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The amount of misinformation (or the very least, confused statements) in this thread is high for being HN. Soo many people know much about Sweden without ever s

The amount of misinformation (or the very least, confused statements) in this thread is high for being HN. Soo many people know much about Sweden without ever setting their foot here. Interesting that. The world's apparent obsession with the Swedish strategy isn't about Sweden at all. It is about their own strategies, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for doing the right thing, whatever that was. There's myriads of variables that differ between Any two countries.

zosima 6y ago
A large part of this confusion has been caused by Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM). Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM) have clarified their strategy as: Keep the number of infected people down at any one time to not overwhelm the health system. Groups at risk for severe disease should quarantine themselves. But they have also repeatedly indicated that they don't want to stop the spread of infection completely. And that they are not running a strategy aiming at herd immunity, though when most people have been infected there will be herd immunity. That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  > That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic. I think it's a bit more than semantic at least. "use mitigations that are as effective as possible while still being sustainable in the long term". So long as healthcare isn't overwhelmed and R is kept under 1, these mitigations aren't leading to herd immunity because the outbreak is going to disappear before that, most likely. If you accept an R on or over 1 then you are using a strategy that will lead to herd immunity.
  - zosima 6y ago
    Again I think we are getting into semantics, where there's no reason to not be clear. If you make R < 1 you are in fact suppressing the disease. However slowly. If you are keeping R around 1 or above, you are mitigating. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172840/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172840/ Currently, it seems the disease is being suppressed in Sweden. I have no idea what Folkhälsomyndigheten or Anders Tegnell thinks about that.
    - alkonaut 6y ago
      Of course it’s being suppressed. R has been below 1 since what, mid-April? (Deaths and hospitalizations peaked on apr 24).
- heracles 6y ago
  I agree a bit, I'm not certain exactly what their game is either. The one thing that feels consistent is the priority to endurance, to push for actions that are sustainable in the long run. Of course, in the long run we are all dead anyway, so I'm not certain what's best!
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I would suppose the world's obsession would be seeing a lot of people dying and thinking in a perhaps mistaken way "that seems unnecessary" and then being upset enough by this idea to not think as highly of the Swedish government as it might otherwise wish people to think of it. A lot of course being in the eye of the beholder. I think that seems a less cynical and perhaps simpler explanation for why people would be obsessed with Sweden.
- riffraff 6y ago
  but other countries are having worse results due to mismanagement by their authorities, and yet are not at the center of the public discourse. I am inclined to agree with grandparent's comment: there is a lot of "we did better then them!" at play in the media.
- heracles 6y ago
  Let me try to rephrase it in a less cynical manner, best as I can. It seems to me that Sweden's strategy is attracting more attention (in form of primarily criticism) than f.x. Belgium's, despite the latters deathrate being ~2x that of Sweden's. To me that indicates that the issue is the strategy in itself, and not the magnitude of the failure of it. Other countries have failed worse (although thankfully the vast majority of countries are currently doing better than Sweden, hopefully forever). Why would people care about 4000 dead in a small country far away, when many don't give a damn when 4000 people die from starvation or malnurishment? Because it says something about _your_ country and _your_ strategy. For me that is the simplest and not at all cynical interpretation of this. I will admit this is speculation, but I don't think I claimed certainty. PS. I'm _guessing_ our Achilles tendon is certain organisational deficiancies in the care of the elderly. How it's done and at what stages of life one is moved between different kinds of care. Even if I'm right (big if) I fear that the outfall from this might be "me caveman gruk, weak restrictions bad for COVID19, dum-dum-donut", or the equivalent opposit. That would be sad. PS. PSS. Belgium seems to be the most "liberal" country in terms of including suspected COVID19-related deaths in the official statistics, but those are the numbers at our disposal. DSS.
  - 6y ago
drtillberg 6y ago
This. Sweden's path has been conventional. The attention is coming from nations that executed extreme and even revolutionary policies of universal home arrest, "shutting" an entire nation like a coffee shop, and sending a 30%+ of the workers onto unemployment. This ultimately comes back to the so-called "Trolley problem,"[1] which some posters in this thread have brilliantly acknowledged. Would we throw the whole world out of work, or imprison them, or bankrupt them, to save 1 life? If not, what is the limit or deciding principle? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
- craigsmansion 6y ago
  > This. You say "this", and then proceed to state the exact fallacy the OP made as a truthful observation. > Sweden's path has been conventional. Yes. Sweden's path has been conventional. Italy's path has been conventional as well. There is this whole wave of misapprehension and misunderstanding on HN, especially when it comes to the pandemic: "My opinion is backed by facts, therefor all other opinions must be political and I do not need to think about them because my opinion is correct", which is a form of circular reasoning. > This ultimately comes back to This ultimately comes back people whose day-job entails shoveling data with computers and being (or at least feeling) smarter than average, and as such feel at least somewhat qualified as a statistician/epidemiologist. One of the few things that is clear is that the spread and the course of the disease has an enormous amount of unknown confounding factors. This means that any approach within general ethical boundaries is valid: from making future prediction based on the most advanced epidemiological data to date, to a system-wide shutdown of "doing the things that are very likely to worsen the situation". None of the scientific advisors to the various democratic governments are complete idiots, and even none of the elected government officials involved are out to willfully wreak havoc on their populations. Find out what works. Find out what doesn't work and why it doesn't work even though it seems to work elsewhere. Sweden's approach is valid. Italy's approach is valid. The chances of any one person getting it exactly right the first time are negligible, so there is no point in cheering for what one believed to be the "winning team". To spell it out for you: you are not right. You are, at best, less wrong. And to paraphrase the OP, "it is about their own opinions, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for believing the right thing."
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Well, Sweden's 4:10000 death rate is alarming. In only a few months. And their confident approach (doing very little) in the face of scant information was bold. With lives at stake, its natural to be alarmed/scandalized at their lack of effort to control a pandemic.
- sojournerc 6y ago
  A pandemic cannot be controlled, only mitigated. That's what one part of the definition of epidemic vs. pandemic. What's alarming is that there isn't sympathy or discussion of the way lockdowns are putting lives at stake, when control of the virus is an illusion. It's natural to be alarmed at overly authoritarian responses, the justifications of which are diminishing as we get more information. Sweden, as far as I understand, is doing very little authoritarian intervention, but are providing thre public information so they can make their own choices with respect to risks they want to take.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Of course there's discussion. All over. And the point of lockdown was, time. Time to understand what to do next. Now that's happening. The concern is all the idealism and absolutism thrown about, instead of measured intelligent discussion, IMO.
  - graeme 6y ago
    But several countries have basically eliminated the virus. SARS-COV-2 spreads in clusters. Tracing these clusters, testing people, and isolating patients seems to work. Neighboring Denmark is down to ~30 cases a day. Is it impossible to believe that with border control and testing they’ll basically have it eliminated on their territory? Countries which have basically eliminated it: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, iceland, luxembourg, monaco, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belize, China Also the Canadian provinces of new brunswick, nova scotia, newfoundland, PEI, Saskatchewan, Manitoba I’m sure I’m forgetting some. What do the countries in that list have in common? Yes some are islands but not all. Yes some are small but not all. For the most part, they took action early, and used contact tracing, testing, isolation, and border control systems. According to this article the small, poor country of Belize has outdone the province of Quebec, where I live. Belize developed a software based contact tracing system. Quebec still does it by fax. It is not a surprise which jurisdiction has better results. What’s your theory for how the systems built in these countries will inevitably fail? The virus is contagious but it isn’t magical. It has to spread from person to person. If you test people, isolate the infected, trace their contacts, the virus has nowhere to go. Most of the west is still not isolating the infected, instead sending them home to their families, and in many cases free to leave home if they decide to break quarantine. https://www.vancourier.com/living/government-of-belize-credits-ground-breaking-technology-for-halting-covid-19-1.24137140 https://www.vancourier.com/living/government-of-belize-credi...
JPKab 6y ago
You are 100% correct about the world looking at Sweden through a lens to validate their own opinions (and enacted strategies) about how best to deal with the virus. I've watched over the last few months as people in the US flip flopped: Center-left folks who cite Sweden as an economic model but trashed the way they handled the virus due to their support of lockdowns. Center-right folks who normally claim Sweden is nothing like the US and therefore we can't emulate their economic policies, but then point to them as a model for reopening. Similarly, every single mention of antibody tests on here results in a similar collection of highly-intelligent people not recognizing their own drive to validate their preconceived beliefs.
- psweber 6y ago
  We're more susceptible to god complex because we're highly skilled at one thing already. We also don't want to admit to ourselves that we're living through a confusing time that we can't make sense of in them moment.
legulere 6y ago
I have lived in Sweden, and see why people living there would believe that Sweden’s policy is normal. But it’s not. It’s not only killing Sweden’s population but also recklessly endangers the rest of the EU. I really hope borders stay closed towards Sweden
- heracles 6y ago
  I can only speak for the parts of Sweden where I live and socialise, but I know of no-one who things our policy is "normal", whatever that means. It is some kind of myth that we are ignoring the risks and pretends like nothing is happening. Lots of restrictions, just not as strict as it could have been. That part about recklessly endangering Europe (!) is hyperbole, UK, Spain and Italy has more deaths capita but apparently the EU can handle them, so... * Source for death per capita is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries. I've heard something about them not being fully reliable, but the death statistics should be comparatively easy to aggregate, so I'll use that number unless obviously wrong.
  - oska 6y ago
    Hyperbole or not, Sweden is going to have to live with being excluded from a lot of EU & international travel relaxations.
v77 6y ago
Heh, I don't think Europeans get to get their tails up given that they are the world kings and queens of criticizing everybody else in the world.
blub 6y ago
Countries have various institutions and organisations tracking and reporting on the virus within their borders. Then there's the press and the locals publishing info on various channels. One doesn't need to set foot in Sweden to form an opinion about how things are going.
- heracles 6y ago
  You are right. I meant to point out that for some significant proportion of people, Sweden are in these circumstances not a country, but a tool to prove their point. And unless one is careful, which some people are, one will reach whatever conclusions one is looking for simply due to lack of resolution. From far away enough you can come up with the details yourself...
catears 6y ago
I agree with this. It scares me that there are people (even in this thread?!) who say Tegnell is some wicked scientist experimenting on the swedish population. Feels like some people read a buzzfeed article on viruses and suddenly they are an expert that somehow figured out the things that the government agency for national health did not. "No, my extremely limited knowledge about virology tells me that I am right and the only logical conclusion is that Tegnell is a wicked scientist". For gods sake... Grow a brain, will you?

zosima 6y ago

A large part of this confusion has been caused by Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM). Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM) have clarified their strategy as: Keep the number of infected people down at any one time to not overwhelm the health system. Groups at risk for severe disease should quarantine themselves. But they have also repeatedly indicated that they don't want to stop the spread of infection completely. And that they are not running a strategy aiming at herd immunity, though when most people have been infected there will be herd immunity. That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic.

alkonaut 6y ago
> That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic. I think it's a bit more than semantic at least. "use mitigations that are as effective as possible while still being sustainable in the long term". So long as healthcare isn't overwhelmed and R is kept under 1, these mitigations aren't leading to herd immunity because the outbreak is going to disappear before that, most likely. If you accept an R on or over 1 then you are using a strategy that will lead to herd immunity.
- zosima 6y ago
  Again I think we are getting into semantics, where there's no reason to not be clear. If you make R < 1 you are in fact suppressing the disease. However slowly. If you are keeping R around 1 or above, you are mitigating. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172840/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172840/ Currently, it seems the disease is being suppressed in Sweden. I have no idea what Folkhälsomyndigheten or Anders Tegnell thinks about that.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    Of course it’s being suppressed. R has been below 1 since what, mid-April? (Deaths and hospitalizations peaked on apr 24).
heracles 6y ago
I agree a bit, I'm not certain exactly what their game is either. The one thing that feels consistent is the priority to endurance, to push for actions that are sustainable in the long run. Of course, in the long run we are all dead anyway, so I'm not certain what's best!

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

I would suppose the world's obsession would be seeing a lot of people dying and thinking in a perhaps mistaken way "that seems unnecessary" and then being upset enough by this idea to not think as highly of the Swedish government as it might otherwise wish people to think of it. A lot of course being in the eye of the beholder. I think that seems a less cynical and perhaps simpler explanation for why people would be obsessed with Sweden.

riffraff 6y ago
but other countries are having worse results due to mismanagement by their authorities, and yet are not at the center of the public discourse. I am inclined to agree with grandparent's comment: there is a lot of "we did better then them!" at play in the media.
heracles 6y ago
Let me try to rephrase it in a less cynical manner, best as I can. It seems to me that Sweden's strategy is attracting more attention (in form of primarily criticism) than f.x. Belgium's, despite the latters deathrate being ~2x that of Sweden's. To me that indicates that the issue is the strategy in itself, and not the magnitude of the failure of it. Other countries have failed worse (although thankfully the vast majority of countries are currently doing better than Sweden, hopefully forever). Why would people care about 4000 dead in a small country far away, when many don't give a damn when 4000 people die from starvation or malnurishment? Because it says something about _your_ country and _your_ strategy. For me that is the simplest and not at all cynical interpretation of this. I will admit this is speculation, but I don't think I claimed certainty. PS. I'm _guessing_ our Achilles tendon is certain organisational deficiancies in the care of the elderly. How it's done and at what stages of life one is moved between different kinds of care. Even if I'm right (big if) I fear that the outfall from this might be "me caveman gruk, weak restrictions bad for COVID19, dum-dum-donut", or the equivalent opposit. That would be sad. PS. PSS. Belgium seems to be the most "liberal" country in terms of including suspected COVID19-related deaths in the official statistics, but those are the numbers at our disposal. DSS.
- 6y ago

drtillberg 6y ago

This. Sweden's path has been conventional. The attention is coming from nations that executed extreme and even revolutionary policies of universal home arrest, "shutting" an entire nation like a coffee shop, and sending a 30%+ of the workers onto unemployment. This ultimately comes back to the so-called "Trolley problem,"[1] which some posters in this thread have brilliantly acknowledged. Would we throw the whole world out of work, or imprison them, or bankrupt them, to save 1 life? If not, what is the limit or deciding principle? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

craigsmansion 6y ago
> This. You say "this", and then proceed to state the exact fallacy the OP made as a truthful observation. > Sweden's path has been conventional. Yes. Sweden's path has been conventional. Italy's path has been conventional as well. There is this whole wave of misapprehension and misunderstanding on HN, especially when it comes to the pandemic: "My opinion is backed by facts, therefor all other opinions must be political and I do not need to think about them because my opinion is correct", which is a form of circular reasoning. > This ultimately comes back to This ultimately comes back people whose day-job entails shoveling data with computers and being (or at least feeling) smarter than average, and as such feel at least somewhat qualified as a statistician/epidemiologist. One of the few things that is clear is that the spread and the course of the disease has an enormous amount of unknown confounding factors. This means that any approach within general ethical boundaries is valid: from making future prediction based on the most advanced epidemiological data to date, to a system-wide shutdown of "doing the things that are very likely to worsen the situation". None of the scientific advisors to the various democratic governments are complete idiots, and even none of the elected government officials involved are out to willfully wreak havoc on their populations. Find out what works. Find out what doesn't work and why it doesn't work even though it seems to work elsewhere. Sweden's approach is valid. Italy's approach is valid. The chances of any one person getting it exactly right the first time are negligible, so there is no point in cheering for what one believed to be the "winning team". To spell it out for you: you are not right. You are, at best, less wrong. And to paraphrase the OP, "it is about their own opinions, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for believing the right thing."

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

Well, Sweden's 4:10000 death rate is alarming. In only a few months. And their confident approach (doing very little) in the face of scant information was bold. With lives at stake, its natural to be alarmed/scandalized at their lack of effort to control a pandemic.

sojournerc 6y ago
A pandemic cannot be controlled, only mitigated. That's what one part of the definition of epidemic vs. pandemic. What's alarming is that there isn't sympathy or discussion of the way lockdowns are putting lives at stake, when control of the virus is an illusion. It's natural to be alarmed at overly authoritarian responses, the justifications of which are diminishing as we get more information. Sweden, as far as I understand, is doing very little authoritarian intervention, but are providing thre public information so they can make their own choices with respect to risks they want to take.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Of course there's discussion. All over. And the point of lockdown was, time. Time to understand what to do next. Now that's happening. The concern is all the idealism and absolutism thrown about, instead of measured intelligent discussion, IMO.
- graeme 6y ago
  But several countries have basically eliminated the virus. SARS-COV-2 spreads in clusters. Tracing these clusters, testing people, and isolating patients seems to work. Neighboring Denmark is down to ~30 cases a day. Is it impossible to believe that with border control and testing they’ll basically have it eliminated on their territory? Countries which have basically eliminated it: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, iceland, luxembourg, monaco, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belize, China Also the Canadian provinces of new brunswick, nova scotia, newfoundland, PEI, Saskatchewan, Manitoba I’m sure I’m forgetting some. What do the countries in that list have in common? Yes some are islands but not all. Yes some are small but not all. For the most part, they took action early, and used contact tracing, testing, isolation, and border control systems. According to this article the small, poor country of Belize has outdone the province of Quebec, where I live. Belize developed a software based contact tracing system. Quebec still does it by fax. It is not a surprise which jurisdiction has better results. What’s your theory for how the systems built in these countries will inevitably fail? The virus is contagious but it isn’t magical. It has to spread from person to person. If you test people, isolate the infected, trace their contacts, the virus has nowhere to go. Most of the west is still not isolating the infected, instead sending them home to their families, and in many cases free to leave home if they decide to break quarantine. https://www.vancourier.com/living/government-of-belize-credits-ground-breaking-technology-for-halting-covid-19-1.24137140 https://www.vancourier.com/living/government-of-belize-credi...

JPKab 6y ago

You are 100% correct about the world looking at Sweden through a lens to validate their own opinions (and enacted strategies) about how best to deal with the virus. I've watched over the last few months as people in the US flip flopped: Center-left folks who cite Sweden as an economic model but trashed the way they handled the virus due to their support of lockdowns. Center-right folks who normally claim Sweden is nothing like the US and therefore we can't emulate their economic policies, but then point to them as a model for reopening. Similarly, every single mention of antibody tests on here results in a similar collection of highly-intelligent people not recognizing their own drive to validate their preconceived beliefs.

psweber 6y ago
We're more susceptible to god complex because we're highly skilled at one thing already. We also don't want to admit to ourselves that we're living through a confusing time that we can't make sense of in them moment.

legulere 6y ago

I have lived in Sweden, and see why people living there would believe that Sweden’s policy is normal. But it’s not. It’s not only killing Sweden’s population but also recklessly endangers the rest of the EU. I really hope borders stay closed towards Sweden

heracles 6y ago
I can only speak for the parts of Sweden where I live and socialise, but I know of no-one who things our policy is "normal", whatever that means. It is some kind of myth that we are ignoring the risks and pretends like nothing is happening. Lots of restrictions, just not as strict as it could have been. That part about recklessly endangering Europe (!) is hyperbole, UK, Spain and Italy has more deaths capita but apparently the EU can handle them, so... * Source for death per capita is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries. I've heard something about them not being fully reliable, but the death statistics should be comparatively easy to aggregate, so I'll use that number unless obviously wrong.
- oska 6y ago
  Hyperbole or not, Sweden is going to have to live with being excluded from a lot of EU & international travel relaxations.

v77 6y ago

Heh, I don't think Europeans get to get their tails up given that they are the world kings and queens of criticizing everybody else in the world.

blub 6y ago

Countries have various institutions and organisations tracking and reporting on the virus within their borders. Then there's the press and the locals publishing info on various channels. One doesn't need to set foot in Sweden to form an opinion about how things are going.

heracles 6y ago
You are right. I meant to point out that for some significant proportion of people, Sweden are in these circumstances not a country, but a tool to prove their point. And unless one is careful, which some people are, one will reach whatever conclusions one is looking for simply due to lack of resolution. From far away enough you can come up with the details yourself...

catears 6y ago

I agree with this. It scares me that there are people (even in this thread?!) who say Tegnell is some wicked scientist experimenting on the swedish population. Feels like some people read a buzzfeed article on viruses and suddenly they are an expert that somehow figured out the things that the government agency for national health did not. "No, my extremely limited knowledge about virology tells me that I am right and the only logical conclusion is that Tegnell is a wicked scientist". For gods sake... Grow a brain, will you?