Live data from Hacker News

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

ft.com

151–160 of 199 posts

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

#151
post #122
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe better to compare to Singapore which had ~6 deaths per million earlier this year, has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world but since barely relaxing their restrictions now has ~120 deaths per million, raging number of cases (mostly vaccinated) and had the highest level of suicides last year since 2012?

It doesn't makes any sense to compare a country with a population density of 25/km2 to one with 8,358/km2. Also, Singapore's deaths per positive test and deaths per hospitalization are far lower even during the same outbreak period. Also, the suicide rates were already spiking by 19.15% in 2019, while the increase for 2020 was 13%, so to place the blame on lockdowns is misinformed and disingenuous, at best.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Why calculate density of Sweden based on the total country when most people live in a couple cities? That’s just lying. It’s like calculating Canada’s density over the Arctic when 80% live within 100 miles of the US border.

And is my statistics about suicides wrong? 2020 was the highest since 2012?

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

#152
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best guess I've seen on hit this has to do with how much time people are spending inside due to weather. See the screenshot of covid positivity rates at two different dates. https://mobile.twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1457438899580456... The screenshot is from the NYTimes covid tracker. The guess was that more people were inside in the south the summer when it was hot, and they were running air conditioning. Now that…

In considering areas, are you including vaccination rates? https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st... CA, OR, and WA have better rates than many places, and the North East is by far the most vaccinated area of the country.

How about Vermont? Their 7day COVID rate is high (53 per 100k), and they are the highest vaccinated rate in the continental US.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/corona...

For OR, I understand that they had a warm summer and spiked this summer already and are trending down now.

https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spr...

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

#153
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read them. More journalists and broken links. No data. No corroboration, not from those sources cited.

uh, I clicked through to, and I didn't see journalists and broken links.

Did you see the government? Any mention of car accidents? I must have missed that. Sorry if that's the case.

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

#154
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To destroy US, they want to create a one government rule.

Oh boy. I'll bite. Who is they? What is the one government rule?

WoW. I shouldn't have bitten. Don't even know where to begin. :O

(Note - replying to parallel comments as they flagged dead so I'm unable to reply directly; understand this may Confuse people as it seems I'm replying to myself - not sure what the right etiquette is here?)

1. "Democrats as Marxists"? Please. I'm in Canada, and general perception is that USA Democrats are much in line with our Conservatives . Our Liberals are overall further left. I wonder what you'd think of our NDP, which is our third mainstream party and essentially socialist.

And then let me tell you about actual communist/marxist-leninist parties of the country I was born in! It seems that so many people spew words they think are bad and intended as an insult ("You're a socialist!!!!" "Umm, yeah; and?"), more than having any remote vague understanding what they mean.

2. "Democrats want a one party rule" - I don't follow this. Is there any party that wouldn't want to always win? Is there a perception, anywhere, that USA Republicans are the party that enjoys democracy and power to the people? :) I feel there's more details to this particular statement that I'm not getting. Are we looking for word "Dictatorship"?

3. "California is total shit. "

I mean, that's subjective. You may well feel so. It's my personal favourite part of USA, but I do get the feeling we'll disagree on many things in life:). My other favourite places in USA, whether Boston etc, are probably not in your top 3 either :).

4. "Stop pretending to be stupid. "

I honestly am not; I don't spend enough time in specific echelons so claims like this take me by genuine surprise. It's like the time my well-educated aunt in Europe suddenly one day said "Hilary Clinton is part of Jewish way of taking over the world". It's those "Umm, what???" moments where I get that I may appear stupid, but they are genuinely unexpected and I haven't a foggiest where they came from.

I don't feel our perception of reality on the ground, risk, and likelihood of that risk is sufficiently similar.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or the others are strange.

I feel like the right wing in Sweden (conservatives) are the ones that are less likely to be liberal.

In the sense that the have opinions on how people behave.

For example when it comes to freedom of religion or sexuality or want to have opinions what should be considered real art and what is not etc.

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

#156
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, he is not without bias. But then, who is? Although I don't agree he is far right. He is right. In any case, Björn Olsen is certainly an expert and his viewpoints are a healthy balance to what Tegnell says

I can back on far right, but not back on opinionated.

Björn Olsen has held a consistent line throughout so he is worth listening to.

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

#157
post #54

I wish there would be more talk about the other side of Covid: the people suffering of various long term post-covid problems. I think this will be the high price that Sweden really will have to pay in the long run.

What's your take on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29165961 ?

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

#158

The bureaucrats that have been responsible for the questionable approach Sweden has followed are currently fighting like a cornered cat to avoid any and all accountability. So this 'message' fits the narrative well. The prime minister has stepped down and left the reigns to someone else this week. The responsible for the health authorities has started his pension a week or two ago. Both conveniently around the same t…

The prime minster stepped down, but his second is taking over, and she's been more or less as involved as him during all this. Lots of other political aspects (and probably soon private ones) surely did factor in the timing.

Regarding the guy responsible for the health authorities. He looks quite old so it makes sense for him to retire, especially after a significant very special "project" is "done". Tegnell's wife (who's also been a public face during the pandemic) is taking over. Doesn't look too me like they're trying to start over.

No opposition: Really? There's been plenty in the news about the handling of the pandemic. TNT seems completely out of touch with reality. Could there be an alternative explanation why there's no uprising? Maybe people in Sweden in general isn't super dissatisfied (in general) with the outcome? I think it's clear even just from this thread that the view on how Sweden had handled the situation is mixed/unclear.

As for your last statement. There's a lot of difference in quality in the numbers from all countries more or less.

I'm a Swede with a relative who worked at "Folkhälsomyndigheten" during the pandemic who have also heard from other sources how these numbers/stats are collected in various countries.

PS. I'm not saying Swedens strategy was right or wrong. I'd say we need to wait and see what actual science has to say after we're all done with this. Instead of seeing random things as signs and thinking it's all a conspiracy.

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

#159
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh, I clicked through to, and I didn't see journalists and broken links.

Did you see the government? Any mention of car accidents? I must have missed that. Sorry if that's the case.

One of the three links is a link to a .uk.org page. If you missed that, I don't want to continue this conversation because you're just wasting everybody's time.

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

#160
post #149
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There is more (and less) to similarity than the shape of the flag. Taking in account economic, geographic and cultural factors, a fair comparison would also consider Germany and Netherlands, possibly also Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and UK. The 'rich germanic protestant NW Europe countries' block. For the nitpickers, Finnish is not germanic and Austria is Catholic, but the point stands.

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/9jyxqt/gdp_per_cap...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages#/media/File...

Post reply on HN