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The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#121

Post by lrgzdmn »

frankbreetz wrote: post #115

I see a lot of articles about how government reactions were good or bad for COVID. I have seen nothing regarding how a country's environment and population density affect COVID, I guess it is hard to push an agenda with that narrative. It seems the country's that "responded" the best all have low population density and/or are physically isolated from other countries. I see people praising leadership from places like…

> I have seen nothing regarding how a country's environment and population density affect COVID

This article does address that.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#122

Post by spookthesunset »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #76
spookthesunset wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t mean anything at all. It could just be random. You’d have no way to tell which of our theories are true. None of these lockdowns were proven to work prior to everybody jumping on them.

> That doesn’t mean anything at all. It could just be random. This is not a serious response. The correlation is far too definite to be mere chance; and the mechanisms that cause it not hard to understand. Or in plain English: it's not random.

It’s a very serious response, and it isn’t my job to prove. All the lockdown proponents need to prove their draconian, Stone Age mitigation’s did anything at all. As far as I can see it’s just blind luck that one region “did better” than a other.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#123

Post by anigbrowl »

kybernetikos wrote: post #60

It's so weird to see people still claiming this. Sweden has relatively few neighbors, but compare it with any of them, and it looks bad https://imgur.com/a/BlaU2SX Yes, Sweden did well compared to the EU average, but a country with very low population density, surrounded by very few neighbors that all got the virus under control very quickly has a lot of things going for it compared to the European average. The diffe…

The Telegraph leans strongly conservative just as the Guardian leans strongly left. This seems like a very slanted article; it buries the mortality impact of CVOID until near the end. I seriously doubt that Norway would prefer to swap its ~10x lower death rate for Sweden's GDP numbers. Further:

In a paper published last week in science journal Nature, Dr Bhatt, together with the UK's former government advisor Neil Ferguson and other researchers, estimated that if the UK had adopted Sweden’s policies, its death rate would have been between two and four times higher.

"What Sweden did was a pandemic response that involved large numbers of interventions, a considerable amount of reliance on population behaviour and population adherence, and a reliance on the intricacies of what makes Swedish culture Swedish culture,” Dr Bhatt said.

"If the UK had adopted what Sweden did, I have no doubt in my mind that it would have had an absolute disaster."

¯\(°_o)/¯

Notably, the Telegraph is not calling for people int he UK to be more like Swedes.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#124

Post by spookthesunset »

dTal wrote: post #89
spookthesunset wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t prove the people doing these voluntary lockdowns had any different of an outcome than if they did nothing at all. Way to many people just blindly assume these interventions worked. The fact is we have zero clue if they did anything or the outcomes experienced by different regions was a result of a bunch of stuff that is completely out of our control. If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns…

I made you this chart of the UK pandemic. It's incomplete by necessity, but gives the flavor. Do the dates and lockdown measures look unrelated? https://imgur.com/a/026CGjK

You have that as a log chart?

Here, I’ll do you better: https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#125

Post by bachmeier »

yodsanklai wrote: post #102
kybernetikos wrote: post #60

It's so weird to see people still claiming this. Sweden has relatively few neighbors, but compare it with any of them, and it looks bad https://imgur.com/a/BlaU2SX Yes, Sweden did well compared to the EU average, but a country with very low population density, surrounded by very few neighbors that all got the virus under control very quickly has a lot of things going for it compared to the European average. The diffe…

Sweden is a different country than Norway or Finland, even though they are neighbors. Also, being low population density is irrelevant (you could have a huge country with everybody crammed in a city, actually Stockholm is much denser than Oslo for instance). Also, even within a single country, fatality rates vary greatly. I don't think anybody knows how Sweden would have done with a different response to the Covid. I…

> I don't think anybody knows how Sweden would have done with a different response to the Covid. In any case, on an objective scale, I think they've done quite well and they had a less miserable experience than the rest of us.

So first you claim we don't know. Then you claim they've "done quite well". Which is it? What was the purpose of the first sentence?

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#126

Post by spookthesunset »

jchook wrote: post #91
kybernetikos wrote: post #60

It's so weird to see people still claiming this. Sweden has relatively few neighbors, but compare it with any of them, and it looks bad https://imgur.com/a/BlaU2SX Yes, Sweden did well compared to the EU average, but a country with very low population density, surrounded by very few neighbors that all got the virus under control very quickly has a lot of things going for it compared to the European average. The diffe…

Notice the article doesn't mention countries where proper lockdown worked very well and took only around 100 days.

And what, pray tell is a “proper lockdown”?

I hardly think NZ and AU are places to copy.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#127

Post by alliao »

frankbreetz wrote: post #115

I see a lot of articles about how government reactions were good or bad for COVID. I have seen nothing regarding how a country's environment and population density affect COVID, I guess it is hard to push an agenda with that narrative. It seems the country's that "responded" the best all have low population density and/or are physically isolated from other countries. I see people praising leadership from places like…

South Korea/Taiwan don't have low population density. Best response comes from states with educated citizens with good basic hygiene and understanding of exponential so are able to accept early intervention. NZ have the benefit of citizens actually trust the government; bit of a wet dream for many politicians around the world.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#128

Post by avmich »

danjac wrote: post #118
kybernetikos wrote: post #60

It's so weird to see people still claiming this. Sweden has relatively few neighbors, but compare it with any of them, and it looks bad https://imgur.com/a/BlaU2SX Yes, Sweden did well compared to the EU average, but a country with very low population density, surrounded by very few neighbors that all got the virus under control very quickly has a lot of things going for it compared to the European average. The diffe…

The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in their portfolios. On an average day you'll notice multiple anti-remote working articles parroted by Cabinet ministers. Why should they care how businesses conduct their business, especially if it's more convenient and can lead to a happier and…

> The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in their portfolios.

I'm curious, how does it work in reality? A boardroom meetings where landlord's representative decide what to publish in the next issue to get people into commercial property? A weekly reviews of editors where they have their KPI tied to how well they lure people into buildings? Phone calls from commercial union leaders to publishing houses asking for specific results? Do we have some good articles which would describe mechanics of that or is it all successful clandestine operations?

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#129

Post by AndyPa32 »

avmich wrote: post #128
danjac wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in their portfolios. On an average day you'll notice multiple anti-remote working articles parroted by Cabinet ministers. Why should they care how businesses conduct their business, especially if it's more convenient and can lead to a happier and…

> The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in their portfolios. I'm curious, how does it work in reality? A boardroom meetings where landlord's representative decide what to publish in the next issue to get people into commercial property? A weekly reviews of editors where they have the…

More like a boardroom full of landlords, I guess.

Re: The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy

#130

Post by eckesicle »

kybernetikos wrote: post #60

It's so weird to see people still claiming this. Sweden has relatively few neighbors, but compare it with any of them, and it looks bad https://imgur.com/a/BlaU2SX Yes, Sweden did well compared to the EU average, but a country with very low population density, surrounded by very few neighbors that all got the virus under control very quickly has a lot of things going for it compared to the European average. The diffe…

In this case the neighbouring countries arent great comparators. Population density has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread. Large swaths of the country is empty with the populace being very urbanised. Stockholm has a population density on par with London, and Oslo is about half of that.

Also households look very different in Sweden compared to it's neighbours. The average household size is among the lowest in the world with a very high variability (in particular in poorer areas where large family groups live together and were also disproportionally hit by COVID). That probably had an outsize effect as to why Sweden managed as well as they did. Social distancing and personal space is also pretty much the norm in Sweden even during non-pandemic times.

The Swedish CDC also says they believe they've fared worse than Norway and Denmark because the last few flu seasons were very mild in the country. Looking at the excess mortality numbers for the last few years that does indeed seem to at least explain some of the difference (although the claim has been disputed by their Norwegian counterpart).

It's also notable that Sweden tends to do a little worse than their neighbours through every flu season when it comes to excess death. Maybe COVID also just exacerbated that effect somewhat?

I think that the factors influencing COVID spread are so complex that it is impossible to disentangle how effective any political measures were in all but the most general terms.

In the end I think it mostly came down to luck, where those countries that managed to avoid clusters and super spreader events or more infectious strands early on fared better.

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