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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

#151

Post by skytreader »

spookthesunset wrote: post #124
dTal wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Such dishonest statistics, this source. For example,

> One of these neighboring Southeastern states had a statewide mask mandate. The other two did not.

> [Shown: COVID-19 Deaths, per million, 7-day average]

But mask mandates do not claim to prevent COVID-19 deaths, rather transmission. A state with relatively low transmission but poor healthcare infra will see similarly unintuitive/surprising trends.

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

#152

Post by tpmx »

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…

Swede here:

It's complex. I'm extremely unhappy with the way the Swedish gov handled this.

I see two main failures:

1. Not reacting quickly enough. Denmark and Norway reacted quickly and strongly back in early March 2020. At this critical point, Sweden's "CDC" dropped the ball in a monumental manner, and the government didn't pick it up.

2. Not protecting municipal elderly homes in a competent way, early on. This is where most deaths happened. Norway in particular handled this so much better.

And of course we should compare ourselves to e.g. Denmark/Norway/Finland.

I think the root cause of all this is that Sweden has not been involved in a war in a very long time, unlike our neighbors. We're pretty good when things are stable, but apparently awful when things are dynamic/shit is going down.

Of course I have very specific opinions on what "actually" went wrong and why, but that would be too detailed to be useful here and also way too partisan.

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

#153

Post by throwawayboise »

tpmx wrote: post #30
warning26 wrote: post #17

What I find particularly interesting is that Sweden wasn't the only country that did this -- Brazil also did a no-lockdown strategy, and it was basically a disaster there. Evidently, there must have been some other factors at play besides the boolean of lockdown true/false. Better healthcare, maybe?

I'm Swedish. I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the population here thought the government was being incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown, much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions. Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did,…

This sounds exactly like what happened where I live in the USA. Many people who could WFH did. People who could not, did not. Everyone made a personal risk assessment and went about his life accordingly.

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

#154

Post by johanneskanybal »

sergiosgc wrote: post #97
guerrilla wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the decision proves beneficial, it was an error That's subjective: It depends on how much risk you're willing to take on. People here were pretty supportive of the policy, so presumably willing to take on more risk than you. Like you, I wasn't but that's just how it goes.

Except if the risk is unknown you don't know how much risk are you taking, and hence if it is above our below your threshold. When faced with a cataclysmic, albeit low probability, event, the only course of action is the cautious one.

Not sending kids to school, eliminating social interactions, shutting down businesses, this was the drastic unknown experiment not the other way around. The effects are becoming more apparent now and I'm sure there will be a lot written about the subject in the future. Gloating doesn't seem appropriate at this point but sure after a year of the world screaming how bad we handled it maybe a Swedish moderate amount of national pride is warranted.

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

#155

Post by yyyk »

Gwypaas wrote: post #103
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…

Why are people still arguing about a countries population density in late 2021? It is a completely irrelevant metric, lets include the Canadian arctic when calculating the density of Toronto and the effects of Covid, makes a whole lot of sense! A measure which actually has some relevance on country scale is population weighted density. "Population weighted density refers to a metric which measures the density at whic…

>Why are people still arguing about a countries population density in late 2021?

Because the effective Swedish population density is very low? The effective density is affected by household size, and about 40% of Swedes live alone without children[0]. Sweden had the biggest Corona infection vector neutered and still did horribly.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/526013/sweden-number-of-...

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

#156

Post by tpmx »

throwawayboise wrote: post #153
tpmx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Swedish. I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the population here thought the government was being incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown, much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions. Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did,…

This sounds exactly like what happened where I live in the USA. Many people who could WFH did. People who could not, did not. Everyone made a personal risk assessment and went about his life accordingly.

Yeah, and the outcome (confirmed cases & deaths) is kinda similar.

Confirmed cases:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Confirmed deaths:

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

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

#157

Post by Closi »

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…

Eh, It all depends how you look at the statistics. Consider the below:

* Sweden had c14k deaths. Average age of death was in the eighty's - let's say Covid shortened life expectancy by 10 years on average (seems a conservative figure). Total life lost is c140k life-years.

* If Sweden locked down like other countries for a year, this would have been 10m people * 1 year = 10 million years of lockdown. Let's say that people had a life that was 10% worse during that time because of the restrictions of lockdown, that's 1 million quality-adjusted life years lost.

If you are trying to optimise for "total quality-adjusted life years" as a society across the full population rather than just 'save lives' - Sweden's approach looks absolutely valid and correct.

If your measure of success is 'minimise the absolute number of lives lost to Covid, no matter what the cost' then it looks poor.

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

#158

Post by corney91 »

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…

It was The Times that fired Boris Johnson for lying, The Telegraph hired him after that.

They have gone off the deep end though. Some good coverage of The Telegraph's fall in standards is Peter Oborne's resignation letter: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-i-have-...

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

#159

Post by gerikson »

LinAGKar wrote: post #81
tpmx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Swedish. I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the population here thought the government was being incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown, much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions. Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did,…

Stefan Löfven made a surprise announcement today that he'll be stepping down in November Again? He got kicked out and reelected two months ago. This government is a damn yo-yo.

His ministry lost a no-confidence vote in parliament, but no-one else was able to form a new government so he was asked to form a new one.

This latest announcement is that he will be stepping down as the leader of the Social Democrats. There's a new election in Sep 2022, and to me (a Swede) it looks as if no-one is interested in an extra snap election right now (the regular election will be held in Sep 2022 as planned anyway).

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

#160

Post by mattmanser »

spookthesunset wrote: post #131
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #35

Telegraph has an anti-lockdown agenda to push in the UK; it is not an impartial source here. In the UK the praise for the "Sweden model" comes particularly from the conservative-aligned pro-business anti-lockdown lobby; who are producing PR for their proposition that "lockdowns do more (economic) harm than they do (public health) good". Right or wrong, it's certainly not impartial reporting on a foreign country, it's…

Your argument is that we should ignore news media with an “anti lockdown” agenda? It may come as a surprise but not every smart, well meaning person supports the lockdowns. You can look at all the publicly available data and come to the conclusion that they were a colossal public health blunder. I would argue the pro lockdown crowd have a huge bias toward ignoring any bit of data that demonstrates lockdowns are a bad…

The telegraph has pretty much become the raving loony of the right in the UK, not just because of this.

It's not a good news source anymore, if you want a rational right-wing paper in the UK these days, read The Times.

Used to be the other way around.

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