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I wish this article went into more detail about the relative death rates. The fact that Sweden’s death rate “far outstripped that of other nordic” countries (a

I wish this article went into more detail about the relative death rates. The fact that Sweden’s death rate “far outstripped that of other nordic” countries (all else being equal) would tend to indicate the Swedish strategy failed, no? Are there important confounding variables that would explain the higher death rate?

lbeltrame 6y ago
I know for sure that a lot of the deaths are from nursing care homes (but I don't know in how large percentage), something seen also elsewhere in the world.
- Ovah 6y ago
  47% of all deaths are from nursing homes (July 8th). https://www.svd.se/fortsatt-stor-andel-doda-pa-svenska-aldreboenden https://www.svd.se/fortsatt-stor-andel-doda-pa-svenska-aldre...
  - johnofthesea 6y ago
    For Norway that number is 58% according this page: https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/?utm_source=corona-widget&utm_term=d7#norway https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/?utm_source=corona-wid...
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Depends on whether a few more deaths now is better than whatever the alternatives are / were with regard to death rate and economic damage, no?
matz1 6y ago
The death rate maybe higher but they are in decline right now and that without lockdown, I would say the strategy succeed.
- johnnyo 6y ago
  How so? If they achieved the same results as others on roughly the same timeline, yet with more deaths, how is that a successful strategy?
  - matz1 6y ago
    Because other countries implement lockdown. Lockdowns is not without cost.
  - Kiro 6y ago
    We don't know the results yet. Numbers are going up in countries that are lifting their lockdown.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Lockdown has its own issues, economic and psychology / mental health. Plus, some types of death are an economic boon because they: a) cause economic churn and the associated fees, charges, and taxes b) free up resources that were tied up with non-producers
    - fanatic2pope 6y ago
      "non-producer"? Oh, you mean human being.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  They locked down, just not formally. They saw the same economic damage their neighbors did. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-c...
  - makomk 6y ago
    Sweden saw the same level of damage to their export-oriented industries as their neighbours did, but less damage to the service industries that are directly affected by a lockdown and less of a decrease in mobility: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/01/na060120-sweden-will-covid-19-economics-be-different https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/01/na060120-swe... You can't just lump the two together and claim it shows that not locking down causes about the same level of economic damage as locking down, especially given that those export losses are presumably directly attributable to their neighbours' lockdowns.
Kiro 6y ago
At its peak Sweden had over 100 daily deaths. Yesterday it was 7 and no longer any excess mortality.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  For some more context to the numbers Germany had at it's peak ~300 deaths a day, it had 5 deaths on the 20th (83M people).
- madspindel 6y ago
  21 new deaths today: "21 nya dödsfall med bekräftad covid-19 har inrapporterats det senaste dygnet, enligt Folkhälsomyndighetens senaste uppdatering."
  - nickexyz 6y ago
    21 new deaths with covid-19 reported the last 24 hours. The deaths are not necessarily from today. Edit: For those interested in the stats (English): https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/the-spread-of-the-coronavirus/ https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/the-spread-of-the-corona...
ginko 6y ago
Yes, here's a Norwegian site comparing the different Nordic countries per capita[1]. Other than Iceland being an outlier due to it being tiny, Sweden outstrips all other countries on pretty much any measure by a wide margin. It seems like the number of patients under intensive care is slowly falling for Sweden but they're not anywhere close to where the other Nordics were months ago. [1] https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/norden/ https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/norden/
- glofish 6y ago
  You can't quite compare countries like that and claim that Sweden would have had the same rate as the other. The world is full of examples where neighboring countries have radically different caseloads. I don't know enough to meaningfully discuss the details but I suspect you can't just claim Norway is the same as Sweden. What is most remarkable is the trajectory the epidemic took within Sweden. No comparison is necessary to another country. That they have achieved a substantial reduction of their caseload without any of the invasive measures. Nobody would have ever believed that to be possible! Other countries should learn from Sweden rather than being in denial - it demonstrates that other measures can be just as effective, and we need to understand how that was possible and whether the measures are transferable.
  - jeromegv 6y ago
    But if their economy did worse than their neighbour, what was the point of avoiding invasive measures? They have more deaths, more cases, and worse economic output, what exactly is successful here?
    - hkeide 6y ago
      You should visit Scandinavia sometime. The Swedish and Norwegian economies cannot be compared easily.
    - glofish 6y ago
      because it simply not true, their economy did not do worse their people are happier and pretty much looks like they would agree to do it again the same way that is the real test of measures, would you do the exact same thing again? which country would want to take the same type of measures once more
s9w 6y ago
European (all-cause) mortality is conveniently reported on https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
- glofish 6y ago
  Notably there are substantial excess in 2018 or 2019 during the same weeks. Not quite sure what to make of that. If you were subtracting 2020 from 2018 then it looks like you would end up with 80 thousand fewer deaths in the first 10 weeks of 2020. What is that about.
  - s9w 6y ago
    It's almost as if this isn't nearly as bad as people scream
gridlockd 6y ago
The comparison with other "nordic" countries seems arbitrary. If we go by latitude, why is there such a huge variance in death rates between Belgium, France, Netherlands and Germany? The biggest factor is probably outbreaks in retirement homes. I think you can make the argument that the strategy failed to protect these elderly people, but it might also be the conditions in these facilities that are to blame.
- l33tman 6y ago
  Yes, in Sweden the problem was the nursing homes and they were run (and still are run) badly. The other measures that could have been done (within the covid response itself) would probably not have helped this, goes the argument (but certainly a major overhaul of how the nursing homes are staffed and run would have helped - that would never have been possible in the short timeframe though).
jordanbeiber 6y ago
In Sweden immigrants from Iraq, Syria, Somalia and other countries form a large part of deaths and ICU patients. It will be interesting to see why this is eventually. There’s language barriers, people living in close quarters and perhaps the vitamin D thing as well? Link to article in swedish MD magazine (in Swedish): https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/04/utlandsfodda-ar-overrepresenterade-bland-de-smittade/ https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/04/utlandsfo...
- hedora 6y ago
  Poorer populations are dying of COVID at higher rates throughout the world. In the US, at least, the lockdown is mostly protecting the rich. I wonder if Sweden’s approach is more economically and racially equitable than full lockdowns. I’d love to see a study of this that’s backed by quality data.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    People always jumps to “it must be poverty!” when the Vitamin D thing comes up. There is a strong correlation between Vitamin D levels and COVID-19 outcome, regardless of skin color. Independently, there is a strong correlation between having low Vitamin D levels and living in an environment to which dark skin is not adapted to. That alone should be enough to raise some caution, there is no need to wait for better data because Vitamin D supplementation is in order either way. Unfortunately, the media is mostly silent on this, likely because it wants yet another social justice narrative instead.
    - vinay427 6y ago
      > Independently, there is a strong correlation between having low Vitamin D levels and living in an environment to which dark skin is not adapted to. Honest question: what skin color is actually adapted to western Europe or much of North America? Virtually everyone I know with a lighter skin tone needs to apply sunscreen for any outdoor activity to avoid rapid sunburns, and virtually everyone I know with a darker skin tone (jokingly or not) suspects they have a Vitamin D deficiency.
XyC0 6y ago
On twitter Jacob explained it in more detail: https://twitter.com/JacobGudiol/status/1283308801043636231?s=09 https://twitter.com/JacobGudiol/status/1283308801043636231?s... The death numbers is not counted the same way in Sweden and Norway, in Sweden they count every one that had covid-19 even if they died of something else after they recovered from corvid-19, they do not count it that way in Norway.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  This theory can be dismissed by looking at excess death counts. A very clear spike in overall, country-wide deaths - of all kinds - can be seen in Sweden that is not seen in Norway. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... Screenshots of the current charting, for posterity: https://imgur.com/a/1DC95no https://imgur.com/a/1DC95no
  - refurb 6y ago
    But Sweden has roughly double the population of Finland and Norway, so Sweden (1000 weekly deaths) is comparable to Finland (500 weekly deaths) and not that far off of Norway (200 weekly deaths).
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      Irrelevant. It's how far the spikes go above normal per-capita that matters, which is why each chart has a different Y axis that fits that particular country. The pictured charts clearly show Sweden and the US seeing substantially more deaths than normal, while Finland and Norway stayed at roughly their normal rates.
    - zosima 6y ago
      The countries have significantly different lifespans and normal mortality, because of health care systems, age distribution, culture, genes etc. It doesn't really give anything sensible when you compare unadjusted total mortality per capita across countries.
- 6y ago
gpm 6y ago
It's too early to say the Swedish strategy failed, because the Swedish strategy was "do badly at the start to do better later", and "later" isn't finished yet. On the flip side it would be possible to say it succeeded, if it did so much better that they are already better off than the rest of the world, but I don't think we're really there yet either (and the epidemiologists point is really just that there are signs that they might be there in the future).
- basch 6y ago
  Right. The denominator in rate is per "unit of time" and we dont know the period. The two ways you could compare them are equal points on a bell curve, or equal time periods. What you can't do is compare two instantaneous speeds and then argue that one car has a faster average speed.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  > It's too early to say the Swedish strategy failed, because the Swedish strategy was "do badly at the start to do better later", and "later" isn't finished yet. So, at this moment we are only celebrating that Sweden succeeded at the "do badly at the start" part?
  - gpm 6y ago
    Of course not, the article is rather celebrating the signs that the "do better overall" part of the plan will work out. I think that celebration is a bit premature, from your reaction I assume you do to, but that doesn't mean it isn't a real thing.
    - Viliam1234 6y ago
      To me it seems that Sweden's strategy has been celebrated since the first day, and the celebrations never stopped. At this moment I wonder what would it actually take to make the celebrations stop.
ArkVark 6y ago
Lockdown kills too. In Australia there were about 700 excess deaths from January to April 2020 due to people being unwilling or unable to access normal medical care: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/07/covid-19-drives-up-australias-mortality-rate/ https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/07/covid-19-drives-up-...
deleted 6y ago
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jug 6y ago
Yeah, Sweden has a remarkably high death rate due to very old populations like 80+ or 85+. I mean, really high, it's been pretty terrible. So would probably be quite different and more "normal" numbers if it hadn't hit our nursing homes like it did. Death rate is very low in comparison if you instead look at figures for age 70 and lower. This problem has also been acknowledged as probably the greatest problem and a failure during the coronavirus crisis by Swedish epidemiologists despite "Protect the elderly!" being an early, daily mantra. It's been asked why Sweden then had this problem and not our Nordic friends. Some answers might be understaffing or underestimated equipment needs. When the crisis hit them, there was already a global shortage of disinfectants etc. It's also been asked how the virus entered the nursing homes to begin with. A too liberal stance for visitors a bit too long? Or brought in by staff using too crowded public transports? Many questions and the investigations are still ongoing. Compounding the death rate problem in Sweden was probably also a lack of centralized detail management and confusing directives that even led to palliative care for elderly in nursing homes not even being covid-19 victims. In Sweden, nursing homes work quite independently from each other, and even hospitals are strongly regionally controlled rather than directly state controlled even in a crisis like this. (there are some exceptions though, in these catastrophies, staff can be flewn across the country to help man understaffed hospitals etc) tl;dr I think nursing home infections are the single outstanding factor for the abnormal Swedish death rates. If they are infected, they already have particularly weak immune systems that can often not even begin to fight this beast off. Hell, they probably often already have respiratory diseases and/or use immunosuppressants.
- zosima 6y ago
  As far as I know the age distribution of covid-19 related deaths have been exactly the same in Sweden as other countries (+/- some standard deviation) Do you have data to demonstrate that the age distribution is different?
  - hedora 6y ago
    Many other countries (especially the US) also screwed up their handling of old folks homes. Also, I don’t know what data you are citing, but note that many data sets are normalized by number of estimated or confirmed of cases, not by total population size.
nprz 6y ago
I believe one of the Swedish epidemiologists who helped engineer Sweden's COVID response said not to compare the death rates today, but a year from today and see how they compare then.
bluGill 6y ago
We don't know. If there is no vaccine ever, and no long term immunity from getting it, then it doesn't matter what you do every country will eventually be infected and have the same death rate. Sweden just happens to be there first but everyone will get there. Of course my assumptions are big. If there is a vaccine then it is personally worth a lock down to not get it. If there is herd immunity I want everyone else to get it while I personally lock down.
m0llusk 6y ago
This is not really true. For one thing both cases and deaths have been strongly clustered so that population level rates are not so interesting. What matters is whether your ancestors adapted to life in northern latitudes, what your weight, insulin resistance, and vitamin D levels are, and how densely urbanized your environment is. Another factor is that Sweden aggressively labeled all hospitalizations and deaths involving a COVID-19 diagnosis as being COVID-19 cases and deaths even if the patients were very old and had chronic health problems. This is a major difference between both Denmark and Finland which tended to be very cautious about labeling hospitalizations and deaths as COVID-19 related and had low testing rates as well. Looking at all cause mortality figures yields very different results.
lsllc 6y ago
I found it interesting that the general consensus seems to be that Sweden failed, and yet NY state was just hailed as "doing it correctly" by Dr. Fauci [0] (despite one of the very highest per-capita death rates in the world). We didn't do much better here in MA in terms of deaths, although like NY we're only seeing a very small (and importantly flat) number of cases here. Meanwhile Australia, a country that was previously hailed as having done it right and contained COVID-19 has now locked down 6.6 million people [1], closed state borders between Queensland and NSW [2] and currently seeing record numbers of infections [3]. Only time will tell which is the best strategy. [0] https://abc7ny.com/covid-19-ny-fauci-anthony-cuomo/6324584/ https://abc7ny.com/covid-19-ny-fauci-anthony-cuomo/6324584/ [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/asia/australia-victoria-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/asia/australia-victoria-coron... [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/australia-shutting-border-between-two-biggest-states-as-covid-19-surges-in-melbourne-2020-07-06 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/australia-shutting-border-... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/australia-sets-record-for-coronavirus-cases-with-victoria-surge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/australia...
- rumanator 6y ago
  > found it interesting that the general consensus seems to be that Sweden failed, and yet NY state was just hailed as "doing it correctly" by Dr. Fauci [0] You should read the sources you quote. Dr. Fauci's comments are on NY's approach on "how to successfully bring down cases of coronavirus." It says nothing about what enabled the epidemic to spread like wildfire, which is Sweden's case. Taken right from your own source: "Again, we have a problem. We need to admit it and own it. But we have got to do the things that are very clear that we need to do to turn this around, remembering we can do it," Fauci said."
  - lsllc 6y ago
    I did read it. My point was that it seems to me that Sweden and NY are at about the same place now. Sweden basically just let it happen and NY locked down and imposed significant measures. Both had significant deaths in the elderly population (although significantly more in NY than Sweden) and both now have very few new cases & deaths, so the outcome has been similar. Also interesting is that CA took very similar measures to NY with very similar timing and now are seeing the exact opposite to NY (although the media seem to be a bit quiet on that!).
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sdinsn 6y ago
> The fact that Sweden’s death rate “far outstripped that of other nordic” countries (all else being equal) would tend to indicate the Swedish strategy failed, no? Why are we only comparing Sweden to other nordic countries?
- postcynical 6y ago
  They are very comparable. Similar geographical- and population size, density, culture, climate, lifestyle.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
They pushed their deaths forward by dealing with the pandemic with a light hand. I have a feeling two years from now the total damage will be comparable to other countries in Europe.

lbeltrame 6y ago

I know for sure that a lot of the deaths are from nursing care homes (but I don't know in how large percentage), something seen also elsewhere in the world.

Ovah 6y ago
47% of all deaths are from nursing homes (July 8th). https://www.svd.se/fortsatt-stor-andel-doda-pa-svenska-aldreboenden https://www.svd.se/fortsatt-stor-andel-doda-pa-svenska-aldre...
- johnofthesea 6y ago
  For Norway that number is 58% according this page: https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/?utm_source=corona-widget&utm_term=d7#norway https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/?utm_source=corona-wid...

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

Depends on whether a few more deaths now is better than whatever the alternatives are / were with regard to death rate and economic damage, no?

matz1 6y ago

The death rate maybe higher but they are in decline right now and that without lockdown, I would say the strategy succeed.

johnnyo 6y ago
How so? If they achieved the same results as others on roughly the same timeline, yet with more deaths, how is that a successful strategy?
- matz1 6y ago
  Because other countries implement lockdown. Lockdowns is not without cost.
- Kiro 6y ago
  We don't know the results yet. Numbers are going up in countries that are lifting their lockdown.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Lockdown has its own issues, economic and psychology / mental health. Plus, some types of death are an economic boon because they: a) cause economic churn and the associated fees, charges, and taxes b) free up resources that were tied up with non-producers
  - fanatic2pope 6y ago
    "non-producer"? Oh, you mean human being.
ceejayoz 6y ago
They locked down, just not formally. They saw the same economic damage their neighbors did. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-c...
- makomk 6y ago
  Sweden saw the same level of damage to their export-oriented industries as their neighbours did, but less damage to the service industries that are directly affected by a lockdown and less of a decrease in mobility: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/01/na060120-sweden-will-covid-19-economics-be-different https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/01/na060120-swe... You can't just lump the two together and claim it shows that not locking down causes about the same level of economic damage as locking down, especially given that those export losses are presumably directly attributable to their neighbours' lockdowns.

Kiro 6y ago

At its peak Sweden had over 100 daily deaths. Yesterday it was 7 and no longer any excess mortality.

KingOfCoders 6y ago
For some more context to the numbers Germany had at it's peak ~300 deaths a day, it had 5 deaths on the 20th (83M people).
madspindel 6y ago
21 new deaths today: "21 nya dödsfall med bekräftad covid-19 har inrapporterats det senaste dygnet, enligt Folkhälsomyndighetens senaste uppdatering."
- nickexyz 6y ago
  21 new deaths with covid-19 reported the last 24 hours. The deaths are not necessarily from today. Edit: For those interested in the stats (English): https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/the-spread-of-the-coronavirus/ https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/the-spread-of-the-corona...

ginko 6y ago

Yes, here's a Norwegian site comparing the different Nordic countries per capita[1]. Other than Iceland being an outlier due to it being tiny, Sweden outstrips all other countries on pretty much any measure by a wide margin. It seems like the number of patients under intensive care is slowly falling for Sweden but they're not anywhere close to where the other Nordics were months ago. [1] https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/norden/ https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona/norden/

glofish 6y ago
You can't quite compare countries like that and claim that Sweden would have had the same rate as the other. The world is full of examples where neighboring countries have radically different caseloads. I don't know enough to meaningfully discuss the details but I suspect you can't just claim Norway is the same as Sweden. What is most remarkable is the trajectory the epidemic took within Sweden. No comparison is necessary to another country. That they have achieved a substantial reduction of their caseload without any of the invasive measures. Nobody would have ever believed that to be possible! Other countries should learn from Sweden rather than being in denial - it demonstrates that other measures can be just as effective, and we need to understand how that was possible and whether the measures are transferable.
- jeromegv 6y ago
  But if their economy did worse than their neighbour, what was the point of avoiding invasive measures? They have more deaths, more cases, and worse economic output, what exactly is successful here?
  - hkeide 6y ago
    You should visit Scandinavia sometime. The Swedish and Norwegian economies cannot be compared easily.
  - glofish 6y ago
    because it simply not true, their economy did not do worse their people are happier and pretty much looks like they would agree to do it again the same way that is the real test of measures, would you do the exact same thing again? which country would want to take the same type of measures once more

s9w 6y ago

European (all-cause) mortality is conveniently reported on https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

glofish 6y ago
Notably there are substantial excess in 2018 or 2019 during the same weeks. Not quite sure what to make of that. If you were subtracting 2020 from 2018 then it looks like you would end up with 80 thousand fewer deaths in the first 10 weeks of 2020. What is that about.
- s9w 6y ago
  It's almost as if this isn't nearly as bad as people scream

gridlockd 6y ago

The comparison with other "nordic" countries seems arbitrary. If we go by latitude, why is there such a huge variance in death rates between Belgium, France, Netherlands and Germany? The biggest factor is probably outbreaks in retirement homes. I think you can make the argument that the strategy failed to protect these elderly people, but it might also be the conditions in these facilities that are to blame.

l33tman 6y ago
Yes, in Sweden the problem was the nursing homes and they were run (and still are run) badly. The other measures that could have been done (within the covid response itself) would probably not have helped this, goes the argument (but certainly a major overhaul of how the nursing homes are staffed and run would have helped - that would never have been possible in the short timeframe though).

jordanbeiber 6y ago

In Sweden immigrants from Iraq, Syria, Somalia and other countries form a large part of deaths and ICU patients. It will be interesting to see why this is eventually. There’s language barriers, people living in close quarters and perhaps the vitamin D thing as well? Link to article in swedish MD magazine (in Swedish): https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/04/utlandsfodda-ar-overrepresenterade-bland-de-smittade/ https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/04/utlandsfo...

hedora 6y ago
Poorer populations are dying of COVID at higher rates throughout the world. In the US, at least, the lockdown is mostly protecting the rich. I wonder if Sweden’s approach is more economically and racially equitable than full lockdowns. I’d love to see a study of this that’s backed by quality data.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  People always jumps to “it must be poverty!” when the Vitamin D thing comes up. There is a strong correlation between Vitamin D levels and COVID-19 outcome, regardless of skin color. Independently, there is a strong correlation between having low Vitamin D levels and living in an environment to which dark skin is not adapted to. That alone should be enough to raise some caution, there is no need to wait for better data because Vitamin D supplementation is in order either way. Unfortunately, the media is mostly silent on this, likely because it wants yet another social justice narrative instead.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    > Independently, there is a strong correlation between having low Vitamin D levels and living in an environment to which dark skin is not adapted to. Honest question: what skin color is actually adapted to western Europe or much of North America? Virtually everyone I know with a lighter skin tone needs to apply sunscreen for any outdoor activity to avoid rapid sunburns, and virtually everyone I know with a darker skin tone (jokingly or not) suspects they have a Vitamin D deficiency.

XyC0 6y ago

On twitter Jacob explained it in more detail: https://twitter.com/JacobGudiol/status/1283308801043636231?s=09 https://twitter.com/JacobGudiol/status/1283308801043636231?s... The death numbers is not counted the same way in Sweden and Norway, in Sweden they count every one that had covid-19 even if they died of something else after they recovered from corvid-19, they do not count it that way in Norway.

ceejayoz 6y ago
This theory can be dismissed by looking at excess death counts. A very clear spike in overall, country-wide deaths - of all kinds - can be seen in Sweden that is not seen in Norway. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav... Screenshots of the current charting, for posterity: https://imgur.com/a/1DC95no https://imgur.com/a/1DC95no
- refurb 6y ago
  But Sweden has roughly double the population of Finland and Norway, so Sweden (1000 weekly deaths) is comparable to Finland (500 weekly deaths) and not that far off of Norway (200 weekly deaths).
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    Irrelevant. It's how far the spikes go above normal per-capita that matters, which is why each chart has a different Y axis that fits that particular country. The pictured charts clearly show Sweden and the US seeing substantially more deaths than normal, while Finland and Norway stayed at roughly their normal rates.
  - zosima 6y ago
    The countries have significantly different lifespans and normal mortality, because of health care systems, age distribution, culture, genes etc. It doesn't really give anything sensible when you compare unadjusted total mortality per capita across countries.
6y ago

gpm 6y ago

It's too early to say the Swedish strategy failed, because the Swedish strategy was "do badly at the start to do better later", and "later" isn't finished yet. On the flip side it would be possible to say it succeeded, if it did so much better that they are already better off than the rest of the world, but I don't think we're really there yet either (and the epidemiologists point is really just that there are signs that they might be there in the future).

basch 6y ago
Right. The denominator in rate is per "unit of time" and we dont know the period. The two ways you could compare them are equal points on a bell curve, or equal time periods. What you can't do is compare two instantaneous speeds and then argue that one car has a faster average speed.
Viliam1234 6y ago
> It's too early to say the Swedish strategy failed, because the Swedish strategy was "do badly at the start to do better later", and "later" isn't finished yet. So, at this moment we are only celebrating that Sweden succeeded at the "do badly at the start" part?
- gpm 6y ago
  Of course not, the article is rather celebrating the signs that the "do better overall" part of the plan will work out. I think that celebration is a bit premature, from your reaction I assume you do to, but that doesn't mean it isn't a real thing.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    To me it seems that Sweden's strategy has been celebrated since the first day, and the celebrations never stopped. At this moment I wonder what would it actually take to make the celebrations stop.

ArkVark 6y ago

Lockdown kills too. In Australia there were about 700 excess deaths from January to April 2020 due to people being unwilling or unable to access normal medical care: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/07/covid-19-drives-up-australias-mortality-rate/ https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/07/covid-19-drives-up-...

deleted 6y ago

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jug 6y ago

Yeah, Sweden has a remarkably high death rate due to very old populations like 80+ or 85+. I mean, really high, it's been pretty terrible. So would probably be quite different and more "normal" numbers if it hadn't hit our nursing homes like it did. Death rate is very low in comparison if you instead look at figures for age 70 and lower. This problem has also been acknowledged as probably the greatest problem and a failure during the coronavirus crisis by Swedish epidemiologists despite "Protect the elderly!" being an early, daily mantra. It's been asked why Sweden then had this problem and not our Nordic friends. Some answers might be understaffing or underestimated equipment needs. When the crisis hit them, there was already a global shortage of disinfectants etc. It's also been asked how the virus entered the nursing homes to begin with. A too liberal stance for visitors a bit too long? Or brought in by staff using too crowded public transports? Many questions and the investigations are still ongoing. Compounding the death rate problem in Sweden was probably also a lack of centralized detail management and confusing directives that even led to palliative care for elderly in nursing homes not even being covid-19 victims. In Sweden, nursing homes work quite independently from each other, and even hospitals are strongly regionally controlled rather than directly state controlled even in a crisis like this. (there are some exceptions though, in these catastrophies, staff can be flewn across the country to help man understaffed hospitals etc) tl;dr I think nursing home infections are the single outstanding factor for the abnormal Swedish death rates. If they are infected, they already have particularly weak immune systems that can often not even begin to fight this beast off. Hell, they probably often already have respiratory diseases and/or use immunosuppressants.

zosima 6y ago
As far as I know the age distribution of covid-19 related deaths have been exactly the same in Sweden as other countries (+/- some standard deviation) Do you have data to demonstrate that the age distribution is different?
- hedora 6y ago
  Many other countries (especially the US) also screwed up their handling of old folks homes. Also, I don’t know what data you are citing, but note that many data sets are normalized by number of estimated or confirmed of cases, not by total population size.

nprz 6y ago

I believe one of the Swedish epidemiologists who helped engineer Sweden's COVID response said not to compare the death rates today, but a year from today and see how they compare then.

bluGill 6y ago

We don't know. If there is no vaccine ever, and no long term immunity from getting it, then it doesn't matter what you do every country will eventually be infected and have the same death rate. Sweden just happens to be there first but everyone will get there. Of course my assumptions are big. If there is a vaccine then it is personally worth a lock down to not get it. If there is herd immunity I want everyone else to get it while I personally lock down.

m0llusk 6y ago

This is not really true. For one thing both cases and deaths have been strongly clustered so that population level rates are not so interesting. What matters is whether your ancestors adapted to life in northern latitudes, what your weight, insulin resistance, and vitamin D levels are, and how densely urbanized your environment is. Another factor is that Sweden aggressively labeled all hospitalizations and deaths involving a COVID-19 diagnosis as being COVID-19 cases and deaths even if the patients were very old and had chronic health problems. This is a major difference between both Denmark and Finland which tended to be very cautious about labeling hospitalizations and deaths as COVID-19 related and had low testing rates as well. Looking at all cause mortality figures yields very different results.

lsllc 6y ago

I found it interesting that the general consensus seems to be that Sweden failed, and yet NY state was just hailed as "doing it correctly" by Dr. Fauci [0] (despite one of the very highest per-capita death rates in the world). We didn't do much better here in MA in terms of deaths, although like NY we're only seeing a very small (and importantly flat) number of cases here. Meanwhile Australia, a country that was previously hailed as having done it right and contained COVID-19 has now locked down 6.6 million people [1], closed state borders between Queensland and NSW [2] and currently seeing record numbers of infections [3]. Only time will tell which is the best strategy. [0] https://abc7ny.com/covid-19-ny-fauci-anthony-cuomo/6324584/ https://abc7ny.com/covid-19-ny-fauci-anthony-cuomo/6324584/ [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/asia/australia-victoria-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/asia/australia-victoria-coron... [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/australia-shutting-border-between-two-biggest-states-as-covid-19-surges-in-melbourne-2020-07-06 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/australia-shutting-border-... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/australia-sets-record-for-coronavirus-cases-with-victoria-surge https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/australia...

rumanator 6y ago
> found it interesting that the general consensus seems to be that Sweden failed, and yet NY state was just hailed as "doing it correctly" by Dr. Fauci [0] You should read the sources you quote. Dr. Fauci's comments are on NY's approach on "how to successfully bring down cases of coronavirus." It says nothing about what enabled the epidemic to spread like wildfire, which is Sweden's case. Taken right from your own source: "Again, we have a problem. We need to admit it and own it. But we have got to do the things that are very clear that we need to do to turn this around, remembering we can do it," Fauci said."
- lsllc 6y ago
  I did read it. My point was that it seems to me that Sweden and NY are at about the same place now. Sweden basically just let it happen and NY locked down and imposed significant measures. Both had significant deaths in the elderly population (although significantly more in NY than Sweden) and both now have very few new cases & deaths, so the outcome has been similar. Also interesting is that CA took very similar measures to NY with very similar timing and now are seeing the exact opposite to NY (although the media seem to be a bit quiet on that!).

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sdinsn 6y ago

> The fact that Sweden’s death rate “far outstripped that of other nordic” countries (all else being equal) would tend to indicate the Swedish strategy failed, no? Why are we only comparing Sweden to other nordic countries?

postcynical 6y ago
They are very comparable. Similar geographical- and population size, density, culture, climate, lifestyle.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

They pushed their deaths forward by dealing with the pandemic with a light hand. I have a feeling two years from now the total damage will be comparable to other countries in Europe.