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

#311

Post by xienze » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:09 AM 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…

> A few months of not going to festivals and the cinema is by no measure a catastrophe. It's not fun, but suggesting that your right to fun should trump others' right to life is, again, uncivilized, immoral and irresponsible.

What are your thoughts on a state of permanent lockdown in order to eliminate the tens of thousands of worldwide deaths that occur every single year due to the common flu?

Perhaps life to most of the world involves balancing several factors, one of which is risk to personal health.

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

#312

Post by labster » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

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?

If it kept my loved ones and other random people from dying, sure. Everyone optimizing for their own benefit only is bowing down to the altar of Moloch.

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

#313

Post by virtualwhys » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

Steko wrote: post #278

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.

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

Really? I've been in Da Nang, Vietnam for over 5 months now, and the fine for not wearing a mask only came during the short quarantine period (@3 weeks) at the start of April.

When I arrived at the end of January (during the Chinese New Year) there were thousands of Chinese tourists mobbing the convenience stores buying up all the masks they could find. At the time I wasn't really aware of what was happening, but clearly they were a step ahead of the game, likely based on past history with SARS and news coming from friends and family back home.

It's pretty amazing how low the case count has been in Vietnam; some locals say, "don't believe the government", but you'd expect any outbreaks/deaths related to COVID-19 to have gotten out by now if the government were in fact trying to hide something.

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

#314

Post by austhrow743 » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #309

austhrow743 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really don't understand what you're trying to accomplish here: are you seriously asserting "unless you can assign objectively quantifiable values to 'right to fun' and 'right to life' and prove the latter is larger than the former, your argument is invalid?"

They're not even trying to say that one is larger than the former without objectively quantifying it! That would be a start.

I would like a argument. Any. Instead there's just a bunch of people treating corona virus as this exception where you're sociopath to consider any other facet of life when deciding how to respond to it.

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

#315

Post by x87678r » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

Nice to see all the Swedish commenters on the NYT pointing out how biased the article is.

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

#316

Post by ojnabieoot » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:13 AM UTC

swinglock wrote: post #46

ojnabieoot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really deeply misleading to say that Sweden let the virus go “unchecked.” Sweden didn’t enforce a hard lockdown but strongly encouraged social distancing, mask wearing, staying at home, etc. Sweden did have a strong (if likely inadequate) national response to coronavirus. And Sweden was subject to EU-wide travel restrictions, including virtually no foreign tourism.

False regarding mask wearing; wearing a mask has always been and is still strongly discouraged, instead one should only "stay home if feeling sick".

Thanks for the clarification - I had read recently about Sweden considering a facemask policy but I misremembered it as about making them compulsory. Didn't realize that they were still discouraging it (at least as of late June).

> instead one should only "stay home if feeling sick"

My understanding is that this isn't true, but maybe you're being a bit pithy and I misunderstood - it's true that there weren't any bans or strict stay-at-home recommendations, but there were definitely recommendations for people to limit time outside of the home. Even in March Swedish employers were encouraged to implement remote work and Swedes were discouraged on travelling within the country.

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

#317

Post by chipotle_coyote » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

glofish wrote: post #290

magnio wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how you get that number, but if you didn't isolate, wouldn't your chance of dying higher?

this is a risk/benefit analysis, we are talking about tradeoffs would I trade getting out of six months of quarantine if the price was the chance of 1/100,000 of dying. Of course I would. I contrasted that to the fact that I frequently take on much higher risks of dying (mountaineering) for a lot less payoff (it is fun). (the 1/100,000 is an estimate based on existing data for my age group)

That is the estimated risk of death, not the risk of becoming a carrier of the disease, possibly an asymptomatic one, who spreads it to others.

This is what's really frustrating about this whole "trade-off" argument: it's fine to make trade-offs for yourself, but you do not have the right to implicitly force your choice on others. If you sit within six feet of me not wearing a mask, my risk of falling off a mountain does not increase by any measurable amount. If you have Covid-19 and don't know it yet, the same cannot be said.

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

#318

Post by _-___________-_ » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #287

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.…

There is excess mortality in Sweden https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ It is not the highest in Europe but it is very noticeable. In contrast, the surrounding countries of Finland, Norway and Denmark show almost nothing. As for which figures to take, we don't know, they are all wrong. Each country has a different way of counting depending on what they think is important. For example hospital deaths are very con…

If you read the comment you replied to again, you'll note that they didn't claim there was no excess mortality in Sweden. I'll quote the relevant bit here for you:

> For Sweden the excess deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or take 10%.

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

#319

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:19 AM 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…

> This is a key difference between EU and USA - the Schengen agreement allows member states to temporarily "opt out" of the free travel, reinstate border controls and impose travel restrictions (up to a full closure of borders) for various purposes, and many EU countries did just that due to Covid; while in USA, as far as I understand, the constitution greatly limits the right of states to prohibit interstate travel.

The Supreme Court has directly addressed this in the case of disease epidemics and found that, in the absence of specific Congressional action preempting such regulations, states are free under the Constitution to respond to epidemic disease (and several other kinds of crisis) by enacting and enforcing travel restrictions, even though they impact interstate commerce.

While no state has adopted border closures for containing COVID-19, several have adopted quarantine policies affecting interstate travel and adopted border checkpoints as part of the enforcement mechanism.

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

#320

Post by dmix » Wed, Jul 08, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #201

argonaut wrote: post #193

The jury is still out on "economic failure." The evidence cited on the economy is thin at best. The main piece of evidence is that "Sweden’s central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent." Economic forecasts are ridiculously unreliable. In the US, economists forecast (on average) that 8 million jobs would be lost in May. Instead there…

The NYT has fallen into the bad habit of writing to a narrative, conscious or unconscious, rather than investigating more honestly. In this case they want to paint the alternative path as wrongheaded and foolhardy. I’m glad someone tried something different in light of a lack of hard evidence. Time will tell if one or the other was better, but at least we’ll have baselines to compare against.

Looking at the John Hopkins graph a significant amount of countries are still peaking (including the global trendline):

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

Just because a few countries in Europe and the early big ones in China/SK have slowed down they act like it's over. Yet there's still plenty of very major outbreaks in South America, Middle East, India, Russia, south east Asia, some African. They all have upward hockey stick growth still. Not to mention the delayed US south/west wave.

It's far too early to pick winners/losers of COVID in the midst of the global peak, assuming this is actually near the peak. Let alone measuring the economic consequences.