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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

#491

Post by _-___________-_ »

jddj wrote: post #450
_-___________-_ 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…

Agreed that it certainly can feel "fluked" or random which areas are overwhelmed and which recover, but I have to disagree with the idea that Vietnam didn't take it particularly seriously. I was there in February, for around a month. As a foreigner, I was regularly receiving SMS updates about covid infections. There was a website which detailed exactly when and where people were testing positive. Hotels and guest hou…

I didn't say they weren't taking it seriously. I made a few specific claims, none of which you've discredited or even mentioned.

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

#493

Post by _-___________-_ »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #339
_-___________-_ 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…

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.

And as in wartime, the propaganda machine is running at full capacity.

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

#494

Post by DoingIsLearning »

jpangs88 wrote: post #473

I feel that so many of these articles on Sweden fail to mention the reason for Sweden's strategy and often say it due to another reason. The reason that the Swedish government has given for the strategy is that they think that people can follow the restrictions long term. It's not to save the economy or to create heard immunity (which I have heard from many people.) I think it's too early to judge Sweden's strategy a…

One thing I don't see discussed and it's an unbacked intuition is that all the different government strategies seem to revolve around differences in 'group' trust levels.

Both the Swedish 'no-lockdown' and the Dutch 'intelligent' lockdown are government policies that actually work locally because the government trusts that the population will follow the guidelines given (which they do for the majority).

Equally when I discussed with Dutch and Swedish people (anecdata) they all believed their national strategy was correct because they trusted their governaments competence and the science advisors that were being consulted.

I think many of these strategies cannot be translated to other countries were there isn't a shared trust level, i.e. population trusting the government's competence, and equally the government trusting civil society (biggest example being the US).

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

#495

Post by takeda »

refurb wrote: post #454
cyrksoft wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you attribute every excess death to covid alone, at least directly? There are many countries where family violence has increased, alcohol consumption, suicide, etc. I don’t think every excessive death can be attributed to covid.

Not only that, but if you have a patient in a hospice with stage 4 lung cancer who dies and tests positive for Covid, does that go in the "Covid death" bucket? Honest question. I don't know the answer. I assume it's left up the physician's judgement?

COVID-19 doesn't kill on its own, but weakens your body that other diseases kill you. The most common way of killing is pneumonia, which is basically done after it weakens your body other bacteria that you otherwise would be safe from steps in and kills you. Another common symptom is causing blood clotting, so some people died of stroke.

Yes, maybe that stage 4 lung cancer patient would die anyway, but then there are other deaths that are covid-19 but aren't counted. In fact no one would count is as covid cause in such obvious scenario.

BTW: also it's exactly the opposite to what you're trying to imply[1].

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200701125506.h...

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

#496

Post by kolinko »

nabla9 wrote: post #430
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.…

Extra deaths don't have to come from underreported covid deaths. For example suicides and untreated medical conditions during social distancing and lockdowns can increase the number of deaths.

If those were significant, we’d see an uptick in countries that introduced restrictions early on and avoided the epidemic.

In Poland we had quite serious restrictions introduced very early on and we don’t see any excess deaths in the stats - march and april were actually below average in terms of mortality. Similarly in other countries with similar scenarios.

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

#497

Post by ashtonkem »

TMWNN wrote: post #355
whoisthemachine wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has much less to do with people dying directly from Covid and more to do with the sheer number of severe Covid cases overloading healthcare systems to the point that patients with other serious conditions can't receive medical treatment. This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida. This condition is what incentivizes societies to lock down, not just the me…

>This occurred in Italy, New York City, etc., and is now being seen in some cities in Texas and Florida. Not Florida. An article from yesterday ( https://www.news4jax.com/news/local/2020/06/18/florida-has-l... ) ominously claims that "less than 25%" of ICU beds are available in the state, but actually read it and see that 90% occupancy rates are normal, and only a few of those in the ICU are COVID19 cases. Texas? Let…

56 Florida ICUs are at capacity, with a further 35 are above 90%[0]. Five days ago the largest hospital operator in Houston, TMC announced that they were at 102% [1]. There’s a little bit of flexibility there; TMC can get that down to 72% by converting every possible bed to an ICU space[2], but they are now operating above official capacity.

I agree that there’s a lot to criticize in how NYC handled their hospitals, and that in a pinch hospitals in Texas and Florida can scrounge up extra beds. But those hospitals are filling up.

0: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday...

1: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5efcd4b7c5b612083c5618d0?...

2: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/...

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

#498

Post by kolinko »

notatoad wrote: post #461
nabla9 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra deaths don't have to come from underreported covid deaths. For example suicides and untreated medical conditions during social distancing and lockdowns can increase the number of deaths.

there are additional deaths that can be attributed to the lockdown, as well as some reductions in deaths that can be attributed to the lockdown. but neither are anything close to on the same scale as people actually dying of covid. there's obviously some margin of error, but it's pretty safe to treat the unattributed excess deaths as being caused by covid-19

+1 - countries that introduced strict lockdowns early on have no excess deaths.

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

#499

Post by twblalock »

Any coherent explanation of this pandemic is going to need to explain why some countries that didn't do very much (e.g. Japan) ended up with far fewer deaths per capita than countries that locked down (e.g. EU countries and the United States).

Sweden is somewhere in the middle -- they are being criticized, yet other countries in Europe which locked down have ended up with a higher per capita death rate.

Why is it that Cambodia and other nations in southeast Asia have negligible deaths despite doing very little to combat the virus, while countries in the EU which locked down have way more deaths per capita?

Somehow the models about the spread and death rate of this virus seem to differ on a geographical basis, and that needs to be explained.

At this point, any analysis of the pandemic that does not attempt to tackle this problem is selectively ignorant.

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

#500

Post by stickfigure »

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…

Young people aren't just losing a few months of festivals. A generation of kids are losing a year (possibly more!) of schooling. Young adults are graduating into career-crippling unemployment which may haunt their lives for decades. People are getting laid off, burning through their meager life savings, losing businesses that they've worked themselves half to death to establish. Suicide rates are up. We're just beginning to see the economic and geopolitical consequences... the last great depression precipitated a world war that killed 3% of the world population.

All so that 75 year olds can have an extra month or two of average life expectancy?

I have octogenarian parents who I love deeply and would prefer to see live forever. I also have a young son. I would grind up my parents and feed them to my child if that's what it took for him to thrive. And I would expect my child to do the same for his children.

Stop moralizing, this isn't "right vs wrong". It's basically picking which demographic bears the brunt of an extremely unfortunate but naturally occurring phenomenon. I'm not at all sure we picked the right one.

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