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

#261

Post by username90 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #192

oxymoran wrote: post #53

I find this article a little disingenuous and here is why: Sweden-5420 deaths out of a population of 10 million while no lock down. Michigan-6005 deaths out of a population of 10 million and we have been locked down since mid March. To be clear, I was in favor of the lockdown at first and I still am in favor of keeping things like bars and casinos closed but it’s become clear that the virus doesn’t have much affect o…

Part of the trouble so many folks are having with modeling this disease is that there are several "tiers" of geographic division that are involved and different densities of community spread at each tier. There's spread at the level of countries/nations, at the level of states or provinces, and all the way down to the level of neighborhoods. A few cases in a country is very different from a few cases in a household i…

Those numbers are for Stockholm county which is close to 2.4 million people. Close to a quarter of the population lives there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_County

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

#262

Post by Smithalicious » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:52 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #99

leto_ii wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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'

Now tell this to the people dying painful deaths after a horrible battle on a respirator. Your death will not be in vain, because we prevented people from "losing" a year of getting frequent haircuts and going to events!

Human wellbeing is not fungible. It is not acceptable to let a significant portion of people suffer to prevent a moderate inconvenience to a larger group of people.

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

#263

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:54 PM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #259

latchkey wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if next year a more virulent strand of Covid comes along that kills almost everyone in the world who didn't get exposed to Covid-19. Will you still consider their measures as ALL WORKING? We have no idea how the future is going to unfold. Everyone is faking it while demanding that everyone do as they say.

What if next year aliens arrive and eat us all?

There's no plausible argument from counterfactuals here.

But let's pretend anyway - do you not think that even if a more virulent strain of Covid did arrive, country with proven measures in place has a better chance of dealing with the problem than a country whose current response is a chaotic shambles?

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

#264

Post by leto_ii » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #241

leto_ii wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>All preventable deaths should be prevented What's a preventable death? Everybody dies eventually, there's no such thing as a preventable death. There's delaying death, but everyone dies. Period.

I feel that in this thread people are quite stubborn about interpreting things literally, or misinterpreting them all together.

I will give it my best shot at clarifying:

Preventable refers to what a given society can be expected to manage given its limited resources and given other moral constraints, such as not impinging on people's freedoms unnecessarily. A number of the terms I have used have vague meanings that can't be clarified (not by me at least) within the scope of an HN comment. A good faith interpretation of my statement would be that a society should hold saving lives as its highest priority, as long as this does not cause catastrophic costs or dystopian levels of population control. Some temporary economic costs and some temporary restrictions on certain freedoms should be accepted, I think.

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

#265

Post by sanj » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

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.…

That article (which is 6 weeks old) disagrees with your point:

“The data also shows that in Sweden, which has adopted a different approach with no lockdown in place, excess deaths peaked at 46%.”

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

#266

Post by leto_ii » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #255

leto_ii wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The coronavirus has, in half a year, killed more people than the worst flu seasons That's not true. The flu seasons in 1968, 1957, 1918, and 1889 each killed over a million people worldwide, twice as many as COVID-19 in roughly the same timespan, and that out of a lower total population, and despite lockdowns and quarantines. (Who is downvoting this simple truth? How is anyone going to discuss this issue if we can'…

You are referring, I think, to years with pandemics that were not caused by what can be called the 'regular' flu. It's especially comical that you have included the 1918 flu pandemic among your counter-examples.

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

#267

Post by tux1968 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #263

tux1968 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if next year a more virulent strand of Covid comes along that kills almost everyone in the world who didn't get exposed to Covid-19. Will you still consider their measures as ALL WORKING? We have no idea how the future is going to unfold. Everyone is faking it while demanding that everyone do as they say.

What if next year aliens arrive and eat us all? There's no plausible argument from counterfactuals here. But let's pretend anyway - do you not think that even if a more virulent strain of Covid did arrive, country with proven measures in place has a better chance of dealing with the problem than a country whose current response is a chaotic shambles?

What i'm saying is there is a problem with monocultures. They are more susceptible to being wiped out in a single stroke. I'd say that following a scientific approach, we might want to consider not advocating for everyone to take the exact same course of action. Also, that we have to be careful to not judge success or failure too soon, that assessments can change after a bit more time has passed.

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

#268

Post by ryanwaggoner » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:58 PM UTC

Svip wrote: post #42

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 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]…

And that's with crushing restrictions on normal human activities.

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

#269

Post by zajio1am » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 11:58 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

Which was one of most nonsensical measure and it is real shame that EC did not prevented that. It caused real problems for people living near borders and working in neighboring state, and for cargo transit.

Covid-19 prevalence was not homogenous inside each country and inter-country neighboring areas/districts were often more similar than far-away intra-country areas. Therefore, any movement restriction would make more sense on more fine-grained level, but doing it on country level is just political tool to mobilize nationalistic support.

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

#270

Post by TheGrim-888 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

vmception wrote: post #158

cm2187 wrote: post #117

To me this is moving the goalpost. The stated objective of the lockdown was not to overwhelm the ICUs. As far as I know the ICUs in Sweden have not been overwhelmed. So how is that a failure? As for the economic impact, given the amount of life support injections into the economy, I think the real economic impact of the shock is yet to be seen. Defaults are only starting to rise.

I have been willing to be frustrated with moving the goal post, but there is new information that mayors and governors know that the general public doesn't have a good way to know: The low mortality rate and managed ICU capacity isn't the whole story. there is a large population of recovering and recovered that have serious complications, that seem random and are unproductive to our society. Blood clots resulting in…

If the complications are a serious problem, as you claim, then I have a few follow up questions:

1) You're making some significant claims, and should therefore have significant data and evidence to back up your claims. Over 3 million people in the US have tested positive for covid. What percentage of them needed to have a limb amputated? That should be easily verifiable. What percentage of them had a blood clot and serious damage? What percentage of them currently have persistent long term damage? If you're making the claim that these things are such a serious problem, you should have data that backs up how common the problem is, and how bad it is.

2) How different are the complications from the normal complications that the flu/pneumonia/etc. can give? Tens of thousands of people get the flu, have complications, and die every year. Tens of thousands of elderly people get the flu, and have long-term damage for the rest of their life. As a society we don't care about that at all. Are you saying covid does more damage, or has more complications? If so, where's the evidence comparing the level of damage/complications?

It's my theory at the moment that this "complication" talk is just another viral "meme" that's mostly driven/spread by people just repeating what other people said, which spreads like wildfire, but never has any actual data backing it up. Of course there are people that have had serious complications. But there's people that have had serious complications from every disease. And it says nothing about how common it is. For example, if 0.00001% of people that get covid have to have a limb amputated, yeah that's horrible, and yeah it'd be great if we could just snap our fingers and make that not happen, but is it really something to focus on?