Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#21

Post by wk_end » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

Traster wrote: post #8

jnwatson wrote: post #3

I don’t believe the article has addressed Sweden’s main argument for not shutting down: that herd immunity should be the prime driver. Essentially, that everyone is going to eventually have roughly the same death rate, so might as well get it over with. That remains to be seen; if Sweden’s peers can prevent flare-ups, it looks like Sweden was wrong.

Well it's not only that, if you overwhelm your healthcare system you're going to end up with excess deaths even if the same number of people get the virus in the end. Also, we've learned some mitigation techniques over the last few months (like steroids in late stage treatment) which means that the idea that 'everyone will get it eventually' just isn't relevant - its likely that our survival rate will go up over time…

Yes, although Sweden never came close to overwhelming its health care system.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#22

Post by mtgp1000 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #17

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spread…

Handwashing practices, physical greetings (kissing in some cultures), sharing of eating utensils, personal space, city density; There's no reason to expect R0 values to be the same all over the world.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#23

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

throw-away_42 wrote: post #6

martindbp wrote: post #2

As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy. Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask (still), social distancing is minimal (cram…

Sweden's total per-capita death rate is 50% higher than the Netherlands, 500% higher than Germany and Denmark, and 900+% higher than Finland, Norway, and Poland. All those deaths have not made you safer--your daily per-capita death rate is still several times that of those countries. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data

[deleted]

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#24

Post by drewg123 » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

kanox wrote: post #4

martindbp wrote: post #2

As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy. Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask (still), social distancing is minimal (cram…

> I'm starting to think it was the right decision Sweden is #6 by deaths/population according to this page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ This would indicate that the swedish response is among the worst. Several countries with comparable health systems have a death rate which is many times lower, for example Germany. This saved many thousands of lives. What am I missing?

The same data source also shows that Sweden's per-capita death rates are lower than Spain and Italy, which had full scale lockdowns.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#25

Post by kingkawn » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

mtgp1000 wrote: post #22

mettamage wrote: post #17

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spread…

Handwashing practices, physical greetings (kissing in some cultures), sharing of eating utensils, personal space, city density; There's no reason to expect R0 values to be the same all over the world.

Our treatment of race is quite sensical given that it’s misuse in the past has lead to totally nonsensical slaughter and destruction.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#26

Post by kingkawn » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #9

kanox wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm starting to think it was the right decision Sweden is #6 by deaths/population according to this page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ This would indicate that the swedish response is among the worst. Several countries with comparable health systems have a death rate which is many times lower, for example Germany. This saved many thousands of lives. What am I missing?

If the pandemic is expected to continue for many months, isn't it a bit premature to talk about current death rates as a metric for success? Given Sweden's 'herd immunity' plan, higher death rates at the beginning would seem to be a given. They didn't flatten their curve. But as they approach something like herd immunity, the number of possible carriers should plummet permanently (assuming immunity is a thing with CO…

Herd immunity cannot be considered the plan given that herd immunity has not been proven to be possible

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#27

Post by capableweb » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #17

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spread…

> I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2%

That's the guess at least. But we don't know. The argument for being careful about covid-19 isn't because we know it's more dangerous than other things, it's because we don't know.

It's still novel, we've only been tracking it since last December. The flu been around for a long time. Maybe we'll live with covid-19 for a long time, or maybe we'll find a vaccine.

As it seems right now, it's deadlier than the flu and we weren't really ready for it, so it caused a ripple effect of problems. No matter if a country implemented a quarantine or not, they took a lot of damage one way or another.

It's too early to make any conclusions around this, time will tell what was the best way considering the circumstances

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#28

Post by ojnabieoot » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #17

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spread…

It’s really deeply misleading to say that Sweden let the virus go “unchecked.” Sweden didn’t enforce a hard lockdown but strongly encouraged social distancing, mask wearing, staying at home, etc. Sweden did have a strong (if likely inadequate) national response to coronavirus. And Sweden was subject to EU-wide travel restrictions, including virtually no foreign tourism.

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#29

Post by booboolayla » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

kingkawn wrote: post #25

mtgp1000 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handwashing practices, physical greetings (kissing in some cultures), sharing of eating utensils, personal space, city density; There's no reason to expect R0 values to be the same all over the world.

Our treatment of race is quite sensical given that it’s misuse in the past has lead to totally nonsensical slaughter and destruction.

"Sensical, but with a caveat"

Re: Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

#30

Post by mettamage » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #20

mettamage wrote: post #17

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spread…

>How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths. Because the 1% death rate is a reference to people catching the disease, not the size of the population. Sweden as of now appears to have about 73k officially confirmed cases. Swedes still voluntarily distanced and closed down, hence the econom…

I'm not American, I'm Dutch. And there's a huge difference between WOII levels (which is what 2% deathrate in The Netherlands would be), versus an extra amount of death people comparable to the worst flu season.

In The Netherlands, the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. I hope it stays that way for everyone.