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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

#81

Post by bhupy »

triceratops wrote: post #79
bhupy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That is the same as "no strategy". Without coordination of the lockdowns, travel monitoring, national testing and contact tracing, you're just going to have shifting hotspots of infection. This also leaves behind an embittered population whose lockdown sacrifices were for nothing.

That's not the same as "no strategy", because this level of decentralization is how nation-states work today.

It's also, incidentally, how the EU works. There are open borders between member states — and while some member states "closed" their borders, this has been largely unenforceable in land crossings because there are no border patrol agents between every single land crossing between EU member states. Border enforcements have only been enforced at airports.

In the US, nationwide air travel came to a near complete stand-still during the outset of the pandemic, so inter-state travel was already at the same levels you had in the EU.

The US's strategy has been the same as the EU's, and it has been to let the member States define the strategy.

As of right now, 36 out of 50 US states have a lower per capita death rate[1] than France, Sweden, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Ireland[2]. 15 States have a lower per capita death rate than Germany and Denmark, who have seen the best COVID outcomes in the EU.

The US, to date, has administered more tests per capita than Belgium, Australia, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Norway, and Sweden (to name a handful). This is not because the US has a nationwide testing regime, rather it's because testing systems have been administered at the State level, with varying strategies (some focusing on nursing homes, some focusing on drive-thru testing etc).

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

[2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

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

#82

Post by nkurz »

DanBC wrote: post #34
mettamage wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. Do you have a link to the statistics please? I think you're comparing two different methods of counting death. I think for covid-19 you're counting people who died after testing positive, or people where covid-19 is listed as the cause on the death certificate. But for flu I think you're counting excess mortality.

Not a scientific article, but this blog post gives some numbers for Sweden: https://emanuelkarlsten.se/more-swedes-died-in-one-month-199....

One big question would be why they chose April 2020 as the comparison point rather than May or June -- did the number of deaths per month in Sweden actually drop?

(I haven't read the article closely, and don't have a horse in this race --- I just thought it was apropos. Feel free to tear it to shreds if appropriate.)

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

#83

Post by pengaru »

It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic anyways. Why even pay to have the lights on? You need to mothball the operation ASAP and lobby for government assistance for the duration.

I was just poking at rough figures last night out of curiosity regarding when the other end of this arrives in terms of 60% herd immunity for the US. Just pulling numbers out of my ass, like 200,000,000 for 60% and an avg infection rate of 100,000/day. With those figures it's 5.5yrs before 60% gets infected. We're at more like 50,000/day last I checked, but who knows how accurate that is.

Either way, it looks like this is going to be a life of masks and social distancing for a long time. Hopefully a vaccine arrives in volume before 5+ years go by.

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

#84

Post by DanBC »

nkurz wrote: post #82
DanBC wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. Do you have a link to the statistics please? I think you're comparing two different methods of counting death. I think for covid-19 you're counting people who died after testing positive, or people where covid-19 is listed as the cause on the death certificate. But for flu I think you're counting excess mortality.

Not a scientific article, but this blog post gives some numbers for Sweden: https://emanuelkarlsten.se/more-swedes-died-in-one-month-199... . One big question would be why they chose April 2020 as the comparison point rather than May or June -- did the number of deaths per month in Sweden actually drop? (I haven't read the article closely, and don't have a horse in this race --- I just thought it was apropos. Feel fr…

I'm not going to tear it to shreds!

When people say "covid is like flu" sometimes they mean "flu is a big deal, and a bad flu year kills lots of people". (I agree with that).

But sometimes they mean "flu isn't so bad, it's a bit like a cold, doesn't kill so many people".

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

#85

Post by mirimir »

makomk wrote: post #61
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…

This. It's pretty obvious at this point that a general lockdown is worthless as a replacement for locking down care homes specifically - Spain had one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe but massively screwed up their handling of their care homes, and ended up with an even worse per-capital death toll than Sweden. Unfortunately, mainstream media publications have been spinning this instead as evidence that herd immu…

Right. From what I've read, it seems like the most effective strategy would be locking down elder care homes tightly. And also tightly locking down staff at elder care homes. Because once one resident gets infected, there's no way to prevent other residents, and staff who care for them, from getting infected. At least, short of staff wearing ebola level protection, and changing between residents. Which would be impossibly expensive and time consuming.

Others in the general population who are at serious risk of complications, such as elderly and those with preexisting conditions, should also isolate themselves. As I gotta say, I have done.

But I suspect that it will turn out that general lockdown is neither good enough, nor worth the long term economic consequences. Except of course that those long term consequences will arguably mitigate global climate change.

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

#86

Post by swinglock »

basch wrote: post #77
swinglock wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If someone is feeling sick, are they encouraged to go out, but with a mask, elsewhere?

I don't know. That's the policy. Only those that wear a mask in their profession should do so. Not otherwise, regardless of how you feel. Instead of using masks, Swedes stay home if the feel sick.

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

#87

Post by _bxg1 »

bhupy wrote: post #45
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...

It's all been reactionary. Individual states and even cities are opening up when people clamor for summertime fun, and then frantically closing back down when the inevitable spike hits a couple weeks later. There is no attempt at cohesion or long-term planning. There is no leadership. They're all just winging it.

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

#88

Post by microtherion »

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 large proportion of the deaths were in care homes

… which is no different from other countries. I seem to recall articles comparing the numbers, and the proportions seem similar in many places.

> Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic.

Considering only the improvements in treatments made between March and now, it seems fairly evident that a strategy of front-loading deaths was ill-considered. Even if all countries eventually end up with the same percentage of the population infected (which is far from certain), it's likely that those with a late wave will have considerably fewer deaths.

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

#89

Post by irrational »

triceratops wrote: post #79
bhupy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That is the same as "no strategy". Without coordination of the lockdowns, travel monitoring, national testing and contact tracing, you're just going to have shifting hotspots of infection. This also leaves behind an embittered population whose lockdown sacrifices were for nothing.

I don't think that is true. In my state the governor shut things down quickly and completely and we haven't started opening back up yet. The result is very very very few cases of Covid-19.

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

#90

Post by leto_ii »

bjourne wrote: post #68

You have to look at the excess deaths figures. That is, how many usually dies from January to June in a normal year and compare that to how many extra that died in 2020. For Sweden the excess deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or take 10%. That is not the case for many other countries. For example, the UK had almost twice the number of excess deaths as Covid deaths in a few weeks in April.…

This is an important observation. In the Netherlands, where I live, I've had a number of people look at me with great surprise and mistrust when I mentioned that the Dutch have done a terrible job with this epidemic. The Guardian plots show that the Netherlands is one of the worst when it comes to under-reporting.

This is not to say however that the Swedes have done a good job. While their numbers are credible, their magnitude is still unacceptably large: 0.5/1000 Swedes have so far died of the corona virus.

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