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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

#181

Post by glofish »

ralph84 wrote: post #165
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this is exactly how see it as well.

My mother is 77 at risk from COVID - does she expect the neighbors kid not go to school to keep her "safe"?

Or that a 20 year old not have fun at the beach from now on so that she is "safe"?

Of course not, not a least bit, and she told me that herself. I admire her for it. I agree as well. Everyone is responsible for themselves.

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

#182

Post by FriendlyNormie »

wbronitsky wrote: post #106
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'

The argument that some people die so it’s ok if more people die is not only horrific, but it makes very little sense.

No post body was provided.

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

#183

Post by leto_ii »

jdminhbg wrote: post #169
leto_ii wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While not explicitly specified, my comment was referring to deaths caused by the coronavirus. If you read past the first sentence you will also notice that I explicitly said that this is an unattainable standard and I have provided a number of countries that can be taken as reference for what an acceptable death rate might be.

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

#184

Post by dvdplm »

vondur wrote: post #113
usrusr wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you completely lock down a care home? It's a labor-intensive industry and you can't just put care on hold for a few weeks like you could with an assembly line. The only way to keep a virus like this away from care homes is to keep it away from friends and families of caretakers and from their friends and families. You can't focus prevention when you are dealing with presymptomatic spread.

I believe there was one place in France where the care workers moved into the facilities and then the movement of people and items into it were strictly controlled. I believe no one died from Covid-19 at the facility.

This is exactly what needed to be done, in Sweden and elsewhere. Pay staff triple and have them stay with the old folks and get everything delivered by externals with as little contact as possible. And no new admissions into the care homes.

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

#185

Post by latchkey »

ptx wrote: post #95
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.…

Taiwan has 7 COVID-19 deaths[1]. It seems far-fetched to suppose that they would be somehow covering up the 12000 additional deaths that would be required to reach Sweden's per-capita numbers. South Korea would have had to neglect to report 99% of COVID-19 deaths. [1] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En

Vietnam is zero deaths and At first, I thought it was the govt covering something up, but after so many months, along with closely monitoring things, I trust their numbers.

It is literally a source of national pride for them to have done so well, it would be very hard for them to hide things.

Quarantine, masks, isolation, cleaning, testing, contact tracing. ALL WORKED.

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

#186

Post by CryptoPunk »

This highly cited April 11th study projected that Sweden would have 96,000 deaths by July 1st if it didn't institute a lockdown:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v...

The actual death toll was 5,400, and now the deaths are declining precipitiously. Of course every death is a tragedy, but the harm done from a national lockdown, which includes youth missing out on a year of school, and thousands of small businesses being destroyed, would have been more of one.

Like Michael Levitt, who's the 2013 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for research in complex systems, says, society has forgotten that people die.

10,000 people per million die every year in Sweden. That rate increasing by 500 is not that abnormal - it happens in bad influenza seasons. If every one was forced to stop working and shelter at home for months every time an infectious disease temporarily rose the death rate by 10%, it would lead to disaster over the long run.

90% of deaths in Sweden have been of those over the age of 70. If the statistics are anything like those in Italy, almost all of these victims had pre-existing conditions.

This is not to lessen the tragedy of their death. This is to point out that most of this tragedy predated their coronavirus infection - their life expectancy was already very limited due to other factors.

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

#187

Post by austhrow743 »

dwaltrip wrote: post #171
austhrow743 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 c…

I think it was implied that we try to reduce deaths as much as is reasonably possible, not at the cost of everything else.

What's reasonable is exactly what's up for debate though and they didn't say "civilisation is 5000 fun utils to 1 QALY saved ratio but doing nothing about corona virus actually costs you 3 QALY for every 5000 fun utils so that's disgusting, what they said was

>It's not fun, but suggesting that your right to fun should trump others' right to life is, again, uncivilized, immoral and irresponsible.

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

#188

Post by whatshisface »

username90 wrote: post #163
emiliobumachar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not possible to calculate that exchange rate, because you don't have access to the counterfactual. You're not taking the ratio of lockdown years to years lost to deaths, right? Both of those belong in the expenses side...

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

#189

Post by bhupy »

PeterisP wrote: post #154
bhupy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enf…

In the EU, land crossings were re-manned on many borders and during the main lockdown (which is now mostly over) passenger travel on many land borders was stopped. On many borders (though not all) physical border checkpoints still exist even if they're widely open almost always, and the legal and administrative framework for controlling land borders is still maintained. Of course, it is now much easier to cross the b…

> while in USA, as far as I understand, the constitution greatly limits the right of states to prohibit interstate travel.

The US States have been imposing varying levels of requirements on inter-state travel from other states. New York requires anyone entering from a set of states to quarantine for 14 days[1]. Maine requires visitors from a list of States to have been tested (I'm traveling to Maine and will be getting tested ahead of my trip)[2]. These are just a couple handy examples, but it's true across the board.

And finally this is all moot because, per my original post, the results really speak for themselves: the majority of US States have lower per capita death rates than the major EU member states, and a small handful have lower per capita death rate than the best EU member states (Germany, Denmark).

[1] https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-in...

[2] https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/news/improving-public-h...

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

#190

Post by jdminhbg »

leto_ii wrote: post #183
jdminhbg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

While not explicitly specified, my comment was referring to deaths caused by the coronavirus. If you read past the first sentence you will also notice that I explicitly said that this is an unattainable standard and I have provided a number of countries that can be taken as reference for what an acceptable death rate might be.

> Any death is unacceptable.

vs.

> what an acceptable death rate might be

Maybe you just misspoke?

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