Sweden stands firm on face masks as Anders Tegnell refuses to copy other countries' strategy

With face masks mandatory on public transport in Denmark from Saturday morning, Sweden is now in the position it has been in so often during the coronavirus pandemic - alone.

The country, which chose not to close lower secondary schools, pubs, restaurants, and sports facilities at the peak in April, is again an outlier in not recommending the general public wear face masks.

Dr Anders Tegnell, the country's state epidemiologist, told the Daily Telegraph that he did not expect the Public Health Agency of Sweden to follow Norway, Finland and Denmark and drop its opposition to masks when it recommends new measures to Sweden's government at the start of next month.

"The main risk, I think, is that people will think: 'okay, I'm wearing a face mask. I don't need to take these other precautions'," he said, saying his agency believed social distancing and self-isolation of the sick were "much more important".

While he admitted there was no study showing that face masks did in fact reduce adherence to other guidelines, he pointed to the trajectory of cases in countries that have mandated them.

"There is now a continuous and even increased spread in a number of countries who implemented face masks, " he said.

"There is a belief that if you just have face masks, you can forget about everything else, you can run your subway with full trains and so on."

Norway last week recommended the use of face masks on public transport in Oslo, and Finland on public transport nationwide, putting Dr Tegnell's agency under growing public pressure to follow suit.

Scientific Forum Covid-19 Sweden, a group of 45 Swedish researchers critical of Sweden's strategy, argued last Sunday in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that masks should be worn even by students and teachers in schools.

"The scientific data is clear at this point, with most studies  showing that face masks do limit the spread, and to my knowledge not a single study showing they increase the spread, so why are they so stubborn?" said Lena Einhorn, an author with a PhD in virology, who is part of the group.

But Jonas Ludvigsson, professor of clinical epidemiology at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, who on Monday attacked the group for cherry-picking and misrepresenting studies, said that the different approach Sweden had taken was best explained by the unusual independence of its government agencies.

"In the other Nordic countries, politicians often have a stronger role than the experts at public health agencies." Frode Forland, Dr Tegnell's Norwegian counterpart, told the Telegraph he believed Dr Tegnell had "a valid argument" against face masks.

"We've been stressing that it's still much more effective to keep distance than to wear a face mask," he said. "If you keep one metre's distance, the reduction of risk of infection is about 80 per cent, but if you wear a face mask it's about 40 per cent."

He estimated that even with the rising number of cases Norway is currently experiencing, about 70,000 people would have to wear a mask for a week to prevent a single infection. 

On Wednesday, Johan Carlson, the Director-General of the Public Health Agency and Dr Tegnell's boss, appeared to soften the agency's stance, telling a press conference that "the issue over face masks is not at all dead", and that the agency was working on a review of the available evidence before issuing a list of recommendations to Sweden's government on September 1st.

But Dr Tegnell said the agency was unlikely to recommend face masks to the general public across Sweden, unless the rate of infection increases dramatically.

"There might be a role for face masks if you have increased incidence in a limited geographical area and you want to do everything to stop it as quickly as possible," he said.

But he said that Sweden was seeing a downward trend in most regions of the country. "If that changes then of course we need to think about more measures, but its a bit unusual to install more measures when you are in a downgoing trend."

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Lockdowns Don’t Work, Study Finds

Travel restrictions and containment measures had “no observed association” on the number of critical cases of COVID-19 or death rates for the virus, a new study has found.

Increasing caseloads were associated most with greater obesity, older populations, higher unemployment rates, low levels of national preparedness in early detection and reporting, and limited health care capacity, says the study published by The Lancet. Researchers examined data in 50 countries through May 1 for the study.

“As governments consider partially or completely lifting travel restrictions and containment measures, understanding the roles of these policies in mitigating infection is imperative to minimize the impact of second and third waves of outbreaks,” the authors write.

The study, “A Country Level Analysis Measuring the Impact of Government Actions, Country Preparedness and Socioeconomic Factors on COVID-19 Mortality and Related Health Outcomes,” was authored by Rabail Chaudhry, George Dranitsaris, Talha Mubashir, Justyna Bartoszko, and Sheila Riazi, and published in the Lancet online publication, Eclinical Medicine, July 21, 2020.

SOURCE 

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Bill Gates: America's Coronavirus Testing Is 'Garbage'

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes the majority of the United States' Wuhan coronavirus tests are "garbage," he told Wired.

According to the billionaire, our nation's testing system is deeply flawed because of testing reimbursement rates that are determined by the government.

"The majority of all U.S. tests are complete garbage, wasted. If you don’t care how late the date is and you reimburse at the same level, of course they’re going to take every customer. Because they are making ridiculous money, and it’s mostly rich people that are getting access to that," Gates explained. "You have to have the reimbursement system pay a little bit extra for 24 hours, pay the normal fee for 48 hours, and pay nothing [if it isn’t done by then]. And they will fix it overnight."

Gates helped fund a diagnostic testing program in Seattle. He said the results were quicker and the testing wasn't as intrusive. Instead of relying on a test that requires a swab from the turbinate – the very back of the nostrils – Gates' test utilized a cotton swab from the tip of a person's nose.

"There’s this thing where the health worker jams the deep turbinate, in the back of your nose, which actually hurts and makes you sneeze on the healthy worker. We showed that the quality of the results can be equivalent if you just put a self-test in the tip of your nose with a cotton swab," he explained. "The FDA made us jump through some hoops to prove that you didn’t need to refrigerate the result, that it could go back in a dry plastic bag, and so on. So the delay there was just normal double-checking, maybe overly careful but not based on some political angle. Because of what we have done at FDA, you can buy these cheaper swabs that are available by the billions. So anybody who’s using the deep turbinate now is just out of date. It’s a mistake, because it slows things down."

The Food and Drug Administration warned about false positives, saying approximately three percent of all tests aren't actually positive.

Since the start of the pandemic we have seen flaws in Wuhan coronavirus case numbers and deaths. Texas had to correct their fatality rate. In Orange County, California, 30,000 serology tests – used to detect whether or not a person has antibodies for the virus, suggesting they previously had an infection – were counted in the "cumulative tests to date" figures for five weeks. In Florida, Orlando's positivity rate was said to be 98 percent, when, in reality, it was only 9.4 percent. Part of the issue was the number of clinics and labs that were reporting 100 percent positivity rates.

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Kudlow Says Another Lockdown Would Have 'Enormous' Human and Economic Cost

National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow says he “wouldn’t mind” seeing a return to a 15 percent capital-gains tax rate, while noting that President Donald Trump wouldn’t seek such a cut through an executive order.

“We are looking at middle-class income tax cuts and capital gains tax cuts to spur investment and jobs and liquidity,” Kudlow told reporters at the White House on Aug. 12

“In another era, we used to call them tax cuts 2.0. The president has never lost those thoughts,”  he said, while adding that Joe Biden, the president’s 2020 rival, would raise taxes if elected.

Kudlow said it’s imperative that legislators in Congress work to come up with a cut to capital gains taxes, adding that it’s “not part” of any Trump executive order or plans on future executive action.

White House officials “had the economic committee during the campaign,” Kudlow said. “We originally had a 15 percent capital gains tax rate. And I wouldn’t mind going back to that.”

“We’d like to take it back to 15 percent, where it was for quite a long time because it helps jobs, investment, productivity, and wages,” he reiterated. The capital-gains rate is currently 20 percent.

On Aug. 10, Trump stated that he’s considering a tax cut on the profit that results from the sale of a capital asset such as a stock, bond, or real estate. He didn’t specify how that could be carried out.

The president said at a press conference that he’s also looking at “an income tax cut for middle-income families.”

“We are looking at expanding the cuts that we have already done, but specifically for middle-income families, and you will be hearing about that in the upcoming few weeks,” Trump said, adding that a capital-gains cut will produce more jobs.

While remaining mired in talks with top Democrats about a pandemic relief measure, Trump took executive action to provide a federal unemployment benefit of $300 per week, with states paying another $100 per week. He also took action to suspend evictions for renters and homeowners, defer student loan payments, and suspend payroll taxes for people who make less than $104,000 per year.

Kudlow’s remarks on slashing the capital-gains tax mirror that of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who told Fox News earlier that there’s a need for “legislation to do what we want on that front.”

“That’s what we need now because of COVID. So I think for the next few years while we recover, we should reduce those capital gains,” he added.

Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note to investors that a cut to the rate “would require the support of Congress,” although a Trump executive order “allowing the indexing of capital gains to inflation might be a realizable objective.”

SOURCE 

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Why mail-in voting is a bad idea

With the COVID-19 pandemic still upending our normal routines and the 2020 presidential election looming, mail-in voting continues to be a point of fierce controversy.

Absentee voting is already available for those who cannot vote in person. People who are elderly, immuno-compromised, or otherwise worried about exposure to COVID-19 while voting may apply for an absentee ballot.

But many Democrats want to take that several steps further, by drastically expanding mail-in voting or implementing universal mail-in voting before Election Day. While allowing everyone to mail their ballots in instead of heading to the polls during a pandemic may sound like a good idea, it’s rife with potential for mistakes, complications, and fraud.

“Mail-in ballots are the ballots most vulnerable to being altered, stolen, or forged” writes Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former Federal Election Commission member.

Votes cast by mail-in ballot are more likely to be lost or rejected over minor errors, such as a name or signature not exactly matching election officials’ files. “The U.S. Election Assistance Commission says that in the last four federal elections, 2.7 million mail-in ballots were misdelivered and 1.3 million were rejected by election officials,” von Spakovsky points out.

Many have criticized President Donald Trump for overstating the threat of voter fraud that comes with mail-in voting. But even those in favor of expanding mail-in voting acknowledge that it holds more potential for fraudulent activity.

Richard L. Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, thinks mail-in voting could be done safely with new rules. But as he acknowledged to The New York Times, “election fraud in the United States is very rare, but the most common type of such fraud in the United States involves absentee ballots.”

Douglas A. Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, and a Democrat, told the Times, “if you analyze all the steps involved in a mail election you start to see where the weak points are for fraud.”

It’s true that five states — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington  — conduct their elections entirely by mail. They already have the systems and infrastructure set up to do so. Implementing the level of mail-in voting Democrats are suggesting for the whole nation before November is unrealistic.

Von Spakovsky believes it’s unnecessary to move the election date, an idea President Trump has floated on Twitter. But he doubts Congress, the only entity with the power to move an election, would do so. He notes that even during the Civil War and World War II, elections were not postponed.

“Despite the coronavirus pandemic, experience shows that we can vote safely in-person as long as election officials implement the safety protocols recommended by health experts in polling places—the same protocols we are all using when we go to the grocery store or pharmacy,” he said.

Email from Kerby Anderson: k.anderson@pointofview.net From Point of View Radio Talk Show

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