A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid

I think his point is you can't compare the impact of the flu because 1) it hits every year (versus a quick outbreak) and 2) many people are vaccinated.

Don't forget the '17 flu seasons was 65k deaths in the US. So we're at a little under 3x right now. So yes, Covid is worse, but we don't bat an eye at 65k deaths due to the flu.

The Swedish government never locked down or encouraged any sort of social distancing. Their plan was herd immunity and they appear to have gotten it right.

Finland has roughly half Sweden's population but 5% of their COVID deaths. Sweden's economy contracted 8.6% to the EU's 11.9%.

Hope those 5000+ unnecessary deaths were worth 3.3%.

"Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway."

Wow.

> "it is nonsensical to compare covid to other major pandemics […] Covid will never even come close to those numbers. And yet many countries have shut down their entire economies"

> "That makes covid a mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality."

This sounds wrong to me for several reasons. First of all, it's silly assuming that other countries are shutting down their economies without a very good reason for doing so. As I understood it, the "good reason" for doing so was that the infection & death rate was growing so fast, that it was putting hospitals & morgues way beyond their capacity. At the same time, the situation was keeping non-COVID, hospital-worthy visits out of the healthcare system, thus creating a massive public health problem.

(Let's not forget the improvised hospitals, improvised morgues, etc. These were very real.)

It'd be interesting knowing why somehow the COVID cases 'vanished' from this doctor's hospital. But instead of looking into why this happened, this doctor is just saying "turns out that the problem went away, so in the end it was good that we didn't bother too much about it".

And the thing is - we're not through it yet. Thankfully the death rate seems not being as bad as we thought it could be, but this could very well be down to current measures such as isolating elder people, testing at-risk populations, higher awareness levels, and the fact that the average infection age is now much lower than it was in March. So, now, healthcare systems are not collapsing.

There's a myriad of variables that likely affect the virus spread and outcome. For example, the age and characteristics of the populations where the virus is spreading, how population is distributed around the territory (and its density), how frequently this population "comes together" (social behavior - ever seen a swede profusely hugging and kissing?, public transportation, remote working…), and so on.

And when it comes to the healthcare system capacity debate: Sweden frequently put elder, infected people straight in palliative care (http://archive.is/VC5vb), bypassing hospitals. Other countries did admit elder people into hospitals, thus putting more strain into the healthcare system, which later on prompted a lockdown to prevent said system from collapsing.

It's the patronizing way things get pushed that is a problem. Including you pointing out someone being in the minority, followed by asking a question: the answer is kinda moot if you already established might being right as valid in your view. It's a very thin veneer of good faith, and completely transparent to the person it's done to.

If I told you to list 3 things you're grateful for each day, and hounded and sanctioned you for not doing it, if I talked about all these Nazis I know who incidentally also are not doing it, and meaningfully nodded your way every time, and made fun of you in filter bubbles... wouldn't you just do this minor thing that may actually be beneficial and is unlikely to do harm?

This is the problem, and to use a pandemic to normalize that just makes it worse, morally speaking.