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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

#231

Post by Clewza313 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #189
dijit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sweden is a different country than Norway or Finland Pedantic “every country is a different country” aside; Norway and Finland are absolutely fine comparatives. The population density (in the populated areas), culture and genetic make-up of these countries is so similar that they may as well be considered the same country socioeconomically. Hell, they used to even _be_ the same country (the union of Kalmar). I’ve l…

Your perception of a country doesn't make a scientific evidence on why Norway of Finland could be taken as reference point to assess Sweden strategy regarding Covid.

You're the one asserting they're not comparable here, so please trot out some factors where Sweden is measurably different from its neighbors then.

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

#232

Post by Godel_unicode »

spookthesunset wrote: post #215
Godel_unicode wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting, and quite unexpected, effect was on the suicide rate in the United States. Specifically, the fact that it has declined slightly. This is especially surprising given the seemingly inexorable rise on that same rate for decades. We are only now starting to see analysis of this data, and while I hardly think that this is enough to make any sizable statements about lockdowns, it's also certainly not the c…

Drug overdoses were up like 20%.

Wow, looks like closer to 30% in the US. Interesting that suicides went down and overdoses went up, I wonder how you would go about disentangling those numbers.

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

#233

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

IdontRememberIt wrote: post #221
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…

This argument does not make sense. 1) +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area. ( https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje... ) 2) Switzerland which is higher density has almost the same excess death rate (on your image) 3) France which had very strict and long lockdown (and killed/subsidized heavily its economy) has also almost the same figures. As many have said, one of the major factor…

I’ve seen accusations in the US that people were being counted as Covid deaths that died “woth” Covid, and would have even without it - I have no idea if these accusations are true, just that probably-nonsense leads me to the question:

Isn’t it tough to compared countries with how strictly or loosely they count a “Covid death”?

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

#234

Post by sumedh »

deltree7 wrote: post #226
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?

Also good genes. But that's a blasphemy to bring up

Is it good genes or a healthy population because of good nutrition and exercise?

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

#235

Post by galaxyLogic »

yodsanklai wrote: post #187
bachmeier wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I'm claiming we don't know what would have happened under different policies (lockdown vs no lockdown) - and those who pretend otherwise don't have scientific evidence to back up their claims. Regardless, I'm claiming they've done quite well under all possible objective metrics compared to other European countries.

You should compare Sweden to its closest neighbors, not to all of Europe or all of the World).

Countries geographically close to each other are more similar than countries far apart. Therefore you can more readily attribute the difference in death-rates to differences in policy.

And use Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation for the 10x difference in death-rates is most probably the correct one: lack of lockdown. It just makes (common) sense.

What is your explanation for the 10x difference in death-rates between Sweden and its closest neighbors? Do you have a simpler explanation than the lack of lockdown?

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

#236

Post by jkhdigital »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #210
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…

I'm glad to see someone call out the WSJ... I was a subscriber for many years and it was a conservative yet outstanding source of information. Today it's crap, yet still trades on its historic reputation. Really breaks my heart as I've not been able to find a replacement.

So… par for the course among formerly reputable news outlets?

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

#237

Post by emmelaich »

kenneth wrote: post #230
anigbrowl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fe…

I'd happily trade a 10x higher death rate (to a high of 0.014%, mostly among people who weren't far off from dying anyways) in exchange for everyone having 2 years of having a non-miserable life. I know it's incredibly taboo to say something like this; but people are completely overvaluing the impact of the few absolute numbers of deaths, vs. the much harder to quantify widespread misery caused by these overreactions…

Scott Alexander has a great post on this

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness...

and a follow-up: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/things-i-learned-writi...

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

#238

Post by matvore »

gizmo385 wrote: post #207
Closi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pe…

That comparison of life hours isn't valid though. There are additional effect that are wrought on a nation when it's experiencing mass death - mass grief and loss has effects. And that's not to mention the potential overwhelming of the healthcare system, resulting in many other lives being lost or severely impacted. People can't be simply reduced down to a number and happiness isn't an 'x' that we can solve for in a…

Imperfect comparison but still valid. All lives are eventually lost causing some grief.

(If I may summarize what you've said) Saying that a large number of coincident deaths causes a collective grief that wouldn't have happened otherwise is rather subjective. I have felt nothing of the sort. I don't think it's enough of a concern to justify such an overreach of government power.

Quantifying the value of life as a number is icky but necessary if you're making decisions of this scale.

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

#239

Post by frabbit »

mhh__ wrote: post #209
anigbrowl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fe…

The guardian is left leaning culturally but actually fairly centrist economically. They get stick from Tories who call them elitist Londoners (this is deeply ironic, but that's for another comment) and even more stick from proper lefties who don't believe they are on their side enough.

And the Guardian has been shifting inexorably to the neoliberal position as it has started to rely more and more on US and Australian readership. Their rampant bias against the only viable socialist, anti-imperialist party (Labour under Corbyn) was notable and they've followed this up with a disgusting lack of activism around the torture by imprisonment of Julian Assange. In short: the Guardian is anything but left-wing.

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

#240

Post by jkhdigital »

kenneth wrote: post #230
anigbrowl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fe…

I'd happily trade a 10x higher death rate (to a high of 0.014%, mostly among people who weren't far off from dying anyways) in exchange for everyone having 2 years of having a non-miserable life. I know it's incredibly taboo to say something like this; but people are completely overvaluing the impact of the few absolute numbers of deaths, vs. the much harder to quantify widespread misery caused by these overreactions…

Hey, you said it! I’ve been waiting for a comment like this. I always have to go back to Frederic Bastiat, the “seen and unseen”: Covid deaths are visible. Effects of lockdowns, not so much, especially as they play out over the ensuing years (observable effects on children can be particularly delayed).
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