on this stuff, it is just “variants! variants! variants!”, sigh...

Packing for Greece and getting our paperwork in order… I will go for my expensive PCR test this afternoon, even though the virus has basically disappeared from Stockholm. Tegnell said when our numbers get under 50/100,000, it will be “extremely unlikely you will get sick”. We are almost there…