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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

#41

Post by vonmoltke »

addled wrote: post #16
martindbp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FYI, you double-pasted the link. The correct one is https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm

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

#42

Post by Svip »

mettamage wrote: post #30
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 econom…

I'm not American, I'm Dutch. And there's a huge difference between WOII levels (which is what 2% deathrate in The Netherlands would be), versus an extra amount of death people comparable to the worst flu season. In The Netherlands, the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. I hope it stays that way for everyone.

The average high for the flu is 650,000 fatalities a year.[0] COVID-19 has so far caused 540,000 fatalities,[1][2] and the year is far from over. Quick napkin math would suggest at least 1 million will have died from COVID-19 at year's end, globally.

That's far higher than all regular flu seasons, although nowhere near as bad as previous flu pandemics.

[0] http://jogh.org/documents/issue201902/jogh-09-020421.pdf

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

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

#43

Post by systemvoltage »

frereubu wrote: post #5

One thing missing from this report is that a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes, and ministers have publicly stated that not entirely locking down care homes from the outset was a big mistake. If they had done this, the figures may well not look nearly as bad. Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic. I'll be interested to see where countries are a year…

A very large percentage of US deaths are also from the same type of residents - care homes, elderly communities and such. I read that it was as much as 40%. I need to find source.

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

#44

Post by drummer »

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.

Norway: ‘Lockdown was not necessary to tame Covid-19’

According to Camilla Stoltenberg, the Director-General of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (Folkehelseinstituttet), similar results would have been achieved in her country without a lockdown. She bases that statement on a study by her institution.

The study collected data on confirmed cases of coronavirus registered in Norway, the number of hospital admissions, the reproduction rate, etc. At the beginning of March it was feared that one person infected with the virus would infect four others. Only strict lockdown rules could bring that figure down. This hypothesis came from the Imperial College in London and gave forecasts for a number of European countries, including Norway.

Virus never spread as fast as was feared

In their report, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health now comes to a completely different conclusion: the virus never spread as quickly as was feared and was already on its way back when the lockdown was announced.

‘Our conclusion now is that we could have achieved a similar effect without lockdown. By staying open and taking a series of precautions to prevent the spread. It’s important that we admit that. Because should the number of infections rise again in winter or should there be a second wave, we have to be honest in our analysis whether such a lockdown has proven to be effective’.

According to Stoltenberg, who is herself a doctor and the sister of former Norwegian Prime Minister and current NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, such draconian measures should only be announced in the future if there is an academic basis for them. And that was missing now, according to Stoltenberg.

https://businessam.be/noorwegen-lockdown-was-niet-nodig-om-c...

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

#45

Post by bhupy »

frereubu wrote: post #5

One thing missing from this report is that a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes, and ministers have publicly stated that not entirely locking down care homes from the outset was a big mistake. If they had done this, the figures may well not look nearly as bad. Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic. I'll be interested to see where countries are a year…

> I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no strategy, seemingly like the USA

The USA does not have "no strategy", it just depends from State to State[1]. Every state has had some form of lockdown and school closure.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-ma...

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

#46

Post by swinglock »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #28
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…

It’s really deeply misleading to say that Sweden let the virus go “unchecked.” Sweden didn’t enforce a hard lockdown but strongly encouraged social distancing, mask wearing, staying at home, etc. Sweden did have a strong (if likely inadequate) national response to coronavirus. And Sweden was subject to EU-wide travel restrictions, including virtually no foreign tourism.

False regarding mask wearing; wearing a mask has always been and is still strongly discouraged, instead one should only "stay home if feeling sick".

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

#47

Post by watwut »

drewg123 wrote: post #24
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?

The same data source also shows that Sweden's per-capita death rates are lower than Spain and Italy, which had full scale lockdowns.

They had lockdowns after country systems were completely overwhelmed. Up to inability to handle dead people in some places.

Their situations was strong argument for other countries to lock down much sooner.

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

#48

Post by Svip »

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…

> Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable)

Belgium counts all suspected deaths as well, including those that have not been tested for COVID-19. Which means Belgium is the country closest matching their excess death with COVID-19 fatalities. The Netherlands, for example, leaves about 50% unexplained due to their counting.[0]

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-the-challenge-of...

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

#49

Post by Pepe1vo »

mettamage wrote: post #30
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 econom…

I'm not American, I'm Dutch. And there's a huge difference between WOII levels (which is what 2% deathrate in The Netherlands would be), versus an extra amount of death people comparable to the worst flu season. In The Netherlands, the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. I hope it stays that way for everyone.

This is empirically false. It's at least 25% worse than the 2018 flu season, which was the worst flu season in decades, and that's with unprecedented mitigation measures in place.

https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland

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

#50

Post by lsllc »

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…

For comparison, Massachusetts with 8000 deaths out of a population of 6.9M (which is #4 for deaths per-capita worldwide after NY, NJ and CT).

For some reason MA is now being held up as "the exception to America's coronavirus failure":

https://theweek.com/articles/923075/massachusetts-exception-...

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