8 ms·

This table is missing Norway, Denmark, and Finland which would be the most interesting to compare Sweden to.

goalieca 6y ago
Sweden has a higher rate. The theory is that the bulge in death rate is bigger up front vs a prolonged one that continues for months. It will be interesting to see long term results. Sweden also seems to have the same problem with long term care homes that many other nations (France, Canada, etc) are having.
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  I don’t think the up front deaths are in any way intentional. It’s very hard to compare strategies since there’s many other factors that control the outcome. Like Sweden had school holidays ending with a lot of people coming home from skiing in Italy just when the situation there exploded. And as you mentioned, the virus got into a lot of the nursing homes.
  - marvin 6y ago
    Just for reference, Norway's epidemic also started with a large influx of cases from Italy and Austria. But the countries have used different strategies from that point on.
- marvin 6y ago
  Sad to say, I'm completely unsurprised that countries with rampant Covid19 spread have a lot of deaths in their retirement homes. It's practically deterministic. People are contagious in the pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic case. So all that's needed is that one employee of the retirement home gets sick and goes to work before they know, and the game is up. Dead patients everywhere. I'm sure this is discussed and considered on the highest levels of policy in the jurisdictions that have been the most proactive in getting a handle on the epidemic early, and missed in most others. I'm sure a strict face mask policy could have helped slow things down, but that's sadly been a hotly contested topic.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Many retirement homes here in Czech Republic have had the care takers voluntarily locking themselves up together with the people living there. Some have been there like this for many weeks, only taking in supplies in a safe way & communicating electronically. Thats some serious dedication & very prudent one, give all the tragic cases elsewhere.
- atourgates 6y ago
  This is one of the things I wondered when I saw the "flatten the curve" charts and simulations a few weeks ago. Is there a valid statistical model for letting COVID-19 spread quickly, and "getting it over with", compared to flattening the curve and letting it create fewer mortalities over a longer time? I suppose even if the total number of mortalities is projected over time, there's real hope that we could find more effective treatments over time.
  - Spellman 6y ago
    The problem is that depending on your medical capacity, "getting it over with" overloads your medical system causing even MORE deaths. So the total number of deaths goes way, way up. Because in addition to the deaths from COVID-19, you get extra deaths from hospitals not having beds or able to handle other common injuries/sickness/accidents that are still happening every day but wouldn't normally lead to death because they could get full attention and care. Now, if we had infinite medical capacity, then actually "getting it over with" could, from a number of deaths perspective, be advantageous. No lockdowns! No economic distress! However, you also overshoot a little. You would have deaths due to more of the population being exposed than required for herd immunity. Of course, if you're a no lives lost at any cost, you'd still want to reduce deaths by slowing the spread until something like herd immunity or a vaccine. But most don't seem to have that sort of political or economic calculus.
    - dijit 6y ago
      There will be an economic crisis if 2-3% of people lose their lives in a span of a few weeks.
      - atourgates 6y ago
        Absolutely there would be. On the other hand, the results from the recent antibody testing in California[1] (if they're accurate) would suggest a much lower death rate - around 0.1% - 0.2%. I fully agree that social distancing is the right move with the current data, but I wonder if that will continue to be the case as we come to understand the virus and its actual infection-fatality-rate more. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0
marvin 6y ago
Sweden: 1,937 deaths. 50 fewer seasonal deaths than expected. Norway: 187 deaths. No increase in seasonal deaths. Denmark: 384 deaths. Seasonal deaths unknown to me. Finand: 149 deaths. Seasonal deaths unknown to me. Sweden has approximately twice the population of the other Nordic countries, so per capita they have between ~2.5x and ~6x the Covid19 mortality of their neighbors, who have stricter preventive measures. Honestly, I can't see how Anders Tegnell and his colleagues can sleep at night with the uncertainties they are powering through. By rights they should be terrified that they've gotten one of their assumptions wrong.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  Denmark has ~2.5x the per-capita covid-19 mortality of Finland, should Danish authorities be terrified that they've gotten their assumptions wrong? The UK has ~2x the per-capita covid-19 mortality of Sweden, should English authorities be terrified that they've gotten their assumptions wrong? You are cherry-picking like crazy! There is clearly no evidence that stricter measures have any effect. If that was true, then there should at least be a linear correlation between strictness of measures vs. excess deaths, and that's simply not the case. You're extrapolating a linear correlation using a couple of data-points that happen to support your theory, i.e. Sweden vs other Nordic countries. Sweden vs. all of Europe paints a completely different picture, so you're not looking at that, because you're cherry-picking. There are so many uncertainties around this whole situation, and I think the only thing we can say with certainty is that if a country has no or a low rate of excess deaths, that country is doing "ok". Not doing great, not doing shit, just doing ok.
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    > There is clearly no evidence that stricter measures have any effect Working for us in NZ, although I think the timing of our national lockdown is strongly significant to our success, we managed to do so before it was widespread in the community. Our new case rate is literally bottom of the FT Covid graph: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest And we have 50% the population of Sweden, and 0.72% the deaths. If we were to be per-capita equivalent with Sweden, we'd need about another 964 people to die.
pvaldes 6y ago
And Germany is another outlier
- raphaelj 6y ago
  It looks like Germany put lockdown measures in place about a week earlier than France, Belgium or the Netherlands, if you compare the number of deaths at the time the mesures were enforced. Getting a lockdown in place a week earlier mathematically translates in a 4x reduction in deaths a few weeks later, which is more or less what we see when comparing France and Germany. Likewise the UK enforced the lockdown a few days later than France (proportionally to the state of the pendemic at the time of the measures), more or less like Spain. Looks like they are both heading towards 30k or 40k deaths until the pendemic gets under control. A few days really matter when you're fighting a pendemic that double in size every 3 days.
  - jobigoud 6y ago
    Even before the lockdons went into effect the difference between Germany and France was puzzling.

Sweden has a higher rate. The theory is that the bulge in death rate is bigger up front vs a prolonged one that continues for months. It will be interesting to see long term results. Sweden also seems to have the same problem with long term care homes that many other nations (France, Canada, etc) are having.

Ma8ee 6y ago
I don’t think the up front deaths are in any way intentional. It’s very hard to compare strategies since there’s many other factors that control the outcome. Like Sweden had school holidays ending with a lot of people coming home from skiing in Italy just when the situation there exploded. And as you mentioned, the virus got into a lot of the nursing homes.
- marvin 6y ago
  Just for reference, Norway's epidemic also started with a large influx of cases from Italy and Austria. But the countries have used different strategies from that point on.
marvin 6y ago
Sad to say, I'm completely unsurprised that countries with rampant Covid19 spread have a lot of deaths in their retirement homes. It's practically deterministic. People are contagious in the pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic case. So all that's needed is that one employee of the retirement home gets sick and goes to work before they know, and the game is up. Dead patients everywhere. I'm sure this is discussed and considered on the highest levels of policy in the jurisdictions that have been the most proactive in getting a handle on the epidemic early, and missed in most others. I'm sure a strict face mask policy could have helped slow things down, but that's sadly been a hotly contested topic.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Many retirement homes here in Czech Republic have had the care takers voluntarily locking themselves up together with the people living there. Some have been there like this for many weeks, only taking in supplies in a safe way & communicating electronically. Thats some serious dedication & very prudent one, give all the tragic cases elsewhere.
atourgates 6y ago
This is one of the things I wondered when I saw the "flatten the curve" charts and simulations a few weeks ago. Is there a valid statistical model for letting COVID-19 spread quickly, and "getting it over with", compared to flattening the curve and letting it create fewer mortalities over a longer time? I suppose even if the total number of mortalities is projected over time, there's real hope that we could find more effective treatments over time.
- Spellman 6y ago
  The problem is that depending on your medical capacity, "getting it over with" overloads your medical system causing even MORE deaths. So the total number of deaths goes way, way up. Because in addition to the deaths from COVID-19, you get extra deaths from hospitals not having beds or able to handle other common injuries/sickness/accidents that are still happening every day but wouldn't normally lead to death because they could get full attention and care. Now, if we had infinite medical capacity, then actually "getting it over with" could, from a number of deaths perspective, be advantageous. No lockdowns! No economic distress! However, you also overshoot a little. You would have deaths due to more of the population being exposed than required for herd immunity. Of course, if you're a no lives lost at any cost, you'd still want to reduce deaths by slowing the spread until something like herd immunity or a vaccine. But most don't seem to have that sort of political or economic calculus.
  - dijit 6y ago
    There will be an economic crisis if 2-3% of people lose their lives in a span of a few weeks.
    - atourgates 6y ago
      Absolutely there would be. On the other hand, the results from the recent antibody testing in California[1] (if they're accurate) would suggest a much lower death rate - around 0.1% - 0.2%. I fully agree that social distancing is the right move with the current data, but I wonder if that will continue to be the case as we come to understand the virus and its actual infection-fatality-rate more. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0

marvin 6y ago

Sweden: 1,937 deaths. 50 fewer seasonal deaths than expected. Norway: 187 deaths. No increase in seasonal deaths. Denmark: 384 deaths. Seasonal deaths unknown to me. Finand: 149 deaths. Seasonal deaths unknown to me. Sweden has approximately twice the population of the other Nordic countries, so per capita they have between ~2.5x and ~6x the Covid19 mortality of their neighbors, who have stricter preventive measures. Honestly, I can't see how Anders Tegnell and his colleagues can sleep at night with the uncertainties they are powering through. By rights they should be terrified that they've gotten one of their assumptions wrong.

henrikschroder 6y ago
Denmark has ~2.5x the per-capita covid-19 mortality of Finland, should Danish authorities be terrified that they've gotten their assumptions wrong? The UK has ~2x the per-capita covid-19 mortality of Sweden, should English authorities be terrified that they've gotten their assumptions wrong? You are cherry-picking like crazy! There is clearly no evidence that stricter measures have any effect. If that was true, then there should at least be a linear correlation between strictness of measures vs. excess deaths, and that's simply not the case. You're extrapolating a linear correlation using a couple of data-points that happen to support your theory, i.e. Sweden vs other Nordic countries. Sweden vs. all of Europe paints a completely different picture, so you're not looking at that, because you're cherry-picking. There are so many uncertainties around this whole situation, and I think the only thing we can say with certainty is that if a country has no or a low rate of excess deaths, that country is doing "ok". Not doing great, not doing shit, just doing ok.
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  > There is clearly no evidence that stricter measures have any effect Working for us in NZ, although I think the timing of our national lockdown is strongly significant to our success, we managed to do so before it was widespread in the community. Our new case rate is literally bottom of the FT Covid graph: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest And we have 50% the population of Sweden, and 0.72% the deaths. If we were to be per-capita equivalent with Sweden, we'd need about another 964 people to die.

pvaldes 6y ago

And Germany is another outlier

raphaelj 6y ago
It looks like Germany put lockdown measures in place about a week earlier than France, Belgium or the Netherlands, if you compare the number of deaths at the time the mesures were enforced. Getting a lockdown in place a week earlier mathematically translates in a 4x reduction in deaths a few weeks later, which is more or less what we see when comparing France and Germany. Likewise the UK enforced the lockdown a few days later than France (proportionally to the state of the pendemic at the time of the measures), more or less like Spain. Looks like they are both heading towards 30k or 40k deaths until the pendemic gets under control. A few days really matter when you're fighting a pendemic that double in size every 3 days.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  Even before the lockdons went into effect the difference between Germany and France was puzzling.