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

#381

Post by cinntaile » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #271

IdontRememberIt wrote: post #221

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…

If we look at the data Sweden is still one of the top countries in the world regarding health care. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-qua... https://www.ghsindex.org/ https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/countries/country-details/...

The above was a direct reply to:

> In the 70s and 80s, the Swedish medical infrastructure was one of the top. They still live on that legend. Please talk to Swedish friends around you and ask them how it is now (Part of my family is Swedish).

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

#382

Post by Closi » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

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…

> People can't be simply reduced down to a number and happiness isn't an 'x' that we can solve for in a mathematical calculation.

You can do it - although you can't calculate happiness completely, you can make models and reason about it in a mathematical/economic way. How much you believe the theory maps onto the real world is a valid criticism, however there are entire sections of the social sciences that attempt to do this to help inform policy and decisions (see: Happiness Economics - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness_economics).

In fact, the concept of a quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is a very common healthcare economics concept which is used in the UK (NICE) to decide how to allocate drug funding and direct policy.

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

#383

Post by astrophysics » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 10:08 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…

A huge challenge in Norway, was that all our retired ethnic Pakistani people panicked and booked flights from Pakistan to Norway. They didn't trust that Pakistani hospitals would handle the pandemic. Sweden probably has a lot more foreign residents with swedish citizenship than Norway?

Even though we have relatively few immigrants, at times, more than 50% of all the covid-infected belonged to these groups. https://www.p4.no/nyheter/over-halvparten-av-innlagte-er-inn...

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

#384

Post by CryptoPunk » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 10:25 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…

I think only looking at number of deaths from covid is a huge mistake. What about the quality of life of all of those who survived?

A lockdown is no small thing. It's forcing millions of people into forced isolation, which has hard to forsee consequences for mental health and social development, means destroying innumerable small businesses, and with it, people's livelihoods, closing schools, with devastating effects to education [1], etc.

Also worth noting that the initial projections for covid deaths in Sweden vastly over-estimated the pandemic's eventual lethality:

https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-actual-covid-19-results-co...

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/coronavirus-leadi...

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

#385

Post by CryptoPunk » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 10:28 AM UTC

foxylad wrote: post #257

kenneth wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

>>new strains due to more mutations of the virus

How much does one country having slightly more transmission affect the global mutation rate?

>>Also delta seems to be killing young people better, so we're not talking about "disposable" old people any more.

Do you have a source on this? In England, the data indicates otherwise:

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/06/29/who-is-most-at-risk-from...

>>Nonetheless, the data showed that there have been 117 deaths among people in England who had the delta variant with the majority being in the over-50 age group.

>>There have been eight fatalities among the under-50s with six of them in unvaccinated individuals and the other two in people who had received one dose.

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

#386

Post by native_samples » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 10:36 AM UTC

evgen wrote: post #344

nickthemagicman wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why limit the comparison to nordic countries? We don't limit comparison of Italy to Mediterranean countries, or England to British Isle countries. Sweden is a European country. On a European scale Sweden was right in the middle of the pack in deaths per capita.

Limiting it to immediate neighbors leaves you with comparisons which have similar environment, socio-economic status, and culture/lifestyle. When doing statistical analysis you first try to control for as many potential confounding variables as possible. By limiting the comparisons to like vs like on many different variables you end up being able to make stronger claims about the consequences of active choices.

This analysis doesn't limit it to immediate neighbours. If it was doing that it'd need to include the Baltic states too and when you do that Sweden goes back to being average.

In reality this argument is a form of motivated reasoning. It boils down to, if you ignore all the countries that disprove the hypothesis behind lockdowns and take a tiny number that did better than Sweden, then search backwards for some justification as to why this cherry picking is legitimate, you get a 'neighbours hypothesis' that unfortunately has to ignore some of the neighbours.

It's just rationalizing by people who cannot accept that lockdowns failed, because if they accepted that they'd have to accept that academic expertise in general has failed. And not only failed. Failed in ways that were destructive and damaging.

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

#387

Post by Dwelve » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 10:49 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #300

kenneth wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Comparing a virus that has an average age of death at or even above life expectancy with a suicide shows how weak your point actually is. Let's turn it around shall we? We can reduce the amount of deaths from car accidents by 1000 fold if we limit the speed of all vehicles to 10mph. Should we do it or not? Ask yourself if you would be willing to kill yourself and 999 close members of your family if you knew it would make your taxi driver be able to drive a little faster.

If the virus was as deadly as people pretended it was we wouldn't NEED lockdowns or any government measures at all. People would stay at home by themselves. Instead I see people going shopping 3 times a week.

People are simply unwilling to admit they were wrong and bought into an unwarranted hysteria. The sooner they admit this the sooner this farce can end. The flu is more dangerous to most people in here, so let's react proportionally to what we did for the flu every year

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

#388

Post by areyousure » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 11:10 AM UTC

Neeek wrote: post #298

areyousure wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, I'm pretty sure Australia has lost now.

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

#389

Post by ak_111 » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 12:03 PM 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…

To be clear about this, you are saying that if you wrote down a list of 100 of your close relatives, friends and co-workers that are above 60 years of age, you would happily trade "2 years of having a non miserable life", for the high statistical chance that 10 randomly selected individuals from the list will die?

I think there is a cut-off at some point, but 10x more deaths is way above my threshold.

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

#390

Post by kenneth » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 12:43 PM UTC

ak_111 wrote: post #389

kenneth wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be clear about this, you are saying that if you wrote down a list of 100 of your close relatives, friends and co-workers that are above 60 years of age, you would happily trade "2 years of having a non miserable life", for the high statistical chance that 10 randomly selected individuals from the list will die? I think there is a cut-off at some point, but 10x more deaths is way above my threshold.

So, you're suggesting that 10% of all people over 60 years old died of Covid since this began? I would love to see you try to find me a source for this statistic.

I'll wait…