(1) Ivermectin with zinc and the antibiotic Doxycycline(2) Yale Prof: HCQ is highly effective in treating COVID-19 if administered early(3) Twitter locks Doctor Simone Gold out of her account for advocating HCQ(4) Covax-19 Vaccine, developed by Prof Nikolai Petrovsky, ignored by Australian Gov't(5) A Swedish leftist condemns the Government's Laissez-faire approach(1) Ivermectin with zinc and the antibiotic Doxycyclinehttps://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/coronavirus-australia-sydney-doctor-claims-cheap-head-lice-drug-could-cure-covid19-and-should-be-used-now/news-story/24b930fcec5e4ef33127b13d4356b0aaCoronavirus Australia: Sydney doctor claims cheap head lice drug could ‘cure’ COVID-19 and should be used nowA Sydney doctor claims a head lice treatment that costs $2 could be a coronavirus cure and should be given to vulnerable patients now.Shannon MolloyAUGUST 12, 2020 3:35PMA renowned Sydney doctor is urging health authorities to give vulnerable people infected with coronavirus a cheap and freely available drug that he believes is an effective "cure".Frontline medical workers should also be given it preventively to lower risk and in light of the large number who have contracted COVID-19 in Victoria, he argues.Professor Thomas Borody, a gastroenterologist credited with developing a world-first cure for peptic ulcers, saving countless lives, has stepped up his advocacy for what he believes is the "answer to Australia’s COVID-19 crisis".Taken together, Ivermectin – a treatment for head lice that costs as little as $2 – combined with zinc and the antibiotic Doxycycline, could be a "potential lifesaver right now", Professor Borody said."These three medications are already approved," he said."They do not need preclinical or clinical trials nor additional (Therapeutic Goods Administration) approvals unless the aim is to combine in a single capsule, for example."Patient treatment programs have been done in the US and elsewhere which indicate it can work within four to six days."A handful of South American countries have deployed Ivermectin as both a treatment and preventive measure after early laboratory research indicated it may eliminate COVID-19.Professor Borody believes the combination of three approved ‘off the shelf’ drugs could be a "cure".But experts have cautioned that any declarations of a coronavirus cure or treatment should be "taken with a grain of salt" given trials for a number of theorised medicines are in their early stages.When asked about the drug’s potential in treating coronavirus, Dr Ian Musgrave, a molecular pharmacologist from the University of Adelaide, said: "Oh no, not Ivermectin.""No, it‘s not a cure for COVID-19," Dr Musgrave added."It works in test-tube experiments, but is unlikely to work clinically as it is hard to achieve effective plasma concentrations. No clinical trials data are available yet and in the absence of any public data, claims of the high efficacy are to be taken with a grain of salt."Countless clinical trials for coronavirus treatments and vaccines are underway around the world in one of modern medicine’s biggest endeavours. Picture: AFP Countless clinical trials for coronavirus treatments and vaccines are underway around the world in one of modern medicine’s biggest endeavours. Picture: AFPSource:AFPConcerns have also been raised about some of the Ivermectin trials, with warnings that rushing it to human use might do more harm than good in coronavirus cases.That hasn’t stopped Professor Borody writing to both the Federal and Victorian Government urging authorities to heed his advice.The Daily Telegraph today reported that those pleas have fallen on deaf ears and described Professor Borody as having "invented an effective, cheap, readily available treatment for COVID-19 and his own country ignored him"."I wrote to the federal and state governments," he told the newspaper."I wasn’t even responded to … It got to a certain level of the fortress, but I don’t think it got to the decision-makers. You can see how frustrating it is, whereas a big state of India says ‘let’s use it’."Australia hasn’t exactly ignored Ivermectin, with a joint study by Monash University and The Doherty Institute back in April first sparking excitement about the drug.Their early stage laboratory research showed Ivermectin had an effect on COVID-19 after just one exposure to the anti-parasitic medication. The initial results were published on April 3.Dr Kylie Wagstaff from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Dr Kylie Wagstaff, who led the study, said at the time the results were astounding but stressed it was early days."Ivermectin is very widely used and seen as a safe drug. We need to figure out now whether the dosage you can use it at in humans will be effective – that’s the next step," Dr Wagstaff said.Dozens of clinical trials were launched in multiple countries soon after.Monash has received government funding to continue its research into the drug.But concerns were raised soon after the Monash paper’s publication about the "false hope" it might provide."Using the highest possible dose that’s been studied in a human, it’s 10 to 30 times short of where it needs to be," Professor Mark Sullivan, managing director at vaccine development company Medicines Development for Global Health, told The Age."You will hit safety problems far sooner than you will hit efficacy."The journal that originally published the early findings has since published letters from other scientists cautioning about Ivermectin.Professor Borody said he has reviewed the research, as well as the results of early trials abroad, and is confident his proposed tri-treatment is safe.He also made the bold claim that it could be the "fastest and safest way" to halt the outbreak in Victoria, potentially in as little as four weeks."If nothing else, make it available in aged care homes immediately," he said."Our elderly are at the highest risk and this is a very safe option especially when we have nothing else except ventilators."Also, our frontline workers deserve more protection with a preventive medication like this, and as emergency treatment if they test positive."An Ivermectin tablet can cost as little as $2 – which could make it by far the cheapest, safest, and fastest cure for Australians and the Australian economy."(2) Yale Prof: HCQ is highly effective in treating COVID-19 if administered earlyhttps://www.zerohedge.com/medical/yale-prof-hydroxychloroquine-haters-spewing-misleading-and-toxic-disinformationYale Prof: Hydroxychloroquine Haters Spewing 'Misleading And Toxic Disinformation'by Tyler DurdenFri, 08/14/2020 - 12:30Yale epidemiology professor Harvey Risch has hit back against critics who say he's been the subject of personal attacks over his insistence that hydroxychloroquine is highly effective in treating COVID-19 if administered early in the disease's progression.In a Washington Examiner Op-Ed, Risch writes that the pushback against his advocacy for the drug has been "furious."Dr. Anthony Fauci has implied that I am incompetent, notwithstanding my hundreds of highly regarded, methodologically relevant publications in peer-reviewed scientific literature. A group of my Yale colleagues has publicly intimated that I am a zealot who is perpetrating a dangerous hoax and conspiracy theory. I have been attacked in news articles by journalists who, ignorant of the full picture, have spun hit pieces from cherry-picked sources. -Harvey RischRisch says the personal attacks are a "dangerous distraction from the real issue of hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness, which is solidly grounded in both substantial evidence and appropriate medical decision-making logic."He adds that there a no studies - published or in pre-print - which disprove his theory that HCQ should be used on high-risk outpatients, and that "assertions to the contrary, whether by Faucci, the FDA, or anyone else, are without foundation. They constitute misleading and toxic disinformation."Covid-19 has 'two main stages' according to Risch, and HCQ works well in the first, but not the second, later stage of the disease:At the first stage, it is a flu-like illness. That illness will not kill you. If you are a high-risk patient and begin treatment immediately, you will almost certainly be done with it in a few days. When not treated, high-risk patients may progress. The virus then causes severe pneumonia and attacks many organs, including the heart. In this second stage, hydroxychloroquine is not effective.So, as Risch points out, it's important to distinguish which patients HCQ works best for; "Does it not work in those who have just started to have symptoms, or those sick enough to require hospitalization?"Secondly, Risch notes that most low-risk patients, those below 60 with no underlying comorbidities, typically survive without treatment. High risk patients are those over the age of 60, or those with chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and immunocompromised individuals."High-risk patients need immediate treatment when they first show symptoms," Risch writes. "One should not wait for the COVID-19 test result, which can take days and be wrong."Every randomized controlled trial to date that has looked at early outpatient treatment has involved low-risk patients, patients who are not generally treated. In these studies, so few untreated control patients have required hospitalization that significant differences were not found. There has been only one exception: In a study done in Spain with low-risk patients, a small number of high-risk nursing home patients were included. For those patients, the medications cut the risk of a bad outcome in half.I reiterate: If doctors, including any of my Yale colleagues, tell you that scientific data show that hydroxychloroquine does not work in outpatients, they are revealing that they can’t tell the difference between low-risk patients who are not generally treated and high-risk patients who need to be treated as quickly as possible. Doctors who do not understand this difference should not be treating COVID-19 patients. -Harvey RischRead the rest of Risch's Op-Ed here.https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/hydroxychloroquine-works-in-high-risk-patients-and-saying-otherwise-is-dangerousHydroxychloroquine works in high-risk patients, and saying otherwise is dangerousby Harvey RischAugust 12, 2020 10:29 AMAs of Wednesday, some 165,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19. I have made the case in the American Journal of Epidemiology and in Newsweek that people who have a medical need to be treated can be treated early and successfully with hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and antibiotics such as azithromycin or doxycycline. I have also argued that these drugs are safe and have made that case privately to the Food and Drug Administration.The pushback has been furious. Dr. Anthony Fauci has implied that I am incompetent, notwithstanding my hundreds of highly regarded, methodologically relevant publications in peer-reviewed scientific literature. A group of my Yale colleagues has publicly intimated that I am a zealot who is perpetrating a dangerous hoax and conspiracy theory. I have been attacked in news articles by journalists who, ignorant of the full picture, have spun hit pieces from cherry-picked sources.These personal attacks are a dangerous distraction from the real issue of hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness, which is solidly grounded in both substantial evidence and appropriate medical decision-making logic. Much of the evidence is presented in my articles.To date, there are no studies whatsoever, published or in pre-print, that provide scientific evidence against the treatment approach for high-risk outpatients that I have described. None. Assertions to the contrary, whether by Fauci, the FDA, or anyone else, are without foundation. They constitute misleading and toxic disinformation.What do you need to know to evaluate these smears against hydroxychloroquine? The first thing to understand is that COVID-19 has two main stages. At the first stage, it is a flu-like illness. That illness will not kill you. If you are a high-risk patient and begin treatment immediately, you will almost certainly be done with it in a few days. When not treated, high-risk patients may progress. The virus then causes severe pneumonia and attacks many organs, including the heart. In this second stage, hydroxychloroquine is not effective.So, if you are told that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, ask this question: In which patients? Does it not work in those who have just started to have symptoms, or those sick enough to require hospitalization?The second thing to know is that most low-risk patients survive without treatment. Low risk means you are under age 60 and have no chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, have no past treatment for cancer, are not immunocompromised, etc. High risk means you are over 60 or you have one or more of those chronic conditions. High-risk patients need immediate treatment when they first show symptoms. One should not wait for the COVID-19 test result, which can take days and can be wrong. Again, when Fauci and others say that randomized controlled trials show no benefit for hydroxychloroquine, you must ask: In which group of patients?Every randomized controlled trial to date that has looked at early outpatient treatment has involved low-risk patients, patients who are not generally treated. In these studies, so few untreated control patients have required hospitalization that significant differences were not found. There has been only one exception: In a study done in Spain with low-risk patients, a small number of high-risk nursing home patients were included. For those patients, the medications cut the risk of a bad outcome in half.I reiterate: If doctors, including any of my Yale colleagues, tell you that scientific data show that hydroxychloroquine does not work in outpatients, they are revealing that they can’t tell the difference between low-risk patients who are not generally treated and high-risk patients who need to be treated as quickly as possible. Doctors who do not understand this difference should not be treating COVID-19 patients.What about medication safety? On July 1, the FDA posted a "black-letter warning" cautioning against using hydroxychloroquine "outside of the hospital setting," meaning in outpatients. But on its website just below this warning, the FDA stated that the warning was based on data from hospitalized patients. To generalize and compare severely ill patients with COVID-induced pneumonia and possibly heart problems to outpatients is entirely improper.In fact, the FDA has no information about adverse events in early outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine. The only available systematic information about adverse events among outpatients is discussed in my article in the American Journal of Epidemiology, where I show that hydroxychloroquine has been extremely safe in more than a million users.It is a serious and unconscionable mistake that the FDA has used inpatient data to block emergency use petitions for outpatient use. Further, already back in March, the FDA approved the emergency use of hydroxychloroquine for hospitalized patients, for whom it is demonstrably less effective than for outpatients. If hydroxychloroquine satisfied the FDA criteria for emergency inpatient use in March, it should more than satisfy those criteria now for outpatient use, where the evidence is much stronger.I can only speculate about the cause of the FDA’s recalcitrance. Hydroxychloroquine is an inexpensive, generic medication. Unlike certain profit-generating, patented medications, which have been promiscuously touted on the slimmest of evidence, hydroxychloroquine has no natural financial constituency. No one will get rich from it.Further, it seems quite possible that the FDA, a third of whose funding comes from drug companies, is under intense pressure from those companies to be extremely conservative in its handling of hydroxychloroquine. If hydroxychloroquine is used widely and comes to be recognized as highly effective, the markets for expensive and patented COVID-19 medications, including intravenous drugs that can only be used in the hospital, will shrink substantially.Whatever the reason for the FDA’s stonewalling on hydroxychloroquine, this much is certain: Americans are dying unnecessarily, the economy is in disarray, and the threads that bind our society together have frayed. I am speaking out, but where is everyone else? Where are our elected officials, including those who are themselves physicians? Some, including Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, have been discussing evidence of the drug's effectiveness, but where are the rest?This issue should not be a partisan one. If our elected officials are not willing to pry open the FDA, we must elect new officials. Why are we silent? The time to speak is now.Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.(3) Twitter locks Doctor Simone Gold out of her account for advocating HCQhttps://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-locks-doctor-simone-gold-out-of-her-account/August 8, 2020Twitter locks Doctor Simone Gold out of her account for advocating for hydroxychloroquineBy Didi RankovicPosted 4:47 pmThe crackdown continues.If you're tired of cancel culture and censorship subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Twitter has suspended Dr. Simone Gold for posting about COVID-19. The doctor is one of the advocates of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus and Twitter isn’t a fan.Dr Gold has already lost her job after a social media campaign called for her to get fired, and now she’s found herself locked out of Twitter.Last week, on Monday, Dr. Simone Gold, alongside other doctors calling themselves "American Frontline Doctors" held a press conference called "White Coat Summit." The purpose of the event was to "dispel the misinformation and myths" about the coronavirus touted by the media.Their website says: "If Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, will cease."A day after the conference, the video, posted by Breitbart on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube was removed by all of the Big Tech giants.On July 30, Dr. Simone Gold revealed that she was fired by her employer, after working for about two decades in the ER, because of speaking out in favor of hydroxychloroquine.Dr. Gold is a board-certified physician who has worked in ERs across California for more than three decades. During the press conference, she claimed to have had the first-hand experience with COVID-19 patients and that HCQ works.Yesterday, Twitter temporarily suspended the doctor’s account. Today, after her suspension was lifted, she wrote:"Twitter locked my account for 12 hours & forced me to delete a tweet pertaining to treatment options for COVID-19."The screenshots accompanying the tweet show that she was suspended for "violating the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19." For the suspension to be lifted, she had to delete the tweets violating the "misinformation" policies.News of her suspension was first disclosed by a tweet by Mike Coudrey, which read:"WOW: Twitter has just locked the account of physician and lawyer @drsimonegold for "sharing misleading information related to COVID-19."https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-censors-all-links-to-bitchute/August 7, 2020Twitter censors all links to BitChuteBy Didi RankovicPosted 10:14 pmA brazen move by Twitter to suppress links to a growing alternative platform.If you're tired of cancel culture and censorship subscribe to Reclaim The Net. BitChute, a video hosting platform that is seen as an alternative to YouTube’s ever-more stifling moderating and censorship policies, has over the past five months experienced quite a growth.According to a tweet from the network, its monthly traffic figures doubled in that time from 15 to 30 million visitors.And while those behind the platform are still allowed to share this information about their business on Twitter – as of today anybody essentially engaging in further growing of that user base is now actively sabotaged on Jack Dorsey’s network.It appears, another tweet from BitChute said on Friday, that Twitter had "started blocking all tweets that contain Bitchute videos."The message thread further appealed to users to report what the situation looked like on their end, and advised them to counter any attempts at authoritarianism on the web by making sure they bookmark the BitChute website or set it as their browser’s homepage.In response to BitChute’s call to users to help out and share their current usage status when it comes to trying to posts tweets with links to the platform, many said Twitter had blocked these, providing only the generic explanation that the content was "potentially harmful" – and that Twitter came to this conclusion either on its own, or thanks to third-party "partners" – i.e., likely one of the notoriously tone-deaf or just plain wrong "fact checking" contractors.According to many users from around the world, they are indeed facing obstacles in posting links to BitChute-hosted content both old, and new. Twitter is yet to officially respond to any of this, which might easily be construed as an example of "potentially blatant censorship."At a time when YouTube’s censorship is causing many to look for alternatives, not being able to share those alternatives on current social networks could prove to be a problem and could help slow down getting the word out.And while Twitter itself appears to be in censorship overdrive in recent times, blocking links to entire alternative platforms is a brazen step for the increasingly brazen company.(4) Covax-19 Vaccine, developed by Prof Nikolai Petrovsky, ignored by Australian Gov'thttps://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/coronavirus-australian-vaccine-covax19-hamstrung-by-lack-of-funding/04b598a5-ecf1-4485-aa30-d750342b1068Aussie professor 'disappointed' COVID-19 vaccine hamstrung by lack of fundingBy Dan Nolan|August 12, 2020The whole world is waiting on a vaccine for COVID-19, not only to save lives but also to bring ourselves back to some sort of normality.The good news is that Australia's top scientists are very confident we will develop an effective vaccine soon.The bad news is that some of the contenders being developed here in Australia are hamstrung by a lack of funding.Frustrated with a lack of support at home, Professor Petrovsky will take Covax-19 to Pakistan for Phase Two trials. (A Current Affair)Covax-19 is a candidate being developed out of Adelaide's Flinders University by Professor Nikolai Petrovsky.It was the first Australian candidate to complete Phase One human trials but is yet to receive any government funding."We've had no support from the federal government to date in any of our program," Professor Petrovsky told A Current Affair."We've obviously asked for it but we haven't received anything," he said.Frustrated with a lack of support at home, Professor Petrovsky will take Covax-19 to Pakistan for Phase Two trials."We're just very disappointed in Canberra right now," he said."We don't understand ourselves, we've tried very hard to engage with Canberra and it's just silence."Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews said she was "happy to talk" to Professor Petrovsky but defended her government's modest contribution towards vaccine development so far."Quite frankly we're just not going to throw money away, we're going to continue with the approach that we have taken which is strategic and its positioning Australia quite well," Minister Andrews told A Current Affair.She said the Australian government is focusing on the University of Queensland's vaccine candidate which has received $3 million in federal funding and an additional $10 million from the Queensland government.The minister also points to an additional $10 million in funding via the CSIRO for a vaccine being developed by Oxford University in England."It's quite possible that any one of those will fail and that's why we need to go very widely in our approach," the minister said.{caption} Covax-19 is a candidate being developed out of Adelaide's Flinders University by Professor Nikolai Petrovsky. (A Current Affair)By comparison, Donald Trump's administration has provided almost $10 billion towards vaccine development, partly in the hope that a breakthrough will assist him in the November election.Before a vaccine can be made available to the public it needs to complete three stages of human trials.Phase One involves a small sample of people and focusses on safety and side effects.Phase Two is tested on closer to 1000 people with a focus still on safety.Phase Three is anywhere from 30,000 – 50,000 people usually across multiple countries and this is the crucial test to see whether a vaccine really works.Vladimir Putin announced a Russian-developed vaccine was skipping the all-important Phase Three trials and going straight to public release - with his daughter already having the shot.Scientists around the world have labelled Russia's decision to skip Phase Three testing as "dangerous".The good news is that Australia's top scientists are very confident we will develop an effective vaccine soon. (A Current Affair) Professor Petrovsky hopes that his vaccine candidate can be rolled out in Victorian aged care facilities as part of Phase Two trials."We are in discussions with a number of nursing homes in Victoria to extend our clinical trials so we can actually immunise the people in those nursing homes and hopefully protect them from the virus," Professor Petrovsky said."There really are no downsides to extending the trials to immunising people within nursing homes," he said."They really have nothing to lose and everything to gain."Associate Professor Paul Griffin from Nucleus Network, a specialist company conducting human trials of vaccines in Australia, believes aged care residents could only potentially be used as part of Phase Three testing."In Phase Two we still like to have relatively healthy volunteers," Professor Griffin said."I think we really need to see a bit more data about actual protection before we start using these vaccines as an intended solution."(5) A Swedish leftist condemns the Government's Laissez-faire approachhttps://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/responsibility-of-the-swedish-left-for-swedens-covid-19-tragedy/Responsibility of the Swedish left for Sweden’s COVID-19 tragedyWhy have the Swedish authorities not taken more vigorous steps to slow the spread of a virus that has taken such an unequal toll?Markus Balázs Göransson10 August 2020While the British left has criticized the UK’s erratic handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Swedish left has backed a national response that has led to death, ill health, and ruin among many of the country’s most vulnerable groups. Breaching its own values, it has made itself complicit in the managerial incompetence and moral bankruptcy of the Swedish pandemic response. This has left a stain on it that may take many years to remove.I am writing this in my three-bedroom flat in a town in central Sweden that I have not left since March. As a lecturer at a university in Stockholm, I can do all of my work remotely: my teaching, my research, and my administrative tasks. If I wanted to, I could also secure all my food and essentials online. Yet I am under no obligation to remain cloistered in my home. Under Sweden’s lax pandemic restrictions, during the past five months I have been free to go and come as I please, jogging in my neighbourhood, riding my bike along the lakeside, and, had I so wished, visiting cafés, restaurants, pubs and gyms.Sweden’s pandemic strategy appears to be designed for people like me: relatively young (I am 35) and healthy members of Sweden’s large middle class who do not use public transport to get to work. It is based around a number of public health recommendations: work remotely if you can, stay at home if you show symptoms, wash your hands regularly, self-isolate if you are sick.All Swedes are encouraged to follow them. Yet, it is far easier to do so if you have a spacious flat, a digitalized work space, a secure job, and a wash basin close at hand. It helps, too, if you read and understand Swedish well enough to be able to easily access public information about the disease.Opting for laissez-faireBy no means everyone in Sweden has been in this position. Public transport workers, health workers, taxi drivers, and shop assistants cannot work remotely. People in crowded flats who fall ill cannot easily self-isolate. Residents in care homes cannot stay away from staff who fail to protect them. Elderly immigrants who do not know Swedish struggled to access public information about the disease during the early weeks of the crisis, when the authorities were slow in issuing information in languages other than Swedish.In otherwise heavily regulated Sweden, the authorities have opted for a laissez-faire approach to the pandemic that has devolved much of the responsibility for curbing the contagion to individual citizens. Yet, as has become painfully clear over the past five months, individuals do not possess equal means to protect themselves and others, nor are they at equal risk from the virus.Predictably, the brunt of the pandemic has been borne by the poor, the physically weak, those already sick and the elderly. In Stockholm, people in disadvantaged areas have been many times more likely to contract and die from the virus than residents in wealthy neighbourhoods. People in service professions have been heavily affected, as have people of certain immigrant backgrounds, especially those born in Somalia, Syria and Iraq.Worst hit of all have been Sweden’s elderly. In a country of ten million, more than 5000 people aged 70 or above have died in the pandemic. It is a national tragedy that has been accompanied by horror stories of death waves in care homes and of elderly patients receiving lethal injections of morphine and benzodiazepine instead of oxygen. It contrasts sharply with the situation in Sweden’s Nordic neighbours, where only around 1200 people altogether have perished from Covid-19 out of a combined population of over 17 million at the time of writing.Rapid spreadOther governments might have been prompted by such figures to change their approach. But Sweden’s left-leaning government has dug its heels in, even as the country’s death toll has approached 6000. Prime Minister Stefan Löfven made his views on the matter abundantly clear: "The strategy is right", he stated bluntly in a recent interview with the daily Aftonbladet.Refusing to fault the strategy, the Swedish government and the public health authority that leads Sweden’s pandemic response have scrambled to shift the blame elsewhere. Primarily, they have pinned it on senior care homes which they say failed to keep their residents safe from the virus. Yet this is disingenuous, for it ignores the complicity of central state bodies in the disaster in the care homes. Among other things, the ministry of social affairs was slow in issuing clear guidelines to care homes and the minister for health and social affairs, Lena Hallengren, omitted care homes from a crisis management exercise in early March. Moreover, the public health authority expressly downplayed the dangers of working without PPE in care homes and advised that Covid-19 was unlikely to spread asymptomatically or presymptomatically.The public health authority expressly downplayed the dangers of working without PPE in care homes and advised that Covid-19 was unlikely to spread asymptomatically or presymptomatically.But most of all, it ignores that the main cause of the high fatality rate in Swedish care homes for the elderly has been the high rate of spread of the virus in Sweden. The share of older persons in Covid-19 fatalities in Sweden has been virtually identical to those in neighbouring countries, suggesting that elderly in Sweden are not necessarily more vulnerable than elsewhere. Indeed, as numerous Swedish epidemiologists and geriatrists have pointed out, what sets Sweden apart from its neighbours is not some unique defencelessness of its elderly population, but the fact that the country has had a much higher rate of contagion owing to a less proactive policy. Put crassly, more Swedish elderly have caught Sars-CoV-2, because there has been more Sars-CoV-2 around to catch in Sweden."A middle class strategy"Blaming the care homes has been one of several excuses peddled by the Swedish authorities to deflect blame. Another one has been that Sweden, unlike, supposedly, other countries, has taken a whole-of-society approach, seeking to protect the general health of the population rather than focus narrowly on limiting Covid-19 deaths. There is some merit to this argument, as sharp lockdowns have led to a spike in domestic abuse, depression and other ills in certain countries.But it is also a strawman argument, for between Sweden’s hands-off strategy and the strict lockdowns in some places, there is a spectrum of other possible measures. Sweden’s socially, culturally and politically similar Nordic neighbours have taken milder steps and experienced apparently less averse consequences than countries like the UK and France which imposed stringent lockdowns. According to a study by the Norwegian public health agency, for instance, Norwegians have experienced only minor changes in their quality of life since the crisis.This can be set against the vast and documented suffering that the disease has brought in Sweden. Since early March, over 5700 Swedes have died, tens of thousands have lost their loved ones, medical workers have suffered physical and mental pressures at work, an unknown number have become long-term ill, people over 70 and other at-risk groups have been required to self-isolate for months with no end in sight and a very large number of medical treatments have been scaled down, postponed or cancelled altogether to free up resources for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.As Sweden’s public health has taken a blow, its economy has declined almost as sharply as its neighbours’.As Sweden’s public health has taken a blow, its economy has declined almost as sharply as its neighbours’, its international reputation has plummeted and it continues to record high death rates, it is difficult to see what benefits Sweden’s strategy has brought beyond allowing the country’s healthy, working-age middle class to lead a life with few restrictions.It is not for nothing that the strategy has been described as "liberal" and a "middle class strategy" and has been praised by the American far right and Brazil’s rightist leader Jair Bolsonaro.Even so, Sweden’s left-wing pundits have largely stood by the government. With only a few exceptions, they have refrained from criticizing a strategy that has delegated responsibility for managing the contagion to individuals who lack equal means or indeed an equal interest to stop it."Alternative researchers"Anders Lindberg, the chief political editor of left-leaning Aftonbladet, has been one of the staunchest supporters of the government line. He has repeated government talking points on the pages of his newspaper – and on Twitter, he even branded a group of reputable scientific researchers who have criticised the official approach as "alternative researchers" in a Trumpian slur that he has failed to retract since.Like other op-ed writers in Aftonbladet, he has avoided blaming the decisions of government ministers or the public health authority for Sweden’s calamity and focused on the reality of Swedish class divides. But while those divides certainly exist, one might ask why Lindberg has not implored the Swedish authorities to take more vigorous steps to slow the spread of a virus that has taken such an unequal toll.Another left-wing pundit is the more mild-mannered journalist, Göran Greider. Less combative than Lindberg, Greider has repeatedly made the claim – also a favourite talking point of the authorities – that it is too early to evaluate the Swedish strategy, because the pandemic is likely to last for a long time still. But Greider misses the point that the criticisms that have been directed at the strategy have not been evaluative. They have been peremptory – demanding that Sweden change its course before it is too late.There is a small but growing movement of progressive critics of the Swedish approach. I count myself among them. Ironically, however, it is mainly right-of-centre and liberal newspapers like Expressen and Dagens Nyheter that have addressed the class dimensions of the Swedish crisis response. They have seized the ground in the public discussion that ought to be the birth right of the left.What’s left?Some left-wing commentators have argued that the pandemic may usher in a new progressive wave, as it has revealed the importance of having a strong public sector, a well-funded social safety net and good working conditions for essential workers.Perhaps they are right. But a different story can also be told. That story tells of a left-leaning Swedish government that failed to seize a historical moment to rally Swedes around values of solidarity and compassion – asking the young, the healthy and the well-off to make small sacrifices for those who were most at risk. It tells of a left-leaning government that embraced a strategy that privileged the healthy and resilient but exposed the vulnerable to unnecessary contagion. It tells of a government that failed to honour the most basic social contract between the state and its citizens: to do what it could to protect the life and health of all.After seeing the incompetence and moral bankruptcy of Sweden’s hands-off approach, one may well ask the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party that have presided over the Covid-19 crisis: will all your talk of solidarity and equality not ring hollow in the future after this reckless gamble with the lives of your citizens