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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

#481

Post by tjomk »

arexxbifs wrote: post #210
addicted wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Tegnell’s original mistake was his disbelief that asymptomatic spreaders existed. His entire strategy was based on this and worse, he loudly and publicly criticized other countries that chose to lockdown because unlike him they were fully convinced about the existence of asymptomatic spreaders. Once his strategy to protect the vulnerable failed dramatically due to asymptomatic carriers (and the fact that…

He's made a long string of bad judgement calls and spurious statements. However, I'm more appalled by the government's complete mismanagement. They have completely pushed responsibility onto this single man, who cannot be held accountable in public elections. His job is to be a key advisor. The politicians are the policymakers and the only enforceable decisions they've made is pretty much to prohibit gatherings of mo…

To a degree, they did a sane thing: listened to the advice of an expert. Now if you look at the other side of the ocean where the orange man didn't listen to the advice of an expert, look what happened.

I don't know how these things work in government, but relying on the opinion of just a single expert might not be the best strategy to win here. It's unlikely though that policy makers will come out in the worse shape here than they were before because even though they might have failed (a big if in the long run), they've relied on the advice of the experts rather than their beliefs.

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

#482

Post by freetime2 »

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.

Yup I found the overwhelmingly negative tone of this article off-putting. It doesn't quote any opposing viewpoints. It doesn't quote anybody actually living in Sweden, or any sort of public opinion polls on how Swedish people feel their government is handling things. It only compares Sweden's death rate to countries with lower rates (when countries with higher rates exist). And it seems to paint a straw man argument about what Sweden's reasons are for not implementing lockdowns (I don't think it was just about the economy).

It also doesn't delve very deeply into why Sweden's fatality rate is higher than average. It seems to imply that it's all because Sweden didn't implement forced lockdowns. But I am living in an area that also didn't implement forced lockdowns, and we have experienced virtually no deaths from covid in my city thus far. What measures specifically could Sweden have taken to save lives? And is there anything that they did well?

I have found a lot of the coverage on covid to be fairly sensationalist (ranging from "it's all a big hoax" to "the world as we know it has ended"). Does anyone have any suggestions for more rational, honest, and detailed coverage of covid?

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

#483

Post by ljf »

rimliu wrote: post #449
takeda wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or that many people who survive (including younger ones) will be disabled and unable to work

How do you get many younger ones disabled, when younger ones are barely getting ill? It is a desease that affects the older ones much more.

I've posted elsewhere but my wife (40yo and in great health) has been suffering from a range of issues since her infection over 100 days ago. She cant climb stairs without getting out of breath. Her covid symptoms for the first two weeks was relatively mild. She is in a Slack group with over 7000 others. Predominantly women over 40 or men 2o to 50. All with serious long term issues after getting covid. It is a small number, but not small enough to wave away.

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

#484

Post by anderstornqvist »

This is a very misleading article. Compare Japan (no lockdown) with Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Or we can compare some areas of Sweden with Norway. Sweden has high death rate for the same reason that many of the lockdown countries have hight death rate: Elderly care centers in some areas where not properly protected! 20 years of policies for cost reduction of care homes is the reason for the failure).

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

#485

Post by ljf »

aeternum wrote: post #421
nradov wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would argue a decent metric is human hours. For example, if a safety protocol costs n people x hours in return for saving y lives, then we can strike a balance. In general I'd argue that n * x ~= y * (human life expectancy in hours). You could apply this to things like airport security and check how the sum of all the time passenger spend in line compares to the lives saved. My guess is especially in the airport ex…

That isn't really how terrorism works though is it? 'they' want the population to be fearful doing normal things - it isn't just the life lost but the changes in behaviour people have to make.

Similarly if I died of covid now, it isn't just the 40ish years of life ahead I lose, but the impact on my wife, children and wider family. I've seen friends lose 72 yo grandfathers - who could have provided years ahead of fun and good memories with their grandkids.

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

#486

Post by YZF »

glofish wrote: post #198
username90 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exchange rate for the most successful lock-downs of corona is about 60 years of lock-down for 1 year of life. Edit: Note that USA is doing much worse since so many are dying there even though you lock down.

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.

There's a standard way of looking at this, and in the US the answer is yes, the life of everyone is worth the same, and that's how other economic decisions are made in the US (e.g. safety regulations need to meet this same standard). Suddenly changing the way you value lives to suit a particular outcome for a particular decision doesn't seem right. If you are going to look into the economics you should consider not only deaths but costs of all other hospitalizations, long term effects and various other second order effects. (check out the recent Planet Money episode about the value of lives in the US and their discussion of whether or not the US should lock down, tl;dr economically yes by orders of magnitude).

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

#487

Post by thisrod »

What went wrong in Sweden? I genuinely don't understand that.

The news keeps showing Swedes walking in parks and down streets, but that's not how people catch the novel coronavirus. Meanwhile, people were working from home and mass gatherings were banned; the public were trusted to figure out the details, but they're not idiots. It could have worked.

What was everyone doing in Sweden that people weren't doing in Finland and Australia? Or were there less visible differences, in surveillance and contact tracing maybe, that haven't been so widely reported?

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

#488

Post by _-___________-_ »

refurb wrote: post #365
_-___________-_ wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have family in Vietnam and from what they’ve told me, Vietnam is taking it very seriously. - folks that are high-risk and quarantined are monitored (guards posted outside residence) - if you fail to self isolate, you go to a gov’t camp - all int’l flight have been stopped; only repatriation flights are happening - for those foreigners who made it in before the flights stopped, they all went to gov't facilities - if…

I live in Vietnam.

> if you fail to self isolate, you go to a gov’t camp

There are a few instances of this, which of course the govt made sure were widely reported. It's very unlikely in general that they would know, though.

> all int’l flight have been stopped; only repatriation flights are happening

This is completely false, as you can verify on any public flight tracker website. The number of flights is greatly reduced, but they never stopped. Also, extra charter flights were put on for (at least) Samsung and LG employees to come from Korea, regularly, even in the middle of the lockdown. The "all international flights stopped" line was repeated many times in the local media, and most people here believe it, despite it being untrue.

> for those foreigners who made it in before the flights stopped, they all went to gov't facilities

Not true at all, I know many people who did not have to.

> if someone tests positive, they will lock down all the people around them for 24hr, disinfect common areas and test

They notify the people around them and tell them to self-isolate. They spray some bleach around. They do not test unless symptoms are shown.

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

#489

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

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.

Do you have any data to support that? For many people their mental health has a great effect on their physical health, and in a country like Sweden where a lot of people have mental issues already (including stress, loneliness, various forms of depression etc.), yes you could make a case that making people even more isolated by sitting at home would increase their stress and loneliness which has an effect on the health.

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