A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid • Hacker News Board

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#81

Post by chki » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:03 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #69

chki wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

There are a lot of claims in the article that the current scientific consensus does not support. The T-cells claim is one of them. Of course there are no absolute truths and I agree that my choice of words was maybe unfortunate.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#82

Post by chki » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:05 AM UTC

kmm wrote: post #71

chki wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official numbers from the statistic agency in sweden https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...

Those are preliminary flash estimates, we'll see how they hold up in a month. Even if true, it's still less down than any other European nations, and the only one not in a recession, because you're not taking the previous quarter into account as well.

>Those are preliminary flash estimates, we'll see how they hold up in a month.

> Swedish GDP is up this quarter, as about the only nation in Europe

so... is it possible to talk about the estimated gdp right now or not? Because those two statements don't fit together.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#83

Post by neonate » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:05 AM UTC

hootbootscoot wrote: post #28

mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

This article would be banned on facebook, because the view that covid still has many millions to kill in the US (sans vaccine) is the currently allowed truth.

it would indeed, as it posits spurious claims and is factually inaccurate, ER doctor or not. The fact is, over 150k have died in the US due to COVID, and this exceeds the US death toll from any known war, so there's no real minimizing such a figure. It's likely precisely due to a failure to contain the spread of the causative virus, precisely due to waffling around lockdown.

> over 150k have died in the US due to COVID, and this exceeds the US death toll from any known war

US deaths in WWII: 419k (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties)

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#84

Post by fspeech » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

ghj wrote: post #74

NYC is a good case study since it's one of the first place hit and is now more or less "done" with covid in the same sense used in this article (it had a peak and is now on the right tail). NYC is at 2716 cases per 100k and 281 deaths per 100k: https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases States with aggressive reopening policies like Florida/Louisana/Arizona etc had spikes recently but are also coming back down. Th…

Case rate is unreliable due to testing issues. It's highly unlikely NYC only had that many cases with an implied fatality rate of over 10%.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#85

Post by refurb » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #70

Udik wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, on average. But there seems to be a lot of people in nursing homes that are dying of covid, and I assume that population likely has a lower life expectancy than the average.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#86

Post by mcguire » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

schemy wrote: post #49

alltakendamned wrote: post #2

"COVID is over in Sweden" is a pretty bold claim with ~400 daily infections, and increasing again as per https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6... Just like in other EU countries, it is now the younger population which seems mostly affected, and thus the mortality is lower - which is ultimately some good news. Summer holidays are now almost over though, so people are traveling home from vacation…

https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+covid+deathrate&oq=sw... Sweden's death rate is down to zero today and has been trending down since mid April. Summer Holidays did not start until late May where deaths were already half of what they were in mid April. This post isn't aging, it's already aged.

Want to make any guesses as to what Sweden's all-cause mortality for 2020 will be?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#87

Post by hn_check » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:08 AM UTC

ghj wrote: post #74

NYC is a good case study since it's one of the first place hit and is now more or less "done" with covid in the same sense used in this article (it had a peak and is now on the right tail). NYC is at 2716 cases per 100k and 281 deaths per 100k: https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases States with aggressive reopening policies like Florida/Louisana/Arizona etc had spikes recently but are also coming back down. Th…

I think we really are losing sight of the before versus now comparison. NYC is an absolutely ghost town compared to how it was. Everyone stays remarkably limited in their social contact. Professional sports are a ghost of what they were, running in an incredibly limited fashion. Travel is rare.

The same is true of Sweden as well, of course. Social interaction has collapsed to very close to nil, and any article that claims that things are "normal" is lying to push an agenda.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#88

Post by refurb » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:09 AM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #34

hn_check wrote: post #21

This doctor[1] is basically claiming that all of Sweden, or the vast bulk, have had SARS-CoV-2 and are now immune. This goes completely contrary to every medical authority, and is the sort of claim that generally gets something removed as disinformation. Disinformation does well on HN. Of course you get to the article's slant when it claims that Sweden is "normal" right now, which is an outrageous lie. Virtually all…

Yes, I was noticing this too -- author doesn't state whether the country is locked down and social distancing/masks, etc. now. If so, they've only stabilized because they adopted the recommended measures finally.

First paragraph - "Unlike other countries, Sweden never went in to complete lockdown. Non-essential businesses have remained open, people have continued to go to cafés and restaurants, children have remained in school, and very few people have bothered with face masks in public."

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#89

Post by gnicholas » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

agildehaus wrote: post #46

Finland has roughly half Sweden's population but 5% of their COVID deaths. Sweden's economy contracted 8.6% to the EU's 11.9%. Hope those 5000+ unnecessary deaths were worth 3.3%. "Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway." Wow.

Your Finland comparison misses the author's argument. His claim is not that they haven't had many more deaths than Finland, but that Finland will catch up with Sweden. His theory seems to be that there will be a more-or-less fixed number of deaths per million, unless countries are willing to wait for a vaccine (which he thinks they won't do).

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#90

Post by HarryHirsch » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:13 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #42

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?

I think his point is you can't compare the impact of the flu because 1) it hits every year (versus a quick outbreak) and 2) many people are vaccinated. Don't forget the '17 flu seasons was 65k deaths in the US. So we're at a little under 3x right now. So yes, Covid is worse, but we don't bat an eye at 65k deaths due to the flu.

Consider that recovery from coronaplague is lengthy and that a good amount of those discharged form hospital are looking at permanently reduced lung function. Death isn't the best metric here.