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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

#91

Post by kmm »

chki wrote: post #82
kmm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I communicated badly and meant the last quarter for which we have final results, Q1. Technically, "this" quarter is Q3 and we're already halfway.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#93

Post by RobLach »

2 separate studies are pointing to herd immunity being impossible because SARS-CoV-2 antibodies disappear over time and previous carriers could become infected again.

There haven’t been any cases of reinfection afaik but we’ll see in due time.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.09.20148429v...

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2025179

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#94

Post by Marsymars »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #90
refurb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hear this a lot, but I've never seen this claim put in context of a comparison to lung function following viral pneumonia from viruses other than SARS-CoV-2.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#95

Post by agildehaus »

gnicholas wrote: post #89
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).

Delusional. For that, ~2700 more people would need to die in Finland. 14 people have died in Finland since June 1st and they're typically reporting 0 now. In Sweden, 40 people died ON June 1st.

Both countries have it under control now. But it's clear Finland's shutdown saved lives.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#96

Post by swang »

i don't know what is the actual truth and we probably won't know which way was the "correct" decision until well after this pandemic is over (assuming it ends). i think the biggest issue with the US response is the bad messaging and iffy attempts at lockdown and reopening.

taiwan didn't go into lockdown but the country respects social distancing and masks and is very adamant about quarantining, tracing and cleaning.

do you think the average american citizen will adhere to any of that? forced quarantine for 14 days if you are infected or fly-in while a phone app afterward traces your movements to make sure future outbreaks can be traced? will people wear masks? will people maintain the social good over the individual? (answer for the US is apparently not)

i don't know culturally how sweden viewed these things but from what i can tell most people at least tried to maintain some form of social distancing. some swede can chime in here and correct me on that.

but what they've said about the nordic countries though, is that sweden's economy has shrank the same size as denmark's[0], while denmark which went into lockdown, suffered 8x fewer deaths, 5x fewer by percentage of population. that is the effect no lockdown has had on sweden.

also as a discussion to that both sweden and denmark's new cases are slowly creeping up, but denmark's is at about a quarter (~100/day) compared to sweden (~400/day).

[0]: 4.5 for sweden, 4.1 for denmark. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-c...

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#97

Post by bowyakka »

refurb wrote: post #65
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).

true that.

I guess my counter would be:

* It was solved at a greater expense of human life, its easy to say "those people would have died" but that is harder to prove ethically. Could the excess deaths have lived on _longer than a flu season_?

* Is there a good argument that it is in fact over in Sweden?

* Are there other variables that might have made Covid-19 not so bad in Sweden?

If I was to take more direct counters to the article:

> I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place, because all those countries are going to end up with the same number of dead at the end of the day anyway.

Maybe, but that could also be a case of thinking that the death rate is a fairly simple linear model, which would fly in the face of the various epidemiological models that we use (not just for covid but since the 1920s)

> No, because influenza has been around for centuries while covid is completely new. In an average influenza year most people already have some level of immunity because they’ve been infected with a similar strain previously, or because they’re vaccinated.

Is Covid-19 completely new? By this reasoning it would as stated be more infectious due to a lack of known immunity. With this line of reasoning why wouldn't a _different_ cornovirus also give a more uniform immunity? Why would a novel Cornovirus strain have a greater impact over a novel Influenza strain?

I could go one but I feel like I am sniping.

Personally I dont think the world wide response has been great, I do think we have overreacted but I also would argue that its not just another influenza and should be ignored as such.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#98

Post by Marsymars »

refurb wrote: post #26
chki wrote: post #7

There are a lot of highly problematic claims in the article. This one stood out to me: >Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long. Actually it might very well just be half a year until we have a vaccine. Multiple candidate vaccines are in pha…

If Covid has taught me anything, it's to stop assuming a best case scenario. Even if a vaccine is approved in Q'21, due to manufacturing, supply chain and just general operations issues, it's going to be a while before a large part of the population is vaccinated. I assume they'll prioritize medical workers and the elderly, then start working through the rest of the population. It wouldn't surprise me if it takes ano…

> We're probably looking at end of 2021 for enough vaccinations to happen for things to go back to "normal".

In my eyes, that is the best case scenario.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#99

Post by hn_check »

refurb wrote: post #88
supernova87a wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Sweden has adopted virtually every recommendations without it being mandated. This is an enormous difference from some Florida Man arguing why lockdowns are unnecessary. As much as people focus on face masks, in Sweden the sparsity of people given their response makes it much less of a necessity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/i58jjj/helgtr%C3%A5...

There you go -- read about Swedes talking about their COVID-19 experience. It is a universe removed from normal, or what Florida-man-using-Sweden-as-their-no-biggie-example claims.

Here you go - https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/nastan-alla-fick-coro...

Someone had an ill considered party. Despite the amazing herd immunity nonsense this guy is arguing (again, contrary to the entire expert community), most of the partiers got COVID. Ooops!

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#100

Post by mellow2020 »

chki wrote: post #68
mellow2020 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Listing 3 things you are grateful for each day will improve your whole life and all your relationships. As something that is likely to do good and isn't much of a sacrifice, it's the same thing, and you didn't answer the question.

> Because wearing masks shouldn't be a political issue if you can't develop a reasonable counterargument.

You are the one making it about the masks and only the masks, even the protests aren't, and I for one said IMO the pushiness is the problem, not what is being pushed.

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