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A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

sebastianrushworth.com

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Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#61

Post by refurb »

hootbootscoot wrote: post #19
matz1 wrote: post #3

Its baffling that lots of government still want to continue the lockdown.

It's baffling that you would take this singular anecdotal factually-cherry-picked account of one doctors experience during one nations allegedly ineffective (lack of a) response to COVID as sensible advice moving forward. For one, his per-capita-death-rates are wayyy off. (1 out of 200 dying? try around 8% in Spain and Italy...) For 2, yes, it's precisely about slowing the spread 1) giving a chance for emergency serv…

You seem overly dismissive. I mean he states "this is my experience in Sweden", so I'm not sure how death rates in Spain and Italy are relevant to his observations.

And the "T-cell immunity" is factually correct. Even the NYTimes wrote an article on how people who have never been exposed to Covid, do indeed, appear to have some level of immunity due to T-cell and likely prior infection by a related virus.[1]

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/coronavirus-immune...

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#62

Post by mellow2020 »

refurb wrote: post #12
spirobel wrote: post #5

its time to stop this! I am so proud to see my fellow germans rise up: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=htDrDieOgh0

And this is how it was described in US media. "A large crowd of far-right groups gathered for a "sit-in" at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate on Saturday to protest against the German government's coronavirus restrictions."

I also saw US media describe a protest against the Iraq war by school children as "Hitler's Children: Pro-Saddam protesters in Munich" in the caption of a photo of a blonde kid. Yes, right-wing people are a large part of it, and too many people who are not right-wing aren't critical enough of that. But to simply paint it all with one broad brush and call it a day simply betrays an agenda rather than being an accurate description of reality.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#63

Post by williamstein »

Udik wrote: post #39
mcguire wrote: post #16

" Covid has at present killed less than 6000 in Sweden. It is very unlikely that the number of dead will go above 7,000. An average influenza year in Sweden, 700 people die of influenza. " The average number of people who die of influenza in the US is about 35,000. So we should expect 350,000 deaths and then we'll be all good?

350k deaths sounds like a huge number, but it's important to take in account how many of those would have died anyway in the next two or three years. Dying at 80 is not the same as dying at 20.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the estimate of the years of life lost due to Covid per person is significantly larger than "two or three years". For example, "New study finds coronavirus can cut life span by 10 years or more" (see https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/49...), and there are other more recent studies that go into more detail in the US looking at populations (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/how-many-...).

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#64

Post by hootbootscoot »

refurb wrote: post #56
spirobel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing in the german press. the next demonstration will be on the 29. of august. It will be even bigger than the last one. You can fool some of the people some of the time. But you cant fool all the people all of the time.

I guess my question was - is that true? No doubt there were some far-right groups, but from what I've read it wasn't all of them. It just seemed like an incredibly dismissive headline. "No worries, just crazy far-right doing their crazy stuff. We can safely ignore what they have to say."

I think we can and should safely ignore what people who protest against public health measures in a pandemic say, especially when it's rebelling against life-saving emergency measures.

Shame be upon such short-sighted folks who think that their "freedom" to not wear a mask is greater than others right to merely live.

I'll say it again: can you imagine what the survivors of World War 2 lived through? 10 years of being nervous everytime you try to go to the toilet... and these modern crybabies and their anti-vaccine lies want you to take them seriously?

It's not right.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#65

Post by refurb »

bowyakka wrote: post #60

Counter arguments: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.10.20096909v... https://covid19-projections.com/denmark vs https://covid19-projections.com/sweden Its also possible Sweden just got lucky with the prevalent strain https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.233866v1.... I would love it if Sweden was right and tackled this in a way that does look like a seasonal flu, but I think the science is…

Your first paper isn't a counter argument at all. It's just a measure of excess deaths (which the doctor never claimed weren't happening).

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#66

Post by dang »

hootbootscoot wrote: post #64
refurb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess my question was - is that true? No doubt there were some far-right groups, but from what I've read it wasn't all of them. It just seemed like an incredibly dismissive headline. "No worries, just crazy far-right doing their crazy stuff. We can safely ignore what they have to say."

I think we can and should safely ignore what people who protest against public health measures in a pandemic say, especially when it's rebelling against life-saving emergency measures. Shame be upon such short-sighted folks who think that their "freedom" to not wear a mask is greater than others right to merely live. I'll say it again: can you imagine what the survivors of World War 2 lived through? 10 years of being…

Your comments have been breaking the site guidelines. Please stop taking the thread further into flamewar.

Other commenters are expressing views that are (presumably) similar to yours in ways that stay within the guidelines. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and be like them, we'd be grateful.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#67

Post by tripletao »

hootbootscoot wrote: post #19
matz1 wrote: post #3

Its baffling that lots of government still want to continue the lockdown.

It's baffling that you would take this singular anecdotal factually-cherry-picked account of one doctors experience during one nations allegedly ineffective (lack of a) response to COVID as sensible advice moving forward. For one, his per-capita-death-rates are wayyy off. (1 out of 200 dying? try around 8% in Spain and Italy...) For 2, yes, it's precisely about slowing the spread 1) giving a chance for emergency serv…

> 1 out of 200 dying? try around 8% in Spain and Italy...

You have conflated the CFR and IFR, and are thereby spreading gross misinformation. From the article:

> And remember, the risk of dying is at the very most 1 in 200 if you actually do get infected.

They're talking about the risk of dying "if you actually do get infected" (i.e., IFR), not the risk of dying if you get infected and test positive (i.e., CFR). Most people infected suffer mild enough symptoms that they don't seek a test, so the CFR is much higher than the IFR. This is especially true during severe outbreaks, where people with mild symptoms are explicitly encouraged to just stay home until they get better (or worse) to avoid further stressing the medical system.

A recent meta-analysis estimates the IFR around 0.7%[1], a little higher than the Swedish doctor's numbers but pretty close. The exact number will vary dramatically with the age structure of the population, since the IFR is >100x for old people vs. young.

1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v...

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#68

Post by chki »

mellow2020 wrote: post #50
chki wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> proud to see my fellow germans rise up: That is (luckily imo) only a tiny minority of Germans. I would be very interested: are the current restrictions really that bad? You need to wear a mask in supermarkets, do you think that's actually that big of a deal?

It's the patronizing way things get pushed that is a problem. Including you pointing out someone being in the minority, followed by asking a question: the answer is kinda moot if you already established might being right as valid in your view. It's a very thin veneer of good faith, and completely transparent to the person it's done to. If I told you to list 3 things you're grateful for each day, and hounded and sanct…

>If I told you to list 3 things you're grateful for each day, and hounded and sanctioned you for not doing it, if I talked about all these Nazis I know who incidentally also are not doing it, and meaningfully nodded your way every time, and made fun of you in filter bubbles... wouldn't you just do this minor thing that may actually be beneficial and is unlikely to do harm?

The difference being that there is a strong scientific consensus that wearing a mask will save many peoples lives. I don't want to be patronizing and me pointing out that op was in a minority merely wanted to correct the "fellow germans" statement. But sometimes it's difficult not to be patronizing if you are following the strong scientific consensus on a topic. Because wearing masks shouldn't be a political issue if you can't develop a reasonable counterargument.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#69

Post by dnautics »

chki wrote: post #53
refurb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is effectively as locked down as anywhere else. Is that true? Are all the schools closed? Are most people working from home? Are most businesses shutdown? That's not what I've read (outside this article).

But this is also not the case for all the other countries in Europe which (according to the author) have taken the wrong approach to COVID. The more I think about it the more this article confuses and worries me. It's a thinkpiece that is not grounded in the scientific reality.

> It's a thinkpiece that is not grounded in the scientific reality.

What does that mean? As a scientist myself, 'science' can basically never say anything definitive about reality. Not for something extremely well measured and controlled like GR, and especially not something where the evidence on the ground and influencing factors (policy, social opinion, culture) shift with a frequency on the same order of scale that our measurements can be tallied.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#70

Post by mcguire »

Udik wrote: post #39
mcguire wrote: post #16

" Covid has at present killed less than 6000 in Sweden. It is very unlikely that the number of dead will go above 7,000. An average influenza year in Sweden, 700 people die of influenza. " The average number of people who die of influenza in the US is about 35,000. So we should expect 350,000 deaths and then we'll be all good?

350k deaths sounds like a huge number, but it's important to take in account how many of those would have died anyway in the next two or three years. Dying at 80 is not the same as dying at 20.

Life expectancy at 80 in the US is about 9 years. You have a remarkably cavalier attitude.
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