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

telegraph.co.uk

251–260 of 442 posts

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

#251
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anyplace a conservative can find real news anymore?

Anywhere reputable. For example, I read the guardian pretty much everyday, and various other papers, even though although culturally I am a proper grauniad-reader type, politically I am not - but by virtue of actually reading the articles text you can actually (believe it or not?) determine both the facts and the flavour separately.

Be careful. It takes conscious effort to read sceptically; whenever your attention slips you'll find yourself absorbing the views the writer wants you to.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about the Financial Times and Bloomberg?

Bloomberg has major problems; they have no proper separation between advertising and editorial (a high-profile article on corruption in the Chinese government, following up on an article that had narrowly missed out on the Pulitzer the year before, was spiked in what very much appeared to be a move to protect Bloomberg terminal sales in China), and they still haven't retracted (or clearly stated that they're standing behind) their dubious "hack chip" story.

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

#253

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…

It's strange. I'll see people compare U.S. numbers to the numbers from Germany, Vietnam, and New Zealand. Then when you Sweden is compared to other European countries, they'll suddenly say that you can't make such a comparison and Sweden should only be compared to other Nordic countries.

When it comes to Covid it seems there's a lot of shifting standards of evidence.

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

#254

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…

Weren't a lot of Sweden's deaths very early and from nursing homes specifically because they were taking literally no preventative measures, though? They learned from this, and recommended different things for older people and nursing homes, specifically, was my understanding. If you factor out all those deaths in the beginning - the difference in deaths is not 10x. And 10x doesn't really matter. If 1 person died in…

> Weren't a lot of Sweden's deaths very early and from nursing homes ...

If the data in the graph shared by kybernetikos is correct, the claim that 'it's all because of elder deaths in early 2020' seems to be misguided, given the 2021-01 peak, and the steady first-place position throughout the last ~18 months.

https://imgur.com/a/BlaU2SX

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The pandemics is extremely complex. Fatality rates have looked very different in seemingly similar countries, and even within different areas of a single country. Saying Covid response is the only thing that could possibly explain the observed differences between Sweden and (let say) Norway is simply wrong. I do suspect Sweden would have had less fatality had they implemented a lockdown. Would it then be comparable t…

"Lockdown" is also an almost meaningless term. People adjusted behavior almost everywhere--including Sweden. Furthermore, very few places actually implemented a hard lockdown that largely prevented people from leaving their homes. Certainly no where (?) in the US did. Restaurants closed for indoor dining isn't really a lockdown.

It's very hard to correlate policies to outcomes.

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

#256

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…

Stockholm has the population density of San Diego or Phoenix.

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

#257

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…

Your higher death rate comes with these exciting free add-ons!

- significant loss in productivity due to varying levels of incapacitation from Covid19

- additional loss in productivity due to cautious people isolating anyway

- new strains due to more mutations of the virus

Also delta seems to be killing young people better, so we're not talking about "disposable" old people any more. And I won't be suprised if we have an epidemic of early-onset Alzheimers in ten years time.

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

#258
post #91

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.

You mean Israel and nowhere else, yes? Because nowhere in Europe had lockdown so short. Australia managed to make all its work for nothing by comprehensively fucking up the vaccine rollout.

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

#259

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…

> This argument does not make sense.

The OP compares Sweden to its closest neighbours

> +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area

As do +83% +85% and +88% of the three closest neighbours OP compared Sweden.

In what way does that comparison not make sense?

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

#260
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This argument does not make sense. The OP compares Sweden to its closest neighbours > +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area As do +83% +85% and +88% of the three closest neighbours OP compared Sweden. In what way does that comparison not make sense?

“but a country with very low population density”

Wrong!

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