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The guy is a scientist and his answers have to be viewed from that angle. A politician goes for spin and tries to project confidence; "I am not sure this is the

by ptero 6y ago

The guy is a scientist and his answers have to be viewed from that angle. A politician goes for spin and tries to project confidence; "I am not sure this is the right approach" from a politician usually means "hell, no!". Tegnell's answer means just that -- he is not sure. Which is a normal way for a scientist to feel as there are always uncertainties and when we choose an action we are often not sure for a while if that action is optimal or not. I personally feel a lot of respect to Tegnell. Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic: there are no mountains of corpses on the streets there are a number of countries with lockdowns and worse per capita death rates; second wave, if appears, will likely go much easier on Sweden, etc. I think other countries should take a page out of Tegnell's book and instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. This will not make their argument weaker; it might still mean that lockdowns are a better option. But it would also open policies for discussion and debate. Good policies will still win. But then they win by merits, not because of trying to silence any opposition. My 2c.

KarlKemp 6y ago
Sweden has the highest per-capita rate of deaths from COVID. In Sweden, 4,500 people have died. In neighbouring Norway, 237 people died. Even adjusted for population, Sweden has 10x the deaths. I'm a scientist as well and my math skills say their strategy sucks.
- prepend 6y ago
  Finland also only has 300 deaths. Sweden is not the highest in Europe, per capita, it’s fifth [0]. So it’s pretty bad out of 31 countries but better than Belgium. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat...
  - timwaagh 6y ago
    Lies greater lies and statistics... Belgium counts people who die in nursing homes as covid 19 deaths. They say Belgiums figure would be twice as small if they counted the way others did. Removing that anomaly the only countries higher are Spain, Italy and UK. The first two were hit very hard very early and the last had similar issues as Sweden, reacting very late.
    - specialist 6y ago
      Yup. All discussions should also include excess deaths.
      - nfc 6y ago
        This is the only source I've found to easily compare those https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
      - tyldum 6y ago
        The thing is, at least in Norway, less people than normal have died since COVID-19... So there is no excess.
        specialist 6y ago
        Then they would report negative excess deaths. That's important information.
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      Sweden has also been very good at counting deaths, there was a New York Times report that compared excess deaths and Sweden was the only region where reported COVID-19 deaths actually outnumbered excess deaths
      - kgwgk 6y ago
        The "negative excess" was due to reporting lags, repeating the NYT analysis with up-to-date data for that period there are actually "unexplained" deaths. But it actually seems they make a better job at counting than some other European countries (maybe not as good as Belgium, I don't know).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- matz1 6y ago
  4500 out of 10 million ? 0.045% not bad considering Sweden doesn't do lock down. I wish more country adapt Sweden approach.
  - KarlKemp 6y ago
    They haven't stopped dying, though: Yesterday, Sweden had 74 deaths. Norway, meanwhile, hasn't had a single death in 9 days.
    - matz1 6y ago
      Depends on how much more they have, if their hospital is not overwhelmed, its acceptable. >Norway, meanwhile, hasn't had a single death in 9 days But Norway has lockdown ? of course its a trade off
      - kwhitefoot 6y ago
        > But Norway has lockdown ? No it doesn't. We have prohibitions on large gatherings but private individuals may come and go as they please, visit each other's houses, etc.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - tephra 6y ago
      Actually on the 3rd of June there was 1 death attributed to COVID-19. This is very likely to increase as we get more confirmations and backfills the data. The other 73 deaths reported are confirmed cases for other days.
      - microtherion 6y ago
        Yes, the data is very noisy, and yes, much of it is backfill, but elementary queuing theory suggests that if deaths by reporting date keep oscillating around the same level, deaths by occurrence date will eventually converge to that level as well.
- timwaagh 6y ago
  Yeah being nice is all well and good but the results more or less speak for themselves. I hope they at least got some echo economic benefit out of it. It surprised me to see a country where politicians don't make this call. More surprising to see that the result turned out like this.
geoffreymcgill 6y ago
If France and Sweden were the same population, here's a chart of confirmed cases (7 day average) and total deaths. https://i.imgur.com/oiybcsx.png https://i.imgur.com/oiybcsx.png Sweden will easily pass France in the next few days, yet new infections are now 500% greater than those of France. Again, please keep in mind this is a per capita chart.
- liquidise 6y ago
  Sweden's approach is clearly one focused on long-term results. If Covid sees a resurgence in the fall or as nations return to relative normalcy, we can expect the infection and death counts to be multi-modal in most nations, while Sweden's might be a bell curve. For this reason alone, we are unlikely to know the effectiveness of Sweden's herd immunity for months if not years.
  - legulere 6y ago
    It would take years with current infection rates in Sweden to get herd immunity. If the plan is to reduce pension costs it seems to work.
    - natch 6y ago
      Taking years is generally the case with long term strategies.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      You're assuming current understandings of herd immunity and epidemiology are correct, which by empirical observation they aren't. The epidemic is already over in Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#Deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#De... (more up to date graph: https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG_2421.jpg https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG_...) Yet a much lower level of infected population than conventionally understood has been reached. The models that assume the virus will continue to grow until 60%-70% have been infected are therefore wrong, reality itself is proving that. There are now a whole lot of theories being explored as to why this is. [edit: someone complained about the original graph link not matching worldometers. It's worldometers that's wrong so I replaced it with a Wikipedia link, which sources its data direct from Swedish health authorities. I left the lockdownsceptics link because it's a bit fresher]
disabled 6y ago
I believe Tegnell is brilliant, but that is where my accolades stop. Scientists (which Tegnell is, effectively) are not meant to be politicians, and them getting into political matters is an excellent way to corrupt science. Although Sweden is not a place where one would look to think of corruption, there are still serious ethical issues with this. This is also a form of experimentation in COVID-19 that is among the riskiest and most dangerous in the world. Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the significant differences in death rates in developed countries for COVID-19 were attributed mostly to whether COVID-19 severely penetrated care homes, mostly designed for the elderly. We know that Sweden did not have proper PPE protection in these care homes to protect their most vulnerable, and it still does not. Sure, the death rates worldwide have been going down, at least in developed countries, because, perhaps we have become smarter at treating it, despite having no effective treatment for it. Still, it is not prudent to expose people needlessly to a virus that we know is deadly--and we know little about. A lot of these deaths could have been prevented, with relatively little pain, although it takes a lot of sacrifice. One of the countries I am sovereign to, Croatia, (the other being the USA) has not had any COVID-19 cases for 3 days in a row [1]. You know, a former war-torn Yugoslav country that is up and rising and just became part of the EU in 2013. This kind of stuff is not rocket science. Even war-torn, economically suffering countries can be successful at these sorts of endeavors. It just requires brave political leaders (along with a strong emphasis on public health--which a lot of ex-Yugoslav countries actually have) who can deal with crises (which Croatia has legitimately dealt with before). [1] https://koronavirus.hr/en https://koronavirus.hr/en
- osrec 6y ago
  Science, technology and politics have always been interlinked. If you look at history, it's how things have always been.
- tathougies 6y ago
  > with relatively little pain have you been paying attention to what's going on? I would not describe it as "relatively little pain"...
  - rumanator 6y ago
mrjin 6y ago
Just an obvious question to ask: have we human-being ever gain immunity to common flu? Then how could those Hurd-immunity advocates be so sure it would ever work?
- tathougies 6y ago
  Yes, we do have herd immunity to the common flu. It's why, for most people with healthy immune systems, the flu is a real annoyance, but nothing more. For those with compromised immune systems, such as AIDs patients, the old, and the very young, the flu can be a disaster. But, once a young child gets the flu a few times, they develop herd immunity so that subsequent infections are less severe. Once in a while a flu virus learns to trigger the immune system of those with immunity to flu viruses, and then flu pandemics happen, but that is a rare occurence relatively speaking.
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    > But, once a young child gets the flu a few times, they develop herd immunity herd immunity is a property of the herd and not any single person, though.
    - BillyTheKing 6y ago
      yea, the fact that most children get the flu is a counter example to herd immunity. Full scale herd immunity would protect vulnerable members of societies (who don't have immunity) of contracting the disease in the first place.
      - tathougies 6y ago
        You could be immune but be a carrier?
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  We always get immunity to each flu, or we'd all be dead. So we will get herd immunity to COVID-19, or all be dead. And that hasn't happened in the last million years. There is no vaccine yet, so the only sure thing is herd immunity. The US is especially vulnerable because we have so many patients in so many locations - testing and tracing isn't going to work in the US. The horse left the barn on that one.
dmix 6y ago
> instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. I get the impression social media is killing off this sort of approach (or maybe it's some other cultural driver). There seems to be a clear trend toward monoculture for everything.
knzhou 6y ago
> I think other countries should take a page out of Tegnell's book and instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. Sadly, the discourse affects the results. When everybody believes a lockdown will work, it does. When about half the population isn't sure about it, it just wastes money. It would be great to have some countries go all-in in one strategy and others all-in in another, and compare results later -- but when people talk, you end up with lots of countries effectively doing something in the middle, without the advantages of either extreme but essentially all of the costs.
mikekchar 6y ago
Interestingly (to me anyway ;-) ) I recall when I heard about the Japanese government's plans (where I live). They had a whole special about what the plan was, what the rationale was, how they thought it would go, etc, etc. I thought they were bonkers. "This is going to go down badly", I thought. But, looking back on it, I'm pretty impressed with the results. Good foresight? Luck? Not really sure, but you can't really argue with results. As time goes on, you can see that it's a bit like surfing those huge 50 foot waves. If you can manage it, everything will be fine. If not, you are crushed. Fingers crossed.
- nostromo 6y ago
  The problem in some of the states is that when it was becoming clear this wasn’t anything near the apocalypse that was promised, they refused to adjust course and relax restrictions. Changing course in the US is seen as weak and politicians hate to do it, even when it’s the right thing to do. Also: US media is in a bad place. They have lost their sense of civic responsibility and are blatant fear mongers now. It’s lead to a lot of hysterics in the US.
  - xorfish 6y ago
    Who exactly promised an apocalypse? The early estimates for the IFR from February turned ouf to be quite accurate.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      Everything I was seeing in February for IFR was wildly inflated based on undercounting of infections from lack of testing. I’m curious what you saw that turned out to be correct.
      - xorfish 6y ago
        Scientists and the WHO estimated the IFR to be around 1% in February. Most models that estimate fatalities use that number as well. That estimate has hardly changed.
imartin2k 6y ago
Tegnell has been wrong about almost everything. Hard to see for me why that level of incompetence deserves respect. But he seems to have a lot of charisma so many people mistake that for brilliance. In one Swedish podcast, he was described with the analogy of a “manipulating boyfriend”. Quite fitting.
- storafrid 6y ago
  Source confirming your statement, please, that Tegnell has been "wrong about almost everything". Because that is false and this is not Reddit. In my opinion he _lacks_ charisma. He's just a scientist. Which is good.
  - imartin2k 6y ago
    He has been wrong, partly wrong or ignorant about: - Foreseeing the possibility of local transmission in Europe during the early stages despite first cases popping up in Italy (when many informed, interested lay people understood that this will happen with high probability). - Not recommended any measures to prevent thousands of travelers returning form Italy, Austria and the US from spreading the virus in Sweden in early March. - Claimed that there won't be any risk for widespread spread in Sweden. - Over and over again made claims that "the peak of transmission has been reached" once it started in Sweden during March/April - every time incorrect. - Underestimated the fatality rate (by being overly optimistic and by a assuming that most infected with the virus won't show any symptoms - a totally baseless assumption). - (Ironically) denied the existence/significance of asymptomatic/presymptomatic transmission (he's still not admitting that it plays a significant role). - Not foreseen that asymptomatic/asymptomatic transmission will, through workers, bring the virus into elderly care. - Made multiple, way too optimistic claims about when Stockholm might have reached herd immunity (May, June) - in reality, it's far far away. - Making assumptions about effective, lasting immunity without the existence of any actual evidence for it (thanks tsimionescu for the addition). - Ignored/denied the potential of wide-spread usage of masks to reduce transmission (instead, only focusing on its disadvantages "False security", "people not using them correctly") - Claimed that children don't spread the virus in significant ways (as far as I know, there is no consensus about that). This is just an excerpt. I'm an armchair epidemiologist (however one who has monitored this situation closely since February), so I am not stating that I got everything from the list above perfectly right. But I am informed enough to understand that he has been mostly wrong, ignorant, or unwilling to take in new information. Which makes me wonder: Why outsource everything to an "expert organization" when they perform so incompetently. I have no time now to present you with sources for each of the things from this list. You can either do that yourself, conveniently assume that I'm making all this up (which I don't), or present me with anything he did/claimed which actually turned out to be correct. It's harder to find that, than to find things he was wrong about. Personally I also think he lacks Charisma. But judging from how large parts of the Swedish population at least until recently loved him, some even got themselves tattoos, he clearly seem to have something which captivates the broad masses.
bildung 6y ago
> Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic The only countries worse off than Sweden are significantly poorer - besides Belgium, which seems to be the only country counting correctly (e.g. untested excess deaths in Covid proximity are included). The most similar countries to Sweden, regarding political structure and wealth, are Denmark and Norway, which have 20% and less than 10% of Swedens death rate, respectively. I'd say it's safe to assume that at least 80% of Swedish deaths could have been avoided with a conventional approach.
- guygurari 6y ago
  If Sweden has a significantly higher percentage of the population infected (as they claim) then it doesn’t make sense to compare death rates at this point, because it may be that these other countries will reach the same numbers (infection rate and death rate) later. This is a likely outcome because Sweden’s healthcare system has not been overwhelmed, so it’s not obvious that their policies will lead to excess deaths in the long run. The thing to compare is the final death toll (as well as economic damage), and we don’t know that yet.
  - randomsearch 6y ago
    This is a general observation: you shouldn’t judge pandemic policy over the short term.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Yes, ignore the bodies piling up in morgues. Rational people know that in ten years time it won't really matter.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > infection rate and death rate later. The most successful countries have already managed to reduce their infection rate to almost zero.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
ponker 6y ago
I don't think you can compare strategies in Sweden and France. Scandinavia, Japan, etc. are known to be places where people are civic-minded, responsible adults, where wallets left on benches make their way back to their owners with the money still inside. You can count on Swedish or Japanese people to do the responsible, advised, thing without a police officer standing behind them with a nightstick. That's not true of other countries and that's why those other countries have had to take heavy-handed approaches and still found little success in them.
- randomsearch 6y ago
  Despite press coverage to the contrary, compliance of the U.K. public has been higher, and higher than modelled. Can’t reveal my source but one region of England had over 80% complete compliance with government guidelines. That was as of a month ago.
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    > Can’t reveal my source That's an odd thing to say. What is the reason?
    - ponker 6y ago
      Might be a public authority backchanneling private data to a hedge fund who is trading on it.
    - randomsearch 6y ago
      I don't want to get someone fired.
- new2628 6y ago
  I'd take that "little success" any day. From another comment below: Sweden vs Czech Republic (both 10M): New cases (7 day average): https://i.imgur.com/fciq4Ra.png https://i.imgur.com/fciq4Ra.png Total deaths: https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png
monadic2 6y ago
He said, “We still believe our strategy is good”. That’s a far cry from “he is not sure”.
lordgrenville 6y ago
This is a good argument and it somewhat changed my mind. But I would add that if you take a risky decision in a scenario where the potential downside is mountains of corpses on the streets (or a Lombardy scenario), and then it turns out not to happen, you might have not made the objectively right decision. In hindsight, you got lucky, so it was OK; but maybe confronted with the same situation again you should choose differently. (I guess Tegnell would argue that he had reasons to be confident that Sweden wouldn't become Italy, and that it wasn't just a matter of blind guessing.)
martin_bech 6y ago
How is 4.500 dead, beeing worldwide #1 in deaths pr capita 2 weeks running, allround #7 in deaths and climbing, not qualify as catastrophic? And this nonsense of how Sweden will be better of in a second wave.. why? Because people are already dead?? They are not even done with the first wave, they are litterally #1 in deaths pr capita.
- svrtknst 6y ago
  Depends on how you measure deaths from Covid-19, for one. There have been a multitude of reports from other countries on how they fail to account for all deaths, let alone all deaths from the disease, for instance. The death toll is severe though, no two ways about it, but therea are also a lot of factors to weigh in, such as: - What could have been done instead? There are several countries with radically different measures that still face high numbers of reported deaths - Would more severe restrictions have mitigated the most damaging vectors? A lot of the deaths come from elderly homes, for instance, and further lockdowns wouldn't naturally have prevented that (as much as, say, more personnel in elderly care) - What will the secondary effects be? The effects of Covid-19 go beyond the deaths from the disease itself. How many will die from the economical impact of lesser, or more severe restrictions? For instance. These are all difficult considerations and near-impossible to answer.
  - martin_bech 6y ago
    The Swedes are actually poor at counting deaths, as they lag in their reporting, and often report 0 deaths in the weekend and hollidays. According to NYT Sweden has an excess of deaths totally of about 30%, about the same as France, but climbing. And no its not difficult to compare to say Denmark or Norway.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      > The Swedes are actually poor at counting deaths, as they lag in their reporting, and often report 0 deaths in the weekend and hollidays. That doesn't make them poor at counting death, so long as those deaths do eventually get counted. Everyone knows there are lags in reporting and counting, and everyone should take those lags into account when using the data. Compare that to Spain, which has recently changed their count method and ended up with a confusing and misleading set of data. https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450736398098433?s=20 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450736398098433?...
zosima 6y ago
I have been following the situation in Sweden closely. As far as I can see, calling Tegnell a scientist is incorrect. He may have a Ph.D but does decisively not behave scientifically. Instead he should should be called a bureaucrat, which much better describes his behavior. The catastrophe that is swedish covid-19 strategy, probably started as something like this: http://www.openias.org/swedens-covid19-strategy http://www.openias.org/swedens-covid19-strategy They believed Covid-19 was much more infectious and much fewer people were seriously affected, than we now believe. This was understandable at the time, since it's known that early on in an epidemic only serious cases are noted, and so infectiousness is underestimated and mortality usually overestimated. However, towards march it became definitely clear for most everybody else that covid-19 was fairly serious for many people and the Chinese mortality numbers were not vastly exaggerated. Because of his belief in an exaggerated infectiousness, Tegnell believed herd immunity would be reached fairly fast. Most of april Tegnell spent on justifying his faulty assumptions, believing herd immunity was to be had in Stockholm in may. To justify this, they used highly dubious modelling and wishful thinking: https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1254084767496261632 https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/125408476749626163... Sweden currently is now sitting in a horrible quagmire. The infection is still uncontrolled and mortality, though below its peak, is still significant. Testing infrastructure has still not been built out, and is still not done on all symptomatic cases. Likely because the infection was seen as having a similar severity to flu, and therefore it was presumed better to just stay home for a few days, than to go and get tested. Tegnell can not admit having been wrong, because of bureaucratic honor. The population which are, like in all other countries, generally not very scientifically literate or interested, have not quite fully grasped the situation. But judging by the latest polls of confidence in the government, many are starting to suspect something is not quite right. I fully support a very open debate, and believe all opinions have a right to be heard. But the Swedish situation should not be confused with science. It saddens me to say, that only very few countries have been more passive, bureaucratic and unscientific handling this crisis. And that seems to have cost quite many lives and much suffering for swedes.
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  I have followed the news in Sweden quite closely. I have never heard Anders Tegnell or anyone else från FHM say that they believe any significant herd immunity is close or anything they are trying to achieve. This is a strawman!

by ptero 6y ago

KarlKemp 6y ago

Sweden has the highest per-capita rate of deaths from COVID. In Sweden, 4,500 people have died. In neighbouring Norway, 237 people died. Even adjusted for population, Sweden has 10x the deaths. I'm a scientist as well and my math skills say their strategy sucks.

prepend 6y ago
Finland also only has 300 deaths. Sweden is not the highest in Europe, per capita, it’s fifth [0]. So it’s pretty bad out of 31 countries but better than Belgium. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat...
- timwaagh 6y ago
  Lies greater lies and statistics... Belgium counts people who die in nursing homes as covid 19 deaths. They say Belgiums figure would be twice as small if they counted the way others did. Removing that anomaly the only countries higher are Spain, Italy and UK. The first two were hit very hard very early and the last had similar issues as Sweden, reacting very late.
  - specialist 6y ago
    Yup. All discussions should also include excess deaths.
    - nfc 6y ago
      This is the only source I've found to easily compare those https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
    - tyldum 6y ago
      The thing is, at least in Norway, less people than normal have died since COVID-19... So there is no excess.
      - specialist 6y ago
        Then they would report negative excess deaths. That's important information.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    Sweden has also been very good at counting deaths, there was a New York Times report that compared excess deaths and Sweden was the only region where reported COVID-19 deaths actually outnumbered excess deaths
    - kgwgk 6y ago
      The "negative excess" was due to reporting lags, repeating the NYT analysis with up-to-date data for that period there are actually "unexplained" deaths. But it actually seems they make a better job at counting than some other European countries (maybe not as good as Belgium, I don't know).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
matz1 6y ago
4500 out of 10 million ? 0.045% not bad considering Sweden doesn't do lock down. I wish more country adapt Sweden approach.
- KarlKemp 6y ago
  They haven't stopped dying, though: Yesterday, Sweden had 74 deaths. Norway, meanwhile, hasn't had a single death in 9 days.
  - matz1 6y ago
    Depends on how much more they have, if their hospital is not overwhelmed, its acceptable. >Norway, meanwhile, hasn't had a single death in 9 days But Norway has lockdown ? of course its a trade off
    - kwhitefoot 6y ago
      > But Norway has lockdown ? No it doesn't. We have prohibitions on large gatherings but private individuals may come and go as they please, visit each other's houses, etc.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - tephra 6y ago
    Actually on the 3rd of June there was 1 death attributed to COVID-19. This is very likely to increase as we get more confirmations and backfills the data. The other 73 deaths reported are confirmed cases for other days.
    - microtherion 6y ago
      Yes, the data is very noisy, and yes, much of it is backfill, but elementary queuing theory suggests that if deaths by reporting date keep oscillating around the same level, deaths by occurrence date will eventually converge to that level as well.
timwaagh 6y ago
Yeah being nice is all well and good but the results more or less speak for themselves. I hope they at least got some echo economic benefit out of it. It surprised me to see a country where politicians don't make this call. More surprising to see that the result turned out like this.

geoffreymcgill 6y ago

If France and Sweden were the same population, here's a chart of confirmed cases (7 day average) and total deaths. https://i.imgur.com/oiybcsx.png https://i.imgur.com/oiybcsx.png Sweden will easily pass France in the next few days, yet new infections are now 500% greater than those of France. Again, please keep in mind this is a per capita chart.

liquidise 6y ago
Sweden's approach is clearly one focused on long-term results. If Covid sees a resurgence in the fall or as nations return to relative normalcy, we can expect the infection and death counts to be multi-modal in most nations, while Sweden's might be a bell curve. For this reason alone, we are unlikely to know the effectiveness of Sweden's herd immunity for months if not years.
- legulere 6y ago
  It would take years with current infection rates in Sweden to get herd immunity. If the plan is to reduce pension costs it seems to work.
  - natch 6y ago
    Taking years is generally the case with long term strategies.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    You're assuming current understandings of herd immunity and epidemiology are correct, which by empirical observation they aren't. The epidemic is already over in Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#Deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#De... (more up to date graph: https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG_2421.jpg https://lockdownsceptics.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG_...) Yet a much lower level of infected population than conventionally understood has been reached. The models that assume the virus will continue to grow until 60%-70% have been infected are therefore wrong, reality itself is proving that. There are now a whole lot of theories being explored as to why this is. [edit: someone complained about the original graph link not matching worldometers. It's worldometers that's wrong so I replaced it with a Wikipedia link, which sources its data direct from Swedish health authorities. I left the lockdownsceptics link because it's a bit fresher]

disabled 6y ago

I believe Tegnell is brilliant, but that is where my accolades stop. Scientists (which Tegnell is, effectively) are not meant to be politicians, and them getting into political matters is an excellent way to corrupt science. Although Sweden is not a place where one would look to think of corruption, there are still serious ethical issues with this. This is also a form of experimentation in COVID-19 that is among the riskiest and most dangerous in the world. Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the significant differences in death rates in developed countries for COVID-19 were attributed mostly to whether COVID-19 severely penetrated care homes, mostly designed for the elderly. We know that Sweden did not have proper PPE protection in these care homes to protect their most vulnerable, and it still does not. Sure, the death rates worldwide have been going down, at least in developed countries, because, perhaps we have become smarter at treating it, despite having no effective treatment for it. Still, it is not prudent to expose people needlessly to a virus that we know is deadly--and we know little about. A lot of these deaths could have been prevented, with relatively little pain, although it takes a lot of sacrifice. One of the countries I am sovereign to, Croatia, (the other being the USA) has not had any COVID-19 cases for 3 days in a row [1]. You know, a former war-torn Yugoslav country that is up and rising and just became part of the EU in 2013. This kind of stuff is not rocket science. Even war-torn, economically suffering countries can be successful at these sorts of endeavors. It just requires brave political leaders (along with a strong emphasis on public health--which a lot of ex-Yugoslav countries actually have) who can deal with crises (which Croatia has legitimately dealt with before). [1] https://koronavirus.hr/en https://koronavirus.hr/en

osrec 6y ago
Science, technology and politics have always been interlinked. If you look at history, it's how things have always been.
tathougies 6y ago
> with relatively little pain have you been paying attention to what's going on? I would not describe it as "relatively little pain"...
- rumanator 6y ago

mrjin 6y ago

Just an obvious question to ask: have we human-being ever gain immunity to common flu? Then how could those Hurd-immunity advocates be so sure it would ever work?

tathougies 6y ago
Yes, we do have herd immunity to the common flu. It's why, for most people with healthy immune systems, the flu is a real annoyance, but nothing more. For those with compromised immune systems, such as AIDs patients, the old, and the very young, the flu can be a disaster. But, once a young child gets the flu a few times, they develop herd immunity so that subsequent infections are less severe. Once in a while a flu virus learns to trigger the immune system of those with immunity to flu viruses, and then flu pandemics happen, but that is a rare occurence relatively speaking.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  > But, once a young child gets the flu a few times, they develop herd immunity herd immunity is a property of the herd and not any single person, though.
  - BillyTheKing 6y ago
    yea, the fact that most children get the flu is a counter example to herd immunity. Full scale herd immunity would protect vulnerable members of societies (who don't have immunity) of contracting the disease in the first place.
    - tathougies 6y ago
      You could be immune but be a carrier?
redis_mlc 6y ago
We always get immunity to each flu, or we'd all be dead. So we will get herd immunity to COVID-19, or all be dead. And that hasn't happened in the last million years. There is no vaccine yet, so the only sure thing is herd immunity. The US is especially vulnerable because we have so many patients in so many locations - testing and tracing isn't going to work in the US. The horse left the barn on that one.

dmix 6y ago

> instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. I get the impression social media is killing off this sort of approach (or maybe it's some other cultural driver). There seems to be a clear trend toward monoculture for everything.

knzhou 6y ago

> I think other countries should take a page out of Tegnell's book and instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. Sadly, the discourse affects the results. When everybody believes a lockdown will work, it does. When about half the population isn't sure about it, it just wastes money. It would be great to have some countries go all-in in one strategy and others all-in in another, and compare results later -- but when people talk, you end up with lots of countries effectively doing something in the middle, without the advantages of either extreme but essentially all of the costs.

mikekchar 6y ago

Interestingly (to me anyway ;-) ) I recall when I heard about the Japanese government's plans (where I live). They had a whole special about what the plan was, what the rationale was, how they thought it would go, etc, etc. I thought they were bonkers. "This is going to go down badly", I thought. But, looking back on it, I'm pretty impressed with the results. Good foresight? Luck? Not really sure, but you can't really argue with results. As time goes on, you can see that it's a bit like surfing those huge 50 foot waves. If you can manage it, everything will be fine. If not, you are crushed. Fingers crossed.

nostromo 6y ago
The problem in some of the states is that when it was becoming clear this wasn’t anything near the apocalypse that was promised, they refused to adjust course and relax restrictions. Changing course in the US is seen as weak and politicians hate to do it, even when it’s the right thing to do. Also: US media is in a bad place. They have lost their sense of civic responsibility and are blatant fear mongers now. It’s lead to a lot of hysterics in the US.
- xorfish 6y ago
  Who exactly promised an apocalypse? The early estimates for the IFR from February turned ouf to be quite accurate.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    Everything I was seeing in February for IFR was wildly inflated based on undercounting of infections from lack of testing. I’m curious what you saw that turned out to be correct.
    - xorfish 6y ago
      Scientists and the WHO estimated the IFR to be around 1% in February. Most models that estimate fatalities use that number as well. That estimate has hardly changed.

imartin2k 6y ago

Tegnell has been wrong about almost everything. Hard to see for me why that level of incompetence deserves respect. But he seems to have a lot of charisma so many people mistake that for brilliance. In one Swedish podcast, he was described with the analogy of a “manipulating boyfriend”. Quite fitting.

storafrid 6y ago
Source confirming your statement, please, that Tegnell has been "wrong about almost everything". Because that is false and this is not Reddit. In my opinion he _lacks_ charisma. He's just a scientist. Which is good.
- imartin2k 6y ago
  He has been wrong, partly wrong or ignorant about: - Foreseeing the possibility of local transmission in Europe during the early stages despite first cases popping up in Italy (when many informed, interested lay people understood that this will happen with high probability). - Not recommended any measures to prevent thousands of travelers returning form Italy, Austria and the US from spreading the virus in Sweden in early March. - Claimed that there won't be any risk for widespread spread in Sweden. - Over and over again made claims that "the peak of transmission has been reached" once it started in Sweden during March/April - every time incorrect. - Underestimated the fatality rate (by being overly optimistic and by a assuming that most infected with the virus won't show any symptoms - a totally baseless assumption). - (Ironically) denied the existence/significance of asymptomatic/presymptomatic transmission (he's still not admitting that it plays a significant role). - Not foreseen that asymptomatic/asymptomatic transmission will, through workers, bring the virus into elderly care. - Made multiple, way too optimistic claims about when Stockholm might have reached herd immunity (May, June) - in reality, it's far far away. - Making assumptions about effective, lasting immunity without the existence of any actual evidence for it (thanks tsimionescu for the addition). - Ignored/denied the potential of wide-spread usage of masks to reduce transmission (instead, only focusing on its disadvantages "False security", "people not using them correctly") - Claimed that children don't spread the virus in significant ways (as far as I know, there is no consensus about that). This is just an excerpt. I'm an armchair epidemiologist (however one who has monitored this situation closely since February), so I am not stating that I got everything from the list above perfectly right. But I am informed enough to understand that he has been mostly wrong, ignorant, or unwilling to take in new information. Which makes me wonder: Why outsource everything to an "expert organization" when they perform so incompetently. I have no time now to present you with sources for each of the things from this list. You can either do that yourself, conveniently assume that I'm making all this up (which I don't), or present me with anything he did/claimed which actually turned out to be correct. It's harder to find that, than to find things he was wrong about. Personally I also think he lacks Charisma. But judging from how large parts of the Swedish population at least until recently loved him, some even got themselves tattoos, he clearly seem to have something which captivates the broad masses.

bildung 6y ago

> Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic The only countries worse off than Sweden are significantly poorer - besides Belgium, which seems to be the only country counting correctly (e.g. untested excess deaths in Covid proximity are included). The most similar countries to Sweden, regarding political structure and wealth, are Denmark and Norway, which have 20% and less than 10% of Swedens death rate, respectively. I'd say it's safe to assume that at least 80% of Swedish deaths could have been avoided with a conventional approach.

guygurari 6y ago
If Sweden has a significantly higher percentage of the population infected (as they claim) then it doesn’t make sense to compare death rates at this point, because it may be that these other countries will reach the same numbers (infection rate and death rate) later. This is a likely outcome because Sweden’s healthcare system has not been overwhelmed, so it’s not obvious that their policies will lead to excess deaths in the long run. The thing to compare is the final death toll (as well as economic damage), and we don’t know that yet.
- randomsearch 6y ago
  This is a general observation: you shouldn’t judge pandemic policy over the short term.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Yes, ignore the bodies piling up in morgues. Rational people know that in ten years time it won't really matter.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > infection rate and death rate later. The most successful countries have already managed to reduce their infection rate to almost zero.
- tsimionescu 6y ago

ponker 6y ago

I don't think you can compare strategies in Sweden and France. Scandinavia, Japan, etc. are known to be places where people are civic-minded, responsible adults, where wallets left on benches make their way back to their owners with the money still inside. You can count on Swedish or Japanese people to do the responsible, advised, thing without a police officer standing behind them with a nightstick. That's not true of other countries and that's why those other countries have had to take heavy-handed approaches and still found little success in them.

randomsearch 6y ago
Despite press coverage to the contrary, compliance of the U.K. public has been higher, and higher than modelled. Can’t reveal my source but one region of England had over 80% complete compliance with government guidelines. That was as of a month ago.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  > Can’t reveal my source That's an odd thing to say. What is the reason?
  - ponker 6y ago
    Might be a public authority backchanneling private data to a hedge fund who is trading on it.
  - randomsearch 6y ago
    I don't want to get someone fired.
new2628 6y ago
I'd take that "little success" any day. From another comment below: Sweden vs Czech Republic (both 10M): New cases (7 day average): https://i.imgur.com/fciq4Ra.png https://i.imgur.com/fciq4Ra.png Total deaths: https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png

monadic2 6y ago

He said, “We still believe our strategy is good”. That’s a far cry from “he is not sure”.

lordgrenville 6y ago

This is a good argument and it somewhat changed my mind. But I would add that if you take a risky decision in a scenario where the potential downside is mountains of corpses on the streets (or a Lombardy scenario), and then it turns out not to happen, you might have not made the objectively right decision. In hindsight, you got lucky, so it was OK; but maybe confronted with the same situation again you should choose differently. (I guess Tegnell would argue that he had reasons to be confident that Sweden wouldn't become Italy, and that it wasn't just a matter of blind guessing.)

martin_bech 6y ago

How is 4.500 dead, beeing worldwide #1 in deaths pr capita 2 weeks running, allround #7 in deaths and climbing, not qualify as catastrophic? And this nonsense of how Sweden will be better of in a second wave.. why? Because people are already dead?? They are not even done with the first wave, they are litterally #1 in deaths pr capita.

svrtknst 6y ago
Depends on how you measure deaths from Covid-19, for one. There have been a multitude of reports from other countries on how they fail to account for all deaths, let alone all deaths from the disease, for instance. The death toll is severe though, no two ways about it, but therea are also a lot of factors to weigh in, such as: - What could have been done instead? There are several countries with radically different measures that still face high numbers of reported deaths - Would more severe restrictions have mitigated the most damaging vectors? A lot of the deaths come from elderly homes, for instance, and further lockdowns wouldn't naturally have prevented that (as much as, say, more personnel in elderly care) - What will the secondary effects be? The effects of Covid-19 go beyond the deaths from the disease itself. How many will die from the economical impact of lesser, or more severe restrictions? For instance. These are all difficult considerations and near-impossible to answer.
- martin_bech 6y ago
  The Swedes are actually poor at counting deaths, as they lag in their reporting, and often report 0 deaths in the weekend and hollidays. According to NYT Sweden has an excess of deaths totally of about 30%, about the same as France, but climbing. And no its not difficult to compare to say Denmark or Norway.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > The Swedes are actually poor at counting deaths, as they lag in their reporting, and often report 0 deaths in the weekend and hollidays. That doesn't make them poor at counting death, so long as those deaths do eventually get counted. Everyone knows there are lags in reporting and counting, and everyone should take those lags into account when using the data. Compare that to Spain, which has recently changed their count method and ended up with a confusing and misleading set of data. https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450736398098433?s=20 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1268450736398098433?...

zosima 6y ago

I have been following the situation in Sweden closely. As far as I can see, calling Tegnell a scientist is incorrect. He may have a Ph.D but does decisively not behave scientifically. Instead he should should be called a bureaucrat, which much better describes his behavior. The catastrophe that is swedish covid-19 strategy, probably started as something like this: http://www.openias.org/swedens-covid19-strategy http://www.openias.org/swedens-covid19-strategy They believed Covid-19 was much more infectious and much fewer people were seriously affected, than we now believe. This was understandable at the time, since it's known that early on in an epidemic only serious cases are noted, and so infectiousness is underestimated and mortality usually overestimated. However, towards march it became definitely clear for most everybody else that covid-19 was fairly serious for many people and the Chinese mortality numbers were not vastly exaggerated. Because of his belief in an exaggerated infectiousness, Tegnell believed herd immunity would be reached fairly fast. Most of april Tegnell spent on justifying his faulty assumptions, believing herd immunity was to be had in Stockholm in may. To justify this, they used highly dubious modelling and wishful thinking: https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/1254084767496261632 https://twitter.com/AdamJKucharski/status/125408476749626163... Sweden currently is now sitting in a horrible quagmire. The infection is still uncontrolled and mortality, though below its peak, is still significant. Testing infrastructure has still not been built out, and is still not done on all symptomatic cases. Likely because the infection was seen as having a similar severity to flu, and therefore it was presumed better to just stay home for a few days, than to go and get tested. Tegnell can not admit having been wrong, because of bureaucratic honor. The population which are, like in all other countries, generally not very scientifically literate or interested, have not quite fully grasped the situation. But judging by the latest polls of confidence in the government, many are starting to suspect something is not quite right. I fully support a very open debate, and believe all opinions have a right to be heard. But the Swedish situation should not be confused with science. It saddens me to say, that only very few countries have been more passive, bureaucratic and unscientific handling this crisis. And that seems to have cost quite many lives and much suffering for swedes.

Ma8ee 6y ago
I have followed the news in Sweden quite closely. I have never heard Anders Tegnell or anyone else från FHM say that they believe any significant herd immunity is close or anything they are trying to achieve. This is a strawman!