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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

#81

Post by LinAGKar »

tpmx wrote: post #30
warning26 wrote: post #17

What I find particularly interesting is that Sweden wasn't the only country that did this -- Brazil also did a no-lockdown strategy, and it was basically a disaster there. Evidently, there must have been some other factors at play besides the boolean of lockdown true/false. Better healthcare, maybe?

I'm Swedish. I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the population here thought the government was being incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown, much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions. Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did,…

Stefan Löfven made a surprise announcement today that he'll be stepping down in November

Again? He got kicked out and reelected two months ago. This government is a damn yo-yo.

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

#82

Post by lancewiggs »

tomohawk wrote: post #75
wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns not doing anything. The virus did what it did no matter how hard humans tried to control it Tell that to New Zealand, who have had less than 3,000 cases in a population of 5 million. They did this with strict border controls (people on inbound flights must isolate for 2 weeks) and quick response to community transmission (several lockdowns totalling 40 days).

This is not what I think of by "it worked" https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/new-zealand-lockdown-one... At best, its a fragile, brittle, costly "solution" that may work in an isolated country like NZ until vaccines are available. It's been 8 months since vaccines have been available, and they're still in the low 20s in terms of people getting the vaccine.

New Zealander here.

Yes we locked down over one case. The next day we had a few more, and then more and more and more (21 in each of the last two days). Delta is amazingly spreadable.

Because we are locked down straight away, every case is easily contact traced, and people that did catch COVID are already isolated in their bubble, so cannot re-transmit easily behind that. As people are diagnosed they are taken to isolate in a hotel.

So there will be an end, even though we were unluckily enough to have had a number of very large spreader events (conferences, churches, schools etc.).

The oft-touted alternative from activists outside NZ is to vaccinate and open up. We are vaccinia go quickly, but that plan does not work. (NZ had no right/need to get vaccines early - we did not need them. We are now ramping up quickly, all to the plan.)

But vaccines do not prevent transmission.

Vaccines do not provide population immunity with Delta until a very large percentage (90%?) of all people, kids included, are vaccinated.

Vaccines do not eliminate illness (including long COVID) and death. They do reduce it a lot, but many people will die, especially the vaccine hesitant. Meanwhile anti-vaxers spread disinformation, much as the similar or overlapping anti-lockdown crowd do. (Think about that)

Vaccines are not available to kids, and some very vulnerable.

It has been really amazing living essentially a normal live while most the rest of the world “lives with COVID”. We want that back.

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

#83

Post by onemorepasta »

[deleted] wrote: post #58
giorgioz wrote: post #49

Is it just me or there are A LOT of articles about how Sweden is better in doing X coming from the US and the UK recently? What's going on here? Frankly it seems a bit of nationalist content marketing after the 10th article I read in 3 years. Most of the times the articles claim Sweden is doing better X but that X could easily be applied to several other countries in Europe. "Sweden offers free health care and educat…

[deleted]

Can you paste this one more time please. Do it for daddy.

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

#84

Post by bryanrasmussen »

dance-me wrote: post #11
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…

If you're going to quote that, you should add the directly relevant information from the other side: * "But that death rate is lower than the average for the European Union as a whole (1,684), and well below those of France, Spain, Italy and the UK" * Dr Bhatt concedes "it worked for Sweden" * Dr Bhatt is "one of the team at Imperial College who pushed the UK's lockdown strategy" That last detail is important. Of cou…

>But that death rate is lower than the average for the European Union as a whole (1,684), and well below those of France, Spain, Italy and the UK

I mean one reason why you might want to compare Sweden to other Nordic countries is because you might assume that Nordic countries are more similar to each other than they are to Italy etc.

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

#85

Post by ls612 »

TheCowboy wrote: post #47
elliekelly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of the NYC Metro use data that (I think) was posted here at the very beginning of the pandemic. IIRC it showed subway use plummeted before the city or state government enacted any measures to combat the pandemic at all.

Yep. A lot of what got blamed on lockdowns was widely happening without government mandates, and I don't get how people keep making mistakes about this when looking at the effects of policy.

And the clearest counter example to this ridiculous assertion is the US right now; faced with numbers not seen since the winter the population has only minimally changed it’s behavior over the summer and so far there has been no political will for any distancing restrictions returning.

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

#86

Post by jansan »

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.

Here is an interview with Prof Johan Giesecke from April 2020. In hindsight one can call his statements prophetic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY

They had a clear plan, unlike other governments like Germany, who still do not have a plan how to get out of this mess.

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

#87

Post by guerrilla »

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.

> Even if the decision proves beneficial, it was an error

That's subjective: It depends on how much risk you're willing to take on. People here were pretty supportive of the policy, so presumably willing to take on more risk than you. Like you, I wasn't but that's just how it goes.

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

#89

Post by dTal »

spookthesunset wrote: post #34
tpmx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Swedish. I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the population here thought the government was being incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown, much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions. Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did,…

That doesn’t prove the people doing these voluntary lockdowns had any different of an outcome than if they did nothing at all. Way to many people just blindly assume these interventions worked. The fact is we have zero clue if they did anything or the outcomes experienced by different regions was a result of a bunch of stuff that is completely out of our control. If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns…

I made you this chart of the UK pandemic. It's incomplete by necessity, but gives the flavor. Do the dates and lockdown measures look unrelated?

https://imgur.com/a/026CGjK

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

#90

Post by ismaildonmez »

gpsx wrote: post #73
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…

Your comment about counterfactuals reminds of a saying, or what I would call a more accurate version of a common saying - "Hindsight is 50/50". (Note, that doesn't make hindsight necessarily wrong, just difficult to have confidence in.)

"Hindsight is 20/20" because perfect eyesight is 20/20: https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/what-does-20-...
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