I wasn't aware we were in some low number of care homes list, but it makes sense. It has been a matter of discussion how hard it is to get in one (huge waiting lists) and it's something that we'll need to invest a lot in the future. Even private expensive nursing homes are lacking, let alone social or state-owned ones.
Seems a bit of a random tangent to me though, that may explain some mortality numbers but not that much. In Portugal, around 40% of the victims were from nursing homes, that seems quite high to me. Unless countries with a higher number of nursing homes have a significant higher percentage of victims from there it's a theory that falls a bit to the ground. I just looked at the numbers from Sweden and they don't seem to differ that much, percentage wise.
Also, at least from the phenomenon I'm watching here, the number of lockdown skeptics will keep increasing. I pay no heed to them, most of them are just using hindsight. Softer lockdowns were used with some degrees of success in more peripheral countries and they might have worked for everyone all around if everyone had acted earlier. I think Portugal's success comes from a mix of those two, we're a peripheral country (still a lot more central than Sweden, mind - using passengers traffic as the metric) and we acted quite early. Our population also adhered very well, and we were all home before it was an imposed measure anyway. Our lockdown was not as legally binding as I've seen in other countries, but it was smooth, we didn't saw supermarket races likes in the UK and US. Acting early is more importante than acting strongly.
I also think soft lockdowns will be the norm from now on, i.e., somethings we will have to stop doing completely (bars, churches, discos, music festivals, large sports events), but the rest can be done if people are careful. I don't believe this would be enough as a first measure though, because they came too late and it's hard to teach people this middle ground so quickly.
We now understand a lot better how the vírus transmits. My region is excelent for that, as are other smaller semi-closed territories. Basically every one we diagnosed (and we've almost extinguished the thing) can be attributed to a close contact or came from the outside. Co-workers, co-living, friends in parties, and close/long social gatherings will cause aout 95% of transmissions it seems. The few we don't know how they got it (just 3 or 4) included an airport security guard (very exposed on his work, before precautions were imposed) and an homeless guy, who contacted loads of people. Still, with imperfect confinement, the disease was controlled and almost erradicated. So I can only imagine if we "want to live with it" it's quite possible with softer lockdowns, now that we're equipped for it and people are ready to accept some restrictions, like more distance and masks in close environments. I don't believe soft lockdowns were a real alternative though. And, by many prelimionary accounts, Economies seem to be proportionatelly more fecked were they ignored the problem (i.e., USA and Brazil won't benefit at all from letting the diesase break through, as the chaos it causes might be a lot worse, in GDP lost, than controlled lockdown). I'm very curious to see how this economics thing will pan out comparatively by the end of the year. My guess is that protecting your citizens pays not only in lives but in the economy too.
