Day 1194 – Let’s Talk About Sweden

Day 1194 – Let’s Talk About Sweden

Sunday April 26, 2020 

189 Days until the election on November 3^rd

269 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I’ve learned more about what Sweden is doing to fight the pandemic. They are taking a different tact than most countries. They are protecting their most vulnerable: the sick and the elderly, but they are letting the rest go about their business. 

The idea being that the healthy can fight off the virus and will develop antibodies and therefore the overall population will develop “herd immunity” and then the virus won’t spread once this level of immunity is reached. 

I hope they’re right. But. What if they aren’t? 

We know that most of these types of viruses once you’ve been exposed and survived you’ve developed an immunity. Is that true in this case? Maybe, but we don’t know right now. As time goes by and we have more time to study this situation we can learn more about whether this is true. 

It’s also been reported that this virus causes micro blood clots in the lungs, and it is this micro-clotting that is causing some people to die, not pneumonia, as has been assumed in other corona viruses. 

There is also a condition where your immune system goes into overdrive to defeat this invader and this can cause all sorts of problems – like death. Cyto-something or other. But there are drugs to tamp down the immune system response and this has been shown to save peoples’ lives. It also seems that this condition may be the cause of people seeming to be okay and then suddenly get bad – really bad. Or it could be the microh-bloodclotting.

So for my money, I’d rather stay inside, avoid the virus landing on me, and wait and see what else we learn. 

Maybe, what Sweden is doing and what the rest of the world is doing will ultimately work out to have the same effect. We’ll see.

There are two parts to that “it will work out the same” argument. One would be if we had been able to isolate those with the disease early on so that the virus didn’t spread than we might have been able to contain the outbreak, like we did with Ebola. But we didn’t do that. We now have it literally around the world. Now, we have to wait either for “herd immunity,” which we don’t know yet whether that works in this case; or we have to wait for a vaccine. 

As we wait, we are seeing direct evidence that our planet is healing. Regardless of what happens with the virus I say, “Let’s not return to normal.”

Let’s find a new normal. We have a tremendous chance to change the world for the better. Can we do it?

There are promising signs. 

Rockefeller Center is empty. Yet the folks who commuted everyday are working from home and things seem to be going okay. Should they return? Why? 

This question may be being asked all over the world. The big downtown HQ mentality and commute may be a thing of the past. Can we replace all those single driver cars commuting with none, or find another way?

Mark Cuban was on a finance channel recently and said there is no better time than now to start a company. (Doesn’t he always say that?) He pointed out there aren’t many cars on the highways right now, Why not try out self driving cars?

Jay Leno pointed out that the California State Police have handed out over 2,000 speeding tickets on Highway 101 for people doing over 100 mph. No one can believe there’s no traffic. (A little contrast to Mark’s comment.)

Meanwhile, I’m reading “War and Peace.” A few pages, every day.
Take care, and if nothing happens. I’ll tell you about it.

189 Days until the election on November 3^rd

269 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Ace Reporter, Bryce Holliwell on assignment.