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Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

nytimes.com

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Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#11

Post by martindbp »

drummer wrote: post #7
martindbp wrote: post #2

As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy. Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask (still), social distancing is minimal (cram…

Sweden did the right thing. Covid-19 is not worse than the flu. Norway recently also admitted the lockdown there was not neccesary according to the data they have now. In March they thought differently.

It is definitely many times worse than the flu, but probably not 10 and definitely not 100 times.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#12

Post by martindbp »

throw-away_42 wrote: post #6
martindbp wrote: post #2

As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy. Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask (still), social distancing is minimal (cram…

Sweden's total per-capita death rate is 50% higher than the Netherlands, 500% higher than Germany and Denmark, and 900+% higher than Finland, Norway, and Poland. All those deaths have not made you safer--your daily per-capita death rate is still several times that of those countries. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data

The current death rate, 10-15 people a day, is insignificant compared to other causes of death. It is not reasonable to talk about percentage differences when we're talking 15 vs 3 deaths a day.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#13

Post by marcusverus »

Traster wrote: post #8
jnwatson wrote: post #3

I don’t believe the article has addressed Sweden’s main argument for not shutting down: that herd immunity should be the prime driver. Essentially, that everyone is going to eventually have roughly the same death rate, so might as well get it over with. That remains to be seen; if Sweden’s peers can prevent flare-ups, it looks like Sweden was wrong.

Well it's not only that, if you overwhelm your healthcare system you're going to end up with excess deaths even if the same number of people get the virus in the end. Also, we've learned some mitigation techniques over the last few months (like steroids in late stage treatment) which means that the idea that 'everyone will get it eventually' just isn't relevant - its likely that our survival rate will go up over time…

Whether this is an issue for Sweden should be clear from the death rate among the infected, but that data isn't mentioned in the article. I assume that figure is difficult to calculate without a precise/consistent case count for multiple countries.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#14

Post by mips_avatar »

One interesting thing about Sweden is the high percentage of people who live alone. It's a big deal because in China most deaths came from an infected person spreading it to their family. Makes you think that if Sweden's numbers are as bad as they are without large-scale family spread, it would be absolutely horrific elsewhere.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#15

Post by text70 »

martindbp wrote: post #11
drummer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden did the right thing. Covid-19 is not worse than the flu. Norway recently also admitted the lockdown there was not neccesary according to the data they have now. In March they thought differently.

It is definitely many times worse than the flu, but probably not 10 and definitely not 100 times.

It's ten times worse. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publ...

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#16

Post by addled »

martindbp wrote: post #11
drummer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden did the right thing. Covid-19 is not worse than the flu. Norway recently also admitted the lockdown there was not neccesary according to the data they have now. In March they thought differently.

It is definitely many times worse than the flu, but probably not 10 and definitely not 100 times.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

For US data, I like how this table compares deaths from covid, flu, and pneumonia against the total deaths for all causes each week. I especially like that they show the ratio of current deaths vs the average of the 3 years prior for the same week.

The downside is how the data is slowly updated as each state trickles in data, so the most recent 4-8 weeks look lower now than if you check back later.

Still if you look back to April, flu deaths each week were in the hundreds, while covid deaths 9-15k. Saying it is 10x or more worse, doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

What really grabbed me is that the total US deaths in April from all causes was +40% compared to prior 3 year average.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#17

Post by mettamage »

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one.

Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring.

I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spreading rate that was bigger than 1, if no measures were taken. So, I'd expect between 100,000 to 200,000 to have died. I'm really happy that didn't happen. It also makes me curious as to why. Is it because of Sweden's demographics (people living alone)? Or is it because the virus isn't as deadly as we think it is?

How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths.

It's awful what happened, but the highest flu season in The Netherlands, for example, killed an estimated 9444 people [1] on 17,280,000 people, which is slightly higher than what the Swedes had to go through now (also rounded to 0.05%). I know that the novel coronavirus is not a flu, but if this is it, then well, I've seen worse, apparently.

I know the virus isn't done, but it had months to roam free in Sweden. One would expect it would double up every 5 days in terms of how many people would be infected.

Edit: they did need to maintain social distance apparently. I wouldn't call that "doing nothing". Sure a lot more can be done, but I feel the media are framing the Swedes a bit inaccurately. Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable)

[1] In Dutch, unfortunately: https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#18

Post by postalrat »

throw-away_42 wrote: post #6
martindbp wrote: post #2

As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy. Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask (still), social distancing is minimal (cram…

Sweden's total per-capita death rate is 50% higher than the Netherlands, 500% higher than Germany and Denmark, and 900+% higher than Finland, Norway, and Poland. All those deaths have not made you safer--your daily per-capita death rate is still several times that of those countries. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data

Its not over. For all we know Sweden might have fewer deaths per capita than those countries a year from now.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#19

Post by tomjakubowski »

martindbp wrote: post #10
kanox wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm starting to think it was the right decision Sweden is #6 by deaths/population according to this page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ This would indicate that the swedish response is among the worst. Several countries with comparable health systems have a death rate which is many times lower, for example Germany. This saved many thousands of lives. What am I missing?

Simple: it's not over yet, but it might be for some hard hit areas of Sweden. We'll see. Then there is another question whether it was worth it to shut down the world economy over a 0.05% death rate, or a few years worth of flu at once. I'd say probably no. We didn't know this back in Feb/March, which is why I was very much for a quarantine then, but not now. I don't think the powers that be would have done a complet…

> it might be for some hard hit areas of Sweden

The long-term success of Sweden's approach appears to hinge on this question. What evidence is there which supports that their hardest hit locales have achieved herd immunity?

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#20

Post by Barrin92 »

mettamage wrote: post #17

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spread…

>How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths.

Because the 1% death rate is a reference to people catching the disease, not the size of the population. Sweden as of now appears to have about 73k officially confirmed cases.

Swedes still voluntarily distanced and closed down, hence the economic damage mentioned in the article. Given that there is no widespread immunity still with total infections in the single digits, those deaths will eventually go up.

I'm not sure if the American attitude of indifference is taking hold here now, but 5000 deaths when 4000 of them could have been avoided is no matter to brush aside, it's in fact a straight up disaster. This is an unprecedent amount of needless death in modern Swedish history.

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