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Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on economic gains

331 points by vonmoltke 6y ago

martindbp 6y ago
As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy. Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask (still), social distancing is minimal (crammed subways, buses and beaches), schools have remained open, yet there has not been a single death in the worst hit area of Stockholm for the past 5 days. Again, I think given the uncertainty and lack of evidence in March, not shutting down was an extremely stupid risk, and Tegnell and crew have shown to been wrong at practically every turn, but at this point you have to look at the evidence and reassess. It would seem Stockholm has reached the point of significant herd immunity, which is probably true for other hard hit areas like NYC. Less hit areas will probably have second waves, and unless a vaccine is here soon, my guess is most of the world will go through the same thing eventually.
- kanox 6y ago
  > I'm starting to think it was the right decision Sweden is #6 by deaths/population according to this page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ This would indicate that the swedish response is among the worst. Several countries with comparable health systems have a death rate which is many times lower, for example Germany. This saved many thousands of lives. What am I missing?
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    If the pandemic is expected to continue for many months, isn't it a bit premature to talk about current death rates as a metric for success? Given Sweden's 'herd immunity' plan, higher death rates at the beginning would seem to be a given. They didn't flatten their curve. But as they approach something like herd immunity, the number of possible carriers should plummet permanently (assuming immunity is a thing with COVID), and infections and deaths would permanently decline. Nations which have held down infection numbers with shutdowns have, of course, flattened their curves. But they may well suffer from second/third waves which will hike up their total numbers.
    - kingkawn 6y ago
      Herd immunity cannot be considered the plan given that herd immunity has not been proven to be possible
      - noodlenotes 6y ago
        Indefinite lockdowns, vaccines haven't been "proven possible" either. At some point you have to make a plan with the best information you have. The fact that spread in New York has slowed down compared to other states that weren't initially hit hard implies that there's some immunity effect going on.
      - tripletao 6y ago
        Herd immunity is certainly possible--we could hold a parade, and spray it with cultured virus. Obviously no one is doing that, because no one actually wants natural herd immunity. Sweden just thinks the cost to control the epidemic to the point that it doesn't end in that way is unacceptably high. If a treatment is discovered next month that cuts the IFR by a factor of ten, then Sweden was wrong. If no safe and effective vaccine is ever developed and treatment never improves, then Sweden was right. Reality will fall somewhere between those two unlikely extremes, and we don't know where. Fewer infected is always good news[1], in Sweden or anywhere else--it means fewer dead now, more infections pushed until later when treatment will probably be better, etc. It's weird to see low infection rates twisted around as if they were bad, "evidence that herd immunity may not be possible". This is particularly true when the prevalence is compared to herd immunity from a model assuming a well-mixed, homogeneous population, which we know overestimates the herd immunity threshold (though not by how much, since estimates of the heterogeneity of the coronavirus are even more uncertain than those of R0). Finally, herd immunity is a gradual process. Even in a crude homogeneous SIR model, you may approach it asymptotically but never get there. This is good--the only case where a disease "burns itself out" abruptly is when there's big overshoot, which implies many avoidable deaths. Perhaps that kind of overshoot could be desirable in a population of young people, if the small excess mortality in the young people were more than offset by their decreased ability to spread it later; but that's a narrow needle to thread. For the avoidance of doubt, I believe Sweden did a bad job protecting elder care facilities (though many places that locked down did too), and I disagree with their position on masks. Their response otherwise seems reasonable to me, not obviously better than stricter approaches but also not obviously worse. 1. Unless you know the death count and you're looking for the denominator for your IFR, since more infected then means lower IFR. That was true early in the epidemic, before the first high-quality serosurveys, but not anymore.
  - martindbp 6y ago
    Simple: it's not over yet, but it might be for some hard hit areas of Sweden. We'll see. Then there is another question whether it was worth it to shut down the world economy over a 0.05% death rate, or a few years worth of flu at once. I'd say probably no. We didn't know this back in Feb/March, which is why I was very much for a quarantine then, but not now. I don't think the powers that be would have done a complete shutdown if they'd known what they know now.
    - tomjakubowski 6y ago
      > it might be for some hard hit areas of Sweden The long-term success of Sweden's approach appears to hinge on this question. What evidence is there which supports that their hardest hit locales have achieved herd immunity?
      - wk_end 6y ago
        Numbers and projections show things slowing down in Sweden [1]. The obvious explanation for this would be that herd immunity is kicking in, isn't it? [1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden
      - martindbp 6y ago
        My own observeration from Stockholm is: beaches crowded during heatwave, public transit is crowded as usual. Lots of movement of people, travel within Sweden etc. Practically nobody is wearing a mask. People are still generally careful, washing hands, keeping the distance in lines etc, but I don't think this can explain the cases going down. In March-April, I think people were the most careful, when hundreds were dying every day. Since then people have gradually become more relaxed, but the numbers keep going down. Of course, it could be that these rather small measures have pushed r0 a bit under 1 ever since March. But there have also been reports that for each person tested with antibodies, two more are actually immune, which would put the immunity at maybe 30% two weeks ago. At least it's in the right ball-park, as some have proposed that herd immunity could be reached at much lower percentages than previously thought.
  - drewg123 6y ago
    The same data source also shows that Sweden's per-capita death rates are lower than Spain and Italy, which had full scale lockdowns.
    - watwut 6y ago
      They had lockdowns after country systems were completely overwhelmed. Up to inability to handle dead people in some places. Their situations was strong argument for other countries to lock down much sooner.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        The question is whether locking down sooner actually solves the problem. As Melbourne heads into another 6 weeks of lockdown, I'm growing skeptical.
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- throw-away_42 6y ago
  Sweden's total per-capita death rate is 50% higher than the Netherlands, 500% higher than Germany and Denmark, and 900+% higher than Finland, Norway, and Poland. All those deaths have not made you safer--your daily per-capita death rate is still several times that of those countries. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data
  - martindbp 6y ago
    The current death rate, 10-15 people a day, is insignificant compared to other causes of death. It is not reasonable to talk about percentage differences when we're talking 15 vs 3 deaths a day.
    - alltakendamned 6y ago
      Do note that there's easily a 15-day delay when it comes to Sweden reporting somewhat correct number of deaths, so let's not focus on the "current" death rate too much. And I expect the reporting delay to actually be worse right now as we're in the middle of vacation time. Source: https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/ https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
      - catalogia 6y ago
        > Do note that there's easily a 15-day delay when it comes to Sweden reporting somewhat correct number of deaths, 15 days ago Sweden was experiencing about 20 covid deaths per day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#Deaths_per_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#De...
    - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
      Really? 4500 hundred extra death a year is not insignifcant.
      - martindbp 6y ago
        90000 people die in Sweden every year. Shutting down the economy for a 5% increase is not reasonable.
- drummer 6y ago
  Sweden did the right thing. Covid-19 is not worse than the flu. Norway recently also admitted the lockdown there was not neccesary according to the data they have now. In March they thought differently.
  - martindbp 6y ago
    It is definitely many times worse than the flu, but probably not 10 and definitely not 100 times.
    - text70 6y ago
      It's ten times worse. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publikationsarkiv/i/influenza-in-sweden/?pub=63511 https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publ...
    - addled 6y ago
      https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm For US data, I like how this table compares deaths from covid, flu, and pneumonia against the total deaths for all causes each week. I especially like that they show the ratio of current deaths vs the average of the 3 years prior for the same week. The downside is how the data is slowly updated as each state trickles in data, so the most recent 4-8 weeks look lower now than if you check back later. Still if you look back to April, flu deaths each week were in the hundreds, while covid deaths 9-15k. Saying it is 10x or more worse, doesn't seem unreasonable to me. What really grabbed me is that the total US deaths in April from all causes was +40% compared to prior 3 year average.
      - drummer 6y ago
        Unfortunately covid deaths are highly unreliable as there is lots of evidence worldwide that people dying with covid are also counted with those dying of covid. Also lots of cases of dead people being counted while not being tested or positively tested for covid.
- contemporary343 6y ago
  Not really: I would much rather get the coronavirus today than three months ago. And would much rather get it 6 months or a year from now than today. Survival rates are measurably improving due to both improved procedures (proning) and better protocols on steroid use, as well as emerging therapies like remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies (in addition to convalescent plasma). Not to mention that many vaccines are barreling into phase 3 trials soon. I suspect history will not be kind to Sweden's approach.
- h3ll0k4ll3 6y ago
  Dont fall for the numbers game. The numbers in Sweden are reported on with an expected delay of 7 - 10 days for some deaths. The other game is the break-point in time 1400 - each day when public health agency ( state run ) report their numbers. They reported no new dead in Stockholm and then later on tuesday afternoon Smittskydd Stockholm ( regionally run ) reported 7 new deaths in Stockholm since monday...
jnwatson 6y ago
I don’t believe the article has addressed Sweden’s main argument for not shutting down: that herd immunity should be the prime driver. Essentially, that everyone is going to eventually have roughly the same death rate, so might as well get it over with. That remains to be seen; if Sweden’s peers can prevent flare-ups, it looks like Sweden was wrong.
- Traster 6y ago
  Well it's not only that, if you overwhelm your healthcare system you're going to end up with excess deaths even if the same number of people get the virus in the end. Also, we've learned some mitigation techniques over the last few months (like steroids in late stage treatment) which means that the idea that 'everyone will get it eventually' just isn't relevant - its likely that our survival rate will go up over time even without a proper vaccine.
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    Whether this is an issue for Sweden should be clear from the death rate among the infected, but that data isn't mentioned in the article. I assume that figure is difficult to calculate without a precise/consistent case count for multiple countries.
  - wk_end 6y ago
    Yes, although Sweden never came close to overwhelming its health care system.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Ironically, medical researchers wouldn't have learned those mitigation techniques (like Dexamethasone) without a large population of patients to use as experimental subjects. In other words, if we succeed in slowing down the spread (which would be a good thing) then medical research into treatments and vaccines will also slow down.
    - stallmanite 6y ago
      Would work on a vaccine really slow down? There are many thousands of patients and how many does a vaccine study require in practice?
frereubu 6y ago
One thing missing from this report is that a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes, and ministers have publicly stated that not entirely locking down care homes from the outset was a big mistake. If they had done this, the figures may well not look nearly as bad. Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic. I'll be interested to see where countries are a year or two from now. This isn't to say I support the Swedish government's strategy - I don't feel like I know enough to say what the best strategy is, although I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no strategy, seemingly like the USA and UK.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  A very large percentage of US deaths are also from the same type of residents - care homes, elderly communities and such. I read that it was as much as 40%. I need to find source.
  - ziga 6y ago
    43% according to NYT (includes residents and workers): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-nursing-homes.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-nurs... 55k+ deaths, 296k+ cases, staggering numbers. Out of a 1.3M nursing home population (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/nursing-home-care.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/nursing-home-care.htm), which makes you wonder if the recent decrease in deaths is driven by the fact that the majority of the susceptible nursing home population has already been affected.
- bhupy 6y ago
  > I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no strategy, seemingly like the USA The USA does not have "no strategy", it just depends from State to State[1]. Every state has had some form of lockdown and school closure. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-map-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-ma...
  - triceratops 6y ago
mips_avatar 6y ago
One interesting thing about Sweden is the high percentage of people who live alone. It's a big deal because in China most deaths came from an infected person spreading it to their family. Makes you think that if Sweden's numbers are as bad as they are without large-scale family spread, it would be absolutely horrific elsewhere.
mettamage 6y ago
Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spreading rate that was bigger than 1, if no measures were taken. So, I'd expect between 100,000 to 200,000 to have died. I'm really happy that didn't happen. It also makes me curious as to why. Is it because of Sweden's demographics (people living alone)? Or is it because the virus isn't as deadly as we think it is? How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths. It's awful what happened, but the highest flu season in The Netherlands, for example, killed an estimated 9444 people [1] on 17,280,000 people, which is slightly higher than what the Swedes had to go through now (also rounded to 0.05%). I know that the novel coronavirus is not a flu, but if this is it, then well, I've seen worse, apparently. I know the virus isn't done, but it had months to roam free in Sweden. One would expect it would double up every 5 days in terms of how many people would be infected. Edit: they did need to maintain social distance apparently. I wouldn't call that "doing nothing". Sure a lot more can be done, but I feel the media are framing the Swedes a bit inaccurately. Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable) [1] In Dutch, unfortunately: https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths. Because the 1% death rate is a reference to people catching the disease, not the size of the population. Sweden as of now appears to have about 73k officially confirmed cases. Swedes still voluntarily distanced and closed down, hence the economic damage mentioned in the article. Given that there is no widespread immunity still with total infections in the single digits, those deaths will eventually go up. I'm not sure if the American attitude of indifference is taking hold here now, but 5000 deaths when 4000 of them could have been avoided is no matter to brush aside, it's in fact a straight up disaster. This is an unprecedent amount of needless death in modern Swedish history.
oxymoran 6y ago
I find this article a little disingenuous and here is why: Sweden-5420 deaths out of a population of 10 million while no lock down. Michigan-6005 deaths out of a population of 10 million and we have been locked down since mid March. To be clear, I was in favor of the lockdown at first and I still am in favor of keeping things like bars and casinos closed but it’s become clear that the virus doesn’t have much affect on younger populations and that the death rate has been dropping. Here in Michigan, while our daily new cases is still creeping up, our 7 day moving average of deaths has continued to plummet.
- akmarinov 6y ago
  Well Sweden closed its borders, where Michigan can’t close its borders to other states, so Michigan’s is naturally higher.
  - Svip 6y ago
    Sweden did not close its borders, although it followed EU guidelines to close its borders beyond the EU. The US closed its borders to certain areas of the world, which is what this is comparable to.
    - akmarinov 6y ago
      Well all other countries in the EU closed their borders to them, so it’s effectively the same thing.
      - username90 6y ago
        No they didn't. Danish, Finnish and Norwegian tourists are still coming to Sweden. It is just that Swedes can't go to them.
        NoSubstitute 6y ago
        And that is a textbook example of insanity. To be fair, I do think that they are supposed to self-quarantine when returning home?
bjourne 6y ago
You have to look at the excess deaths figures. That is, how many usually dies from January to June in a normal year and compare that to how many extra that died in 2020. For Sweden the excess deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or take 10%. That is not the case for many other countries. For example, the UK had almost twice the number of excess deaths as Covid deaths in a few weeks in April. That indicates that Covid deaths were under reported in the UK. There are also some indications that Covid deaths have been under reported in other countries. In other words, comparing countries by their Covid deaths/capita rates is meaningless. The statistics are likely completely wrong because different countries use different definitions of "Covid deaths" and different reporting procedures. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/may/29/excess-deaths-uk-has-one-highest-levels-europe https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/may/29...
- leto_ii 6y ago
  This is an important observation. In the Netherlands, where I live, I've had a number of people look at me with great surprise and mistrust when I mentioned that the Dutch have done a terrible job with this epidemic. The Guardian plots show that the Netherlands is one of the worst when it comes to under-reporting. This is not to say however that the Swedes have done a good job. While their numbers are credible, their magnitude is still unacceptably large: 0.5/1000 Swedes have so far died of the corona virus.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway. Considering COVID has closed many of life's fun things, there will be an entire generation of people who have effectively "lost" a year of the things they hoped they would do in their lifetime. By stating open, Sweden might decrease life expectancy in years, but increase it in terms of 'things achieved in a lifetime'
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pengaru 6y ago
It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic anyways. Why even pay to have the lights on? You need to mothball the operation ASAP and lobby for government assistance for the duration. I was just poking at rough figures last night out of curiosity regarding when the other end of this arrives in terms of 60% herd immunity for the US. Just pulling numbers out of my ass, like 200,000,000 for 60% and an avg infection rate of 100,000/day. With those figures it's 5.5yrs before 60% gets infected. We're at more like 50,000/day last I checked, but who knows how accurate that is. Either way, it looks like this is going to be a life of masks and social distancing for a long time. Hopefully a vaccine arrives in volume before 5+ years go by.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  I feel like we should just start building a life of social distance. I really hate getting the normal flu so would like to prevent that too.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  > It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic anyways In Sweden people still seem happy to go out to bars and restaurants, even in the middle of a pandemic. It's non-stop work for the government to shut down venues that are crowded beyond the allowed covid19 congestion regulation. This whole "even if restaurants and bars were open, nobody would go to them" narrative just doesn't bear out in reality. We're seeing the same thing in the UK now as well.
  - pengaru 6y ago
    Your comment is in direct contradiction with TFA, did you read it?
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      I did read it (and insinuating I didn’t is against the rules). Nowhere does it have any proof of restaurants losing all their customers. It says that economists predict a contraction (that hasn’t happened yet), that consumer spending at one point was down 25%, and that the manufacturing sector had to shut down due to supply chain issues. I never said that restaurants have lost customers, just that there is still a very significant amount of people willing to go out anyway. The Google Mobility report shows that retail & recreation (which includes restaurants) for Sweden is currently down only 1%!!! (workplaces -40%, transit -25%)
thepangolino 6y ago
Sweden has half the COVID death of Belgium despite having had some of the more lax restrictions. The only reason Sweden is facing economic hardship is because of its starting position and the fact most of the world decided to go full retard on their own.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  Belgium overcounts its cases, deliberately so.
- yxhuvud 6y ago
  Sweden also has an private sector extremely dependent on exporting stuff, so when global trade is down so is the Swedish economy.
cm2187 6y ago
To me this is moving the goalpost. The stated objective of the lockdown was not to overwhelm the ICUs. As far as I know the ICUs in Sweden have not been overwhelmed. So how is that a failure? As for the economic impact, given the amount of life support injections into the economy, I think the real economic impact of the shock is yet to be seen. Defaults are only starting to rise.
- vmception 6y ago
  I have been willing to be frustrated with moving the goal post, but there is new information that mayors and governors know that the general public doesn't have a good way to know: The low mortality rate and managed ICU capacity isn't the whole story. there is a large population of recovering and recovered that have serious complications, that seem random and are unproductive to our society. Blood clots resulting in amputations. 90 day recovery time periods. Other unknown and randomly targeted blood oxygen issues. The mayors and governors and public health ministers are reacting to that in their own municipalities and countries. The outcomes are not equal, the variables have many different names between jurisdictions, and therefore the stats are not easily collectable. But for people on the front line and getting briefed by those on the front line, they see something horrible that they need to move the goal post to "cases" instead of just deaths and ICU capacity.
  - TheGrim-888 6y ago
    If the complications are a serious problem, as you claim, then I have a few follow up questions: 1) You're making some significant claims, and should therefore have significant data and evidence to back up your claims. Over 3 million people in the US have tested positive for covid. What percentage of them needed to have a limb amputated? That should be easily verifiable. What percentage of them had a blood clot and serious damage? What percentage of them currently have persistent long term damage? If you're making the claim that these things are such a serious problem, you should have data that backs up how common the problem is, and how bad it is. 2) How different are the complications from the normal complications that the flu/pneumonia/etc. can give? Tens of thousands of people get the flu, have complications, and die every year. Tens of thousands of elderly people get the flu, and have long-term damage for the rest of their life. As a society we don't care about that at all. Are you saying covid does more damage, or has more complications? If so, where's the evidence comparing the level of damage/complications? It's my theory at the moment that this "complication" talk is just another viral "meme" that's mostly driven/spread by people just repeating what other people said, which spreads like wildfire, but never has any actual data backing it up. Of course there are people that have had serious complications. But there's people that have had serious complications from every disease. And it says nothing about how common it is. For example, if 0.00001% of people that get covid have to have a limb amputated, yeah that's horrible, and yeah it'd be great if we could just snap our fingers and make that not happen, but is it really something to focus on?
ojhughes 6y ago
Sweden are a model of pragmatism, taking a sensible choice to not have an authoritarian lockdown. Freedom of choice, freedom of movement and freedom of commerce are sacred.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  Disagree, it was incredibly reckless. We still don’t fully understand the virus’ transmission vectors, R-values, etc. It very easily could have had a higher fatality rate or transmission rate potentially killing many more people. Claiming it’s a model of pragmatism is a post-hoc rationalization of poor policy.
glofish 6y ago
Sweden is much hated because it demonstrates how the scientific epidemiological models, the studies on mask effectiveness, lockdown estimations etc are all junk science. None of their models would have predicted the trajectory for Sweden, not even close. And that is because none are based on sound science but are guesstimates at best yet are paraded around as the product of the best minds in the world. Much is made about the growing anti-science sentiment in the world, the rushed pseudo scientific justification will only strengthen that. Give it a year and most of the justification will be walked back, it will turn out that wearing a mask is actually detrimental to public health. It boggles the mind that people assume there must be no ill effects to breathing through a mucus-laden cotton sheet filled with microorganisms captured from the air, ...
- latchkey 6y ago
  > I don't understand how people assume it is healthy to breathe through a mucus-laden cotton sheet filled with microorganisms captured from the air, ... Tell that to the millions of people who go skiing every year, or the people who work in hospitals all day long, every day. I wash my mask every time I use it and I rotate through several of them. Nobody is asking you to wear a dirty mask.
  - glofish 6y ago
    none of that mask wearing is done at the scale and in the manner forced upon the population nurses change their masks all the time, nobody skis every day for eight hours, (FWIW the vast majority of people skiing don't wear masks over their mouths) > I wash my mask every time I use it and I rotate through several of them Like every hour? If not good luck with that, it is a pit of infection, a wet and warm substrate for bacteria and fungi.
    - latchkey 6y ago
      > nurses change their masks all the time, Do they? Are you a nurse? > nobody skis every day for eight hours, (FWIW the vast majority of people skiing don't wear masks over their mouths) Show me the statistics on that. > Like every hour? If not good luck with that, it is a pit of infection, a wet and warm substrate for bacteria and fungi. This is the most inane argument ever. You're basically saying those same exact bacteria and fungi magically don't go into our airways without a mask? Masks magically breed this within a day? Also... who says they are bad? Hate to break it to you, we are FULL of bacteria. Seriously, take a step back and think hard about your logic. Something in your brain isn't firing correctly.
h3ll0k4ll3 6y ago
Disclaimer. I am Swedish. The amount of deaths in Sweden from Covid19 have been very high and many of the deaths has been completely unnecessary. This is nothing else than a cruel state sponsored murder on parts of the elderly population. Its also likely that the actual death toll is significantly higher than reported since many of the elderly dying at institutions was never tested for Covid19 In-fact at many regions of Sweden autopsies has been suspended during parts of the spring. The recommended treatment for these elderly has been injection of morphine (yes to elders with breathing difficulties). There are stories of staff sometimes opening the windows while elderly confined to their rooms grasping for air. Family was not allowed to visit but staff was moving without protection gear between the rooms of sick and healthy ( because in Sweden the government early decided that masks are ineffective ways of protection ). Its still the official stance of Sweden that masks does not help against Covid19. But apparently sneasing in your armpit and washing your hands helps. In the beginning this was applied also at the institutions for the elderly. Some heroes objected and bought gear and significantly lowered the death rate early on. Others followed the advice from the "experts" as a good swede does. And the result sometimes was 50-75% dead in the total population of residents at the care facilities. The Architect behind these state sponsored acts of murder is a man called Anders Tegnell. And you will be surprised to learn that this is the second time this very dangerous narcissist has been causing suffering and deaths in Sweden. Back in 2009 during H1N1 influenza (swine-flue) he was the person responsible for the purchasing and injecting the unsafe Pandemrix vaccine in the Swedish population as head of the vaccine department. Today it has amounted to a total of 600 then children and youths developing narcolepsy. He spent the following years defending the government against the victims who was seeking economic indemnity from the Swedish state medical insurance. When the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet later acquired emails of this mater he was caught on record emailing that the goverment agency he was working for at the time "was at a point of no return politically". He was then recruited as the State Epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden in 2013 as a thank you for his service. Now in 2020 he is directly responsible for the deaths of about 5500 swedes. You could argue that he is also responsible for some of the deaths in neighboring countries where there have been imported cases from Sweden. This person already before the beginning of 2020 had caused 600 direct cases of mistreatment can now add 5500 deaths to his CV. And likely 1000s of people with lung-damages, muscle damaged and other severe trauma damage from intensive care. There are also reports of increased diabetes onset among Covid19 survivors and the ME/CFS that will likely be the result for many who got the disease. If you are interested of the numbers and statistics you can check https://c19.se/ https://c19.se/ it has deaths and infected on a regional level. It can be helpful to understand that the city of Stockholm has had 2344 officially dead and 21490 official cases among its population of 975904. Tests results of antibodies have been reported in ranges from about 10% - 17%. But since testing was not allowed for most people until very recently the numbers can be either spot on or very off.
deleted 6y ago
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CryptoPunk 6y ago
This highly cited April 11th study projected that Sweden would have 96,000 deaths by July 1st if it didn't institute a lockdown: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v... The actual death toll was 5,400, and now the deaths are declining precipitiously. Of course every death is a tragedy, but the harm done from a national lockdown, which includes youth missing out on a year of school, and thousands of small businesses being destroyed, would have been more of one. Like Michael Levitt, who's the 2013 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for research in complex systems, says, society has forgotten that people die. 10,000 people per million die every year in Sweden. That rate increasing by 500 is not that abnormal - it happens in bad influenza seasons. If every one was forced to stop working and shelter at home for months every time an infectious disease temporarily rose the death rate by 10%, it would lead to disaster over the long run. 90% of deaths in Sweden have been of those over the age of 70. If the statistics are anything like those in Italy, almost all of these victims had pre-existing conditions. This is not to lessen the tragedy of their death. This is to point out that most of this tragedy predated their coronavirus infection - their life expectancy was already very limited due to other factors.
argonaut 6y ago
The jury is still out on "economic failure." The evidence cited on the economy is thin at best. The main piece of evidence is that "Sweden’s central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent." Economic forecasts are ridiculously unreliable. In the US, economists forecast (on average) that 8 million jobs would be lost in May. Instead there was a 2.5 million gain in jobs. Not a single economist surveyed by Bloomberg though there would be any gain at all (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-06/may-jobs-report-forecast-miss-could-have-policy-ramifications https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-06/may-jo...). The hard data we have on GDP so far: Sweden's GDP grew by 0.1% in Q1 2020 (0.4% annualized), Germany and the UK's GDP fell. The other evidence is that unemployment has risen in Sweden and spending in Denmark has only fallen 4 percentage points more than Sweden. But Denmark has propped up employment by "covering 75 to 90 percent of all worker salaries over the next three months, provided that companies refrain from layoffs."(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-economic-rescue-virus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-econo...). And from the numbers in the article, Denmark's unemployment rate has still risen proportionally more. Granted, Sweden has very generous unemployment benefits, but I'm not aware of a similar layoff prevention program.
- mc32 6y ago
  The NYT has fallen into the bad habit of writing to a narrative, conscious or unconscious, rather than investigating more honestly. In this case they want to paint the alternative path as wrongheaded and foolhardy. I’m glad someone tried something different in light of a lack of hard evidence. Time will tell if one or the other was better, but at least we’ll have baselines to compare against.
  - dmix 6y ago
    Looking at the John Hopkins graph a significant amount of countries are still peaking (including the global trendline): https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... Just because a few countries in Europe and the early big ones in China/SK have slowed down they act like it's over. Yet there's still plenty of very major outbreaks in South America, Middle East, India, Russia, south east Asia, some African. They all have upward hockey stick growth still. Not to mention the delayed US south/west wave. It's far too early to pick winners/losers of COVID in the midst of the global peak, assuming this is actually near the peak. Let alone measuring the economic consequences.
a3_nm 6y ago
I think it's misleading to phrase things, as the article does, as just "more deaths" vs "the economy". The drawbacks of a large-scale mandatory lockdown (as opposed to asking people to do their own social distancing) also include other things like psychological effects on the population, political consequences (setting a precedent of severely restricting personal freedoms), and, well, enjoyment: making 10 million people more happy for a few months doesn't seem entirely negligible from a utilitarian perspective. This isn't to take position for or against Sweden's policy here, but there are far more variables than simply excess deaths (or DALYs) and economic impact.
pxpm 6y ago
It's my first comment on HN. I am not a native english speaking person so I am sorry for some wrong wording in my answer. I am from Portugal. In first 2 months we were considered an example on how to deal with an pandemic. Today, our best business partners, I list UK in this scenario, does not give Portugal a safe destiny badge. People tend to overcome rules. UK people are flying to Spain an then get a bus to Portugal. Today's news was about 2000 students from Netherlands partying in Portugal, Algarve. I am a young and healthy person AFAIK, but my mother is not. Neither my father in law or some of my closest friends. Any death caused by irresponsible behaviour should be treated as an law infringement. I really don't care if I get Corona. Pretty much I do, or in this case, I don't do, is thinking about people that does not have the chance of saying: fuck it. It's the world we have, but I am sure it's not the world I wanted. Bare with me: any death that could be avoided they should be avoided. And we could avoid alot of deaths if we think about others, an not that much about ourselves. 60 years ago you didn't have internet, lot's didn't even have light or bathroom in house. Divorces are up with confinement. Are those people really meant to be together? Don't look to much to your belly, and look around. Learn how to respect others without expecting the retribution. You will feel great when you give up something you think it's aquired by right to something you think it's just right. Best
natch 6y ago
Economics aside, there may be mental health wins for keeping a different mix as they have. Or losses, too — it’s really too early to say one way or another imho.
cortic 6y ago
Deaths per 1M population are significantly higher in Italy(577), Spain(607) and the UK(654) than they are in Sweden(539). And Sweden have been a lot more honest in counting than most countries. There seems to be a drive to discredit the inalienable human rights approach, in this case by implying it was a financial decision; but i have to say i am impressed by the way they have handled this situation, the only response on earth that involved treating their citizens like adults.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  South Korea never had lockdowns, outside of shutting down bars when they traced some superspreading events back to them. The idea that they’re somehow less committed to human rights when they’ve preserved freedom of movement, while avoiding mass deaths, is laughable on its face.
  - redisman 6y ago
    South Korea, Taiwan, Japan etc. have all done so much better that comparing the responses of “the west” is just nitpicking extremely flawed plans and executions. I know who I’m going to look for guidance in any future outbreaks
  - fomine3 6y ago
    SK traced people in a bar by cellular location data and payment data without permit. I think it's not good for human rights.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      The entire digital advertising industry is in greater violation of human rights, by this measure.
      - fomine3 6y ago
        Tracing real individuals rather than "anonymized" statistics is significantly worse. https://theconversation.com/tracing-homophobia-in-south-koreas-coronavirus-surveillance-program-139428 https://theconversation.com/tracing-homophobia-in-south-kore...
leandrod 6y ago
This is meaningless. There were no economic gains expected, just avoiding a greater disaster. Given that Swedish economy is fairly integrated with its lockdown neighbours, it would be surprising if there were any economic gains; instead, it is probable its neighbours benefitted from Sweden having avoided lockdown. Also, the higher death rate is normal and acceptable, in a tradeoff against deaths caused by confinement and the unnecessary prolongation of the epidemic. Herd immunity will arrive earlier, and lockdown-caused deaths will perhaps make Swedes survive more and better. Now vote me down.
deleted 6y ago
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jfoster 6y ago
The idea of prioritising the economy is a falsehood. You can't have a strong economy with a virus like covid ripping its way through the population. Some people might go on as normal, but a huge portion of the population will be afraid of going outside. The only feasible path to economic recovery is: 1. Keep the borders closed. Mandatory & monitored quarantine for anyone entering. 2. Lock down, test & contact-trace until the virus is basically eradicated. Mandating mask use outside of abodes or any other measure will help speed this along, too. 3. Open up, but keep borders closed except to places applying a similar approach. The swifter the action, the easier it all is.
x87678r 6y ago
Nice to see all the Swedish commenters on the NYT pointing out how biased the article is.
reddog 6y ago
Sweden is right to be concerned about their economy. Its not just about skipping a few haircuts -- a shattered economy kills people as sure as coronavirus does. Every shuttered manufacturing plant has a body count associated with it and its own case mortality rate. I don't know how many people died as a direct result of the Great Depression but based on what I've been told by relatives the suffering was considerable with deaths due to lack of food, homelessness and despair. I do know that the Nazi party would never have come to power in Germany without the world economic collapse. They were a minor party on the wane in the late 20s only to get their second wind in the elections following the crash. It's also possible the Japanese militarist would never have come to power without the Great Depression for more complex reasons. WWII was the result at the cost of 45-70 million lives. Economic catastrophes are not just about money -- they have life and death consequences. I wish more people would have taken this into consideration before they carpet bombed the US economy to combat the pandemic. I guess they figured that no matter what, the US was safe from the kind of civil unrest that gripped the Weimar republic. A strong man taking control of the US? Fascist and antifascist battling in the street? That could never happen here.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Sweden recorded its first week of no excess mortality over a month ago: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-mortality/sweden-records-first-week-with-no-excess-mortality-since-pandemic-struck-idUSKBN23F1WK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden... The economic gains part of it is not really relevant. Today each country is exposed to the global economy. If everyone else has economies that are broken then that will trickle over to Sweden inevitably. But that doesn’t mean that it is not worth pushing for Sweden’s strategy. If more countries did so, perhaps Sweden would collect economic gains.
Markoff 6y ago
this was supposed to be about economy? I thought they just wanted to preserve their way of life without draconian measures of countries which took those measures and got Fd anyway in matter of deaths or economy it was pretty clear from beginning it won't have big impact on their economy either way
jpangs88 6y ago
I feel that so many of these articles on Sweden fail to mention the reason for Sweden's strategy and often say it due to another reason. The reason that the Swedish government has given for the strategy is that they think that people can follow the restrictions long term. It's not to save the economy or to create heard immunity (which I have heard from many people.) I think it's too early to judge Sweden's strategy as presumably the intent is that things will be better down the line. On a more personal note, I live in Sweden and I am not a Swedish citizen and I can say that things aren't "Business as usual here" and plenty is being done to stop the spread of the COVID 19. I can't say I 100% agree with the policy but I also don't think it's the huge mistake people make it out to be. I have linked below an explanation for the strategy by one of Sweden's top epidemiologist and the one that's often credited as the architect of Sweden's strategy. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-28/sweden-s-covid-expert-says-the-world-still-doesn-t-understand https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-28/sweden-s-... https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-risks/disasters-and-incidents/2020/official-information-on-the-new-coronavirus https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-risks/disaster...
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  One thing I don't see discussed and it's an unbacked intuition is that all the different government strategies seem to revolve around differences in 'group' trust levels. Both the Swedish 'no-lockdown' and the Dutch 'intelligent' lockdown are government policies that actually work locally because the government trusts that the population will follow the guidelines given (which they do for the majority). Equally when I discussed with Dutch and Swedish people (anecdata) they all believed their national strategy was correct because they trusted their governaments competence and the science advisors that were being consulted. I think many of these strategies cannot be translated to other countries were there isn't a shared trust level, i.e. population trusting the government's competence, and equally the government trusting civil society (biggest example being the US).
anderstornqvist 6y ago
This is a very misleading article. Compare Japan (no lockdown) with Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Or we can compare some areas of Sweden with Norway. Sweden has high death rate for the same reason that many of the lockdown countries have hight death rate: Elderly care centers in some areas where not properly protected! 20 years of policies for cost reduction of care homes is the reason for the failure).
thisrod 6y ago
What went wrong in Sweden? I genuinely don't understand that. The news keeps showing Swedes walking in parks and down streets, but that's not how people catch the novel coronavirus. Meanwhile, people were working from home and mass gatherings were banned; the public were trusted to figure out the details, but they're not idiots. It could have worked. What was everyone doing in Sweden that people weren't doing in Finland and Australia? Or were there less visible differences, in surveillance and contact tracing maybe, that haven't been so widely reported?
mirekrusin 6y ago
Little bit too early to proclaim this kind of conclusions, isn't it?
raxxorrax 6y ago
Hard to say already since many small businesses will close but haven't done so officially yet.
twblalock 6y ago
Any coherent explanation of this pandemic is going to need to explain why some countries that didn't do very much (e.g. Japan) ended up with far fewer deaths per capita than countries that locked down (e.g. EU countries and the United States). Sweden is somewhere in the middle -- they are being criticized, yet other countries in Europe which locked down have ended up with a higher per capita death rate. Why is it that Cambodia and other nations in southeast Asia have negligible deaths despite doing very little to combat the virus, while countries in the EU which locked down have way more deaths per capita? Somehow the models about the spread and death rate of this virus seem to differ on a geographical basis, and that needs to be explained. At this point, any analysis of the pandemic that does not attempt to tackle this problem is selectively ignorant.
- taneq 6y ago
  > some countries that didn't do very much (e.g. Japan) Japan had a strong preexisting culture of wearing a mask when going out in public if you're the slightest bit sick. > countries that locked down (e.g. EU countries and the United States). The early EU countries (Italy, France, Spain) and the US didn't lock down until far too late when their local epidemics had already spiraled out of control. The US in particular locked down far too late, too little, and has now re-opened despite still having a huge number of active cases and community transmission. On top of that, it sounds like a large number of people there are still refusing to wear masks. > Why is it that [...] nations in southeast Asia have negligible deaths I'm less sure here but I'd guess it's a combination of age demographics (fewer very old people who are most likely to die of the virus), lack of testing/reporting, and higher overall death rates due to disease which masks the effect somewhat.
  - LeanderK 6y ago
    yeah, i think the cultural aspect can not be ignored! The stereotypes of some cultures being more cold and wanting to keep their distances is grounded in reality. In e.g. france or italy having very close contact for example when greeting is the norm. I can imagine that it helps to spread the virus. Others don't have to adjust too much.
catears 6y ago
The opening paragraph of the article shows to me that the journalist in question has done a poor job researching exactly what happened in Sweden. > Sweden has captured international attention by conducting an unorthodox, open-air experiment. Almost every interview available with Anders Tegnell (swedish equivalent of Anthony Fauci) mention that the international community prior to covid had agreed that following a strategy similar to the one sweden are following now is the best choice. Somehow this translates to an "unorthodox" strategy. Never mind that during previous epidemics, like SARS, the current Swedish response was "the normal response". > It has allowed the world to examine what happens in a pandemic when a government allows life to carry on largely unhindered. I am really disturbed by this sentence. While it is technically correct that no lockdown has been imposed on the swedish people by the government, saying that life has "carried on largely unhindered" is straight up dishonest. Ever since February or March there have been regular press conferences with the FHM ("swedish CDC") broadcast over public radio (and obviously you can listen to it on internet and in their app, with push notifications). The hospital system has almost completely shifted to handling covid, nationwide. Most companies have tried to shift their work to peoples homes as much as possible, just like FHM has suggested. Buying groceries online has increased by a large margin. Even the cars at my local supermarket are now practicing social distancing! Swedes, overall, have really taken the gravity of the situation to heart and made changes in their life to protect their community. > but Sweden’s economy has fared little better. This misses the most important points about the swedish strategy and shows a lack of knowledge about swedish economy and EU economy. The goal of the swedish strategy has been to preserve peoples health as good as possible. Locking everyone in their homes for several months is not a strategy that is resillient. It increases cases of domestic violence, people losing their jobs cause negative effects as well. The number of deaths related to covid have to be compared to overall deaths, but most importanlty the overall health. The goal was never to gamble peoples life away for the economy! The article jumps straight into saying that Sweden did not gain anything, economically, from having no lockdown. Well of course not. How could a country with focus on exports and services thrive economically in a pandemic? If the inner market of the EU is as good as closed, who would make the bet that an export focused country would be thriving? Sweden is dependent on other nations, especially in the EU and Scandinavia, so of course the economy wouldn't fare well. > Sweden put stock in the sensibility of its people as it largely avoided imposing government prohibitions. This is factually wrong. From the 27th of March it became a criminal offence to organize events of 50 or more people, down from the 500 that was decided on the 12th of March https://www.regeringen.se/artiklar/2020/03/forbud-mot-allmanna-sammankomster-eller-offentliga-tillstallningar-med-fler-an-50-deltagare/ https://www.regeringen.se/artiklar/2020/03/forbud-mot-allman... This article is an example of poor journalism. It misrepresents the situation in Sweden, while containing crucial factual mistakes bordering on misinformation while also trying to steer american policy making in a specific direction.
MasterYoda 6y ago
Statistics is just statistics. Many compare Swedens death/capita to other countries figures and conclude it is bad. But this is in fact not a god measure at all because this figure dont account for how far the spread is over the population, Sweden is very different here. Because Sweden have been more open they are also far ahead of other countries and much more people have been exposed and got antibodies. Sweden cant simply be compared to others that are more in the beginning in the pandemic. Sadly media forget this. The virus cant be stopped so sooner or later other couties must open up and then they going to get more death. Just look at Spain that open up now had to lock down a reginon now with 200.000. Saying Swedens way is bad right now is far to early to conclude, when the pandemic is far from over. We have to wait at least a year or two.
mekkkkkk 6y ago
Swedish officials has said over and over again that neither herd immunity nor economics is the basis for the strategy chosen. They tried to strike a balance between the impact of containment measures (isolation, mental health, lack of education etc) and minimizing the spread of the virus. Of course the first point is extremely hard to quantify, and thus the hard numbers are horrifying. Most people in Sweden are taking plenty precautions and isolate on a voluntary level, highly encouraged by all institutions. However, if you are stuck inside with abusive parents or are getting depressed by the isolation, you have the choice to go out. As others have mentioned, the true failure has been in elder care. How the virus was allowed to ravage care centers is completely unacceptable.
Proven 6y ago
The NYT socialists just can't help it. Ok, so 5.5K people died. Let's assume the current approach helped avoid $10bn of damages, and the government saved $10bn in stimulus spending. That's a $4 million saving per each dead person. Meanwhile (various other) nanny states spent way more, lost billions thanks to lockdowns, and people still died. The NYT cares about MMT and socialism, not about Covid-19.
anang 6y ago
I think one aspect missing from the discussion of whether or not Sweden has done the right thing is just how much power a government has over its citizens. In many cases I think the consensus in Sweden is that the government doesn’t have the right to keep people at home or force people to wear masks. The current government had to push to get legislation passed that allowed them to shut down primary schools and preschools, if needed. When this is all said and done a lot of countries are going to have evaluate what all of this has meant for their democracies.

331 points by vonmoltke 6y ago

As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy. Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask (still), social distancing is minimal (crammed subways, buses and beaches), schools have remained open, yet there has not been a single death in the worst hit area of Stockholm for the past 5 days. Again, I think given the uncertainty and lack of evidence in March, not shutting down was an extremely stupid risk, and Tegnell and crew have shown to been wrong at practically every turn, but at this point you have to look at the evidence and reassess. It would seem Stockholm has reached the point of significant herd immunity, which is probably true for other hard hit areas like NYC. Less hit areas will probably have second waves, and unless a vaccine is here soon, my guess is most of the world will go through the same thing eventually.

kanox 6y ago
> I'm starting to think it was the right decision Sweden is #6 by deaths/population according to this page: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ This would indicate that the swedish response is among the worst. Several countries with comparable health systems have a death rate which is many times lower, for example Germany. This saved many thousands of lives. What am I missing?
- marcusverus 6y ago
  If the pandemic is expected to continue for many months, isn't it a bit premature to talk about current death rates as a metric for success? Given Sweden's 'herd immunity' plan, higher death rates at the beginning would seem to be a given. They didn't flatten their curve. But as they approach something like herd immunity, the number of possible carriers should plummet permanently (assuming immunity is a thing with COVID), and infections and deaths would permanently decline. Nations which have held down infection numbers with shutdowns have, of course, flattened their curves. But they may well suffer from second/third waves which will hike up their total numbers.
  - kingkawn 6y ago
    Herd immunity cannot be considered the plan given that herd immunity has not been proven to be possible
    - noodlenotes 6y ago
      Indefinite lockdowns, vaccines haven't been "proven possible" either. At some point you have to make a plan with the best information you have. The fact that spread in New York has slowed down compared to other states that weren't initially hit hard implies that there's some immunity effect going on.
    - tripletao 6y ago
      Herd immunity is certainly possible--we could hold a parade, and spray it with cultured virus. Obviously no one is doing that, because no one actually wants natural herd immunity. Sweden just thinks the cost to control the epidemic to the point that it doesn't end in that way is unacceptably high. If a treatment is discovered next month that cuts the IFR by a factor of ten, then Sweden was wrong. If no safe and effective vaccine is ever developed and treatment never improves, then Sweden was right. Reality will fall somewhere between those two unlikely extremes, and we don't know where. Fewer infected is always good news[1], in Sweden or anywhere else--it means fewer dead now, more infections pushed until later when treatment will probably be better, etc. It's weird to see low infection rates twisted around as if they were bad, "evidence that herd immunity may not be possible". This is particularly true when the prevalence is compared to herd immunity from a model assuming a well-mixed, homogeneous population, which we know overestimates the herd immunity threshold (though not by how much, since estimates of the heterogeneity of the coronavirus are even more uncertain than those of R0). Finally, herd immunity is a gradual process. Even in a crude homogeneous SIR model, you may approach it asymptotically but never get there. This is good--the only case where a disease "burns itself out" abruptly is when there's big overshoot, which implies many avoidable deaths. Perhaps that kind of overshoot could be desirable in a population of young people, if the small excess mortality in the young people were more than offset by their decreased ability to spread it later; but that's a narrow needle to thread. For the avoidance of doubt, I believe Sweden did a bad job protecting elder care facilities (though many places that locked down did too), and I disagree with their position on masks. Their response otherwise seems reasonable to me, not obviously better than stricter approaches but also not obviously worse. 1. Unless you know the death count and you're looking for the denominator for your IFR, since more infected then means lower IFR. That was true early in the epidemic, before the first high-quality serosurveys, but not anymore.
- martindbp 6y ago
  Simple: it's not over yet, but it might be for some hard hit areas of Sweden. We'll see. Then there is another question whether it was worth it to shut down the world economy over a 0.05% death rate, or a few years worth of flu at once. I'd say probably no. We didn't know this back in Feb/March, which is why I was very much for a quarantine then, but not now. I don't think the powers that be would have done a complete shutdown if they'd known what they know now.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    > it might be for some hard hit areas of Sweden The long-term success of Sweden's approach appears to hinge on this question. What evidence is there which supports that their hardest hit locales have achieved herd immunity?
    - wk_end 6y ago
      Numbers and projections show things slowing down in Sweden [1]. The obvious explanation for this would be that herd immunity is kicking in, isn't it? [1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden
    - martindbp 6y ago
      My own observeration from Stockholm is: beaches crowded during heatwave, public transit is crowded as usual. Lots of movement of people, travel within Sweden etc. Practically nobody is wearing a mask. People are still generally careful, washing hands, keeping the distance in lines etc, but I don't think this can explain the cases going down. In March-April, I think people were the most careful, when hundreds were dying every day. Since then people have gradually become more relaxed, but the numbers keep going down. Of course, it could be that these rather small measures have pushed r0 a bit under 1 ever since March. But there have also been reports that for each person tested with antibodies, two more are actually immune, which would put the immunity at maybe 30% two weeks ago. At least it's in the right ball-park, as some have proposed that herd immunity could be reached at much lower percentages than previously thought.
- drewg123 6y ago
  The same data source also shows that Sweden's per-capita death rates are lower than Spain and Italy, which had full scale lockdowns.
  - watwut 6y ago
    They had lockdowns after country systems were completely overwhelmed. Up to inability to handle dead people in some places. Their situations was strong argument for other countries to lock down much sooner.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The question is whether locking down sooner actually solves the problem. As Melbourne heads into another 6 weeks of lockdown, I'm growing skeptical.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throw-away_42 6y ago
Sweden's total per-capita death rate is 50% higher than the Netherlands, 500% higher than Germany and Denmark, and 900+% higher than Finland, Norway, and Poland. All those deaths have not made you safer--your daily per-capita death rate is still several times that of those countries. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data
- martindbp 6y ago
  The current death rate, 10-15 people a day, is insignificant compared to other causes of death. It is not reasonable to talk about percentage differences when we're talking 15 vs 3 deaths a day.
  - alltakendamned 6y ago
    Do note that there's easily a 15-day delay when it comes to Sweden reporting somewhat correct number of deaths, so let's not focus on the "current" death rate too much. And I expect the reporting delay to actually be worse right now as we're in the middle of vacation time. Source: https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/ https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
    - catalogia 6y ago
      > Do note that there's easily a 15-day delay when it comes to Sweden reporting somewhat correct number of deaths, 15 days ago Sweden was experiencing about 20 covid deaths per day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#Deaths_per_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#De...
  - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
    Really? 4500 hundred extra death a year is not insignifcant.
    - martindbp 6y ago
      90000 people die in Sweden every year. Shutting down the economy for a 5% increase is not reasonable.
drummer 6y ago
Sweden did the right thing. Covid-19 is not worse than the flu. Norway recently also admitted the lockdown there was not neccesary according to the data they have now. In March they thought differently.
- martindbp 6y ago
  It is definitely many times worse than the flu, but probably not 10 and definitely not 100 times.
  - text70 6y ago
    It's ten times worse. https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publikationsarkiv/i/influenza-in-sweden/?pub=63511 https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publ...
  - addled 6y ago
    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm For US data, I like how this table compares deaths from covid, flu, and pneumonia against the total deaths for all causes each week. I especially like that they show the ratio of current deaths vs the average of the 3 years prior for the same week. The downside is how the data is slowly updated as each state trickles in data, so the most recent 4-8 weeks look lower now than if you check back later. Still if you look back to April, flu deaths each week were in the hundreds, while covid deaths 9-15k. Saying it is 10x or more worse, doesn't seem unreasonable to me. What really grabbed me is that the total US deaths in April from all causes was +40% compared to prior 3 year average.
    - drummer 6y ago
      Unfortunately covid deaths are highly unreliable as there is lots of evidence worldwide that people dying with covid are also counted with those dying of covid. Also lots of cases of dead people being counted while not being tested or positively tested for covid.
contemporary343 6y ago
Not really: I would much rather get the coronavirus today than three months ago. And would much rather get it 6 months or a year from now than today. Survival rates are measurably improving due to both improved procedures (proning) and better protocols on steroid use, as well as emerging therapies like remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies (in addition to convalescent plasma). Not to mention that many vaccines are barreling into phase 3 trials soon. I suspect history will not be kind to Sweden's approach.
h3ll0k4ll3 6y ago
Dont fall for the numbers game. The numbers in Sweden are reported on with an expected delay of 7 - 10 days for some deaths. The other game is the break-point in time 1400 - each day when public health agency ( state run ) report their numbers. They reported no new dead in Stockholm and then later on tuesday afternoon Smittskydd Stockholm ( regionally run ) reported 7 new deaths in Stockholm since monday...

jnwatson 6y ago

I don’t believe the article has addressed Sweden’s main argument for not shutting down: that herd immunity should be the prime driver. Essentially, that everyone is going to eventually have roughly the same death rate, so might as well get it over with. That remains to be seen; if Sweden’s peers can prevent flare-ups, it looks like Sweden was wrong.

Traster 6y ago
Well it's not only that, if you overwhelm your healthcare system you're going to end up with excess deaths even if the same number of people get the virus in the end. Also, we've learned some mitigation techniques over the last few months (like steroids in late stage treatment) which means that the idea that 'everyone will get it eventually' just isn't relevant - its likely that our survival rate will go up over time even without a proper vaccine.
- marcusverus 6y ago
  Whether this is an issue for Sweden should be clear from the death rate among the infected, but that data isn't mentioned in the article. I assume that figure is difficult to calculate without a precise/consistent case count for multiple countries.
- wk_end 6y ago
  Yes, although Sweden never came close to overwhelming its health care system.
- nradov 6y ago
  Ironically, medical researchers wouldn't have learned those mitigation techniques (like Dexamethasone) without a large population of patients to use as experimental subjects. In other words, if we succeed in slowing down the spread (which would be a good thing) then medical research into treatments and vaccines will also slow down.
  - stallmanite 6y ago
    Would work on a vaccine really slow down? There are many thousands of patients and how many does a vaccine study require in practice?

frereubu 6y ago

One thing missing from this report is that a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes, and ministers have publicly stated that not entirely locking down care homes from the outset was a big mistake. If they had done this, the figures may well not look nearly as bad. Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire lifetime of this pandemic. I'll be interested to see where countries are a year or two from now. This isn't to say I support the Swedish government's strategy - I don't feel like I know enough to say what the best strategy is, although I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no strategy, seemingly like the USA and UK.

systemvoltage 6y ago
A very large percentage of US deaths are also from the same type of residents - care homes, elderly communities and such. I read that it was as much as 40%. I need to find source.
- ziga 6y ago
  43% according to NYT (includes residents and workers): https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-nursing-homes.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-nurs... 55k+ deaths, 296k+ cases, staggering numbers. Out of a 1.3M nursing home population (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/nursing-home-care.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/nursing-home-care.htm), which makes you wonder if the recent decrease in deaths is driven by the fact that the majority of the susceptible nursing home population has already been affected.
bhupy 6y ago
> I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no strategy, seemingly like the USA The USA does not have "no strategy", it just depends from State to State[1]. Every state has had some form of lockdown and school closure. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-map-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-ma...
- triceratops 6y ago

mips_avatar 6y ago

One interesting thing about Sweden is the high percentage of people who live alone. It's a big deal because in China most deaths came from an infected person spreading it to their family. Makes you think that if Sweden's numbers are as bad as they are without large-scale family spread, it would be absolutely horrific elsewhere.

mettamage 6y ago

Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't think I'd be the only one. Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the impending doom I thought the virus would bring. I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% and a bigger spreading rate that was bigger than 1, if no measures were taken. So, I'd expect between 100,000 to 200,000 to have died. I'm really happy that didn't happen. It also makes me curious as to why. Is it because of Sweden's demographics (people living alone)? Or is it because the virus isn't as deadly as we think it is? How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths. It's awful what happened, but the highest flu season in The Netherlands, for example, killed an estimated 9444 people [1] on 17,280,000 people, which is slightly higher than what the Swedes had to go through now (also rounded to 0.05%). I know that the novel coronavirus is not a flu, but if this is it, then well, I've seen worse, apparently. I know the virus isn't done, but it had months to roam free in Sweden. One would expect it would double up every 5 days in terms of how many people would be infected. Edit: they did need to maintain social distance apparently. I wouldn't call that "doing nothing". Sure a lot more can be done, but I feel the media are framing the Swedes a bit inaccurately. Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable) [1] In Dutch, unfortunately: https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland

Barrin92 6y ago
>How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths. Because the 1% death rate is a reference to people catching the disease, not the size of the population. Sweden as of now appears to have about 73k officially confirmed cases. Swedes still voluntarily distanced and closed down, hence the economic damage mentioned in the article. Given that there is no widespread immunity still with total infections in the single digits, those deaths will eventually go up. I'm not sure if the American attitude of indifference is taking hold here now, but 5000 deaths when 4000 of them could have been avoided is no matter to brush aside, it's in fact a straight up disaster. This is an unprecedent amount of needless death in modern Swedish history.

oxymoran 6y ago

I find this article a little disingenuous and here is why: Sweden-5420 deaths out of a population of 10 million while no lock down. Michigan-6005 deaths out of a population of 10 million and we have been locked down since mid March. To be clear, I was in favor of the lockdown at first and I still am in favor of keeping things like bars and casinos closed but it’s become clear that the virus doesn’t have much affect on younger populations and that the death rate has been dropping. Here in Michigan, while our daily new cases is still creeping up, our 7 day moving average of deaths has continued to plummet.

akmarinov 6y ago
Well Sweden closed its borders, where Michigan can’t close its borders to other states, so Michigan’s is naturally higher.
- Svip 6y ago
  Sweden did not close its borders, although it followed EU guidelines to close its borders beyond the EU. The US closed its borders to certain areas of the world, which is what this is comparable to.
  - akmarinov 6y ago
    Well all other countries in the EU closed their borders to them, so it’s effectively the same thing.
    - username90 6y ago
      No they didn't. Danish, Finnish and Norwegian tourists are still coming to Sweden. It is just that Swedes can't go to them.
      - NoSubstitute 6y ago
        And that is a textbook example of insanity. To be fair, I do think that they are supposed to self-quarantine when returning home?

bjourne 6y ago

You have to look at the excess deaths figures. That is, how many usually dies from January to June in a normal year and compare that to how many extra that died in 2020. For Sweden the excess deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or take 10%. That is not the case for many other countries. For example, the UK had almost twice the number of excess deaths as Covid deaths in a few weeks in April. That indicates that Covid deaths were under reported in the UK. There are also some indications that Covid deaths have been under reported in other countries. In other words, comparing countries by their Covid deaths/capita rates is meaningless. The statistics are likely completely wrong because different countries use different definitions of "Covid deaths" and different reporting procedures. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/may/29/excess-deaths-uk-has-one-highest-levels-europe https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/may/29...

leto_ii 6y ago
This is an important observation. In the Netherlands, where I live, I've had a number of people look at me with great surprise and mistrust when I mentioned that the Dutch have done a terrible job with this epidemic. The Guardian plots show that the Netherlands is one of the worst when it comes to under-reporting. This is not to say however that the Swedes have done a good job. While their numbers are credible, their magnitude is still unacceptably large: 0.5/1000 Swedes have so far died of the corona virus.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway. Considering COVID has closed many of life's fun things, there will be an entire generation of people who have effectively "lost" a year of the things they hoped they would do in their lifetime. By stating open, Sweden might decrease life expectancy in years, but increase it in terms of 'things achieved in a lifetime'
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pengaru 6y ago

It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic anyways. Why even pay to have the lights on? You need to mothball the operation ASAP and lobby for government assistance for the duration. I was just poking at rough figures last night out of curiosity regarding when the other end of this arrives in terms of 60% herd immunity for the US. Just pulling numbers out of my ass, like 200,000,000 for 60% and an avg infection rate of 100,000/day. With those figures it's 5.5yrs before 60% gets infected. We're at more like 50,000/day last I checked, but who knows how accurate that is. Either way, it looks like this is going to be a life of masks and social distancing for a long time. Hopefully a vaccine arrives in volume before 5+ years go by.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
I feel like we should just start building a life of social distance. I really hate getting the normal flu so would like to prevent that too.
kalleboo 6y ago
> It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic anyways In Sweden people still seem happy to go out to bars and restaurants, even in the middle of a pandemic. It's non-stop work for the government to shut down venues that are crowded beyond the allowed covid19 congestion regulation. This whole "even if restaurants and bars were open, nobody would go to them" narrative just doesn't bear out in reality. We're seeing the same thing in the UK now as well.
- pengaru 6y ago
  Your comment is in direct contradiction with TFA, did you read it?
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    I did read it (and insinuating I didn’t is against the rules). Nowhere does it have any proof of restaurants losing all their customers. It says that economists predict a contraction (that hasn’t happened yet), that consumer spending at one point was down 25%, and that the manufacturing sector had to shut down due to supply chain issues. I never said that restaurants have lost customers, just that there is still a very significant amount of people willing to go out anyway. The Google Mobility report shows that retail & recreation (which includes restaurants) for Sweden is currently down only 1%!!! (workplaces -40%, transit -25%)

thepangolino 6y ago

Sweden has half the COVID death of Belgium despite having had some of the more lax restrictions. The only reason Sweden is facing economic hardship is because of its starting position and the fact most of the world decided to go full retard on their own.

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
Belgium overcounts its cases, deliberately so.
yxhuvud 6y ago
Sweden also has an private sector extremely dependent on exporting stuff, so when global trade is down so is the Swedish economy.

cm2187 6y ago

To me this is moving the goalpost. The stated objective of the lockdown was not to overwhelm the ICUs. As far as I know the ICUs in Sweden have not been overwhelmed. So how is that a failure? As for the economic impact, given the amount of life support injections into the economy, I think the real economic impact of the shock is yet to be seen. Defaults are only starting to rise.

vmception 6y ago
I have been willing to be frustrated with moving the goal post, but there is new information that mayors and governors know that the general public doesn't have a good way to know: The low mortality rate and managed ICU capacity isn't the whole story. there is a large population of recovering and recovered that have serious complications, that seem random and are unproductive to our society. Blood clots resulting in amputations. 90 day recovery time periods. Other unknown and randomly targeted blood oxygen issues. The mayors and governors and public health ministers are reacting to that in their own municipalities and countries. The outcomes are not equal, the variables have many different names between jurisdictions, and therefore the stats are not easily collectable. But for people on the front line and getting briefed by those on the front line, they see something horrible that they need to move the goal post to "cases" instead of just deaths and ICU capacity.
- TheGrim-888 6y ago
  If the complications are a serious problem, as you claim, then I have a few follow up questions: 1) You're making some significant claims, and should therefore have significant data and evidence to back up your claims. Over 3 million people in the US have tested positive for covid. What percentage of them needed to have a limb amputated? That should be easily verifiable. What percentage of them had a blood clot and serious damage? What percentage of them currently have persistent long term damage? If you're making the claim that these things are such a serious problem, you should have data that backs up how common the problem is, and how bad it is. 2) How different are the complications from the normal complications that the flu/pneumonia/etc. can give? Tens of thousands of people get the flu, have complications, and die every year. Tens of thousands of elderly people get the flu, and have long-term damage for the rest of their life. As a society we don't care about that at all. Are you saying covid does more damage, or has more complications? If so, where's the evidence comparing the level of damage/complications? It's my theory at the moment that this "complication" talk is just another viral "meme" that's mostly driven/spread by people just repeating what other people said, which spreads like wildfire, but never has any actual data backing it up. Of course there are people that have had serious complications. But there's people that have had serious complications from every disease. And it says nothing about how common it is. For example, if 0.00001% of people that get covid have to have a limb amputated, yeah that's horrible, and yeah it'd be great if we could just snap our fingers and make that not happen, but is it really something to focus on?

ojhughes 6y ago

Sweden are a model of pragmatism, taking a sensible choice to not have an authoritarian lockdown. Freedom of choice, freedom of movement and freedom of commerce are sacred.

GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
Disagree, it was incredibly reckless. We still don’t fully understand the virus’ transmission vectors, R-values, etc. It very easily could have had a higher fatality rate or transmission rate potentially killing many more people. Claiming it’s a model of pragmatism is a post-hoc rationalization of poor policy.

glofish 6y ago

Sweden is much hated because it demonstrates how the scientific epidemiological models, the studies on mask effectiveness, lockdown estimations etc are all junk science. None of their models would have predicted the trajectory for Sweden, not even close. And that is because none are based on sound science but are guesstimates at best yet are paraded around as the product of the best minds in the world. Much is made about the growing anti-science sentiment in the world, the rushed pseudo scientific justification will only strengthen that. Give it a year and most of the justification will be walked back, it will turn out that wearing a mask is actually detrimental to public health. It boggles the mind that people assume there must be no ill effects to breathing through a mucus-laden cotton sheet filled with microorganisms captured from the air, ...

latchkey 6y ago
> I don't understand how people assume it is healthy to breathe through a mucus-laden cotton sheet filled with microorganisms captured from the air, ... Tell that to the millions of people who go skiing every year, or the people who work in hospitals all day long, every day. I wash my mask every time I use it and I rotate through several of them. Nobody is asking you to wear a dirty mask.
- glofish 6y ago
  none of that mask wearing is done at the scale and in the manner forced upon the population nurses change their masks all the time, nobody skis every day for eight hours, (FWIW the vast majority of people skiing don't wear masks over their mouths) > I wash my mask every time I use it and I rotate through several of them Like every hour? If not good luck with that, it is a pit of infection, a wet and warm substrate for bacteria and fungi.
  - latchkey 6y ago
    > nurses change their masks all the time, Do they? Are you a nurse? > nobody skis every day for eight hours, (FWIW the vast majority of people skiing don't wear masks over their mouths) Show me the statistics on that. > Like every hour? If not good luck with that, it is a pit of infection, a wet and warm substrate for bacteria and fungi. This is the most inane argument ever. You're basically saying those same exact bacteria and fungi magically don't go into our airways without a mask? Masks magically breed this within a day? Also... who says they are bad? Hate to break it to you, we are FULL of bacteria. Seriously, take a step back and think hard about your logic. Something in your brain isn't firing correctly.

h3ll0k4ll3 6y ago

Disclaimer. I am Swedish. The amount of deaths in Sweden from Covid19 have been very high and many of the deaths has been completely unnecessary. This is nothing else than a cruel state sponsored murder on parts of the elderly population. Its also likely that the actual death toll is significantly higher than reported since many of the elderly dying at institutions was never tested for Covid19 In-fact at many regions of Sweden autopsies has been suspended during parts of the spring. The recommended treatment for these elderly has been injection of morphine (yes to elders with breathing difficulties). There are stories of staff sometimes opening the windows while elderly confined to their rooms grasping for air. Family was not allowed to visit but staff was moving without protection gear between the rooms of sick and healthy ( because in Sweden the government early decided that masks are ineffective ways of protection ). Its still the official stance of Sweden that masks does not help against Covid19. But apparently sneasing in your armpit and washing your hands helps. In the beginning this was applied also at the institutions for the elderly. Some heroes objected and bought gear and significantly lowered the death rate early on. Others followed the advice from the "experts" as a good swede does. And the result sometimes was 50-75% dead in the total population of residents at the care facilities. The Architect behind these state sponsored acts of murder is a man called Anders Tegnell. And you will be surprised to learn that this is the second time this very dangerous narcissist has been causing suffering and deaths in Sweden. Back in 2009 during H1N1 influenza (swine-flue) he was the person responsible for the purchasing and injecting the unsafe Pandemrix vaccine in the Swedish population as head of the vaccine department. Today it has amounted to a total of 600 then children and youths developing narcolepsy. He spent the following years defending the government against the victims who was seeking economic indemnity from the Swedish state medical insurance. When the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet later acquired emails of this mater he was caught on record emailing that the goverment agency he was working for at the time "was at a point of no return politically". He was then recruited as the State Epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden in 2013 as a thank you for his service. Now in 2020 he is directly responsible for the deaths of about 5500 swedes. You could argue that he is also responsible for some of the deaths in neighboring countries where there have been imported cases from Sweden. This person already before the beginning of 2020 had caused 600 direct cases of mistreatment can now add 5500 deaths to his CV. And likely 1000s of people with lung-damages, muscle damaged and other severe trauma damage from intensive care. There are also reports of increased diabetes onset among Covid19 survivors and the ME/CFS that will likely be the result for many who got the disease. If you are interested of the numbers and statistics you can check https://c19.se/ https://c19.se/ it has deaths and infected on a regional level. It can be helpful to understand that the city of Stockholm has had 2344 officially dead and 21490 official cases among its population of 975904. Tests results of antibodies have been reported in ranges from about 10% - 17%. But since testing was not allowed for most people until very recently the numbers can be either spot on or very off.

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CryptoPunk 6y ago

This highly cited April 11th study projected that Sweden would have 96,000 deaths by July 1st if it didn't institute a lockdown: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v... The actual death toll was 5,400, and now the deaths are declining precipitiously. Of course every death is a tragedy, but the harm done from a national lockdown, which includes youth missing out on a year of school, and thousands of small businesses being destroyed, would have been more of one. Like Michael Levitt, who's the 2013 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for research in complex systems, says, society has forgotten that people die. 10,000 people per million die every year in Sweden. That rate increasing by 500 is not that abnormal - it happens in bad influenza seasons. If every one was forced to stop working and shelter at home for months every time an infectious disease temporarily rose the death rate by 10%, it would lead to disaster over the long run. 90% of deaths in Sweden have been of those over the age of 70. If the statistics are anything like those in Italy, almost all of these victims had pre-existing conditions. This is not to lessen the tragedy of their death. This is to point out that most of this tragedy predated their coronavirus infection - their life expectancy was already very limited due to other factors.

argonaut 6y ago

The jury is still out on "economic failure." The evidence cited on the economy is thin at best. The main piece of evidence is that "Sweden’s central bank expects its economy to contract by 4.5 percent this year, a revision from a previously expected gain of 1.3 percent." Economic forecasts are ridiculously unreliable. In the US, economists forecast (on average) that 8 million jobs would be lost in May. Instead there was a 2.5 million gain in jobs. Not a single economist surveyed by Bloomberg though there would be any gain at all (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-06/may-jobs-report-forecast-miss-could-have-policy-ramifications https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-06/may-jo...). The hard data we have on GDP so far: Sweden's GDP grew by 0.1% in Q1 2020 (0.4% annualized), Germany and the UK's GDP fell. The other evidence is that unemployment has risen in Sweden and spending in Denmark has only fallen 4 percentage points more than Sweden. But Denmark has propped up employment by "covering 75 to 90 percent of all worker salaries over the next three months, provided that companies refrain from layoffs."(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-economic-rescue-virus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-econo...). And from the numbers in the article, Denmark's unemployment rate has still risen proportionally more. Granted, Sweden has very generous unemployment benefits, but I'm not aware of a similar layoff prevention program.

mc32 6y ago
The NYT has fallen into the bad habit of writing to a narrative, conscious or unconscious, rather than investigating more honestly. In this case they want to paint the alternative path as wrongheaded and foolhardy. I’m glad someone tried something different in light of a lack of hard evidence. Time will tell if one or the other was better, but at least we’ll have baselines to compare against.
- dmix 6y ago
  Looking at the John Hopkins graph a significant amount of countries are still peaking (including the global trendline): https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... Just because a few countries in Europe and the early big ones in China/SK have slowed down they act like it's over. Yet there's still plenty of very major outbreaks in South America, Middle East, India, Russia, south east Asia, some African. They all have upward hockey stick growth still. Not to mention the delayed US south/west wave. It's far too early to pick winners/losers of COVID in the midst of the global peak, assuming this is actually near the peak. Let alone measuring the economic consequences.

a3_nm 6y ago

I think it's misleading to phrase things, as the article does, as just "more deaths" vs "the economy". The drawbacks of a large-scale mandatory lockdown (as opposed to asking people to do their own social distancing) also include other things like psychological effects on the population, political consequences (setting a precedent of severely restricting personal freedoms), and, well, enjoyment: making 10 million people more happy for a few months doesn't seem entirely negligible from a utilitarian perspective. This isn't to take position for or against Sweden's policy here, but there are far more variables than simply excess deaths (or DALYs) and economic impact.

pxpm 6y ago

It's my first comment on HN. I am not a native english speaking person so I am sorry for some wrong wording in my answer. I am from Portugal. In first 2 months we were considered an example on how to deal with an pandemic. Today, our best business partners, I list UK in this scenario, does not give Portugal a safe destiny badge. People tend to overcome rules. UK people are flying to Spain an then get a bus to Portugal. Today's news was about 2000 students from Netherlands partying in Portugal, Algarve. I am a young and healthy person AFAIK, but my mother is not. Neither my father in law or some of my closest friends. Any death caused by irresponsible behaviour should be treated as an law infringement. I really don't care if I get Corona. Pretty much I do, or in this case, I don't do, is thinking about people that does not have the chance of saying: fuck it. It's the world we have, but I am sure it's not the world I wanted. Bare with me: any death that could be avoided they should be avoided. And we could avoid alot of deaths if we think about others, an not that much about ourselves. 60 years ago you didn't have internet, lot's didn't even have light or bathroom in house. Divorces are up with confinement. Are those people really meant to be together? Don't look to much to your belly, and look around. Learn how to respect others without expecting the retribution. You will feel great when you give up something you think it's aquired by right to something you think it's just right. Best

natch 6y ago

Economics aside, there may be mental health wins for keeping a different mix as they have. Or losses, too — it’s really too early to say one way or another imho.

cortic 6y ago

Deaths per 1M population are significantly higher in Italy(577), Spain(607) and the UK(654) than they are in Sweden(539). And Sweden have been a lot more honest in counting than most countries. There seems to be a drive to discredit the inalienable human rights approach, in this case by implying it was a financial decision; but i have to say i am impressed by the way they have handled this situation, the only response on earth that involved treating their citizens like adults.

claudeganon 6y ago
South Korea never had lockdowns, outside of shutting down bars when they traced some superspreading events back to them. The idea that they’re somehow less committed to human rights when they’ve preserved freedom of movement, while avoiding mass deaths, is laughable on its face.
- redisman 6y ago
  South Korea, Taiwan, Japan etc. have all done so much better that comparing the responses of “the west” is just nitpicking extremely flawed plans and executions. I know who I’m going to look for guidance in any future outbreaks
- fomine3 6y ago
  SK traced people in a bar by cellular location data and payment data without permit. I think it's not good for human rights.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    The entire digital advertising industry is in greater violation of human rights, by this measure.
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Tracing real individuals rather than "anonymized" statistics is significantly worse. https://theconversation.com/tracing-homophobia-in-south-koreas-coronavirus-surveillance-program-139428 https://theconversation.com/tracing-homophobia-in-south-kore...

leandrod 6y ago

This is meaningless. There were no economic gains expected, just avoiding a greater disaster. Given that Swedish economy is fairly integrated with its lockdown neighbours, it would be surprising if there were any economic gains; instead, it is probable its neighbours benefitted from Sweden having avoided lockdown. Also, the higher death rate is normal and acceptable, in a tradeoff against deaths caused by confinement and the unnecessary prolongation of the epidemic. Herd immunity will arrive earlier, and lockdown-caused deaths will perhaps make Swedes survive more and better. Now vote me down.

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jfoster 6y ago

The idea of prioritising the economy is a falsehood. You can't have a strong economy with a virus like covid ripping its way through the population. Some people might go on as normal, but a huge portion of the population will be afraid of going outside. The only feasible path to economic recovery is: 1. Keep the borders closed. Mandatory & monitored quarantine for anyone entering. 2. Lock down, test & contact-trace until the virus is basically eradicated. Mandating mask use outside of abodes or any other measure will help speed this along, too. 3. Open up, but keep borders closed except to places applying a similar approach. The swifter the action, the easier it all is.

x87678r 6y ago

Nice to see all the Swedish commenters on the NYT pointing out how biased the article is.

reddog 6y ago

Sweden is right to be concerned about their economy. Its not just about skipping a few haircuts -- a shattered economy kills people as sure as coronavirus does. Every shuttered manufacturing plant has a body count associated with it and its own case mortality rate. I don't know how many people died as a direct result of the Great Depression but based on what I've been told by relatives the suffering was considerable with deaths due to lack of food, homelessness and despair. I do know that the Nazi party would never have come to power in Germany without the world economic collapse. They were a minor party on the wane in the late 20s only to get their second wind in the elections following the crash. It's also possible the Japanese militarist would never have come to power without the Great Depression for more complex reasons. WWII was the result at the cost of 45-70 million lives. Economic catastrophes are not just about money -- they have life and death consequences. I wish more people would have taken this into consideration before they carpet bombed the US economy to combat the pandemic. I guess they figured that no matter what, the US was safe from the kind of civil unrest that gripped the Weimar republic. A strong man taking control of the US? Fascist and antifascist battling in the street? That could never happen here.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Sweden recorded its first week of no excess mortality over a month ago: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-mortality/sweden-records-first-week-with-no-excess-mortality-since-pandemic-struck-idUSKBN23F1WK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden... The economic gains part of it is not really relevant. Today each country is exposed to the global economy. If everyone else has economies that are broken then that will trickle over to Sweden inevitably. But that doesn’t mean that it is not worth pushing for Sweden’s strategy. If more countries did so, perhaps Sweden would collect economic gains.

Markoff 6y ago

this was supposed to be about economy? I thought they just wanted to preserve their way of life without draconian measures of countries which took those measures and got Fd anyway in matter of deaths or economy it was pretty clear from beginning it won't have big impact on their economy either way

jpangs88 6y ago

I feel that so many of these articles on Sweden fail to mention the reason for Sweden's strategy and often say it due to another reason. The reason that the Swedish government has given for the strategy is that they think that people can follow the restrictions long term. It's not to save the economy or to create heard immunity (which I have heard from many people.) I think it's too early to judge Sweden's strategy as presumably the intent is that things will be better down the line. On a more personal note, I live in Sweden and I am not a Swedish citizen and I can say that things aren't "Business as usual here" and plenty is being done to stop the spread of the COVID 19. I can't say I 100% agree with the policy but I also don't think it's the huge mistake people make it out to be. I have linked below an explanation for the strategy by one of Sweden's top epidemiologist and the one that's often credited as the architect of Sweden's strategy. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-28/sweden-s-covid-expert-says-the-world-still-doesn-t-understand https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-28/sweden-s-... https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-risks/disasters-and-incidents/2020/official-information-on-the-new-coronavirus https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-risks/disaster...

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
One thing I don't see discussed and it's an unbacked intuition is that all the different government strategies seem to revolve around differences in 'group' trust levels. Both the Swedish 'no-lockdown' and the Dutch 'intelligent' lockdown are government policies that actually work locally because the government trusts that the population will follow the guidelines given (which they do for the majority). Equally when I discussed with Dutch and Swedish people (anecdata) they all believed their national strategy was correct because they trusted their governaments competence and the science advisors that were being consulted. I think many of these strategies cannot be translated to other countries were there isn't a shared trust level, i.e. population trusting the government's competence, and equally the government trusting civil society (biggest example being the US).

anderstornqvist 6y ago

This is a very misleading article. Compare Japan (no lockdown) with Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Or we can compare some areas of Sweden with Norway. Sweden has high death rate for the same reason that many of the lockdown countries have hight death rate: Elderly care centers in some areas where not properly protected! 20 years of policies for cost reduction of care homes is the reason for the failure).

thisrod 6y ago

What went wrong in Sweden? I genuinely don't understand that. The news keeps showing Swedes walking in parks and down streets, but that's not how people catch the novel coronavirus. Meanwhile, people were working from home and mass gatherings were banned; the public were trusted to figure out the details, but they're not idiots. It could have worked. What was everyone doing in Sweden that people weren't doing in Finland and Australia? Or were there less visible differences, in surveillance and contact tracing maybe, that haven't been so widely reported?

mirekrusin 6y ago

Little bit too early to proclaim this kind of conclusions, isn't it?

raxxorrax 6y ago

Hard to say already since many small businesses will close but haven't done so officially yet.

twblalock 6y ago

Any coherent explanation of this pandemic is going to need to explain why some countries that didn't do very much (e.g. Japan) ended up with far fewer deaths per capita than countries that locked down (e.g. EU countries and the United States). Sweden is somewhere in the middle -- they are being criticized, yet other countries in Europe which locked down have ended up with a higher per capita death rate. Why is it that Cambodia and other nations in southeast Asia have negligible deaths despite doing very little to combat the virus, while countries in the EU which locked down have way more deaths per capita? Somehow the models about the spread and death rate of this virus seem to differ on a geographical basis, and that needs to be explained. At this point, any analysis of the pandemic that does not attempt to tackle this problem is selectively ignorant.

taneq 6y ago
> some countries that didn't do very much (e.g. Japan) Japan had a strong preexisting culture of wearing a mask when going out in public if you're the slightest bit sick. > countries that locked down (e.g. EU countries and the United States). The early EU countries (Italy, France, Spain) and the US didn't lock down until far too late when their local epidemics had already spiraled out of control. The US in particular locked down far too late, too little, and has now re-opened despite still having a huge number of active cases and community transmission. On top of that, it sounds like a large number of people there are still refusing to wear masks. > Why is it that [...] nations in southeast Asia have negligible deaths I'm less sure here but I'd guess it's a combination of age demographics (fewer very old people who are most likely to die of the virus), lack of testing/reporting, and higher overall death rates due to disease which masks the effect somewhat.
- LeanderK 6y ago
  yeah, i think the cultural aspect can not be ignored! The stereotypes of some cultures being more cold and wanting to keep their distances is grounded in reality. In e.g. france or italy having very close contact for example when greeting is the norm. I can imagine that it helps to spread the virus. Others don't have to adjust too much.

catears 6y ago

The opening paragraph of the article shows to me that the journalist in question has done a poor job researching exactly what happened in Sweden. > Sweden has captured international attention by conducting an unorthodox, open-air experiment. Almost every interview available with Anders Tegnell (swedish equivalent of Anthony Fauci) mention that the international community prior to covid had agreed that following a strategy similar to the one sweden are following now is the best choice. Somehow this translates to an "unorthodox" strategy. Never mind that during previous epidemics, like SARS, the current Swedish response was "the normal response". > It has allowed the world to examine what happens in a pandemic when a government allows life to carry on largely unhindered. I am really disturbed by this sentence. While it is technically correct that no lockdown has been imposed on the swedish people by the government, saying that life has "carried on largely unhindered" is straight up dishonest. Ever since February or March there have been regular press conferences with the FHM ("swedish CDC") broadcast over public radio (and obviously you can listen to it on internet and in their app, with push notifications). The hospital system has almost completely shifted to handling covid, nationwide. Most companies have tried to shift their work to peoples homes as much as possible, just like FHM has suggested. Buying groceries online has increased by a large margin. Even the cars at my local supermarket are now practicing social distancing! Swedes, overall, have really taken the gravity of the situation to heart and made changes in their life to protect their community. > but Sweden’s economy has fared little better. This misses the most important points about the swedish strategy and shows a lack of knowledge about swedish economy and EU economy. The goal of the swedish strategy has been to preserve peoples health as good as possible. Locking everyone in their homes for several months is not a strategy that is resillient. It increases cases of domestic violence, people losing their jobs cause negative effects as well. The number of deaths related to covid have to be compared to overall deaths, but most importanlty the overall health. The goal was never to gamble peoples life away for the economy! The article jumps straight into saying that Sweden did not gain anything, economically, from having no lockdown. Well of course not. How could a country with focus on exports and services thrive economically in a pandemic? If the inner market of the EU is as good as closed, who would make the bet that an export focused country would be thriving? Sweden is dependent on other nations, especially in the EU and Scandinavia, so of course the economy wouldn't fare well. > Sweden put stock in the sensibility of its people as it largely avoided imposing government prohibitions. This is factually wrong. From the 27th of March it became a criminal offence to organize events of 50 or more people, down from the 500 that was decided on the 12th of March https://www.regeringen.se/artiklar/2020/03/forbud-mot-allmanna-sammankomster-eller-offentliga-tillstallningar-med-fler-an-50-deltagare/ https://www.regeringen.se/artiklar/2020/03/forbud-mot-allman... This article is an example of poor journalism. It misrepresents the situation in Sweden, while containing crucial factual mistakes bordering on misinformation while also trying to steer american policy making in a specific direction.

MasterYoda 6y ago

Statistics is just statistics. Many compare Swedens death/capita to other countries figures and conclude it is bad. But this is in fact not a god measure at all because this figure dont account for how far the spread is over the population, Sweden is very different here. Because Sweden have been more open they are also far ahead of other countries and much more people have been exposed and got antibodies. Sweden cant simply be compared to others that are more in the beginning in the pandemic. Sadly media forget this. The virus cant be stopped so sooner or later other couties must open up and then they going to get more death. Just look at Spain that open up now had to lock down a reginon now with 200.000. Saying Swedens way is bad right now is far to early to conclude, when the pandemic is far from over. We have to wait at least a year or two.

mekkkkkk 6y ago

Swedish officials has said over and over again that neither herd immunity nor economics is the basis for the strategy chosen. They tried to strike a balance between the impact of containment measures (isolation, mental health, lack of education etc) and minimizing the spread of the virus. Of course the first point is extremely hard to quantify, and thus the hard numbers are horrifying. Most people in Sweden are taking plenty precautions and isolate on a voluntary level, highly encouraged by all institutions. However, if you are stuck inside with abusive parents or are getting depressed by the isolation, you have the choice to go out. As others have mentioned, the true failure has been in elder care. How the virus was allowed to ravage care centers is completely unacceptable.

Proven 6y ago

The NYT socialists just can't help it. Ok, so 5.5K people died. Let's assume the current approach helped avoid $10bn of damages, and the government saved $10bn in stimulus spending. That's a $4 million saving per each dead person. Meanwhile (various other) nanny states spent way more, lost billions thanks to lockdowns, and people still died. The NYT cares about MMT and socialism, not about Covid-19.

anang 6y ago

I think one aspect missing from the discussion of whether or not Sweden has done the right thing is just how much power a government has over its citizens. In many cases I think the consensus in Sweden is that the government doesn’t have the right to keep people at home or force people to wear masks. The current government had to push to get legislation passed that allowed them to shut down primary schools and preschools, if needed. When this is all said and done a lot of countries are going to have evaluate what all of this has meant for their democracies.