Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 720 posts

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

#271

Post by leereeves »

leto_ii wrote: post #266
leereeves wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What is "regular" flu? There are many strains in circulation, including those that caused past pandemics. We have vaccines and acquired immunity, so it's been some time since the last truly deadly flu epidemic, but the flu should not be dismissed so lightly.

And why wouldn't I include 1918 in a list of flu pandemics that killed over a million people?

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

#273

Post by senderista »

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…

Children seem far more vulnerable to the flu than the coronavirus, so I don’t understand your argument.

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

#274

Post by username90 »

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'…

Before vaccines the flu killed over a million people worldwide every single year.

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

#275

Post by detaro »

bhupy wrote: post #245
detaro wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh for sure, the CDC is certainly more talked about by the media, but the power and structure of the agencies is fairly similar. It's only a matter of time until EU's agencies impose supremacy on its Member States. The EU supreme court is already starting to penalize member States for violating policies[1]. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-policy-germany-ecj-id...

ECDC has primarily the "power" to coordinate data exchange between member states, and afaik no authority to force lower-level health authorities or healthcare providers to do anything, unless member states were to explicitly adopt their suggestions as binding in local law.

The mess that's going on with ECB is an IMHO quite special situation (which also is an odd example for "already starting to penalize for violating policies". There is no "starting to", obviously EU law has enforcement tools - although the court itself can't use them)

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

#276

Post by leto_ii »

WalterBright wrote: post #237
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…

> 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 mon…

> You could say "if it cost $1b to save this life, we should do it".

This a common, yet unrealistic, hypothetical. In reality, of course, death is inevitable regardless of the economic costs. Past a certain point everybody, so far, has died. The amount of things that we can do in order to prevent any given death doesn't scale with the economic cost, past a certain (quite low) point. Spending 1B on a person won't get you 1000 times better 'medical stuff' than spending 1 million; therefore, a trade-off of e.g. one life for 1B vs 1000 lives for 1m is illusory.

In practice all societies have limited resources. My position is, however, that those limited resources, in the case of an acute health crisis, should be focused as much as possible on mitigating that crisis, without having primary concern for the economic costs.

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

#277

Post by nl »

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…

Australia had a very, very tight lock down on aged care homes, and yet very nearly 50% (62/106) of the COVID deaths in Australia were in these homes.

It turns out to be pretty much impossible to keep out of aged care if there is community spread.

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

#278

Post by Steko »

latchkey wrote: post #185
ptx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Vietnam came out right at the start with a significant fine for not wearing a mask in public.

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

#279

Post by rumanator »

madballster wrote: post #222
glofish wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is a year in the life of an 82 year old (median age of covid death) the same as a year in the life of a 10, 20 or 30 year old? I sure think not. So the comparisons are a bit moot. trading 60 years of 30 year olds for 1 year of an 82 year old is a trade that probably no 82 year old would want.

This is what happens is democratic societies with a demographic pyramid that's upside down: lots of old and relatively few young. Politicians want to get re-elected and cater to the largest, most influential voter group (old people) and disregard younger voters agendas.

> lots of old and relatively few young. Politicians want to get re-elected and cater to the largest, most influential voter group (old people) and disregard younger voters agendas.

I really don't follow your argument. Do you believe young voters are totally indifferent to the idea of seeing their parents and grandparents die?

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

#280

Post by rumanator »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #142
VectorLock wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument that "its okay for more of other people to die so some people don't miss out on some fun" I find even more abhorrent.

It's an argument you have to accept on some level, unless you propose to make more radical changes to society. How many thousands of people could we have saved from car accidents in 2019 by banning nonessential driving?

> unless you propose to make more radical changes to society. How many thousands of people could we have saved from car accidents in 2019 by banning nonessential driving?

I'm pretty sure that mandating driver's license to be able to drive, and passing laws and regulations to enforce the use and adoption of safety systems such as seat belts, air bags, and helmets, not to mention criminalizing wreck less driving, is a pretty radical change to society.

With covid19 all people is asked to do is wear a mask and practice social distancing.

Post reply on HN