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

telegraph.co.uk

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

#211

Post by narrator »

danjac wrote: post #118
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…

The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in their portfolios. On an average day you'll notice multiple anti-remote working articles parroted by Cabinet ministers. Why should they care how businesses conduct their business, especially if it's more convenient and can lead to a happier and…

Meta related, but this so perfectly fits my previous comment on the trend these days in "political debate":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28250033

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

#212

Post by bsaul »

polote wrote: post #140

Can we ban discussion of covid restrictions on HN ? At that point nobody is going to change his position. Pro lockdown people will not change their opinion even if there are proof that masks mandate and lockdowns dont work Anti lockdown people will not change their opinion even if there are proof that masks mandate and lockdowns works. There is no point keep talking about it, unless you want to loose your time arguin…

Please, let’s not ban one of the rare place where people of different opinions can exchange links and arguments with a pretty decent average scientific ground. Banning and expelling difficult topics from the public space has become far too common.

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

#213

Post by naasking »

sergiosgc wrote: post #14
whiddershins wrote: post #9

While many people might point out that Sweden did in fact have more deaths, the verdict on that is still out. They are getting far fewer cases and deaths than many other areas now, and have been for many weeks. Couple that with the not-lost social interactions and economy etc, and the fact that this was always (more or less) every country’s pandemic plan before we changed our mind for covid, and it becomes a troublin…

When Sweden decided for no lock-downs, we knew very little about the virus. It was effectively a jump into the unknown. Even if the decision proves beneficial, it was an error, in the knowledge context of March 2020.

> When Sweden decided for no lock-downs, we knew very little about the virus. It was effectively a jump into the unknown.

And lockdowns were a jump into an economic unknown, which also had very unpredictable effects. There's no way you can say it was an error given the evidence available at the time. We'll see how it works out in the end.

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

#214

Post by spookthesunset »

mavhc wrote: post #59
Ntrails wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job of Governing is not solely to minimise loss of life, or to utterly avoid tail risks irrespective of cost. (imo) Focussing so myopically on the above has had unmeasurable consequences on a huge variety of fronts. My prime fury is reserved for closing schools. Extraordinary damage done, gulfs in opportunity and experience widened. Nobody cares much. Death stats are, after all, the only thing that matters to the…

You're pro having 30 people breathing in a small room with bad airflow for multiple hours when there's a pandemic? If you don't know how it's transmitted, then try various things and see if they help. We tried lockdown, and it worked. So we kept doing it, if it didn't change the situation we would have tried other things instead.

There is very little proof that lockdowns worked. We had no clue if they worked going in and we still can’t prove they worked, let alone well enough to justify their immense societal costs.

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

#215

Post by spookthesunset »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #198
johanneskanybal wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sending kids to school, eliminating social interactions, shutting down businesses, this was the drastic unknown experiment not the other way around. The effects are becoming more apparent now and I'm sure there will be a lot written about the subject in the future. Gloating doesn't seem appropriate at this point but sure after a year of the world screaming how bad we handled it maybe a Swedish moderate amount of…

One interesting, and quite unexpected, effect was on the suicide rate in the United States. Specifically, the fact that it has declined slightly. This is especially surprising given the seemingly inexorable rise on that same rate for decades. We are only now starting to see analysis of this data, and while I hardly think that this is enough to make any sizable statements about lockdowns, it's also certainly not the c…

Drug overdoses were up like 20%.

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

#217

Post by kjaftaedi »

microtherion wrote: post #186
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #35

Telegraph has an anti-lockdown agenda to push in the UK; it is not an impartial source here. In the UK the praise for the "Sweden model" comes particularly from the conservative-aligned pro-business anti-lockdown lobby; who are producing PR for their proposition that "lockdowns do more (economic) harm than they do (public health) good". Right or wrong, it's certainly not impartial reporting on a foreign country, it's…

Sweden not only had many more Covid-19 deaths than other Scandinavian countries they also have considerably higher unemployment: https://twitter.com/Andreas_Hopf/status/1429523341510123528 So they traded more deaths for a WORSE economy (though, as far as I know, the part about self reported mental health is true).

This piece is propaganda.

The overall sentiment in Sweden is that they should have done more. Even their chief epidemiologist publicly regretted their policy and wished they had followed their neighboring countries.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/scientist-behind-swedens-no-loc...

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

#218

Post by andrepd »

lamontcg wrote: post #169
avmich wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in their portfolios. I'm curious, how does it work in reality? A boardroom meetings where landlord's representative decide what to publish in the next issue to get people into commercial property? A weekly reviews of editors where they have the…

You know in an interview loop where you consider "culture fit?" That's it. That's the conspiracy. For a journalism job at the Telegraph you're going to need to have a resume where you've written the right kinds of articles with the right kind of tone. Have a bunch of articles that you've written sympathetic to Corbyn and those around him and you ain't getting the job. They won't even need to police you that hard once…

Excellent summary for people who think that there needs to be actual explicit indications for conspiracies (in the original sense of the word) to exist

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

#219

Post by postingawayonhn »

hkt wrote: post #193
spookthesunset wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what, pray tell is a “proper lockdown”? I hardly think NZ and AU are places to copy.

NZ and AU are faring pretty differently. AU is wracked with crisis and NZ has been business as usual for ages. The key difference as I understand it is that NZ sacrificed easy international travel for domestic wellbeing and AU didn't.

Australia has far more restrictions on travel.

For outbound travel Australians are required to get a government exemption to leave the country. Australia also has far fewer inbound quarantine places per capita.

Also internally most states require entry/exit permits and frequently close thier borders to one another.

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

#220

Post by krona »

nickloewen wrote: post #3

The article provides evidence to support the claim made in the headline, but there are important caveats included at the end: > The death rate was between three and four times that of Denmark, and nearly 10 times those of Finland and Norway - suggesting Swedes died that didn’t need to. > And Dr Bhatt does not think another, non-Nordic country such as Britain could have copied Sweden’s policies and got the same result…

We were not able to explain the variation of deaths/million in different regions in the world by social isolation

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84092-1

A dozen other papers in reputable journals have come to the same conclusion.

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