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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

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.
- mettamage 6y ago
  I'm not American, I'm Dutch. And there's a huge difference between WOII levels (which is what 2% deathrate in The Netherlands would be), versus an extra amount of death people comparable to the worst flu season. In The Netherlands, the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. I hope it stays that way for everyone.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. Do you have a link to the statistics please? I think you're comparing two different methods of counting death. I think for covid-19 you're counting people who died after testing positive, or people where covid-19 is listed as the cause on the death certificate. But for flu I think you're counting excess mortality.
    - nkurz 6y ago
      Not a scientific article, but this blog post gives some numbers for Sweden: https://emanuelkarlsten.se/more-swedes-died-in-one-month-1993-and-2000-compared-to-april-2020-why/ https://emanuelkarlsten.se/more-swedes-died-in-one-month-199.... One big question would be why they chose April 2020 as the comparison point rather than May or June -- did the number of deaths per month in Sweden actually drop? (I haven't read the article closely, and don't have a horse in this race --- I just thought it was apropos. Feel free to tear it to shreds if appropriate.)
      - DanBC 6y ago
        I'm not going to tear it to shreds! When people say "covid is like flu" sometimes they mean "flu is a big deal, and a bad flu year kills lots of people". (I agree with that). But sometimes they mean "flu isn't so bad, it's a bit like a cold, doesn't kill so many people".
      - yxhuvud 6y ago
        Yes, the death rate has dropped and is now down to normal.
mtgp1000 6y ago
Handwashing practices, physical greetings (kissing in some cultures), sharing of eating utensils, personal space, city density; There's no reason to expect R0 values to be the same all over the world.
- kingkawn 6y ago
  Our treatment of race is quite sensical given that it’s misuse in the past has lead to totally nonsensical slaughter and destruction.
  - booboolayla 6y ago
    "Sensical, but with a caveat"
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  > prevents scientists from exploring the possibility that R0 values are culturally dependent This is just not true at all. Let’s call a spade a spade: you are abusing fears about COVID-19 to take a political shot against antiracists. The Lancet published “Ethnicity and COVID-19: an urgent public health research priority” in April: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30922-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... It is true that scientists can’t expect to publish about the racial aspects of coronavirus spread, for the same reasons they couldn’t publish about coronavirus differences between wizards and Muggles. Humans only have one race.
capableweb 6y ago
> I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% That's the guess at least. But we don't know. The argument for being careful about covid-19 isn't because we know it's more dangerous than other things, it's because we don't know. It's still novel, we've only been tracking it since last December. The flu been around for a long time. Maybe we'll live with covid-19 for a long time, or maybe we'll find a vaccine. As it seems right now, it's deadlier than the flu and we weren't really ready for it, so it caused a ripple effect of problems. No matter if a country implemented a quarantine or not, they took a lot of damage one way or another. It's too early to make any conclusions around this, time will tell what was the best way considering the circumstances
ojnabieoot 6y ago
It’s really deeply misleading to say that Sweden let the virus go “unchecked.” Sweden didn’t enforce a hard lockdown but strongly encouraged social distancing, mask wearing, staying at home, etc. Sweden did have a strong (if likely inadequate) national response to coronavirus. And Sweden was subject to EU-wide travel restrictions, including virtually no foreign tourism.
- mettamage 6y ago
  I see, that's how I understood it. I never checked the media super carefully regarding the Swedes. But now I'm seeing that they did do stuff.
- swinglock 6y ago
  False regarding mask wearing; wearing a mask has always been and is still strongly discouraged, instead one should only "stay home if feeling sick".
  - basch 6y ago
    If someone is feeling sick, are they encouraged to go out, but with a mask, elsewhere?
    - swinglock 6y ago
      I don't know. That's the policy. Only those that wear a mask in their profession should do so. Not otherwise, regardless of how you feel. Instead of using masks, Swedes stay home if the feel sick.
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    Thanks for the clarification - I had read recently about Sweden considering a facemask policy but I misremembered it as about making them compulsory. Didn't realize that they were still discouraging it (at least as of late June). > instead one should only "stay home if feeling sick" My understanding is that this isn't true, but maybe you're being a bit pithy and I misunderstood - it's true that there weren't any bans or strict stay-at-home recommendations, but there were definitely recommendations for people to limit time outside of the home. Even in March Swedish employers were encouraged to implement remote work and Swedes were discouraged on travelling within the country.
contemporary343 6y ago
It has not been running rampant in Sweden, because many individuals altered their behaviors as well. Which is to say, Sweden is nowhere close to herd immunity, so it stands to lose many more lives in the future as well. So far: it has lost many more lives per capita than its neighbors, and is economically worse off. There are also two other important reasons to have locked down early in the pandemic: - with time, we have already learned how to treat patients better and reduce mortality. This includes proning, dexamethasone and remdesivir which will reduce deaths. So exposing people to it in spring 2020 will produce very different mortality outcomes compared to fall or spring 2021 - We also have important therapeutic advances happening in monoclonal antibodies, and of course phase 3 trials of vaccines. I would bet that, with some luck, other European communities avoid ever accumulating the deaths Sweden did. Finally, it's more than deaths: many long-haul COVID patients are facing permanent disability and diminished capacity. The statistics aren't capturing this yet, but collectively, I think it was very foolish to have tried to push for herd immunity so early in a pandemic.
Svip 6y ago
> Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable) Belgium counts all suspected deaths as well, including those that have not been tested for COVID-19. Which means Belgium is the country closest matching their excess death with COVID-19 fatalities. The Netherlands, for example, leaves about 50% unexplained due to their counting.[0] [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-the-challenge-of-counting-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-the-challenge-of...
- dmurray 6y ago
  Belgium is the closest of the 8 countries/regions considered in that article - not of the EU or the world. Reported deaths there comprise 93% of excess deaths. Overreporting is possible too. Ireland is at 150-160% according to recent reports [0]. [0] https://www.thejournal.ie/covid-19-deaths-ireland-hiqa-5140490-Jul2020/ https://www.thejournal.ie/covid-19-deaths-ireland-hiqa-51404...
lsllc 6y ago
For comparison, Massachusetts with 8000 deaths out of a population of 6.9M (which is #4 for deaths per-capita worldwide after NY, NJ and CT). For some reason MA is now being held up as "the exception to America's coronavirus failure": https://theweek.com/articles/923075/massachusetts-exception-americas-coronavirus-failure https://theweek.com/articles/923075/massachusetts-exception-...
- toss1 6y ago
  Massachusetts is the exception because our re-infection rates (Rt) have been successfully driven down to well below 1.00 (~0.90 in a recent report), despite having started with a nearly out of control situation. We've gone from thousands of new cases per day to now averaging ~100. The doubling days started out at around 2.4, stayed stubbornly in the dozens for many weeks, then rise, to now averaging well over 400. The original terrifying exponential growth has clearly been halted. New levels of opening ("Level 3") are now happening this week - gyms, movies, restaurants, all w/large spacing requirements. In the few times I've gone out (making heavy use of delivery), seeing generally very good mask compliance - 75-90%, but less on one recent trip, which is worrying. I'm concerned about the opening, but confident that the plan is really data driven, and this is as far as they will go until a vaccine, and they'll quickly roll back if numbers slide. source: MA resident, track & analyze data daily.
  - lsllc 6y ago
    Not sure they were "driven" down by policy per-se: According to rt.live, we started March 3rd with an Rt of 2.22 and were already in a steep Rt decline by the time Baker issued the stay-home request on March 24rd (Rt 1.22) and got below Rt 1.0 a week later on March 31st. Baker issued his mask order May 6th (Rt 0.88) and we've been bouncing around at that since although we're creeping up now from our low of 0.75 around when reopening started and been slowly ticking upwards since late May to Rt 0.98 now. A few weeks ago we had the lowest Rt in the nation, now we're only 5th lowest. Hopefully the start of Phase 3 this week won't push us up over 1, but I suspect it will. https://rt.live/us/MA https://rt.live/us/MA
    - 6y ago
nodamage 6y ago
Remember that IFR (infection fatality rate) is the (total number of deaths / total number of infections). You can't use 10 million as the denominator because not everyone in Sweden has actually been infected. An antibody study[1] indicated that 7.3% of Stockholm has been infected, but that number is 1) from April and 2) is going to be higher than average because Stockholm was harder hit than the rest of the country. [1] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhetsarkiv/2020/maj/forsta-resultaten-fran-pagaende-undersokning-av-antikroppar-for-covid-19-virus/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhets...
msbarnett 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. Naive death rate is deaths/totally cases of infection, not deaths/total population. Most of Sweden never contracted covid in the first place. A first approximation of Sweden's covid death rate would be around ~7.4% to date (almost certainly lower in practice bc total infections > officially diagnosed)
jariel 6y ago
"On a country left completely unchecked?" not unchecked. There were a lot of closures and measures taken. Just not the same as elsewhere. That would be almost 200 000 were it to be in America, and that's quite a lot of people to die in 3 or so months. More than Vietnam+Korean wars put together and those wars lasted years. So it's not a small number.

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.

mettamage 6y ago
I'm not American, I'm Dutch. And there's a huge difference between WOII levels (which is what 2% deathrate in The Netherlands would be), versus an extra amount of death people comparable to the worst flu season. In The Netherlands, the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. I hope it stays that way for everyone.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than corona. Do you have a link to the statistics please? I think you're comparing two different methods of counting death. I think for covid-19 you're counting people who died after testing positive, or people where covid-19 is listed as the cause on the death certificate. But for flu I think you're counting excess mortality.
  - nkurz 6y ago
    Not a scientific article, but this blog post gives some numbers for Sweden: https://emanuelkarlsten.se/more-swedes-died-in-one-month-1993-and-2000-compared-to-april-2020-why/ https://emanuelkarlsten.se/more-swedes-died-in-one-month-199.... One big question would be why they chose April 2020 as the comparison point rather than May or June -- did the number of deaths per month in Sweden actually drop? (I haven't read the article closely, and don't have a horse in this race --- I just thought it was apropos. Feel free to tear it to shreds if appropriate.)
    - DanBC 6y ago
      I'm not going to tear it to shreds! When people say "covid is like flu" sometimes they mean "flu is a big deal, and a bad flu year kills lots of people". (I agree with that). But sometimes they mean "flu isn't so bad, it's a bit like a cold, doesn't kill so many people".
    - yxhuvud 6y ago
      Yes, the death rate has dropped and is now down to normal.

mtgp1000 6y ago

Handwashing practices, physical greetings (kissing in some cultures), sharing of eating utensils, personal space, city density; There's no reason to expect R0 values to be the same all over the world.

kingkawn 6y ago
Our treatment of race is quite sensical given that it’s misuse in the past has lead to totally nonsensical slaughter and destruction.
- booboolayla 6y ago
  "Sensical, but with a caveat"
ojnabieoot 6y ago
> prevents scientists from exploring the possibility that R0 values are culturally dependent This is just not true at all. Let’s call a spade a spade: you are abusing fears about COVID-19 to take a political shot against antiracists. The Lancet published “Ethnicity and COVID-19: an urgent public health research priority” in April: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30922-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... It is true that scientists can’t expect to publish about the racial aspects of coronavirus spread, for the same reasons they couldn’t publish about coronavirus differences between wizards and Muggles. Humans only have one race.

capableweb 6y ago

> I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to 2% That's the guess at least. But we don't know. The argument for being careful about covid-19 isn't because we know it's more dangerous than other things, it's because we don't know. It's still novel, we've only been tracking it since last December. The flu been around for a long time. Maybe we'll live with covid-19 for a long time, or maybe we'll find a vaccine. As it seems right now, it's deadlier than the flu and we weren't really ready for it, so it caused a ripple effect of problems. No matter if a country implemented a quarantine or not, they took a lot of damage one way or another. It's too early to make any conclusions around this, time will tell what was the best way considering the circumstances

ojnabieoot 6y ago

It’s really deeply misleading to say that Sweden let the virus go “unchecked.” Sweden didn’t enforce a hard lockdown but strongly encouraged social distancing, mask wearing, staying at home, etc. Sweden did have a strong (if likely inadequate) national response to coronavirus. And Sweden was subject to EU-wide travel restrictions, including virtually no foreign tourism.

mettamage 6y ago
I see, that's how I understood it. I never checked the media super carefully regarding the Swedes. But now I'm seeing that they did do stuff.
swinglock 6y ago
False regarding mask wearing; wearing a mask has always been and is still strongly discouraged, instead one should only "stay home if feeling sick".
- basch 6y ago
  If someone is feeling sick, are they encouraged to go out, but with a mask, elsewhere?
  - swinglock 6y ago
    I don't know. That's the policy. Only those that wear a mask in their profession should do so. Not otherwise, regardless of how you feel. Instead of using masks, Swedes stay home if the feel sick.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  Thanks for the clarification - I had read recently about Sweden considering a facemask policy but I misremembered it as about making them compulsory. Didn't realize that they were still discouraging it (at least as of late June). > instead one should only "stay home if feeling sick" My understanding is that this isn't true, but maybe you're being a bit pithy and I misunderstood - it's true that there weren't any bans or strict stay-at-home recommendations, but there were definitely recommendations for people to limit time outside of the home. Even in March Swedish employers were encouraged to implement remote work and Swedes were discouraged on travelling within the country.

contemporary343 6y ago

It has not been running rampant in Sweden, because many individuals altered their behaviors as well. Which is to say, Sweden is nowhere close to herd immunity, so it stands to lose many more lives in the future as well. So far: it has lost many more lives per capita than its neighbors, and is economically worse off. There are also two other important reasons to have locked down early in the pandemic: - with time, we have already learned how to treat patients better and reduce mortality. This includes proning, dexamethasone and remdesivir which will reduce deaths. So exposing people to it in spring 2020 will produce very different mortality outcomes compared to fall or spring 2021 - We also have important therapeutic advances happening in monoclonal antibodies, and of course phase 3 trials of vaccines. I would bet that, with some luck, other European communities avoid ever accumulating the deaths Sweden did. Finally, it's more than deaths: many long-haul COVID patients are facing permanent disability and diminished capacity. The statistics aren't capturing this yet, but collectively, I think it was very foolish to have tried to push for herd immunity so early in a pandemic.

Svip 6y ago

> Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable) Belgium counts all suspected deaths as well, including those that have not been tested for COVID-19. Which means Belgium is the country closest matching their excess death with COVID-19 fatalities. The Netherlands, for example, leaves about 50% unexplained due to their counting.[0] [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-the-challenge-of-counting-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-the-challenge-of...

dmurray 6y ago
Belgium is the closest of the 8 countries/regions considered in that article - not of the EU or the world. Reported deaths there comprise 93% of excess deaths. Overreporting is possible too. Ireland is at 150-160% according to recent reports [0]. [0] https://www.thejournal.ie/covid-19-deaths-ireland-hiqa-5140490-Jul2020/ https://www.thejournal.ie/covid-19-deaths-ireland-hiqa-51404...

lsllc 6y ago

For comparison, Massachusetts with 8000 deaths out of a population of 6.9M (which is #4 for deaths per-capita worldwide after NY, NJ and CT). For some reason MA is now being held up as "the exception to America's coronavirus failure": https://theweek.com/articles/923075/massachusetts-exception-americas-coronavirus-failure https://theweek.com/articles/923075/massachusetts-exception-...

toss1 6y ago
Massachusetts is the exception because our re-infection rates (Rt) have been successfully driven down to well below 1.00 (~0.90 in a recent report), despite having started with a nearly out of control situation. We've gone from thousands of new cases per day to now averaging ~100. The doubling days started out at around 2.4, stayed stubbornly in the dozens for many weeks, then rise, to now averaging well over 400. The original terrifying exponential growth has clearly been halted. New levels of opening ("Level 3") are now happening this week - gyms, movies, restaurants, all w/large spacing requirements. In the few times I've gone out (making heavy use of delivery), seeing generally very good mask compliance - 75-90%, but less on one recent trip, which is worrying. I'm concerned about the opening, but confident that the plan is really data driven, and this is as far as they will go until a vaccine, and they'll quickly roll back if numbers slide. source: MA resident, track & analyze data daily.
- lsllc 6y ago
  Not sure they were "driven" down by policy per-se: According to rt.live, we started March 3rd with an Rt of 2.22 and were already in a steep Rt decline by the time Baker issued the stay-home request on March 24rd (Rt 1.22) and got below Rt 1.0 a week later on March 31st. Baker issued his mask order May 6th (Rt 0.88) and we've been bouncing around at that since although we're creeping up now from our low of 0.75 around when reopening started and been slowly ticking upwards since late May to Rt 0.98 now. A few weeks ago we had the lowest Rt in the nation, now we're only 5th lowest. Hopefully the start of Phase 3 this week won't push us up over 1, but I suspect it will. https://rt.live/us/MA https://rt.live/us/MA
  - 6y ago

nodamage 6y ago

Remember that IFR (infection fatality rate) is the (total number of deaths / total number of infections). You can't use 10 million as the denominator because not everyone in Sweden has actually been infected. An antibody study[1] indicated that 7.3% of Stockholm has been infected, but that number is 1) from April and 2) is going to be higher than average because Stockholm was harder hit than the rest of the country. [1] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhetsarkiv/2020/maj/forsta-resultaten-fran-pagaende-undersokning-av-antikroppar-for-covid-19-virus/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-press/nyhets...

msbarnett 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. Naive death rate is deaths/totally cases of infection, not deaths/total population. Most of Sweden never contracted covid in the first place. A first approximation of Sweden's covid death rate would be around ~7.4% to date (almost certainly lower in practice bc total infections > officially diagnosed)

jariel 6y ago

"On a country left completely unchecked?" not unchecked. There were a lot of closures and measures taken. Just not the same as elsewhere. That would be almost 200 000 were it to be in America, and that's quite a lot of people to die in 3 or so months. More than Vietnam+Korean wars put together and those wars lasted years. So it's not a small number.