12 ms·

Swedish expert: why lockdowns are the wrong policy

68 points by jamesblonde 7y ago

jamesblonde 7y ago
"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" "The results will eventually be similar for all countries" "Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people."
- ldng 7y ago
  "The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" Fatality rate is meaningless. Even if you don't die, you can't work when you're sick for 2 to 5 weeks. Sickness duration is relevant. Hospital bed occupancy rate and impact on hospital treating other pathologies and injuries is relevant. > "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" It's just pure speculation at the moment. You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible.
  - dehrmann 7y ago
    > You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible. Not more or less irresponsible than large-scale lockdowns. Don't kid yourself and think the lockdowns were evidence-driven and accounted for knock-on effects. They were desperation moves.
    - ldng 7y ago
      Most state waited for at least one city hospitals, if not a region's hospitals, to be overwhelmed before acting. Despite hard medical evidence of high contagiousness. Lockdowns were not irrational, just the fruit on not having enough masks ans test ready on time for selective quarantine.
  - jamesblonde 7y ago
    Actually he claimed it was based on data they had collected in the last week, but was careful to say that it may change as they collect more data. I assume it is because they are now testing all care workers and finding a large percentage of them have antibodies.
- mgsouth 7y ago
  Sweden already has 1 death per 10,000 population (0.01% per capita, not per case) and rate is increasing. Spain is 1 per 2,500 (0.04%). NY state is 1 per 1,200, soon to be 1 per 1,000 (0.1% per capita). This is with lockdown [0] [0] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
  - nabla9 7y ago
    According to Giesecke projection, the total number of deaths will be around 6000, 2-3 times the deaths from annual influenza. (currently 1,511 have died from COVID-19 in Sweden)
    - glofish 7y ago
      right or wrong, he'll be proven so relatively shortly, after all the rate will either rise exponentially as the alarmist say, or stays the same and slowly drops as he claims
  - glofish 7y ago
    the whole point of the argument is that it does not matter what you do everyone will end up in the same situation
    - koheripbal 7y ago
      Which is obviously wrong because it's been demonstrated that if infections get out of control and hospitals are overwhelmed, a higher percentage of infections before fatal. This was shown in the difference in death rates in Wuhan vs other cities in China. ...as well as northern Italy vs other provinces in Italy.
    - twic 7y ago
      "Hiding infections in the future is not the same as avoiding them": https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo...
- gberger 7y ago
  What is the conclusion that you make from these select quotes? Or are you just summarizing what you consider to be the most important information?
  - jamesblonde 7y ago
    Just summarizing. That's what we do on HN for those who dont want to read the whole article/interview.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Yes, those are things from the article. Did you have some comment on them? Are those the things you agree with most or are those things you disagree with?
- adrr 7y ago
  Mild disease that caused of rationing of care in multiple countries. Filled up all the hospitals and stopped elective surgeries through out the world. Killed more people in the US in 1 month that the flu kills in a year even with the largest states going into full lock down to prevent spreading. What disease besides Spanish flu has caused this must disruption to our medical infrastructure?
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    Not even close. Flu killed 80K in the 2018-2019 season. https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter... Projected deaths for COVID-19 are 70K through July.
    - candybar 7y ago
      That's for the 2017-2018 season and it was the worst flu season in quite some time. The article even says it's the worst flu season in at least 4 decades and way outside the normal range: "In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC." This is not to mention that these estimates include non flu deaths to compensate for the fact that not every dead person gets tested for the flu and even those that are, often wouldn't be documented as flu deaths. For example, if COVID-19 was merely a minor outbreak, COVID-19 deaths would be counted towards flu deaths, as the cause of the death would be viral pneumonia and viral pneumonia is statistically likely to be caused by the flu. The reverse isn't close to true - we're for the most part only attributing deaths to COVID-19 when it's either a confirmed case or otherwise overwhelmingly likely to be caused by it. It's a certainty that COVID-19 will end up killing more people in the month of April than the flu kills most years.
      - rpiguy 7y ago
        Conversely if 80% of COVID carriers are asymptomatic and therefore untested as is currently theorized (the US aircraft carrier that became infected is the most recent example) then we should be multiplying the denominator by 5 for the mortality rate, because right now we are just putting tested cases in the denominator for COVID. This dramatically reduces the mortality rate for the disease. So the contagiousness of the disease actually reduces the mortality rate quite a lot, more so than uncounted deaths in the numerator. Secondly if you do the same thing for the flu, put confirmed flu deaths over confirmed flu cases (tested) the mortality for flu is 4%. This would be the apples to apples comparison.
- klipt 7y ago
  > "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" They're already doing antibody testing in other countries and the numbers are much lower than 50%. In Santa Clara county, California, the estimate is only 2.49% to 4.16% https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/health/santa-clara-coronavirus-infections-study/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/heal...
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    But much higher in a Chicago, as high as 50% https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospital-phlebotomist-30-of-those-tested-have-coronavirus-antibody https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
    - klipt 7y ago
      Totally different sample. Chicago tested patients, from your link "10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus". Not representative of the general population. Santa Clara was testing from the general population.
      - rpiguy 7y ago
        Apologies.
standardUser 7y ago
Sweden's deaths per capita attributed to COVID-19 is currently the 8th highest in the world (exempting a few tiny city states). That's about 20% more deaths per capita than in the US. It also has one of the lowest testing rates in the Western world at 0.7%, compared to around 2% in Spain, Italy and Germany.
- nabla9 7y ago
  That's not counterargument against Swedish strategy. Year from now we will see the total number of deaths from different strategies and the thing is settled by then.
  - yxhuvud 7y ago
    It also doesn't help that different countries count differently.
    - sesuximo 7y ago
      It's worse than that. Many countries publish sums of their regions' counts, and the regions count differently
    - devit 7y ago
      Ultimately you can just compare the total deaths to the averages from previous years, which works regardless of how they are counted (as long as the deaths are recorded at all, which I think is something that can generally be relied upon).
      - hinkley 7y ago
        That sounds as if it would be a good worst case number, but that number will be all over the place. During the quarantine, we will see fewer deaths due to misadventure, especially I’m places where those numbers are high. After or toward the end, more deaths and health complications due to complications of a sedentary lifestyle, especially in places where those numbers are already high.
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AzzieElbab 7y ago
It is scary how confident people are when discussing the unknown.
- throwlaplace 7y ago
  indeed. here and elsewhere in the blagosphere people have taken this opportunity to opine at length on everything from epidemiology to virology to welfare economics. it's been the case for a long time that people online have had very little sense of humility about their opinions but somehow experiencing a pandemic has given them even less pause to consider what they're ignorant of.
  - lordnacho 7y ago
    I think the Internet makes it worse, but it's not as if it was hard to find someone who was too confident in their layman's opinion in the real world. Witness any sports event. How often do your friends say "favorite will definitely win" when it's been known that they lose now and again? Same with the stock market, predictions about the house market, the weather, political events, and so on. Overconfidence is the rule, not the exception. I'm certain of it.
  - tehjoker 7y ago
    Consider how ill informed and criminally stupid the US administration is and I would suggest that people discussing things and coming to their own conclusions, while a messy process, is at least one that might reach the correct conclusion in the face of being lied to by authority figures. EDIT: As a recent example, consider the lies we were told by the administration about the effectiveness of surgical masks in preventing spread. While this lie was told in service of keeping the supply prioritized for health care workers, it caused vulnerable people to not wear them and discouraged people from wearing home made masks that might help prevent asymptomatic spread. We have only overcome this lie through public discussion and eventual acknowledgement by the CDC.
  - AzzieElbab 7y ago
    I wasn't thinking about the internet. I meant the "experts", you can't be an expert on the unknown.
meerita 7y ago
I live in Spain. It's about one month and 7 days of lockdown and the official data isn't realistic. Although we are having lower numbers, it will take many months of lockdown to stop having deaths. I don't think this strategy of full lockdown will help, to be honest, we should lockdown risk factor people.
- m3kw9 7y ago
  Once proper contact tracing is out, the lock down can ease. Otherwise the fire will spread uncontrollably and govt won’t take anymore risks
- TheChaplain 7y ago
  It's not about stopping deaths completely, it's about not putting more strain on an already overworked health care system.
- Markoff 7y ago
  we will really only know when looking at yearly stats or even bigger stats, it's possible it may slightly increase yearly death toll but nothing close to those crazy numbers reported now when just cause of death shift towards virus from other causes if your system is not overloaded or kills almost only the people who would die anyway soon I feel pity for Spain, their economy was F up prior this virus, can't imagine what it's gonna be after virus
erdos4d 7y ago
Thank goodness at least someone with credentials is saying what is obvious. The lockdown approach is not sustainable for much longer out of basic economic concerns and the virus will absoluteley start spreading again when the masses break and go back to work. Protecting the most vulnerable while the rest of the society works to support them is the only sensible approach and should have been the plan all along. I'm personally very sad that so many will sustain great economic damage on top of this reality, but this is what happens when people run scared. I just hope this reality is recognized and accepted before even more damage is done.
- DennisP 7y ago
  If you use your lockdown time to set up solid testing and tracing, it can work out pretty well.
  - jdminhbg 7y ago
    That’s a theory, but nothing more. Nobody has successfully done that yet. The testing and tracing success stories started before they needed to lock anything down.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - yongjik 7y ago
      They (South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) did not need lockdown because testing and tracing were successful! Of course there's no success stories with lockdown and successful tracing - the early successes didn't need full lockdown (unless you count China), and the ones going through lockdown now will need weeks or months to contain it. Sigh.
      - jdminhbg 7y ago
        Right, but that still does not tell us whether testing and tracing will work once it got past the point of lockdowns. Hopefully it does, but we don’t know if it’s possible to do once the scale of tracing gets so huge.
jfoster 7y ago
These seem like made-up statistics: 1. "The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" 2. "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"
- alharith 7y ago
  1. It's about as made up as the WHO's 3.4% figure. 2. Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test. (OK, 3.4% of reported cases, my point is they have thrown out death rates as well, all of them can be considered fantasy because we have zero clue what the denominator is)
  - esoterica 7y ago
    The WHO never said the infection fatality rate is 3.4%. Here's the actual transcript the number is taken from: https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-... > Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. They said that 3.4% of REPORTED cases had died, which was true at that point. > Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test. 0.015% of the Swedish population has died so far from the coronavirus. On the other hand ~0.15% of NYC has already died from the coronavirus. If the majority of the Swedish population is already infected, why is the death rate only 1/10th that of NYC? How does that pass the "common sense test"?
  - iforgotpassword 7y ago
    > Most thinkers I know I hope that doesn't translate to "people in the same Facebook groups like me", i.e. the typical echo chamber effect. It's amazing how there can be a hundred experts plus hard figures, studies, whatnot, which then get strictly ignored by those "just the flu" folks, which forward the same handful of interviews with some doctor or virologist on WhatsApp or Facebook claiming we're overreacting, it's just a slightly more aggressive kind of flu, mass panic, coming up with excuses why Wuhan, Italy and NY don't quite fit what they're saying, but no convincing counter argument yet. Sure it would be the more convenient truth, or you just feel woke, but there are more and more places on this planet that simply show this is not true.
elesbao 7y ago
Good that Sweden is using the same rational inside that they applied to other countries during WWII, cruelly neutral wrt w/death toll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_neutrality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_neutrality
simonsaidit 7y ago
“The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only.” How is it working out with that. Last I heard old people in Sweden don’t go to the ICU but is left to die and they have a large spread in care homes for elderly. And as if their economy is in a vacuum they think they won’t be struggling with the same recession as the rest of us
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  The old and frail will die eventually. It’s reasonable to discuss how much we’re willing to sacrifice for the additional time afforded them in aggregate. This is not to sound cold or callus. I’ll be old one day (but am also not going to expect extraordinary resources to live a few extra months). These are necessary discussions in a finite world.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    It's likely enough that lockdowns are the better strategy for the economy. If that is the case, it's not even a sacrifice. Severe infection and death rates are still quite high among people that are not especially old or frail; and then it sort of depends a lot of whether 'frail' is an apt description of the people that are more susceptible.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      > It's likely enough that lockdowns are the better strategy for the economy. I would like to see data supporting this. Because at the moment, things are pretty bleak.
      - simonsaidit 7y ago
        https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/upshot/coronavirus-cities-social-distancing-better-employment.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/upshot/corona... I think everyone would like better data but one point I can follow is that scared people are bad consumers. I can’t find the exact story but I recall some research on Denver vs Philadelphia where the hard lockdown came out ahead later and the psychology of dealing with the disease contributed to this.
lymeeducator 7y ago
It's unknown how long symptoms typically last. I am pushing 4+ weeks with mild symptoms I have never experienced with the flu. My doctor indicates 4+ weeks until ~mostly recovered based on her patients. How does this deplete nutrients necessary for continued immune function relative to the flu? We need more data and that Swede doesn't have it.
iso1631 7y ago
In the UK, week ending April 3rd, rather than the expected 10k deaths there were a (preliminary) 16k deaths. 60% above background level Stats for week ending April 10th aren't out yet, however they are alluded to in https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/879714/Weekly_all_cause_mortality_surveillance_week_16_2020_report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... at being over 20k deaths, twice the number. (The week 15 report predicted 5k excess deaths for week ending apr3, more concrete figures had it at 6k. Week 16 predicts about 12k excess deaths for w/e april 10. 60% extra deaths isn't "slightly above background level" If covid is burning itself out then that's great, we'd be looking at a total 100k excess deaths, or 20% above background level for the year. However there is no evidence that we're anywhere near 20% of the country having had it, let alone 70%. Those dying in week ending april 10th will likely have contracted covid before lockdown w/e | reported covid deaths | actual excess deaths w/e mar 27 | 842 | 1.5k w/e apr 3 | 3294 | 6k w/e apr 10 | 5562 | 10-15k w/e apr 17 | 5589 | So we're likely looking at 30k excess deaths in the last month, or about 80%, but that's because we locked down in mid-end march and the number of deaths 3 weeks later hasn't increased at the non-lockdown rate we'd expect. Tobacco kills an average 2k per week in the UK, covid is killing 5 times as many, and that's with all the controls. Cars kill an average 30 per week
- rpiguy 7y ago
  This is a stunning difference. In the US we had no excess mortality in March, in fact total deaths from all causes were down year over year. Cases didn’t peak in NY until April so we may see some increase after this month. I realize the U.K. locked down later than many countries, but there must be other factors driving mortality as there are other countries that did not lock down and aren’t being ravaged quite the same. What is it? Level of care in the NHS? Higher prevalence of secondary conditions like diabetes? Hygiene? Crowding?
  - iso1631 7y ago
    We didn't really have any excess mortality in March either - total deaths in 4 weeks upto 27th march was 43,406. 5 year average for that 4 week period is 43,700. We're slightly ahead of New York state in covid breakout too (about 4-5 days at the occurrence of both 10th and 100th death) I suspect that the excess numbers are undiagnosed covid cases - especially those dying in care homes. In w/e 3rd april compared with the week before Place | Excess Deaths | Excess covid deaths Home | 1079 | 105 Care Home | 1280 | 175 Hospital | 2779 | 2609 Tests in the UK are almost entirely to people going into hospital. Where are the stats for deaths in New York? UK (Or rather England and Wales, but that's 90% of the population of the UK) are at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
m3kw9 7y ago
He is of course inclined to say what he thinks is right because he suggested such a plan.
lazylizard 7y ago
Sweden is the only country that has a scientist in charge of covid response? All other countries have politicians in charge? I'm not sure that they're definitely wrong?
nradov 7y ago
Why is this flagged? The interview is intellectually interesting. Prof. Johan Giesecke literally wrote the book on infectious disease epidemiology, and works as a senior advisor to the WHO and Swedish government.
- specialbat 7y ago
  Agree, he is not some crank. I don't understand the flagging system on this site at all
Markoff 7y ago
I agree with most of the things besides 50% of infected population, in Czech 250+ branches (that's at least 5000 people) of Lidl they had only 4 confirmed infected until now, in Globus supermarket chain out of 5000 workers only 2. yes, Czechia is enforcing mandatory masks (although like 90% of population wear only cloth masks due to lack of access to medical masks and respirators) but still you would expect, if it would be that contagious through surfaces and other ways as some scare, there would be much more infected in these busiest businesses right now

68 points by jamesblonde 7y ago

"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" "The results will eventually be similar for all countries" "Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people."

ldng 7y ago
"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" Fatality rate is meaningless. Even if you don't die, you can't work when you're sick for 2 to 5 weeks. Sickness duration is relevant. Hospital bed occupancy rate and impact on hospital treating other pathologies and injuries is relevant. > "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" It's just pure speculation at the moment. You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  > You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible. Not more or less irresponsible than large-scale lockdowns. Don't kid yourself and think the lockdowns were evidence-driven and accounted for knock-on effects. They were desperation moves.
  - ldng 7y ago
    Most state waited for at least one city hospitals, if not a region's hospitals, to be overwhelmed before acting. Despite hard medical evidence of high contagiousness. Lockdowns were not irrational, just the fruit on not having enough masks ans test ready on time for selective quarantine.
- jamesblonde 7y ago
  Actually he claimed it was based on data they had collected in the last week, but was careful to say that it may change as they collect more data. I assume it is because they are now testing all care workers and finding a large percentage of them have antibodies.
mgsouth 7y ago
Sweden already has 1 death per 10,000 population (0.01% per capita, not per case) and rate is increasing. Spain is 1 per 2,500 (0.04%). NY state is 1 per 1,200, soon to be 1 per 1,000 (0.1% per capita). This is with lockdown [0] [0] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
- nabla9 7y ago
  According to Giesecke projection, the total number of deaths will be around 6000, 2-3 times the deaths from annual influenza. (currently 1,511 have died from COVID-19 in Sweden)
  - glofish 7y ago
    right or wrong, he'll be proven so relatively shortly, after all the rate will either rise exponentially as the alarmist say, or stays the same and slowly drops as he claims
- glofish 7y ago
  the whole point of the argument is that it does not matter what you do everyone will end up in the same situation
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    Which is obviously wrong because it's been demonstrated that if infections get out of control and hospitals are overwhelmed, a higher percentage of infections before fatal. This was shown in the difference in death rates in Wuhan vs other cities in China. ...as well as northern Italy vs other provinces in Italy.
  - twic 7y ago
    "Hiding infections in the future is not the same as avoiding them": https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo...
gberger 7y ago
What is the conclusion that you make from these select quotes? Or are you just summarizing what you consider to be the most important information?
- jamesblonde 7y ago
  Just summarizing. That's what we do on HN for those who dont want to read the whole article/interview.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Yes, those are things from the article. Did you have some comment on them? Are those the things you agree with most or are those things you disagree with?
adrr 7y ago
Mild disease that caused of rationing of care in multiple countries. Filled up all the hospitals and stopped elective surgeries through out the world. Killed more people in the US in 1 month that the flu kills in a year even with the largest states going into full lock down to prevent spreading. What disease besides Spanish flu has caused this must disruption to our medical infrastructure?
- rpiguy 7y ago
  Not even close. Flu killed 80K in the 2018-2019 season. https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter... Projected deaths for COVID-19 are 70K through July.
  - candybar 7y ago
    That's for the 2017-2018 season and it was the worst flu season in quite some time. The article even says it's the worst flu season in at least 4 decades and way outside the normal range: "In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC." This is not to mention that these estimates include non flu deaths to compensate for the fact that not every dead person gets tested for the flu and even those that are, often wouldn't be documented as flu deaths. For example, if COVID-19 was merely a minor outbreak, COVID-19 deaths would be counted towards flu deaths, as the cause of the death would be viral pneumonia and viral pneumonia is statistically likely to be caused by the flu. The reverse isn't close to true - we're for the most part only attributing deaths to COVID-19 when it's either a confirmed case or otherwise overwhelmingly likely to be caused by it. It's a certainty that COVID-19 will end up killing more people in the month of April than the flu kills most years.
    - rpiguy 7y ago
      Conversely if 80% of COVID carriers are asymptomatic and therefore untested as is currently theorized (the US aircraft carrier that became infected is the most recent example) then we should be multiplying the denominator by 5 for the mortality rate, because right now we are just putting tested cases in the denominator for COVID. This dramatically reduces the mortality rate for the disease. So the contagiousness of the disease actually reduces the mortality rate quite a lot, more so than uncounted deaths in the numerator. Secondly if you do the same thing for the flu, put confirmed flu deaths over confirmed flu cases (tested) the mortality for flu is 4%. This would be the apples to apples comparison.
klipt 7y ago
> "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" They're already doing antibody testing in other countries and the numbers are much lower than 50%. In Santa Clara county, California, the estimate is only 2.49% to 4.16% https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/health/santa-clara-coronavirus-infections-study/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/heal...
- rpiguy 7y ago
  But much higher in a Chicago, as high as 50% https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospital-phlebotomist-30-of-those-tested-have-coronavirus-antibody https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
  - klipt 7y ago
    Totally different sample. Chicago tested patients, from your link "10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus". Not representative of the general population. Santa Clara was testing from the general population.
    - rpiguy 7y ago
      Apologies.

standardUser 7y ago

Sweden's deaths per capita attributed to COVID-19 is currently the 8th highest in the world (exempting a few tiny city states). That's about 20% more deaths per capita than in the US. It also has one of the lowest testing rates in the Western world at 0.7%, compared to around 2% in Spain, Italy and Germany.

nabla9 7y ago
That's not counterargument against Swedish strategy. Year from now we will see the total number of deaths from different strategies and the thing is settled by then.
- yxhuvud 7y ago
  It also doesn't help that different countries count differently.
  - sesuximo 7y ago
    It's worse than that. Many countries publish sums of their regions' counts, and the regions count differently
  - devit 7y ago
    Ultimately you can just compare the total deaths to the averages from previous years, which works regardless of how they are counted (as long as the deaths are recorded at all, which I think is something that can generally be relied upon).
    - hinkley 7y ago
      That sounds as if it would be a good worst case number, but that number will be all over the place. During the quarantine, we will see fewer deaths due to misadventure, especially I’m places where those numbers are high. After or toward the end, more deaths and health complications due to complications of a sedentary lifestyle, especially in places where those numbers are already high.

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AzzieElbab 7y ago

It is scary how confident people are when discussing the unknown.

throwlaplace 7y ago
indeed. here and elsewhere in the blagosphere people have taken this opportunity to opine at length on everything from epidemiology to virology to welfare economics. it's been the case for a long time that people online have had very little sense of humility about their opinions but somehow experiencing a pandemic has given them even less pause to consider what they're ignorant of.
- lordnacho 7y ago
  I think the Internet makes it worse, but it's not as if it was hard to find someone who was too confident in their layman's opinion in the real world. Witness any sports event. How often do your friends say "favorite will definitely win" when it's been known that they lose now and again? Same with the stock market, predictions about the house market, the weather, political events, and so on. Overconfidence is the rule, not the exception. I'm certain of it.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  Consider how ill informed and criminally stupid the US administration is and I would suggest that people discussing things and coming to their own conclusions, while a messy process, is at least one that might reach the correct conclusion in the face of being lied to by authority figures. EDIT: As a recent example, consider the lies we were told by the administration about the effectiveness of surgical masks in preventing spread. While this lie was told in service of keeping the supply prioritized for health care workers, it caused vulnerable people to not wear them and discouraged people from wearing home made masks that might help prevent asymptomatic spread. We have only overcome this lie through public discussion and eventual acknowledgement by the CDC.
- AzzieElbab 7y ago
  I wasn't thinking about the internet. I meant the "experts", you can't be an expert on the unknown.

meerita 7y ago

I live in Spain. It's about one month and 7 days of lockdown and the official data isn't realistic. Although we are having lower numbers, it will take many months of lockdown to stop having deaths. I don't think this strategy of full lockdown will help, to be honest, we should lockdown risk factor people.

m3kw9 7y ago
Once proper contact tracing is out, the lock down can ease. Otherwise the fire will spread uncontrollably and govt won’t take anymore risks
TheChaplain 7y ago
It's not about stopping deaths completely, it's about not putting more strain on an already overworked health care system.
Markoff 7y ago
we will really only know when looking at yearly stats or even bigger stats, it's possible it may slightly increase yearly death toll but nothing close to those crazy numbers reported now when just cause of death shift towards virus from other causes if your system is not overloaded or kills almost only the people who would die anyway soon I feel pity for Spain, their economy was F up prior this virus, can't imagine what it's gonna be after virus

erdos4d 7y ago

Thank goodness at least someone with credentials is saying what is obvious. The lockdown approach is not sustainable for much longer out of basic economic concerns and the virus will absoluteley start spreading again when the masses break and go back to work. Protecting the most vulnerable while the rest of the society works to support them is the only sensible approach and should have been the plan all along. I'm personally very sad that so many will sustain great economic damage on top of this reality, but this is what happens when people run scared. I just hope this reality is recognized and accepted before even more damage is done.

DennisP 7y ago
If you use your lockdown time to set up solid testing and tracing, it can work out pretty well.
- jdminhbg 7y ago
  That’s a theory, but nothing more. Nobody has successfully done that yet. The testing and tracing success stories started before they needed to lock anything down.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - yongjik 7y ago
    They (South Korea, Taiwan, etc.) did not need lockdown because testing and tracing were successful! Of course there's no success stories with lockdown and successful tracing - the early successes didn't need full lockdown (unless you count China), and the ones going through lockdown now will need weeks or months to contain it. Sigh.
    - jdminhbg 7y ago
      Right, but that still does not tell us whether testing and tracing will work once it got past the point of lockdowns. Hopefully it does, but we don’t know if it’s possible to do once the scale of tracing gets so huge.

jfoster 7y ago

These seem like made-up statistics: 1. "The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" 2. "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available"

alharith 7y ago
1. It's about as made up as the WHO's 3.4% figure. 2. Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test. (OK, 3.4% of reported cases, my point is they have thrown out death rates as well, all of them can be considered fantasy because we have zero clue what the denominator is)
- esoterica 7y ago
  The WHO never said the infection fatality rate is 3.4%. Here's the actual transcript the number is taken from: https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-... > Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. They said that 3.4% of REPORTED cases had died, which was true at that point. > Most thinkers I know and follow widely believe this to be the case as well, it also passes the common sense test. 0.015% of the Swedish population has died so far from the coronavirus. On the other hand ~0.15% of NYC has already died from the coronavirus. If the majority of the Swedish population is already infected, why is the death rate only 1/10th that of NYC? How does that pass the "common sense test"?
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  > Most thinkers I know I hope that doesn't translate to "people in the same Facebook groups like me", i.e. the typical echo chamber effect. It's amazing how there can be a hundred experts plus hard figures, studies, whatnot, which then get strictly ignored by those "just the flu" folks, which forward the same handful of interviews with some doctor or virologist on WhatsApp or Facebook claiming we're overreacting, it's just a slightly more aggressive kind of flu, mass panic, coming up with excuses why Wuhan, Italy and NY don't quite fit what they're saying, but no convincing counter argument yet. Sure it would be the more convenient truth, or you just feel woke, but there are more and more places on this planet that simply show this is not true.

elesbao 7y ago

Good that Sweden is using the same rational inside that they applied to other countries during WWII, cruelly neutral wrt w/death toll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_neutrality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_neutrality

simonsaidit 7y ago

“The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only.” How is it working out with that. Last I heard old people in Sweden don’t go to the ICU but is left to die and they have a large spread in care homes for elderly. And as if their economy is in a vacuum they think they won’t be struggling with the same recession as the rest of us

toomuchtodo 7y ago
The old and frail will die eventually. It’s reasonable to discuss how much we’re willing to sacrifice for the additional time afforded them in aggregate. This is not to sound cold or callus. I’ll be old one day (but am also not going to expect extraordinary resources to live a few extra months). These are necessary discussions in a finite world.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  It's likely enough that lockdowns are the better strategy for the economy. If that is the case, it's not even a sacrifice. Severe infection and death rates are still quite high among people that are not especially old or frail; and then it sort of depends a lot of whether 'frail' is an apt description of the people that are more susceptible.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    > It's likely enough that lockdowns are the better strategy for the economy. I would like to see data supporting this. Because at the moment, things are pretty bleak.
    - simonsaidit 7y ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/upshot/coronavirus-cities-social-distancing-better-employment.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/upshot/corona... I think everyone would like better data but one point I can follow is that scared people are bad consumers. I can’t find the exact story but I recall some research on Denver vs Philadelphia where the hard lockdown came out ahead later and the psychology of dealing with the disease contributed to this.

lymeeducator 7y ago

It's unknown how long symptoms typically last. I am pushing 4+ weeks with mild symptoms I have never experienced with the flu. My doctor indicates 4+ weeks until ~mostly recovered based on her patients. How does this deplete nutrients necessary for continued immune function relative to the flu? We need more data and that Swede doesn't have it.

iso1631 7y ago

In the UK, week ending April 3rd, rather than the expected 10k deaths there were a (preliminary) 16k deaths. 60% above background level Stats for week ending April 10th aren't out yet, however they are alluded to in https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/879714/Weekly_all_cause_mortality_surveillance_week_16_2020_report.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... at being over 20k deaths, twice the number. (The week 15 report predicted 5k excess deaths for week ending apr3, more concrete figures had it at 6k. Week 16 predicts about 12k excess deaths for w/e april 10. 60% extra deaths isn't "slightly above background level" If covid is burning itself out then that's great, we'd be looking at a total 100k excess deaths, or 20% above background level for the year. However there is no evidence that we're anywhere near 20% of the country having had it, let alone 70%. Those dying in week ending april 10th will likely have contracted covid before lockdown w/e | reported covid deaths | actual excess deaths w/e mar 27 | 842 | 1.5k w/e apr 3 | 3294 | 6k w/e apr 10 | 5562 | 10-15k w/e apr 17 | 5589 | So we're likely looking at 30k excess deaths in the last month, or about 80%, but that's because we locked down in mid-end march and the number of deaths 3 weeks later hasn't increased at the non-lockdown rate we'd expect. Tobacco kills an average 2k per week in the UK, covid is killing 5 times as many, and that's with all the controls. Cars kill an average 30 per week

rpiguy 7y ago
This is a stunning difference. In the US we had no excess mortality in March, in fact total deaths from all causes were down year over year. Cases didn’t peak in NY until April so we may see some increase after this month. I realize the U.K. locked down later than many countries, but there must be other factors driving mortality as there are other countries that did not lock down and aren’t being ravaged quite the same. What is it? Level of care in the NHS? Higher prevalence of secondary conditions like diabetes? Hygiene? Crowding?
- iso1631 7y ago
  We didn't really have any excess mortality in March either - total deaths in 4 weeks upto 27th march was 43,406. 5 year average for that 4 week period is 43,700. We're slightly ahead of New York state in covid breakout too (about 4-5 days at the occurrence of both 10th and 100th death) I suspect that the excess numbers are undiagnosed covid cases - especially those dying in care homes. In w/e 3rd april compared with the week before Place | Excess Deaths | Excess covid deaths Home | 1079 | 105 Care Home | 1280 | 175 Hospital | 2779 | 2609 Tests in the UK are almost entirely to people going into hospital. Where are the stats for deaths in New York? UK (Or rather England and Wales, but that's 90% of the population of the UK) are at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

m3kw9 7y ago

He is of course inclined to say what he thinks is right because he suggested such a plan.

lazylizard 7y ago

Sweden is the only country that has a scientist in charge of covid response? All other countries have politicians in charge? I'm not sure that they're definitely wrong?

nradov 7y ago

Why is this flagged? The interview is intellectually interesting. Prof. Johan Giesecke literally wrote the book on infectious disease epidemiology, and works as a senior advisor to the WHO and Swedish government.

specialbat 7y ago
Agree, he is not some crank. I don't understand the flagging system on this site at all

Markoff 7y ago

I agree with most of the things besides 50% of infected population, in Czech 250+ branches (that's at least 5000 people) of Lidl they had only 4 confirmed infected until now, in Globus supermarket chain out of 5000 workers only 2. yes, Czechia is enforcing mandatory masks (although like 90% of population wear only cloth masks due to lack of access to medical masks and respirators) but still you would expect, if it would be that contagious through surfaces and other ways as some scare, there would be much more infected in these busiest businesses right now