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Sweden's unusual response to coronavirus
- jdjriekfkf 7y agoEverybody's brave until the deaths start to mount. Let's check again in two weeks.
- martinhath 7y agoWe don't need to wait two weeks; Sweden has significantly more deaths (110) than any of it's neighboring countries: Norway (25), Denmark (72), and Finland (11). [0]: https://www.corona.cloud/ https://www.corona.cloud/
- gdrift 7y agohttps://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
- wodenokoto 7y agoSwedens population is almost twice of Denmarks, so I am not sure saying 110 is signifcantly more than 72.
- martinhath 7y agoDenmark is also about 5 times as dense, so one could easily attribute the death number to that.
- Gwypaas 7y agoI think the numbers are within margin if you measure what actually matters; urbanization. The huge swaths of empty forests up north in Sweden makes the 5 times number look ridiculous but doesn't carry any meaning. Looking at urbanization: Denmark: 87.5% [0] Sweden: 87.4% [1] Another statistic is Copenhagen Metropolitan area compared to Stockholm, which both is about 2.5 million. Though Copenhagen jumps to 4 million if you go by the Öresund region including parts of Sweden. [2] [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/455812/urbanization-in-denmark/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/455812/urbanization-in-d... [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/455935/urbanization-in-sweden/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/455935/urbanization-in-s... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Region
- lazyjones 7y agoSweden is significantly behind Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark at deaths per 1M: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries The epidemic is still growing fast though and since some countries are naturally lagging behind others, the effectiveness of measures will only be seen in the aftermath.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cmehdy 7y agoThat's almost twice the amount of deaths in Canada, which has a population of over 30 million people and is on a relatively tight lockdown (not as intense as some European countries but still well followed). Different folks different strokes, but I wonder which approach is going to be the most reasonable in hindsight.
- YZF 7y agoTheir numbers though seem to show they are not on the same curve as some other countries. Low/flatish daily increases, flat to lower deaths per day. Maybe what they're doing works for them for some other reason. EDIT: though the higher relative numbers of severe cases and deaths might indicate they don't know how many cases they really have.
- nerpderp82 7y agoExponentials look linear when you are on them and they are small. There are no magic answers here.
- rickard 7y agoThe number of people in intensive care is most certainly not growing exponentially. Please see the official statistics on https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/vtfstart-corona https://portal.icuregswe.org/siri/report/vtfstart-corona . The number of patients admitted to intensive care daily has gone from 43 on the 23rd of March to 10 today. The cumulative number of patients admitted to intensive care is 278, and since we had 510 intensive care before the start of the pandemic, that is not a problem at all. Unless you have reason to believe that the ratio of patients requiring intensive care somehow has decreased radically during the course of the pandemic, the growth of cases is most certainly not exponential.
- stenl 7y agoThere is lag in the reporting I think. The total number of patients increased by 39 from yesterday, but those were probably assigned to multiple dates in the past. Therefore it will always look like the last few days are declining.
- dang 7y agoCould you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- Causality1 7y agoI kinda figured that was how it was going to go. First came the panic as everyone realized how "real" it is, and now we're into the stage where we're getting tired of feeling those emotions just because of things we've heard and been told. We're in the lull now, where certain people start calling for a return to normality despite no real change in the acceleration of cases. In a few weeks will come the slap and then the gut punch. The slap is when everybody knows someone who tested positive. The gut punch is when everybody knows someone, maybe multiple someones, who died from it.
- guscost 7y agoIn a few months we will certainly see whether you’re right, or not.
- listsfrin 7y agoWhen I was in med school you didn't die because of the flu. People died because they had diabetes or HTA which got some complications like low immunity, a failing kidney and so on. Did these things change in current medicine?
- paul_f 7y agoThat is true. But, this particular coronavirus seems more likely to cause pneumonia than influenza.
- usaar333 7y agoDifferent countries are defining this differently. China uses the type of definition you are using so their deaths from covid (or even flu) are really low. Italy is using the definion of had virus at death, which results in a possible over count. All said covid is >7x as deadly as seasonal flu and you have more deaths with no comorbidities.
- listsfrin 7y ago> All said covid is >7x as deadly as seasonal flu and you have more deaths with no comorbidities. You have some studies proving this? Because all the studies I have read flu is a lot more dangerous. For all ages.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Because all the studies I have read flu is a lot more dangerous Every study I've seen the seasonal flu has a case mortality rate that varies form year to year in the close neighborhood of 0.1%, the low estimate of the case mortality rate I've seen for covid-19 is around 1% in countries with functional healthcare systems. The ratio of cases requiring hospitalization is similarly at least an order of magnitude greater for Covid-19, which is also why it poses a danger (already being realized in several parts of the United States, and very much realized, e.g., in Italy) of overwhelming the healthcare system, driving the car mortality rate higher for all conditions, including itself. We don't annually overwhelm the healthcare system because of the seasonal flu and exhaust ICU capacity and PPE supplies, which should be a clue that whatever you are seeing claiming the flu is worse is not only bullshit, but bullshit that isn't even trying very hard to convince anyone paying even a little bit of attention.
- tobr 7y ago> After a long winter, it's just become warm enough to sit outside in the Swedish capital A “long” winter? It‘s been a record-breakingly mild winter. It felt like we went from autumn, through a weekend of snow, directly to spring.
- eMSF 7y agoDisregarding Leap Day, it's been the same amount of days since last September as every other year, and while there has been little snow or freezing temperatures, it was still rather too cold to comfortably sit outside all winter (winter Sun intensity plays a role too).
- cjblomqvist 7y agoMeteorologically, there's a definition of when winter starts and ends. According to that definition it was one of the shortest one in Sweden in a long time.
- Hokusai 7y ago> After a long winter, it's just become warm enough to sit outside in the Swedish capital Yeah. This sounds very weird. No, you do not want to sit outside. It is sunny, but cold (4 to 8 degrees). > It‘s been a record breakingly mild winter. Yes. It has felt like actually a short winter with spring stepping in early in the year.
- ricardobeat 7y agoI don't know where you're from, but even a mild winter is always waaay too long in northern europe.
- gregoriol 7y agoSince the travels from abroad are all stopped now, there is less chance for the virus to get there. Maybe they'll be lucky enough to be the last ones without the large outbreak, and all the others being locked down won't bring it there?
- digikata 7y agoI think there is little "getting lucky". If they also run an intense detect, test, and trace capability it might be effective. If they rely only on border lockdowns, or lockdown and lackadaisical test/trace then it would likely be insufficient.
- hedgew 7y agoAll the Nordic countries underestimated the pandemic. Norway switched their goal from mitigation to suppression a few days ago, Finland is still teetering somewhere in between, and Sweden is solidly in the mitigation camp. Government officials in these countries seemed incapable of accepting just how horrible the situation is, so they only created optimistic models of the pandemic. Finland and Norway have released more and more pessimistic models each week, while Sweden has kept theirs secret for some reason. I fear Sweden is still basing their approach on those optimistic models, that likely don't apply to this particular pandemic. They seem to be making the same mistake UK did, except they haven't changed paths yet. They say they are only doing what is "scientifically proven", without realizing that peer review and randomized controlled trials alone are not enough for situations where decisions need to be made in short time with imperfect information.
- listsfrin 7y agoEverybody is creating "models". How about asking the doctors? Don't they have some trustworthy studies in the three months that have passed? Let's skip Facebook and Twitter and analyse the data that we have. What does it tell us?
- ma2rten 7y agoYou need to create models to predict what will happen in the future, which is what epidemiologist do.
- listsfrin 7y agoWhile I agree that some people need to create models, it is very important to understand that not everyone is able to create them. For example journalists should not be able to create such models, they lack the knowledge.
- conformist 7y agoAgreed. That is an important point. Let epidemiologist do the modelling, and use some back-of-the-envelope calculations to convince yourself of the orders of magnitude. It's super annoying that everyone who knows what a jupyter notebook is now starts blogging about their own modelling efforts.
- aazaa 7y agoLooks like Sweden doesn't stand out much in its case growth compared to neighbors: https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?country=Finland&country=Germany&country=Norway&country=Sweden https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?country=Finland&country=Ger...
- Hokusai 7y agoSweden has also a small population. Values from smaller populations are less statistically relevant. Once the number of infections growth the number will be more significant. Small number are problematic. There are 2.27 Popes per square kilometer in the Vatican.
- usaar333 7y agoSweden is almost certainly growing faster than Norway. Norway is testing more broadly (note the 6x death rate in Sweden) and they have similar case count growth per day (implying Sweden might actually be growing 3x as fast factoring population difference). Case counts also lag measures by 2 weeks.
- hjnilsson 7y agoCould just as well be statistical anomaly. Denmark (which has about the same population as Norway) has 50% more deaths per capita compared to Sweden, with stronger restrictions than Norway. With the numbers we’re looking at (10-100 deaths), a single nursing home being hit is the difference between entire countries. Any judgement on effectiveness needs weeks more of data.
- Symbiote 7y agoThe statistics change quickly: Denmark and Sweden now have the same number of deaths per capita, after 5 more in Denmark but 36 in Sweden.
- user_50123890 7y agoDon't look at case growth. That is limited by testing capacity/policy. Look at deaths.
- Hokusai 7y agoSweden is quite different from other countries, that explains the slow spread of the virus. Many companies allow employees to stay home for minor flu symptoms of the employee or their children. You will be fired in countries like Spain if you remained home so often. (update: I mean that you can do this always, not just now because the new virus) Stockholm, the "big" city, has 2.5 million habitants in its extended metropolitan area. So, not so big. Swedish are not in love of big gatherings. Cultural behaviour than is the opposite than that of Italy or Spain. All my friends at companies like Electronic Arts, Epic, King, Klarna... are already working from home. Stockholm is a technological hub. Office work has been moved home fast and eficciently thank to the tradition of “VAB'ing”. In any given meeting some one is working from home, anyway. The subway is emptier than ever. Many companies have shut down offices and operations continue from home. But, that is something that you do not read in the news. The virus growth is exponential, we may not need complete isolation just yet. Probably it is just a matter of time. So, getting to conclusions right now is premature.
- Symbiote 7y agoDenmark is roughly the same, culturally and regarding worker's rights, yet had a very strong response from around 12 March.
- hedgew 7y agoFinland and Norway have also had much stronger responses than Sweden.
- EmilStenstrom 7y agoWhat does "strong" mean in this case? The health care department issues statements in Norway that politicians were not acting on their recommendations, but rather that they were making "political decisions". I guess they want their population to look at them as strong leaders. We should not confuse that kind of strong, with measures that elicit a strong decline in cases. We only need the latter right now.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dmh2000 7y agoSweden's mortality rate (2.97) is significantly higher than Germany (0.78), South Korea (1.59) and the US (1.75) among others. As of 3/29/2020 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-death-rates-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-deat...
- paul_f 7y agocan't really reach that conclusion. Mortality rate is too dependent on how many people have been tested, not the underlying mortality. Nobody knows the true denominator in these equations.
- Gwypaas 7y agoSweden has since March 13th stopped testing except those who requires hospital care, so the numbers are not comparable in any way.
- chosenbreed37 7y agoI wonder why they stopped testing...
- Gwypaas 7y agoBecause the government figured that contact tracing wouldn't contain the spread, it was already too far gone. Based on that it was better to reserve the tests available to those who actually need them.
- jariel 7y agoYes. This is a pretty scary artifact of their program. The Swedish government has purposefully decided to obfuscate the facts, ignore the data, with the logic that a) it won't necessarily help and b) the data will only cause panic, etc.. Can you imagine the US government doing such a thing? This is deeply, deeply disturbing and it's hypocritical to defend their actions in light of authoritarian tactics around the world. The WHO and nations that have been successful (Korea) have been saying test, test, test test. It's a key to suppression.
- paul_f 7y agoHonestly, while it's wouldn't be my choice, I am glad someone is running this test
- alkonaut 7y agoThe reports of “business as usual in Sweden” are exaggerated. The end results are pretty similar across Scandinavia despite approaches being officially different. Streets are mostly empty. People do walk outside as there is no lockdown or shelter-in-place, but restaurants are mostly empty or closed, ski resorts are closing, travel is “not recommended” even domestically and so on. The restrictions are based on recommendations and personal responsibility. Trust in authorities is high. You’ll always be able to find people that won’t follow recommendations (So taking clickbait pictures of people drinking isn’t difficult). I think the gradual approach might mean we are always “one step behind” since the idea is to introduce measures as they are needed, which you notice two to three weeks after you need them. That’s my fear, at least. On the other hand I think we’ll se authorities facing the opposite problem in Italy and elsewhere when lockdown needs to continue for longer than people accept (already reports of this). In the end I think we’ll see that differences will be small between countries despite varying policy, and that policy will converge to the successful ones. I hope authorities will be quick to introduce further restrictions if and when they are needed. More importantly I hope people are doing this before authorities require it, if reports of healthcare overload appear. Looking at the curves now, I’m pretty satisfied, but again if they start to point north further restrictions need to be introduced two weeks back in time, which is difficult even for our trusted authorities.
- dijit 7y agoI guess this hugely depends on where you live. I live in central Malmö and restaurants don’t seem any less empty in the evenings. Large groups of people hang around in the parks in the middle of the day and small groups (5-10 people) saunter passed each other on the high street as usual. Not much has changed at all, maybe a few less people out at lunch, but it’s definitely alarming to me.
- alkonaut 7y agoI live in Stockholm but I don’t visit the city in evenings now since I live outside the city and obviously reasons to visit the city (concerts, matches, restaurants) are out of the question now. I think one key element of the Swedish approach is this: don’t make restrictions that aren’t proven very effective, because people will adhere less to those that are really effective. As if there is a budget of restriction (same with duration, I guess). Banning meetings of 5 people outside in a park (who take reasonable precautions and keep distance) might have marginal effect compared to some much more important measure, so don’t ban small park gatherings - instead try to get more adherence to the things that are important. This is my interpretation of the reasoning. If it’s based on self enforcing rather than policing it needs to encourage adherence to the important parts. I don’t worth much about small groups walking outside or meeting in parks. What does bother me is packed public transport at rush hour. That just isn’t good and we should try to fix it. Same with some gyms still being open. Thought people would realize that they shouldn’t go so they’d close by themselves, but no.
- tinyhouse 7y agoSomeone told me old people in Scandinavia not going to the doctor when they are sick (unless it's very bad). It's a cultural thing. I guess it helps when there's a pandemic like this.
- BaronSamedi 7y agoI think that in hindsight Sweden's approach will look reasonable. The data we have now, imperfect as it is, shows that the elderly are the main risk group and therefore the ones needing special protection. The South Koreans have very good data and publish it daily. Their recent CFR numbers by age group are: 80+ 17.51% 70-79 6.77% 60-69 1.74% 50-59 0.56% 40-49 0.08% 30-39 0.10% 0-29 0% The data from other countries matches this distribution. Keep in mind that the CFR is what we have but not the number we want. The one we want is the infection fatality rate (IFR). This is the number of deaths divided the total number of cases (not just the reported ones). The IFR numbers are likely to be lower due to the fact that widespread testing is not in place in many countries.
- PeterStuer 7y agoYou are assuming dead or perfect health is the only outcome. Besides, since it takes on average about 2 weeks to die of this disease after being admitted to hospital, you should compare today's dead rate with the number of admitted cases 2 weeks ago.
- ricardobeat 7y agoOnly if you ignore the overloaded-healthcare-system factor, which is the main reason for lockdowns, not the number of deaths.
- BaronSamedi 7y agoNot ignored, I just cannot find any good data on hospitalization rates by age group nor the associated stats. These figures also do not take into account pre-existing conditions which greatly influence the CFR.
- lsc 7y agoMy understanding is that a lot of those young people end up needing to go to the hospital, and only survive because of treatment. If the hospitals are overwhelmed, the death rate is going to go way up.
- rasz 7y agoUK had the same "unusual" approach, and look at them now after two weeks.
- 100-xyz 7y agoLooks like even Batman is affected :-) https://toonclip.com/player?key1=4de7921623 https://toonclip.com/player?key1=4de7921623