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Look, I agree with you that stricter measures probably have an effect. All countries have some forms of restrictions, all countries have flattened their curves,

Look, I agree with you that stricter measures probably have an effect. All countries have some forms of restrictions, all countries have flattened their curves, no-one is really seeing crazy exponential growth, common sense dictates that it's working. But a lot of people in this thread are arguing that Sweden should have enforced stricter measures because that should have decreased the deaths further. And that position is unsupported, because there are comparable countries with stricter measures than Sweden that have a higher per-capita death count, for example the UK or Belgium. Looking at excess mortality the picture is similar. Sweden is absolutely not doing great, but it's not doing bad either. If stricter measures always resulted in less deaths, as you argue, why are so many countries doing worse than Sweden? Why are more people dying in those countries? Is their population stupider? Unluckier? More defiant towards government? Clearly there are multiple other unknown factors at work here, which is why there's no evidence that stricter measures in Sweden would have an effect.

arel 7y ago
> for example the UK or Belgium It depends when each country locked down relative to the number of cases and deaths at the time. The UK is widely acknowledged (here anyway) to have acted too late in its lockdown as the were trying to pursue herd immunity.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Every country was widely acknowledged to be too late in its lockdown. In the ones that have seen disasters the accusation stuck, while in the ones that haven't it's been quietly forgotten.
EdwardDiego 7y ago
I perhaps didn't emphasise this enough in my original post, but I believe it answers your questions. > I think the timing of our national lock down is strongly significant to our success, we managed to do so before it was widespread in the community. > Why are more people dying in those countries? Timing is a very significant factor, I believe - I couch that as a belief, because I haven't had the time to compare all lockdowns, but you'll note that on this FT graph[1], NZ's lockdown began near immediately by the metric being used, whereas the UK's took a full two weeks. We know that the UK government dithered, initially focused on herd immunity (and worth noting that Johnson and his advisor Dominic Cummings who was hugely influential in pushing for it both went on to contract the illness), hired social media bots(?!)[2] to spin the party line, and only after all that, then went into lockdown. A veritable case of closing the barn door after the infectious horse has bolted. Of course there's a bunch of other factors in death rates - the comparative proportion of your population which is especially vulnerable, medical care capacity, but it seems obvious to me that the largest factor will always be the number of infections in the first instance. [1]: https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.upp-prod-us.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8850e4ac-84de-11ea-b872-8db45d5f6714?fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=1260 https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt... [2]: https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2020/04/21/fake-nurses-propaganda-tweets-distract-from-further-government-coronavirus-shambles/ https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2020/04/21/fake-nurses-pro...
- henrikschroder 7y ago
  > Timing is a very significant factor, I believe - I couch that as a belief, because I haven't had the time to compare all lockdowns Fair enough, and I agree. It's clear that countries who clamped down super early have fared much better than everyone else. But going by that FT graph, Spain went into lockdown a week before the UK, and still did worse? Germany later than the UK, and is doing better? There's a crazy amount of uncertainty about what good lockdowns are once you've passed a certain point of community spread. Sweden obviously missed the point in time where lockdowns would have worked very well, while NZ, Australia, Norway didn't. The UK obviously missed it as well, but while they were debating herd immunity, it might have been too late anyway? We might never know. And with all that uncertainty, I think it's wrong for people to argue that Sweden "obviously" would have saved lives by going into a hard lockdown earlier. Maybe, probably, perhaps. Would a stricter lockdown now do anything in Sweden? Unlikely.
  - zamfi 7y ago
    > Spain went into lockdown a week before the UK, and still did worse? Germany later than the UK, and is doing better? Not relative to number of cases: Germany locked down later than UK, but a week earlier on the exponential growth curve. I'll post this link again, because it's the best articulation of this point that I've found: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... Timing, with respect to where a country/region is on the exponential growth curve, is critical. In almost every place you see the same outcome, it's crazy.
    - henrikschroder 7y ago
      > Not relative to number of cases: Germany locked down later than UK, but a week earlier on the exponential growth curve. Not according to the Financial Times graph in the post I was commenting on. Germany went into lockdown at 3000 cases per day, while the UK went into lockdown at 700 cases per day, and Spain at 600 cases per day, according to that. Is the FT graph wrong? Do you have a better data source that proves your point?
clouddrover 7y ago
> If stricter measures always resulted in less deaths, as you argue, why are so many countries doing worse than Sweden? The UK acted too late. Compare Sweden to Australia. Australia has 2.5 times the population of Sweden (25.6 million versus 10.3 million). Sweden has had 1,937 COVID-19 deaths and Australia has had 74. Sweden's deaths per million population is 192 and Australia's deaths per million population is 3. Sweden's rate of testing is 9,357 tests per million population and Australia's is 17,743: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html Australia's had fewer cases, fewer deaths, and is doing more testing than Sweden.

arel 7y ago

> for example the UK or Belgium It depends when each country locked down relative to the number of cases and deaths at the time. The UK is widely acknowledged (here anyway) to have acted too late in its lockdown as the were trying to pursue herd immunity.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Every country was widely acknowledged to be too late in its lockdown. In the ones that have seen disasters the accusation stuck, while in the ones that haven't it's been quietly forgotten.

EdwardDiego 7y ago

I perhaps didn't emphasise this enough in my original post, but I believe it answers your questions. > I think the timing of our national lock down is strongly significant to our success, we managed to do so before it was widespread in the community. > Why are more people dying in those countries? Timing is a very significant factor, I believe - I couch that as a belief, because I haven't had the time to compare all lockdowns, but you'll note that on this FT graph[1], NZ's lockdown began near immediately by the metric being used, whereas the UK's took a full two weeks. We know that the UK government dithered, initially focused on herd immunity (and worth noting that Johnson and his advisor Dominic Cummings who was hugely influential in pushing for it both went on to contract the illness), hired social media bots(?!)[2] to spin the party line, and only after all that, then went into lockdown. A veritable case of closing the barn door after the infectious horse has bolted. Of course there's a bunch of other factors in death rates - the comparative proportion of your population which is especially vulnerable, medical care capacity, but it seems obvious to me that the largest factor will always be the number of infections in the first instance. [1]: https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.upp-prod-us.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8850e4ac-84de-11ea-b872-8db45d5f6714?fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=1260 https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt... [2]: https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2020/04/21/fake-nurses-propaganda-tweets-distract-from-further-government-coronavirus-shambles/ https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2020/04/21/fake-nurses-pro...

henrikschroder 7y ago
> Timing is a very significant factor, I believe - I couch that as a belief, because I haven't had the time to compare all lockdowns Fair enough, and I agree. It's clear that countries who clamped down super early have fared much better than everyone else. But going by that FT graph, Spain went into lockdown a week before the UK, and still did worse? Germany later than the UK, and is doing better? There's a crazy amount of uncertainty about what good lockdowns are once you've passed a certain point of community spread. Sweden obviously missed the point in time where lockdowns would have worked very well, while NZ, Australia, Norway didn't. The UK obviously missed it as well, but while they were debating herd immunity, it might have been too late anyway? We might never know. And with all that uncertainty, I think it's wrong for people to argue that Sweden "obviously" would have saved lives by going into a hard lockdown earlier. Maybe, probably, perhaps. Would a stricter lockdown now do anything in Sweden? Unlikely.
- zamfi 7y ago
  > Spain went into lockdown a week before the UK, and still did worse? Germany later than the UK, and is doing better? Not relative to number of cases: Germany locked down later than UK, but a week earlier on the exponential growth curve. I'll post this link again, because it's the best articulation of this point that I've found: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... Timing, with respect to where a country/region is on the exponential growth curve, is critical. In almost every place you see the same outcome, it's crazy.
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    > Not relative to number of cases: Germany locked down later than UK, but a week earlier on the exponential growth curve. Not according to the Financial Times graph in the post I was commenting on. Germany went into lockdown at 3000 cases per day, while the UK went into lockdown at 700 cases per day, and Spain at 600 cases per day, according to that. Is the FT graph wrong? Do you have a better data source that proves your point?

clouddrover 7y ago

> If stricter measures always resulted in less deaths, as you argue, why are so many countries doing worse than Sweden? The UK acted too late. Compare Sweden to Australia. Australia has 2.5 times the population of Sweden (25.6 million versus 10.3 million). Sweden has had 1,937 COVID-19 deaths and Australia has had 74. Sweden's deaths per million population is 192 and Australia's deaths per million population is 3. Sweden's rate of testing is 9,357 tests per million population and Australia's is 17,743: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html Australia's had fewer cases, fewer deaths, and is doing more testing than Sweden.