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

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#211

Post by Majromax » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:22 AM UTC

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…

> Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot.

Indeed; both Sweden (https://ycharts.com/indicators/sweden_unemployment_rate) and Norway (https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_unemployment_rate) have experienced anomalous increases in their unemployment rates that seem clearly linked to the pandemic.

If the article's thesis is correct that Sweden minimally-disrupted the status quo, then we would have expected to see little employment response.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#212

Post by _-___________-_ » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:25 AM UTC

adrinavarro wrote: post #48

> "it is nonsensical to compare covid to other major pandemics […] Covid will never even come close to those numbers. And yet many countries have shut down their entire economies" > "That makes covid a mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality." This sounds wrong to me for several reasons. First of all, it's silly assuming that other countries are shutting down their economies without a very good reason for doing…

> First of all, it's silly assuming that other countries are shutting down their economies without a very good reason for doing so.

I certainly wouldn't want to assume that governments only ever do the correct thing, or the thing that is in my best interests, so I think it's reasonable to ask questions.

> As I understood it, the "good reason" for doing so was that the infection & death rate was growing so fast, that it was putting hospitals & morgues way beyond their capacity. At the same time, the situation was keeping non-COVID, hospital-worthy visits out of the healthcare system, thus creating a massive public health problem.

The UK enlisted the army to build enormous field hospitals and staffed them with doctors and nurses from other hospitals. Most of them closed after seeing only a few patients, since all other hospitals were operating far below capacity. Emergency rooms were ghost towns. Meanwhile, all elective surgery was cancelled, reducing the quality of life for thousands of people while doctors stood around waiting for the promised influx that never happened.

It seems to me that the response in the West has been largely reactionary, driven by fear and public opinion, and disconnected from any real analysis of what genuinely works and what the long-term plan is -- with the possible exception of Sweden, who despite all the "they don't care" rhetoric you see in other comments, not only put a lot of analytical care into their approach, but discussed that analysis openly.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#213

Post by _-___________-_ » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

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.

I mean, he mentions right at the start and several times throughout the post that it's his observations and opinion. Expecting it to be scientific reality seems a bit unfair.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#214

Post by chrisjs96 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:32 AM UTC

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…

Even though recessions cause loss of lives(as they always do), I'm not arguing we value the economy over lives. The economy will bounce back as it always does. I'm arguing that we should value all lives. We're only valuing covid lives over other lives right now. Meaning we're valuing our grandmother and great grandmothers lives over our brothers, sister, mothers, fathers even children. To be frank we have to look at average years of life loss with Covid. Let's call it how it is: The quarantine should just be called the life exchange.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#215

Post by mellow2020 » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:40 AM UTC

chki wrote: post #127

mellow2020 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 are…

> it's the same thing It is not. Masks are meant to protect everybody, they are not meant to protect yourself. I'm not in favor of preventing consenting mentally stable adults from doing basically anything to themselves and – to answer your question – I would obviously object to other people forcing me into adopting any unreasonable habit. But this is about protecting society and risk groups. > IMO the pushiness is t…

I didn't say "it's the same thing", I said "As something that is likely to do good and isn't much of a sacrifice, it's the same thing"

> I would obviously object to other people forcing me into adopting any unreasonable habit.

There is nothing "unreasonable" about naming 3 things you are grateful for each day. If you did it each day, you could probably get it down to taking a few seconds.

> Or do you mean the general attitude by commentators (in the media/on twitter etc.) towards people not abiding by those laws?

I do mean the attitude, but not about not abiding to laws per se. It's just a wholesale dismissal. Like, what does "mentally stable" have to do with anything, why did you weave that in there? Because instable people are complaining about masks or think G5 causes Corona? What do, for example, arguments put forward in the OP article have to do with that?

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#216

Post by ballenf » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:44 AM UTC

chki wrote: post #29

spirobel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the german gdp is down over 10 percent. A decade of growth is gone because of this failed policy. The young generation will suffer from this for a long time. Seems like the current politicians dont care about our future.

>the german gdp is down over 10 percent. A decade of growth is gone because of this failed policy. The swedish GDP is down 9% despite them (according to the article which is misrepresenting a lot of things) not locking down at all. Even if Germany took a completely different approach (which would have led to a New York Style situation in the whole country) there would basically not be a difference in gdp numbers.

Could that be the result of trade with lockdown countries falling?

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#217

Post by lsllc » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:47 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #199

lsllc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think given the circumstances, NZ did the right thing and they did it with the support & cooperation of their citizens.

They had the distinct advantages of being a remote island with very few cases to begin with and relatively little international traffic compared to most of the rest of the world which was easily shutdown. They had a really good chance to beat it, they took it and they succeeded -- but I think it was a pretty unique situation.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#218

Post by sabujp » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:53 AM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #25

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…

Unfortunately, it appears that a significant chunk of people are not interested in taking the vaccine. [1] If only half of Americans are going to get the vaccine (that figure is from May polling, referenced below), we can't pin all of our hopes on it. I should note that I'm not saying it's unreasonable of people to be hesitant to take this particular vaccine, given how it is being rushed. Even scientists have said th…

the vaccine will work as well as it can. The nvax vaccine has a spike protein that is stable and effectively generates neutralizing ABs : https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.06.234674v1

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#219

Post by logicchains » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

chki wrote: post #38

spirobel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see my other comment. its not about the masks. the economy got ruined and its celebrated like we won something.

Even taking the claims in the article at face value (which is most likely not a good idea), we prevented 40,000 people from dying. That's a lot.

>we prevented 40,000 people from dying

I suppose the Swedish response would be that these deaths weren't prevented, just delayed, as there'll be a second wave, third wave... and lockdowns can't continue forever.

Re: A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

#220

Post by nradov » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 4:05 AM UTC

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…

It appears that Harvard study failed to adjust for comorbid conditions such as obesity, and thus I suspect it overestimates years of life lost. We know that obesity cuts several years off of life expectancy independent of COVID-19. The typical patient who dies from COVID-19 has multiple chronic comorbid conditions.