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

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

#171

Post by Jensson »

cinntaile wrote: post #118
Jensson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expected lifespan under covid was still higher in Sweden than Denmark or Finland. So to me it seems like other healthcare or national policies matters much more than the covid response, overall covid had a very minor effect on healthspan compared to laws regulating alcohol or tobacco or similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... I don't really see why people talk so much about covid when…

How would limiting the hours you can buy >3.5% alcohol have a big impact on lifespan. What data exists that supports your thesis? All the alcoholics seem to either buy <=3.5% or hang around in pubs all day?

It matters for among other things drinking and driving. You would save way more lives in the long run if you fixed this than had a few covid lockdowns. There are also positive health effects to moving stronger alcohol away from grocery stores, do both and it becomes a no brainer positive effect. And no whining about "freedom", if you think that locking down people is fine in order to save lives then you can manage to buy alcohol at daytime at special stores.

> One older overview of systematic reviews found that reducing hours of sale resulted in averting 250 to 750 Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) per one million population (8)

> One older systematic review and a recent rapid synthesis found an association between hours of sale of alcohol and increases in alcohol-related harms, including drinking and driving and road accidents, but the association was less clear for the effects on alcohol consumption or health harms

> Two older reviews found significant increases in alcohol-related motor casualties and assaults with increased temporal availability

https://www.mcmasterforum.org/docs/default-source/product-do...

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

#172

Post by jimmaswell »

fifilura wrote: post #63
jimmaswell wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a political thing that many people are going to support government measures and wear masks at family gatherings for the rest of their lives. I wouldn't be surprised if some things like masks at the post office last forever at this point regardless of necessity.

Post office? Long time since I heard those two words together. What country are you from? Looking at how quickly the disappeared from Sweden (merged into grocery stores) I would not be very surprised if they are gone in your country too before whatever mask mandatory you have.

United States

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

#173

Post by bryans »

refurb wrote: post #151
bryans wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

Even if you want to compare by Sweden's most dense region, it's still 282/km2 versus 8,358/km2. Your comparison makes no sense whatsoever.

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

You weren't making some generalized point about suicides increasing (which would have been irrelevant to the conversation at hand), you were trying to imply that lockdowns were directly responsible for the increase, which the statistical trend refutes.

Your commentary is intentionally disinformative.

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

#174

Post by refurb »

bryans wrote: post #173
refurb wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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. Even if you want to compare by Sweden's most dense region, it's still 282/km2 versus 8,358/km2. Your comparison makes no sense whatsoever. > And is my statistics about suicides wrong? 2020 was t…

https://www.worldscapitalcities.com/capital-facts-for-stockh...

” Population density is concentrated within Stockholm including its immediately surrounding urban area, averaging 11,802 people per square mile (4,279 per square kilometer).”

Clearly I’m the one spreading disinformation. Looking at city to city (Singapore is a city state) the density differences are minor.

And in in terms of suicides they were up 13% in one year. Singapore seems to think the covid situation was a factor.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/suicide-highest-re...

Not sure kind of games you’re playing here.

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

#175

Post by wk_end »

rajin444 wrote: post #147
wk_end wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Overwhelmed” means “hospitals, doctors, nurses, and health care officials all over the world say they’re overwhelmed, and say that it’s due to COVID”. This is what I mean by “conspiratorial” - you need to assume that massive numbers of people in dozens of countries are colluding and lying to believe that medical systems aren’t struggling due to COVID.

The idea that COVID and the Hong Kong flu were comparable is, at this point, outdated. For instance, the most liberal estimate (per Wikipedia) of HKF deaths is around 100k in the US. Adjusting for population growth you’d see something like 175k dead (the US population was 200M at the time). The US is now at ~800,000 excess deaths since the start of the pandemic, and rising.

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

#176

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

geofft wrote: post #55
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In modern times, you serve an economy because if you don't, you starve. This isn't star trek socialism. It's a survival of the fittest environment. The government stepping in and saying "NOPE! WE KNOW BEST!" and then basically forcing every citizen to restructure their lives for something that couldn't even remotely be contained just shows the abuse of power. Even among private institutions. Look how many took advant…

The economy, as you know it, exists because government says, "Nope, we know best!" It is a survival of the fittest environment solely because the people in charge of the government don't want Star Trek socialism. It is true that the majority of COVID deaths are among the population that one government called "life unworthy of life." But the decision to let them die off for the greater good is, itself, a form of sayin…

Sweden did and theyre fine...

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

#177

Post by bryans »

refurb wrote: post #174
bryans wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Even if you want to compare by Sweden's most dense region, it's still 282/km2 versus 8,358/km2. Your comparison makes no sense whatsoever. > And is my statistics about suicides wrong? 2020 was t…

https://www.worldscapitalcities.com/capital-facts-for-stockh... ” Population density is concentrated within Stockholm including its immediately surrounding urban area, averaging 11,802 people per square mile (4,279 per square kilometer).” Clearly I’m the one spreading disinformation. Looking at city to city (Singapore is a city state) the density differences are minor. And in in terms of suicides they were up 13% in…

Sure, we can compare city to city, but the comparison instantly falls apart, because that peak urban density is still nearly HALF of Singapore's entire density. There is no universe in which 50% is considered a "minor" difference, and that's STILL pretending the rest of Sweden doesn't even exist. That is the definition of an apples-to-oranges argument.

In regards to the suicides, you just referenced an individual's personal thoughts on a potential reason for part of the increase. That's not evidence of anything, especially given that the statistical trend was already rising sharply upward, meaning there were existing issues being exacerbated long before COVID showed up. Even if we pretend that 100% of the 52 additional suicides in 2020 (a death rate of 12.6/mil) were directly caused by lockdowns, that's still a small fraction of the number of COVID deaths resulting from not having lockdowns, as is evidenced by ANY country's statistics.

So, yeah, you are ignoring all of the obvious facts that refute your assertions, which makes you disinformative.

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

#178

Post by h0l0cube »

dnautics wrote: post #169
h0l0cube wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never made an assertion to the contrary, but I think economies are also useful for permitting specialization (and hence supply chains, to create more complex goods) and amortizing local disruptions to supply (e.g. food stores, trade) and probably a bunch of other useful things. They can also enable large scale waste, environmental destruction, debt traps, extreme inequality etc

No you're still misunderstanding. Even in for example, a super primitive society, there are, say "obligation economies" that exist even though nobody inside the society is using it to understand their situation. Likewise, in a modern society there are economies of waste, economies of environmental destruction etc. The "economies" are just quantitative frameworks for understanding human interaction.

Ah sure, I suppose I'm talking about what pops into mind when most people here the word 'economy', but certainly there's more going on as you've noted.

When I use the word, I'm talking something a more to do with the systems of trade of goods and services, currency, etc. - the health of such systems are the concern of many anti-lockdown proponents.

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

#179

Post by dang »

foxhop wrote: post #11
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #5

Halting an economy to the point of economic depression levels (early on) for the sake of people who were already vulnerable (look at the US, lockdowns but people still left the house cause duh...groceries and jobs) was a dumb idea. The government was trying to play god with it's citizens and they couldn't even police simple things like "stay at home" orders. So what was the point in even shutting down everything and…

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

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? you've been doing it repeatedly lately, and it's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#180

Post by dang »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #28
foxhop wrote: 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?

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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