Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

telegraph.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 442 posts

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

#361

Post by mannerheim »

dmitriid wrote: post #333
mannerheim wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an accurate figure for the density where a typical Swede lives. Most of the population lives in the southern part of the country, a quarter of the population lives in the Stockholm metro area as well. It's like using Canadian population density with the whole country when almost the entire population lives within a hundred miles of the US border.

> quarter of the population lives in the Stockholm metro area You've never been to Stockholm metro area. It's very sparsely populated compared to many big metro areas. Stockholm is a small city (800k people or so) surrounded by villages (another 1.5 million people) spread over 6,519.3 km2. Density is 360/km2 And that's the biggest city in the country. In comparison, Paris (as we were talking about France): 13 mln peo…

I was in Stockholm last week. My point is that 25/km^2 is an absurd figure to use because northern Sweden has more reindeer than people.

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

#362

Post by nivenkos »

kybernetikos wrote: post #64
tomohawk wrote: post #4

The excess mortality for the past few years in Sweden: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... Better than most, not as good as some. Certainly not the catastrophe predicted by some.

It really depends who you're comparing with. If you're comparing with high population countries with lots of neighbors / travel links, then they did great. If you're comparing with literally any of their neighbors, then they did really really badly. Their excess mortality was around 1000 per million (i.e. around 10,000 more people dead than expected), while Denmark, Finland and Norway were much much less.

> comparing with high population countries with lots of neighbors / travel links, then they did great.

Sweden _is_ one of those countries when compared to its neighbours though.

Denmark, Finland and Norway have nowhere near the same levels of international travel, immigration and urban population.

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

#363

Post by nivenkos »

dghughes wrote: post #37

I know a lot of right-wing types like to point to Sweden as an example. But I'd argue whether what they did was right or wrong the Swedish population was better prepared. Compared to the USA the Swedish socialized medical system would mean that most of their citizens probably started off healthier.

Access to medicine is pretty terrible in Sweden for less critical issues.

You have to pay for doctor's visits between $30-60 and often have to wait 4-8 weeks even with the fee. Almost everything requires a prescription compared to other countries, so the delays are problematic as there is no opportunity for self-medication at all.

But there's definitely something to be said for the overall health of the population like obesity rates, smoking rates, etc.

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

#364

Post by jmopp »

tdfx wrote: post #350
jchook wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice the article doesn't mention countries where proper lockdown worked very well and took only around 100 days.

You mean places like Australia, that are still in strict lockdowns 18 months later and deploying soldiers to ensure people aren't leaving their house without government permission? It boggles my mind that some people desire to live in a system like that.

I've been barely outside at all over the past 18 months because the risk of infection has been too high. I would rather have a short, strict lockdown (followed by a period of being open with extremely low infection risk) than the long, drawn-out yo-yo lockdowns (where we lock down too late and open up too early - meaning community transmission remains high) we've been having. Better to rip the band-aid off quickly than slowly.

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

#365

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #285
another_story wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan had only a few weeks of full lockdown last year, and then a few months of softer lockdown during the second outbreak this year. During the recent outbreak it was WFH and takeout from restaurants with certain businesses closed. About 100 days later most things are open again. They resisted a full lockdown and doubled down on contact tracing. Went from 500+ cases a day to just a few now.

Contact Tracing sounds like an Orwellian nightmare.

> Contact Tracing sounds like an Orwellian nightmare

George Orwell, who actually died of an infectious disease ( Tuberculosis ), being recruited posthumously to the "lets spread disease without restraint" brigade is quite low.

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

#366

Post by nickthemagicman »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #319
nickthemagicman wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contact Tracing sounds like an Orwellian nightmare.

Honestly, it all sounds like an Orwellian nightmare

Good point. Phew. Slowly being normalized.

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

#367

Post by eckesicle »

eckesicle wrote: post #130
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…

In this case the neighbouring countries arent great comparators. Population density has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread. Large swaths of the country is empty with the populace being very urbanised. Stockholm has a population density on par with London, and Oslo is about half of that. Also households look very different in Sweden compared to it's neighbours. The average household size is among the lowest in the…

I have mostly changed my opinion on this matter after reading this blog post (linked elsewhere in the thread too) https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness...

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

#368

Post by agent327 »

gizmo385 wrote: post #207
Closi wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, It all depends how you look at the statistics. Consider the below: * Sweden had c14k deaths. Average age of death was in the eighty's - let's say Covid shortened life expectancy by 10 years on average (seems a conservative figure). Total life lost is c140k life-years. * If Sweden locked down like other countries for a year, this would have been 10m people * 1 year = 10 million years of lockdown. Let's say that pe…

That comparison of life hours isn't valid though. There are additional effect that are wrought on a nation when it's experiencing mass death - mass grief and loss has effects. And that's not to mention the potential overwhelming of the healthcare system, resulting in many other lives being lost or severely impacted. People can't be simply reduced down to a number and happiness isn't an 'x' that we can solve for in a…

If that's true, then lockdowns aren't a valid answer either.

And on the side of not having lockdowns you'll find things that are much worse than some assumed percentage loss of happiness: people dying in total isolation despite not being sick, people dying of medical care that was withheld because they were too afraid to go to the hospital, a generation whose growth was stunted by lack of education and simple lack of human contact (according to one study, babies during the pandemic had a 22% lower IQ than babies from other years [1]), etc. We have done incredible damage to ourselves.

At the beginning of the pandemic this was justified, since we didn't know if this was going to be a mild case of the sniffles or some kind of air-transmissible ebola. Once we knew it was much closer to the first than to the second, however, we should have adjusted our policies, and we never did. I'm terrified that in the coming months we might see a return to lockdowns, as cases will inevitably rise again, and our politicians know only one answer.

I know an elderly couple that literally hasn't left their house, nor received any visitors other than for things like grocery deliveries, since the beginning of the pandemic. Considering how terrified they now are of the outside world, they will live out their lives in a self-chosen prison cell. They are both fully vaccinated (doctor came to their house for it), but refuse to step outside. Is that life?

As another poster here put it so eloquently: life shouldn't be treated as nothing other than a transmission vector for the virus.

How would you feel about a government policy where people are killed two years before their estimated 'normal' date of death, in order to spare society the massive medical cost of the last few years of living? Evil, right?

How do you feel about a policy where those two years are also taken by the government, but in the middle of your life? Sure, we weren't actually killed; we were allowed to keep producing. The only thing that was taken from us were all the things that made life worth living...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/12/children-born-...

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

#369

Post by nickthemagicman »

evgen wrote: post #344
nickthemagicman wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why limit the comparison to nordic countries? We don't limit comparison of Italy to Mediterranean countries, or England to British Isle countries. Sweden is a European country. On a European scale Sweden was right in the middle of the pack in deaths per capita.

Limiting it to immediate neighbors leaves you with comparisons which have similar environment, socio-economic status, and culture/lifestyle. When doing statistical analysis you first try to control for as many potential confounding variables as possible. By limiting the comparisons to like vs like on many different variables you end up being able to make stronger claims about the consequences of active choices.

Sweden shares similar socio economic status and culture and lifestyle with other European countries I completely agree.

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

#370

Post by tonyedgecombe »

kenneth wrote: post #230
anigbrowl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Telegraph leans strongly conservative just as the Guardian leans strongly left. This seems like a very slanted article; it buries the mortality impact of CVOID until near the end. I seriously doubt that Norway would prefer to swap its ~10x lower death rate for Sweden's GDP numbers. Further: In a paper published last week in science journal Nature, Dr Bhatt, together with the UK's former government advisor Neil Fe…

I'd happily trade a 10x higher death rate (to a high of 0.014%, mostly among people who weren't far off from dying anyways) in exchange for everyone having 2 years of having a non-miserable life. I know it's incredibly taboo to say something like this; but people are completely overvaluing the impact of the few absolute numbers of deaths, vs. the much harder to quantify widespread misery caused by these overreactions…

I don't think that choice was available. If you let the virus spread unchecked then people would have been locking themselves down.

Cafes and restaurants were emptying in my area before the official lockdowns started. Even now with our (UK) lockdown over and high vaccination rates many people are still wary. Use of public transport is still way down.

Post reply on HN