Live data from Hacker News

Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

ft.com

141–150 of 199 posts

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if we could get such clear-cut results from the numbers, and just be able to say “this strategy is good, if we do that everything will be fine” (not saying you're saying that), but I really don't think that's the case. Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million. The UK has shifted strategies around a bunch, but they h…

UK is a bad example to choose. They used the highest possible sensitivity setting on the PCR test, to the degree that no meaningful information could be extracted from them. In addition, anyone who died, for any reason, at any time after a positive test, was recorded as a covid death. Even if they died in a car accident months after they had the test. Sources: Covid-19: The problems with case counting: "What is a cas…

The most sensible number to look at for countries with differing data quality is excess mortality.

However tempting it may be to correlate only with the magnitude of the lockdown procedures, however, it is equally if not more important to correlate them with how public health is organized and what kind of service citizens could be expected to receive.

We can only hope that in time people will look back at this with a scientific mindset and draw any conclusions from that.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#142
post #130
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even know why covid has a seasonality. Obviously it has a physical cause but the interplay of all factors is so complicated that no one can really explain why peaks come and go, and at different times in each place.

Covid is not seasonal and it does not have a seasonality.

Thanks, tell that to Gov. Newsom: https://old.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/qr34sz/...

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#143
post #3

There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Here are the results versus their similar neighbors in deaths per million people[1]: Sweden 1478 Denmark 474 Finland 219 Norway 173 They're 3 to 8 times worse. They now do compare favorably to Portugal for example at 1796. When did Portugal have the huge spike in deaths that propelled it in front of Sweden? When it decided not to do lockdowns, eve…

I don't know. A lot of people are attempting to use Sweden as some sort of political blunt force instrument to drive home some point, seems to be used to argue both the horrors of lockdowns and the horrors of not locking down. In terms of saving lives, it clearly wasn't the best strategy. In terms of securing a reasonable standard of living, keeping the economy going, keeping mental health effects limited, it was rea…

Bodies don't pile up on the streets in an advanced first world country. That's kinda the problem: everyone is entitled to the best medical care. A 100 years ago nobody would have even blinked at a cholera epidemic in Stockholm's slums causing deaths.

In the Netherlands less than one thousand patients on the ICU is able to bring a healthcare system to a grinding halt.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#144
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectivity seems to be the biggest causality of COVID... The vast majority of people have "picked a side" and will use any data they deem to be advantage to their side to highlight how they were right, and ignore any data that disproves their side. This is true for both the "science" class and the political class. "Trust the science" has become a "Trust the science that agrees with my worldview, ignore the rest" For…

> Trust the science" I find this statement, which we hear ad infinitum from every direction, to be indistigushable from "trust in god". This "Science" thing is the new faith.

I think a lot of politicians lacked and still lack the moral courage to say “we don’t know yet” or “we’re acting out of caution as the science isn’t clear”. I’m not sure how we can devise a system of politics where moral courage doesn’t conflict with career progression, perhaps a nonpartisan democracy would be better for this but that may have issues of its own.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#145
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK is a bad example to choose. They used the highest possible sensitivity setting on the PCR test, to the degree that no meaningful information could be extracted from them. In addition, anyone who died, for any reason, at any time after a positive test, was recorded as a covid death. Even if they died in a car accident months after they had the test. Sources: Covid-19: The problems with case counting: "What is a cas…

These sort of “over sensitive PCR tests”, “died with not of” claims are silly. You start peeling away at them even a little - why are hospitals overwhelmed? Why are there so many excess deaths? - and any explanations start becoming conspiratorial (“there’s no actual overwhelmed hospital, it’s all fearmongering from the media”) or completely implausible (“hundreds of thousands of excess deaths, in numbers that line up…

My prediction—-when this point in time is measured 20 years from now, I suspect we are going to see that the excess deaths measured 2020-2025 are not going to be dramatically higher compared to 2014-2019 (at least as high as people today anticipate. There will be some, but Covid seems to be extremely skillful at killing people early who were statistically likely to die in the coming 5 years.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#146
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectivity seems to be the biggest causality of COVID... The vast majority of people have "picked a side" and will use any data they deem to be advantage to their side to highlight how they were right, and ignore any data that disproves their side. This is true for both the "science" class and the political class. "Trust the science" has become a "Trust the science that agrees with my worldview, ignore the rest" For…

> Trust the science" I find this statement, which we hear ad infinitum from every direction, to be indistigushable from "trust in god". This "Science" thing is the new faith.

Some of this is because instead of presenting data, we are now presenting personalities.

When people in media, or politicians say "Trust the science" they do not point to a piece of data, or research, they instead point to a person, often a high profile person, that we are to trust.

I trust data, not people.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#147
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK is a bad example to choose. They used the highest possible sensitivity setting on the PCR test, to the degree that no meaningful information could be extracted from them. In addition, anyone who died, for any reason, at any time after a positive test, was recorded as a covid death. Even if they died in a car accident months after they had the test. Sources: Covid-19: The problems with case counting: "What is a cas…

These sort of “over sensitive PCR tests”, “died with not of” claims are silly. You start peeling away at them even a little - why are hospitals overwhelmed? Why are there so many excess deaths? - and any explanations start becoming conspiratorial (“there’s no actual overwhelmed hospital, it’s all fearmongering from the media”) or completely implausible (“hundreds of thousands of excess deaths, in numbers that line up…

How often are hospitals overwhelmed? What does “overwhelmed” mean - 95% capacity? Excess beds but not enough nurses? Turning patients away? Operating at max capacity?

What qualifies as “so many excess deaths”? The Hong Kong flu was per capita comparable to what we have now and most people didn’t know anything was happening.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#148
post #68

I don't think it is interesting to hear "the architect" evaluate his own work. Tegnell has a lot of critics but they don't get the same day of light. I can't refer to an English source but Ivar Arpi's interview with Björn Olsen recently is a good balance to this self-gratulatory message from Tegnell.

Ivar Arpi is a very opinionated far-right columnist. So that will be very biased in the the other direction. I guess expect the truth to be somewhere in between. But (like proven with other far-right strategies) also don't expect it to be exactly mid-day.

Sweden is a strange country. Even moderately right wing people advocated for stronger lockdowns in unison, whereas the left wing perspective was think of the children (keep schools open) and think of the working class (who are the ones to lose their jobs).

Says a lot of how malleable political discourse is, I guess.

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#149
post #137
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the cumulative excess death since January 1st 2020 (in terms of percentage of expected) is Sweden: 5.21% Finland: 1.57% Denmark: -0.09% Norway: -0.85% And you think these numbers somehow argue that Sweden "no longer stands out"? Or tells a more positive story than the covid death numbers at least? Source (thanks tomp): https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Data as of October 17th (the lat…

Well yes, if you deliberately chose to compare Sweden with only those countries that have better statistics, Sweden will indeed prove to have the worst statistics. Truling shocking how that works out. Here is the same graph of excess mortality with all 27 EU states included: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Note how Sweden has the is the sixth lowest of all the countries in the graph.

Rather it's the list of countries that Sweden borders on, that are culturally and geographically most similar to Sweden...

Re: Sweden no longer stands out in pandemic, says architect of ‘no lockdown’ policy

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trust the science" I find this statement, which we hear ad infinitum from every direction, to be indistigushable from "trust in god". This "Science" thing is the new faith.

I think a lot of politicians lacked and still lack the moral courage to say “we don’t know yet” or “we’re acting out of caution as the science isn’t clear”. I’m not sure how we can devise a system of politics where moral courage doesn’t conflict with career progression, perhaps a nonpartisan democracy would be better for this but that may have issues of its own.

I think the bigger problem here is not "we’re acting out of caution as the science" but more that politicians are incapable of saying "we are NOT going to act because the science is unclear"

They must be seen as ALWAYS doing something, anything, to solve every perceived problem. This is the root cause of most of the issues, Just once I would love to see a politician say "This is not for government to solve" ... Just once...

Post reply on HN