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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

#331

Post by kspacewalk2 »

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.

Some deaths are caused not by the coronavirus itself, but by the lockdown. Suicides, as well as consequences of foregone or delayed diagnostic tests and other medical appointments, for example. In the US, where unemployment often means no health insurance, many thousands of lives are lost per percentage point of unemployment. I'm the third world, you've got future deaths due to foregone immunizations. So the goal is not minimizing Covid deaths at all. The goal is minimizing deaths, and it's not at all clear that going into max lockdown mode in fact minimizes the sum total of deaths.

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

#332

Post by xienze »

bhupy wrote: post #217
_bxg1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all been reactionary. Individual states and even cities are opening up when people clamor for summertime fun, and then frantically closing back down when the inevitable spike hits a couple weeks later. There is no attempt at cohesion or long-term planning. There is no leadership. They're all just winging it.

It's been no more reactionary than most other nations in the world. There is absolutely long-term planning by the majority of states. To the extent that states are frantically changing their strategies, it's because we're learning more about the virus and how it spreads, and shifting our strategies. Take New York, for example. Its high death rate can be largely attributed to Governor Cuomo's disastrous decision to fo…

Wish I could upvote this more. To hear it said, you’d think half the US has died already. Another great point that people always forget is that the US, at least in situations like this, is better thought of as similar to a collection of small countries. Policies are not the same across the board. Sorta like how not every EU country is doing the same thing, and wouldn’t you know it, some EU countries are doing better than others.

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

#333

Post by aaaxyz »

b112 wrote: post #310
dvdplm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Will you force them with a gun? To forgo all friends, family, comforts of home, and be literally trapped at work for months? Money doesn't just buy people. You'd essentially be drafting them.

>You'd essentially be drafting them.

In every country (except maybe Iceland which doesn't have a standing army), the military has plenty of medically trained soldiers who are used to doing these things away from home for months

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

#334

Post by KarlKode »

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 you look at your argument without the "I bias", there is (or at least I'd argue there is strong empirical evidence for) a tradeoff between "lives saved [from Covid]" and "decrease in the quality of life" which IMHO is the argument of the OC.

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

#335

Post by claudeganon »

jeffbee wrote: post #322
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.…

Comparing disease outcomes at all is futile because they are incredibly sensitive to initial conditions. One sick person travelling in January made all the difference.

The serious outbreaks in the US and South Korea began at the same time. Arguably, South Korea’s circumstances were worse because there’s was driven by a secretive cult that hid their illness and misled contract tracers. Look at where both countries are today.

An immediate, thorough response makes all the difference.

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

#336

Post by 345218435 »

ncallaway wrote: post #110
nradov wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the criteria for defining an acceptable number of deaths?

I would generally go for "as few as possible given the circumstances". Given how much higher they are over other nations—even taking into account excess deaths—I would say they have failed that metric.

thanks for the downvotes. what a leftist liberal light-skinned cesspool hn has degraded to. this community should be ashamed of the unwelcoming and hostile circle it fosters.

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

#337

Post by tux1968 »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #236
makomk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

What was the death rate and high-severity rate of infection for each of those clusters? The reason people focus specifically on the retirement homes is that it tends to have the most dire outcomes.

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

#338

Post by tspike »

345218435 wrote: post #295
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…

the church of covid is a cult. get out. get perspective and truth. https://twitter.com/haraldofw/status/1280383315871236096?s=2...

The stats in the tweet you linked are quite detailed and interesting. Perhaps your message would be better received if put in a less abrasive package?

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

#339

Post by somewhereoutth »

_-___________-_ wrote: post #323
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.).

The inclusion of Vietnam on these lists always surprises me. There is no excess mortality data for Vietnam, nor any data on infections (e.g. from random population sampling). All we have is their self-reported number of cases (i.e. confirmed infections) and deaths (zero!), which come from triumphant news releases from the Communist Party (usually paired with reminders about how great this success will be for their ec…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/01/testin...

"As in wartime, almost every sector, including aviation, healthcare and food production, has been mobilised and dedicated to containing the pandemic."

They fought the virus, not each other. They won.

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

#340

Post by sooheon »

Afforess wrote: post #325
b112 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you force them with a gun? To forgo all friends, family, comforts of home, and be literally trapped at work for months? Money doesn't just buy people. You'd essentially be drafting them.

Yes, then draft them. I'm in favour of martial law for this crisis.

I'm curious if you've ever lived through martial law or know someone who has.
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