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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

#191

Post by refurb »

gorkempacaci wrote: post #135

Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot. In the grocery store the cashiers are in a plastic bubble. Wherever there is a line there are marks on the floor to show where to wait to keep distance. Nobody shakes hands for quite some time. Yes, people go to Cafes/restaurants but restaurants have been assessed and assigned covid-friendly seating layouts. There are many more things that clearly separate tod…

That's helpful as we Americans don't have much visibility into what it's actually like in Sweden.

I think the big differentiator is that for California at least, people have been staying at home since late March, with the exception of essential workers (~20%?). Many are working from home, but many are unemployed too.

So while Sweden still did a lot, the distinction is pretty large with regards to disruption to "normal" life. A year or so when we look back, it will be interesting to see how big of an impact that decision had!

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#192

Post by glofish »

ghj wrote: post #172
glofish wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your numbers are way off. 25% percent of NYC was seropositive in May. So that works out to about 25k per 100k people. The reported cases have always been just the tip of the iceberg. And we never knew how big the underwater part was. We still down't. Take the current situation, is the disease penetration larger than that in March/April? Most likely not, not even close, yet the reported new cases are about 5x larger.

I don't care how big the underwater part is though. I am just using the case rate as a proxy for when states seem to hit their peak (yes, extremely handwavy). As long at the confirmed cases is within some constant fraction of true number, it will be a decent proxy. This makes sense to me since some x% of the people who get infect will need hospitalization so they will get counted towards the statistics.

> I don't care how big the underwater part is though

You should care. The disease propagation is all about the "unseen" part.

Otherwise the numbers are not comparable at all. Back then we caught 10% of cases, today perhaps 50%

Thus you can't extrapolate from old numbers into the new.

if anything you'd need to triple the numbers or more

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#193

Post by zaroth »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #183
chrisjs96 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear anything is saving lives. Once everything opens up we could be right where we started. Also we've said basically that people with coronavirus matter more than other illnesses. There will be millions of deaths around the world because of shutdown. Things like AIDs medicine. Then thousands due to lack of treatment of cancers and people not going to doctor(England did a study on this). Then you'll have th…

I don't think we're going to know in just 10 years. Maybe 50, or 100. For myself, I definitely sense that we (collectively, or nation by nation) could have followed various pathways (and to some extent, we did). The "right" answer was (and is) not known, and we had a choice between erring on the side of caution over the damage caused by the disease versus that caused by economic disruption. For now, I'm still in favo…

The really thorny issues is that erring on the side of caution over the disease impact means that we are avoiding COVID cases at the expense of millions of undiagnosed / later-diagnosed cancer cases, and many other diseases.

That’s just a piece of the all cause mortality due to the COVID response.

And then after accepting all that direct cost, then you can start evaluating the economic damage on top (which to some extent is unavoidable regardless of lockdown policy).

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#194

Post by stickfigure »

williamstein wrote: post #63
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.

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.har…

Be careful, these are years of life lost for people who died of covid. Headlines like "coronavirus can cut lifespan by 10 years or more" is just sensational - for that matter, so can bowling.

The average YLL for people infected with covid is vastly smaller. You still don't want it, but the actual number is measured in months.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#195

Post by hh3k0 »

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.

Wow, indeed. What a quote. I can't believe a doctor wrote this.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#196

Post by treeman79 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #175
chrisjs96 wrote: post #136

Only thing anyone can do is go to a shoe store, buy some running shoes and start running like 5 to 10 miles a week. Lay out in the sun and start eating healthier. If you can't run just walk. Play basketball, play soccer whatever. Why do people worry so much about things they can't control, when there are things they actually can control. If some of my facebook friends were more worried about walking everyday instead…

This. Have been taking hour walks in the sun since May. Never have I gotten so much sun before! Feels great

Some of us are allergic to the sun...

Still do what I can at sunrise and set

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#197

Post by refurb »

foogazi wrote: post #146

Confused by this: > 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. Wouldn’t shutting down completely for a month or two effectively end covid ?

Theoretically yes, but practically? Anyone who is involved in healthcare is aware that compliance is a major problem. Even for diseases that are life threatening and have effective treatments you see compliance rates of 80-90%.

All it would take is 1 out of 1M people to break the rules and you're dealing with another outbreak.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#198

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

keith___talent wrote: post #18
matz1 wrote: post #3

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

The people who wanted power have it now, and they love wielding it. If they relent, the perception becomes that it never mattered in the first place. Lockdown makes them heroes and wise politicians, saving you from something that we know very little about.

Heroes? Name one "powerful" person who is a hero in this pandemic. I can't think of any. Cuomo was quite effective with his daily briefings but made so many other basic mistakes before and after the core part of the NY "wave" that even that performance didn't turn him into a hero. I haven't see a single wise politician, let alone a hero, within the USA with regards to COVID19.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#199

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

lsllc wrote: post #155
foogazi wrote: post #146

Confused by this: > 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. Wouldn’t shutting down completely for a month or two effectively end covid ?

The UK, France, Spain, India and Australia who all shutdown (to varying degrees) are now experiencing significant upticks in cases. Even Vietnam is now fighting hard to tamp down a resurgence of C19 despite impressive initial measures to try to stop it. You'd have to be completely sure that during your lockdown, the virus burned itself out inside each household. You'd have to have a really strict lockdown (e.g. troop…

New Zealand apparently had police on the streets.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#200

Post by eternalban »

refurb wrote: post #191
gorkempacaci wrote: post #135

Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot. In the grocery store the cashiers are in a plastic bubble. Wherever there is a line there are marks on the floor to show where to wait to keep distance. Nobody shakes hands for quite some time. Yes, people go to Cafes/restaurants but restaurants have been assessed and assigned covid-friendly seating layouts. There are many more things that clearly separate tod…

That's helpful as we Americans don't have much visibility into what it's actually like in Sweden. I think the big differentiator is that for California at least, people have been staying at home since late March, with the exception of essential workers (~20%?). Many are working from home, but many are unemployed too. So while Sweden still did a lot, the distinction is pretty large with regards to disruption to "norma…

> That's helpful as we Americans don't have much visibility into what it's actually like in Sweden.

I wish we had the technology to broadcast images from far away lands. Alas ..

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