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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

#341

Post by jeffbee »

claudeganon wrote: post #335
jeffbee wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also just not having any initial sick people and closing the airports works great.

Your "at the same time" statement is off by a few days and off by a few days makes a huge difference in outbreak severity. That's why you need to keep in mind that small numbers of infected people and seemingly short time intervals change the result radically.

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

#342

Post by AaronFriel »

username90 wrote: post #261
AaronFriel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thank you. It's still sad to see that Alameda County has 2/3 the people and 1/20th the lives lost. Sweden's strategy deserves criticism because it is demonstrably not necessary to lose that many lives.

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

#343

Post by somewhereoutth »

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'

We have been very lucky in the EU - the 'other narrative' was concentrated in Sweden, so all we had to do was wall them off.

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

#344

Post by mirimir »

simonh wrote: post #101
mirimir wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. From what I've read, it seems like the most effective strategy would be locking down elder care homes tightly. And also tightly locking down staff at elder care homes. Because once one resident gets infected, there's no way to prevent other residents, and staff who care for them, from getting infected. At least, short of staff wearing ebola level protection, and changing between residents. Which would be impos…

> But I suspect that it will turn out that general lockdown is neither good enough, nor worth the long term economic consequences. Hang on, this is an article showing that a looser lockdown still ends up with your economy hammered anyway. This should not be surprising, analysts if the Spanish Flu pandemic showed that cities that locked down later and lighter actually suffered more economically. This is because the hi…

> Hang on, this is an article showing that a looser lockdown still ends up with your economy hammered anyway.

Well, there is effectively no "looser lockdown" when you're part of the EU, and even more economically tied to the rest of Scandinavia.

But anyway, the most important point is that a general lockdown that doesn't adequately protect the elderly, and others with preexisting conditions, won't reduce the death rate very much.

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

#345

Post by fzeroracer »

jlmorton wrote: post #144
leto_ii wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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…

So let's expand on that a bit then.

Cancer is a rather big problem. It taxes society quite a bit, costs a lot of money and in general inconveniences quite a lot of people that need to support or help cancer patients.

Would you agree then that perhaps it's a better idea to let cancer patients die rather than try and find cures or reduce the chances of dying? Why or why not? If you had cancer but of the curable kind, would you accept the state killing you because it inconveniences others?

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

#346

Post by claudeganon »

jeffbee wrote: post #341
claudeganon wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also just not having any initial sick people and closing the airports works great. Your "at the same time" statement is off by a few days and off by a few days makes a huge difference in outbreak severity. That's why you need to keep in mind that small numbers of infected people and seemingly short time intervals change the result radically.

Do you honestly believe the difference between South Korea and the US’ outcomes is those few days? The difference in response on any dimension between the two countries, from their testing to contract tracing to on-demand hospital expansions is so staggering as to make this claim absurd.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about with airports. South Korea has had less incoming travel restrictions than the US.

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

#347

Post by mirimir »

addicted wrote: post #164
simonh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I suspect that it will turn out that general lockdown is neither good enough, nor worth the long term economic consequences. Hang on, this is an article showing that a looser lockdown still ends up with your economy hammered anyway. This should not be surprising, analysts if the Spanish Flu pandemic showed that cities that locked down later and lighter actually suffered more economically. This is because the hi…

It’s so simple. (1) Your economy will be hit whether or not you lockdown. People are gonna reduce their activity due to the threat of the disease. The lockdown affects behavior at the margins. And at the margins, the economic gains are linear to the additional activity due to not having a lockdown, but the growth of the virus is exponential. Then the fact that the virus persists longer means places without a lockdown…

Those are good arguments. I'm very curious what the data will show over the next couple years. However, I'm concerned that data for incidence and mortality will be too incomparable to draw reliable conclusions.

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

#348

Post by malandrew »

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.…

I'm curious what we'll see years down the line.

If there are excess deaths now and this disease disproportionately impacts the elderly, the assumption likely is that it's mostly picking people off early and that 1+ years from now we should observe a deaths deficit relative to the baseline years of 2018-2019. From there we should be able to start calculating the cumulative years of life lost.

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

#349

Post by stallmanite »

nradov wrote: post #172
Traster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's not only that, if you overwhelm your healthcare system you're going to end up with excess deaths even if the same number of people get the virus in the end. Also, we've learned some mitigation techniques over the last few months (like steroids in late stage treatment) which means that the idea that 'everyone will get it eventually' just isn't relevant - its likely that our survival rate will go up over time…

Ironically, medical researchers wouldn't have learned those mitigation techniques (like Dexamethasone) without a large population of patients to use as experimental subjects. In other words, if we succeed in slowing down the spread (which would be a good thing) then medical research into treatments and vaccines will also slow down.

Would work on a vaccine really slow down? There are many thousands of patients and how many does a vaccine study require in practice?

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

#350

Post by rumanator »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #301
rumanator wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The official stay at home order where I live forbids me from visting my family. I'm ignoring that part of it - everyone I know is, at this point - but it's a much more severe imposition than the phrase "practice social distancing" makes it sound.

You do agree that a temporary emergency measure that is expected to take between a few weeks and a couple of months doesn't come close to compare with all the driving regulation, don't you agree?

I mean, Spain had to endure a couple of months of isolation and we don't see Spaniards complaining that it's the end of the world.

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