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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

#231

Post by bhupy »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #214
triceratops wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Coordination of lockdowns makes no sense past a county or small state. Do you believe NYC and rural Nebraska should be coordinating schedules when they have vastly different situations over time?

Not to mention that the US Federal government simply does not have the power to issue nationwide lockdowns.

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

#232

Post by vkou »

bhupy wrote: post #189
PeterisP wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 getti…

> New York requires anyone entering from a set of states to quarantine for 14 days[1].

Does it actually enforce this, or is it just an advisory? Has anyone been fined or arrested for breaking quarantine? Are they conducting papers-and-purpose-of-stay-please inspections at the interestates, prior to entering the state?

The only state that I know of that actually enforced quarantine is Hawaii, and even there, the beaches have magically filled with tourists over the past week... I'm sure all of them sat inside their hotel rooms for the entire two-week quarantine period...

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

#233

Post by detaro »

bhupy wrote: post #225
aazaa wrote: post #147

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 one thing to leave pandemic response to member countries like the EU does. Each country knows it's responsible for its own response. Money is budgeted and spent specifically for this purpose. That's not the system in the US - or hasn't been. The Federal government maintains what, until recently, was th…

> That's not the system in the US - or hasn't been. The Federal government maintains what, until recently, was the world's premier infectious disease-fighting organization - the CDC. The implication was that pandemic response occurs through this organization. In the past, this is exactly what happened. While you're right that the Federal government has the CDC, every single US States has its own infectious disease/he…

Random anecdote about the difference: I (in Germany) can't really remember seeing anything about what ECDC said or thinks in the past months in the media, only about country-level (and lower) authorities. Whereas US-CDC seems quoted quite a lot in US media.

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

#234

Post by tomohawk »

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.…

Exactly. In addition, Sweden reached zero excess mortality at the end of May.

https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid

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

#235

Post by bhupy »

vkou wrote: post #232
bhupy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 getti…

> New York requires anyone entering from a set of states to quarantine for 14 days[1]. Does it actually enforce this, or is it just an advisory? Has anyone been fined or arrested for breaking quarantine? Are they conducting papers-and-purpose-of-stay-please inspections at the interestates, prior to entering the state? The only state that I know of that actually enforced quarantine is Hawaii, and even there, the beach…

New York is instituting random checks[1]. I live in New York City, and all major exits from JFK/LGA are manned by NYPD checkpoints at the moment.

[1] https://www.newsday.com/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-...

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

#236

Post by EdwardDiego »

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…

> It's pretty obvious at this point that a general lockdown is worthless as a replacement for locking down care homes specifically

New Zealander here, our general lockdown went very well and enabled us to isolate clusters of transmission and prevent it becoming community transmission. While two of our clusters were rest homes, several others were not - a school, a St Patrick's Day celebration at a pub, and a wedding, are significant "not rest home" examples.

So yeah, I think your focus on rest homes is too specific.

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

#237

Post by WalterBright »

leto_ii wrote: post #166
jlmorton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 alr…

> Casually weighing human life against economic cost is not acceptable in what we might call a civilized society.

The reality is quite different. We accept a risk of death to ourselves and others in everything we do. You do it, too. Everything. You even risk death by doing nothing.

You could say "if it cost $1b to save this life, we should do it". But how many lives could be saved at $1b each before we run out of money? Then what? And what about the lives that could have been saved at $1m apiece?

If someone not willing to give up all of his assets to save someone else's life, is he uncivilized and morally wrong?

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

#238

Post by gpderetta »

drummer wrote: post #70
berdario wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Virus never spread as fast as was feared" Except in the US, in Italy, etc. where it's spreading or it has been spreading exactly as fast as feared.

This is what was happening in Italy: "The figures are questionable Angelo Borrelli, the head of Civil Protection, who announces the latest figures every day at 6 p.m., said Saturday night that the 793 new deaths have been caused “by and with” the coronavirus. “We count all the dead, we make no distinction between with and by the coronavirus.” However, one wonders whether these daily figures reflect the situation corr…

Sgarbi is, hum, an "interesting" figure in Italy.

Anyway, in the real world excess mortality in Italy was drammatically higher than even the worst flu seasons especially in the worst hit regions.

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

#239

Post by pas »

gridlockd wrote: post #212
VectorLock wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a fundamental level, yes. By degree of magnitude not even in the same galaxy. If you take a 200 million mile road trip you might contribute to one death, vs. going to a party and risk contracting and spreading a pandemic that has has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Remember, the game plan that virologists came up with for COVID acknowledged that most people will get it eventually. The point of the lockdowns was not to eliminate spread, which is impossible, but to not overwhelm the system.

The plan is/was also to understand it, find effective protocols for managing it, etc.

(And we also have pretty good chances of coming up with a vaccine in about 1 year.) It's not "just the same amount of death, but slower, so the crematoriums don't get overwhelmed".

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

#240

Post by abiogenesis »

glofish wrote: post #194
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?

what if you die next year (of a different cause) and the quarantine robbed you from your last year, would you make the same trade?

Statistically speaking, deaths from random causes will not increase by 1% in the next year (assuming that the death rate of COVID-19 is 1%).
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