Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by addicted » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

heavyavocado wrote: post #56

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…

Swede here. The leadership in Sweden has consistently tried to find different ways of justifying the strategy. Blaming the results on failing elderly care has been one such tactic. When you compare the raw numbers the proportion of elderly care deaths is actually in line with (or even less than) neighboring countries.

I feel like Tegnell’s original mistake was his disbelief that asymptomatic spreaders existed. His entire strategy was based on this and worse, he loudly and publicly criticized other countries that chose to lockdown because unlike him they were fully convinced about the existence of asymptomatic spreaders.

Once his strategy to protect the vulnerable failed dramatically due to asymptomatic carriers (and the fact that people make bad decisions), it was too late for him to back down and it’s been Iraq war all over again. One day he is criticizing other countries saying that what they are doing is not sustainable and then in the next breath complaining that his strategy has been misrepresented and what he is doing isn’t different from what the rest of the world is doing.

It’s been unfortunate to watch his inability to admit his initial mistake lead to so much unnecessary suffering and pain.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

kanox wrote: post #4

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…

> 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?

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by username90 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #124

londons_explore wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway . Considering COVID has closed many of life's fun things, there will be an entire generation of people who have effectively "lost" a year of the things they hoped they would do in their lifetime. By stating open, Sweden might decrease life expectancy in years, but increase it in terms of 'things achieved in a lifetime'

Keep in mind that years of life lost by dying sooner are actually a complete loss, while a year in quarantine is still partially lived. It varies a lot from person to person. If it was all about yourself, what do you think would be a reasonable exchange rate?

The exchange rate for the most successful lock-downs of corona is about 60 years of lock-down for 1 year of life.

Edit: Note that USA is doing much worse since so many are dying there even though you lock down.

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

#164

Post by addicted » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #101

mirimir wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impos…

> But I suspect that it will turn out that general lockdown is neither good enough, nor worth the long term economic consequences. Hang on, this is an article showing that a looser lockdown still ends up with your economy hammered anyway. This should not be surprising, analysts if the Spanish Flu pandemic showed that cities that locked down later and lighter actually suffered more economically. This is because the hi…

It’s so simple. (1) Your economy will be hit whether or not you lockdown. People are gonna reduce their activity due to the threat of the disease.

The lockdown affects behavior at the margins. And at the margins, the economic gains are linear to the additional activity due to not having a lockdown, but the growth of the virus is exponential.

Then the fact that the virus persists longer means places without a lockdown that did not drastically reduce the spread of the disease continue suffering economically.

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

#165

Post by ralph84 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #109

londons_explore wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway . Considering COVID has closed many of life's fun things, there will be an entire generation of people who have effectively "lost" a year of the things they hoped they would do in their lifetime. By stating open, Sweden might decrease life expectancy in years, but increase it in terms of 'things achieved in a lifetime'

Such an odd argument. I wonder how would you reply to such a statement when you reach 65 years of age.

At age 65 (or any age) I'd evaluate my risk and modify my own activities. I wouldn't even dream of asking others to give up their work or school or favorite activities because of my own frailty.

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

#166

Post by leto_ii » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

jlmorton wrote: post #144

leto_ii wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway. Yes, people die. That's true of all countries and all times. What we might call civilized societies have however strived to reduce those numbers as much as possible. This was done by trying to avoid violence, improving lifestyles and developing better medical techniques in order to prevent or repair diseases and injuries. Containing and minimizing the effects of a pand…

> Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is just one aspect of what we might call a civilized attitude towards human life. Conversely, not doing so is uncivilized and I might add immoral and irresponsible. The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others to die for their own convenience. I intentionally phrased that harshly, but it is indisputably true. In the US, 70,000 people died from the infl…

All preventable deaths should be prevented - this is the gold standard. In reality, of course, things don't work out that way. The analogy with a flu season is deeply misleading. The coronavirus has, in half a year, killed more people than the worst flu seasons, with extraordinary measures in place all over the world. It's completely reasonable to assume that without lockdowns we would have had millions of deaths already.

> The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others to die for their own convenience.

It may be so. Those people are morally wrong however. This is a deep point that I have insisted on in other comments as well. Casually weighing human life against economic cost is not acceptable in what we might call a civilized society.

> The only difference between believing 70,000 is okay, and 700,000 is not is a gut feeling about how much preventable death is worth it to maintain our living standards.

That is not true. Deaths caused by the regular flu are deeply regrettable and should be prevented as much as possible. If you dig into the data however, you will see that the coronavirus not only kills many more people than the flu, but it also kills people who would otherwise have many more years left to live. Diabetes, a heart condition or age > 65 yrs. shouldn't be death sentences in a modern civilized society.

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

#167

Post by austhrow743 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

leto_ii wrote: post #112

londons_explore wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway . Considering COVID has closed many of life's fun things, there will be an entire generation of people who have effectively "lost" a year of the things they hoped they would do in their lifetime. By stating open, Sweden might decrease life expectancy in years, but increase it in terms of 'things achieved in a lifetime'

> In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway. Yes, people die. That's true of all countries and all times. What we might call civilized societies have however strived to reduce those numbers as much as possible. This was done by trying to avoid violence, improving lifestyles and developing better medical techniques in order to prevent or repair diseases and injuries. Containing and minimizing the effects of a pand…

>What we might call civilized societies have however strived to reduce those numbers as much as possible

Unless you're claiming that no civilised society exists, that's not true at all. A civilisation built around minimising death as much as possible would look very differently to any that currently exists.

Resources are always a trade off. People working at those festivals and cinemas could have went in to medical care pre corona virus. People building festival stages and cinemas could have been building hospitals. If festivals and cinemas didn't exist then that would be less driving and less road deaths.

At some level festivals and cinemas existing is putting some peoples fun over others right to life, corona virus or no.

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

#168

Post by ljf » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #85

makomk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impos…

Don't forget that deaths are just one measure of the damage covid brings. My wife is/was a fit and healthy 40yo no underlying conditions - she had covid 4 months ago and has barely been able to climb the stairs some days. The 'crazy' thing is that her actual covid infection wasn't hat bad and she had no shortness of breath etc at the time. But here she is with symptoms very like ME some 100+ days later.

Obviously that doesn't happen to everyone but it appears a significant proportion of those getting ill have serious symptoms some time after the illness, with no clear end in sight.

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

#169

Post by jdminhbg » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

leto_ii wrote: post #120

nradov wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the criteria for defining an acceptable number of deaths?

Any death is unacceptable. This is, of course, unattainable in practice, so I would suggest looking at Eastern European or East Asian societies for a rule of thumb (e.g. Czechia, Slovakia, Greece, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam etc.).

> Any death is unacceptable.

This is not how society works. We could drastically curtail the number of deaths by outlawing cars, alcohol, and social interaction indefinitely, regardless of covid, but we don't. Refusing to understand that tradeoffs are involved is not helpful.

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

#170

Post by nodamage » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

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…

Remember that IFR (infection fatality rate) is the (total number of deaths / total number of infections). You can't use 10 million as the denominator because not everyone in Sweden has actually been infected.

An antibody study[1] indicated that 7.3% of Stockholm has been infected, but that number is 1) from April and 2) is going to be higher than average because Stockholm was harder hit than the rest of the country.

[1] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhets...