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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

#591

Post by jacobush »

leereeves wrote: post #560
takeda wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many strains of corona virus as well, most of them cause a simple cold. We are not comparing COVID-19 to a common cold.

Right, I compared COVID-19 to the worst strains of the flu, not to the common cold. I found that the worst strains of the flu killed more people. But even that simple statement of fact is suppressed, even here on HN, because this issue is so heavily politicized.

Is it? I see it acknowledged, and often paired with the observation that the worst flus have not been mitigated by extreme social distancing as we have now.

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

#592

Post by dynamite-ready »

account42 wrote: post #547
dynamite-ready wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geography is part of it too. Some countries are densely populated, and some aren't. And echoing the comment about behaviour, the difference between the culture of say, Norway and Britain, is vast in some respects. Or even the likes of Germany and Italy, which are neighbours.

> Germany and Italy, which are neighbours. I think Austria and Switzerland would like to have a word with you.

Yes. You're right.

But if you travel to North Italy in the summer, you see so many cars with German license plates, you wonder about the geography!

I stand, corrected.

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

#593

Post by ClumsyPilot »

kazinator wrote: post #516
leto_ii wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All preventable deaths should be prevented - this is the gold standard. In reality, of course, things don't work out that way. The analogy with a flu season is deeply misleading. The coronavirus has, in half a year, killed more people than the worst flu seasons, with extraordinary measures in place all over the world. It's completely reasonable to assume that without lockdowns we would have had millions of deaths alr…

> All preventable deaths should be prevented - this is the gold standard. It absolutely isn't; it is complete nonsense. Firstly, it directly conflicts with right to die; it asserts that if we can intervene in any suicide, then we should. How can stepping on the right to die be elevated to a gold standard? Some people take risks, and those risks are fatal. Deaths in dangerous sports and other activities are easily pre…

There is no right to die in most countries in the world. Got horrible painfull and untreatable disease, but a few years left on the clock? In most places you are doomed to suffer through it. The only exception i am aware of is netherlands.

Secondly, most of your post conflates me engangering myself my choice ( i choose a dangerous sport and suffer) vs someone else endangering me (unsafe building collapses on my head).

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

#594

Post by LandR »

malandrew wrote: post #348
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.

Scotland last week was back to being below our 5 year average for deaths.

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

#595

Post by dynamite-ready »

new2628 wrote: post #565
dynamite-ready wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geography is part of it too. Some countries are densely populated, and some aren't. And echoing the comment about behaviour, the difference between the culture of say, Norway and Britain, is vast in some respects. Or even the likes of Germany and Italy, which are neighbours.

> Germany and Italy, which are neighbours. This is new to me :) Your point stands of course..

Yeah. I shouldn't be using experiential or anecdotal evidence to inform my understanding of geographic borders!

System 1 thinking in action.

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

#596

Post by luckylion »

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?"

The argument was made that "avoiding unnecessary death > fun/comfort things to do". The counter argument was "if that was true, we'd ban lots of things" and that it's more of a question of how many deaths vs how much fun/comfort.

One death a year vs permanent lockdown? We won't lock down. 99% of society dying vs washing your hands once a day? We'll make hand-washing mandatory. The deaths from Covid-19 and the responses to it are somewhere between those extremes.

The important point here is: it's not a matter of moral principles, it's a matter of where on those scales you put the deaths/counter measures. Pretending that it's a moral argument (as in "you're immoral if you accept any amount of unnecessary deaths for non-essential things like going to festivals or having pineapple delivered to your door") is simply not working unless you (demand to) ban plenty of things.

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

#597

Post by robinzfc »

bhupy wrote: post #189
PeterisP wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> while in USA, as far as I understand, the constitution greatly limits the right of states to prohibit interstate travel. The US States have been imposing varying levels of requirements on inter-state travel from other states. New York requires anyone entering from a set of states to quarantine for 14 days[1]. Maine requires visitors from a list of States to have been tested (I'm traveling to Maine and will be getti…

> lower per capita death rate than the best EU member states (Germany, Denmark).

You repeat that a couple of times in your posts, I am curious where do you get that from? Germany and Denmark are not "the best", they are both above the median in the EU.

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

#598

Post by cma »

makomk wrote: post #587
nradov wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their plan is to require a strict quarantine for all arrivals from overseas. That will be permanent, at least until an effective vaccine is available. It may work, at the cost of their tourism industry.

Emphasis strongly on the "may" - we've seen how well that worked in Australia, which is now having to gradually impose lockdowns.

How about Vietnam. Extensive contact tracing during each new flare up. Only 400 cases or so. It is extremely cheap to control it early.

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

#599

Post by close04 »

jobigoud wrote: post #574
_-___________-_ wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

And they are saying that a good match between excess mortality and reported Covid death is not, in itself, an argument to say that Sweden is doing a good job. It has more excess mortality than its neighbors even if these might be underreporting Covid death so this argument is not exactly relevant.

The implication is that Sweden is doing a great job with the reporting. I think the whole point of OP's comment was that the statistics are meaningless because many countries skew the reporting, while Sweden does not.

> The statistics are likely completely wrong because different countries use different definitions of "Covid deaths" and different reporting procedures.

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

#600

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

pas wrote: post #562
jessaustin wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...pretty good chances of coming up with a vaccine in about 1 year. This is just wishful thinking. We've never had effective vaccines for this sort of virus. (The yearly flu vaccine is like 30% effective.) Sure lots of research groups are working on vaccines, but many of them are academics who have no particular duty to work on research likely to have an immediate payoff. The researchers who do have such a duty, i.e.…

At least one phase 3 clinical trial is about to start this month. I too am surprised that the one year estimate is not complete nonsense, but it seems it's not. (Of course the mRNA vector might simply not pan out, but there are still others currently undergoing phase 2.) Efficacy is always a question, sure, yet it seems the spike protein is stable (conserved across mutations). If the mRNA stuff works well then it'll…

Phase 3 is normally where most medicines fail.

Covid (any vaccine based treatment really) is even more difficult as you need to wait for six months to assess transmission.

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