The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health, healthier economy • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by nl » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

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…

To add to this, the linked article itself says:

However, Dr Bhatt, the University of Copenhagen professor, is keen to point out that for all of its successes, Sweden saw more Covid fatalities than its Nordic neighbours who took a more interventionist approach.

The death rate was between three and four times that of Denmark, and nearly 10 times those of Finland and Norway - suggesting Swedes died that didn’t need to.

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

#292

Post by mistermann » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:24 AM UTC

kenneth wrote: post #286

emmelaich wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The key takeaway I had from Scott's post was this stat: >It takes people ~50 months of strict lockdown to save one month of someone's healthy life. Or another way to look at it, it takes 50 people locking down for a month to save each one month of life expectancy for one person. 600 people locking down to save a single person's life expectancy by one year. 6000 people for 10 years of life expectancy for a single pers…

Another way of looking at it: those telling us that we must lockdown seem to not even try to think about it from any perspective other than simply saving lives, regardless of consequences.

Every year my confidence and trust in politicians and any expert with a role in setting policies gets lower.

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

#293

Post by nl » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:31 AM UTC

hkt wrote: post #193

spookthesunset wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what, pray tell is a “proper lockdown”? I hardly think NZ and AU are places to copy.

NZ and AU are faring pretty differently. AU is wracked with crisis and NZ has been business as usual for ages. The key difference as I understand it is that NZ sacrificed easy international travel for domestic wellbeing and AU didn't.

Australia sacrificed international travel too. It still leaked in which led to occasional limited lockdowns. Until Delta strain hit and spread too fast for the small lockdown strategy to contain it.

Australia screwed up the vaccination strategy. They bought AstraZeneca and relied on a domestic vaccine that was being developed which failed in trials.

Then the AZ side effects became an issue and there was no backup plan.

But even the AZ rollout was a debacle with no one sure if they were eligible or how to get it. And the Prime Minster excusing it all by saying "it's not a race".

If Australia had the vaccination rate of the US or the UK (which was absolutely achievable) then Australia would still be the envy of the world.

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

#294

Post by naasking » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

polote wrote: post #140

Can we ban discussion of covid restrictions on HN ? At that point nobody is going to change his position. Pro lockdown people will not change their opinion even if there are proof that masks mandate and lockdowns dont work Anti lockdown people will not change their opinion even if there are proof that masks mandate and lockdowns works. There is no point keep talking about it, unless you want to loose your time arguin…

> Anti lockdown people will not change their opinion even if there are proof that masks mandate and lockdowns works

Even if they do work it's barely relevant to the argument that lockdowns should be avoided. Lockdowns would have to work and be less harmful overall than cutting off or reducing access to everything else people depend on in society, like schooling, mental health services, cancer diagnostics and treatment, and so on and so forth. That's a tall order.

Anti-lockdown people who claim lockdowns don't work are surely employing motivated reasoning.

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

#295

Post by nl » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:34 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #204

hkt wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It continues to astonish me how far the telegraph (and conservatism generally) has left people like Oborne behind. Really quite something to behold, and pretty deeply alarming.

Is there anyplace a conservative can find real news anymore?

Financial Times is pretty good, and definitely not liberal.

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

#296

Post by eitland » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:38 AM UTC

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…

My biggest problem with all this is the thought that have got rid of this entire virus by being a little more strict.

Norway was down to 0-5 infections a day last summer even when the society was open.

Then we opened the door for foreign workers (and not a bad thing about them) and the industry who had promised to take care of quarantines etc failed so hard that all of a sudden wehad another wave.

I'm moderately conservative but disappointed with both conservative politicians and rhe industry for this.

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

#297

Post by nl » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 3:41 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #252

malloryerik wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> their dubious "hack chip" story

It shocks me that people believe manufacturer denials on this particular issue but still claim to be immune to commercial propaganda.

It's unlikely there will ever be undeniable proof available to the general public one way or the other on this. But the story was well sourced, was definitely technical credible and the parts that could be checked all checked out. Literally the only thing against it was manufacturer statements saying "nah".

But follow up articles have expanded that, and are starting to name people who say they have seen evidence now: https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/12/supermicro_bloomberg_...

In particular, check out page 71 of [1], where a former US Marine testifies under oath in a federal case about a similar things happening with Lenovo laptops in 2008 in Iraq. Quote:

A large amount of Lenovo laptops were sold to the US military that had a chip encrypted on the motherboard that would record all the data that was being inputted into that laptop and send it back to China.

[1] https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/r9dKMMM0...

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

#298

Post by Neeek » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 4:02 AM UTC

areyousure wrote: post #268

lancewiggs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Zealander here. Yes we locked down over one case. The next day we had a few more, and then more and more and more (21 in each of the last two days). Delta is amazingly spreadable. Because we are locked down straight away, every case is easily contact traced, and people that did catch COVID are already isolated in their bubble, so cannot re-transmit easily behind that. As people are diagnosed they are taken to iso…

Will you get that back, or is New Zealand's quest for zero Covid lost?

From our experience here in Queensland, it's definitely not lost. We managed to get on top of a delta outbreak that peaked at NZ's current daily cases with a week of lockdown less than a month ago.

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

#299

Post by choward » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 4:07 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #292

kenneth wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key takeaway I had from Scott's post was this stat: >It takes people ~50 months of strict lockdown to save one month of someone's healthy life. Or another way to look at it, it takes 50 people locking down for a month to save each one month of life expectancy for one person. 600 people locking down to save a single person's life expectancy by one year. 6000 people for 10 years of life expectancy for a single pers…

Another way of looking at it: those telling us that we must lockdown seem to not even try to think about it from any perspective other than simply saving lives, regardless of consequences. Every year my confidence and trust in politicians and any expert with a role in setting policies gets lower.

See Goodhart's law.

> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

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

#300

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 4:09 AM UTC

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…

It’s incredibly easy to trade statistical deaths for statistical happiness. Ask yourself instead if you would be willing to kill yourself and your family if you knew it would make your neighbors happy.

Sounds aggressive, I know. But it’s a solid way to illustrate that there are real people behind statistics.

If 10x more people die, “everyone” is not going to have 2 years of a non-miserable life. The people who lose their spouses, parents, friends, children, etc will be horrifically miserable. It’s easy to trade lives when you assume you won’t be one of those people (or worse, one of the prematurely deceased).