4 ms·

Sweden is not middle of the pack. They are in line with the worst death rates in Europe when their comparable neighbors have the best rates. And they achieved t

Sweden is not middle of the pack. They are in line with the worst death rates in Europe when their comparable neighbors have the best rates. And they achieved that while still doing quite a few lockdown measures, just less. In numbers of cases we've already gone from high to low and back to high again in direct correlation to the lockdown measures that were taken. We've done that in multiple places and at different times. I don't see any way to argue that lockdowns are not more effective than chance. Not even Sweden argues that, they just think they can manage the extra cases and achieve herd immunity soon.

elcritch 6y ago
According to this Statista data, they’re roughly in the middle for Western Europe, not precisely but they certainly aren’t ahead of the pack: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat... Just because your bordering countries do better, is a possible indicator there methods worked better but there’s a lot more confounding variables that would need to be isolated, as I mention in another comment. For example perhaps the Nordic countries have similar age distributions (or not). They do have what seems to about 1/3 more immigrants than the other nordics per capita (https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-publikasjoner/_attachment/204333?_ts=1497ab86428 https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-publikasjoner/_...). Immigrants aren’t bad, just this particular virus hits elderly people more severely so having more elderly living in stratified homes means more elderly exposed. Certainly stricter and government enforced lockdowns slow down progression rate of the disease for a while, but other factors also appear to have a larger cumulative effect. Timing, population composition, age distribution. It’s more akin to anti-depressants, as in clinical studies of many potential anti-depressants show they have similar rates of effect as placebos. The degree of the covid deaths per capita has as much to do with societal, geographical, and even luck in many countries. I grant that well executed lockdowns have better success, especially in as in New Zealand, but they’re more of an anomaly I’d say. Now presuming, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy weren’t completely incompetent in their governmental lockdowns then other factors appear to be as big a factor as those policies. France from the Statista data only has a per capita mortality rate that 25% larger, which isn’t a large effect given the uncertainty of the data, and especially for epidemics which generally follow exponential curves (e.g. a tiny initial difference in starting conditions can lead to large differences very quickly). Take this (older graph) and it’d difficult to statistically say which countries have lockdowns or not. Again just including nearest neighbors isn’t sufficient since other neighboring countries like Germany, Belgium, and Netherlands have pretty big variations between them as large as Sweden to Norway. So do say the US and Canada. I don’t believe the absolute number of COVID-19 cases matters as much given a virus where 5-80% of cases are mild or asymptotic (https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion-are-asymptomatic/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion-are-a...). Many serological studies point to 10x the number of cases, which if so, all the cases numbers are off by an order of magnitude (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-suggesting-vast-undercount-coronavirus-infections-may-be-unreliable https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-sug...). A bit callous perhaps, but the more cases of sars-cov-2 overall with the same number of fatalities means the less deadly it is overall. Also, the countries that had/have stricter lockdowns will likely continue having larger waves of deaths until their overall numbers look more like Sweden (your point of achieving herd immunity sooner).
- pedrocr 6y ago
  > According to this Statista data, they’re roughly in the middle for Western Europe I stopped right here. You linked data that shows them 5th of a list of 31 countries, with values that are 5x larger than 2/3 of the list. You linked that to argue they are "roughly in the middle". At that point facts don't matter and there's no point in having a discussion.
  - elcritch 6y ago
    > I stopped right here. You linked data that shows them 5th of a list of 31 countries, with values that are 5x larger than 2/3 of the list. You linked that to argue they are "roughly in the middle". At that point facts don't matter and there's no point in having a discussion. The facts do matter, though your comment doesn't give my point fair consideration that I'd expect of a genuine discussion. I provided a link to raw data for all of Europe which requires a bit of interpretation since Statista doesn't have a convenient link for Western European. Croatia is not part of Western Europe by most metrics, so saying they're 5x smaller isn't a valid criticism. For sake of completeness, I took data from the first Statista link and a common list of Western European countries: Luxembourg, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Sweden, Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium. These lists vary of course, and if you were critiquing my argument that would be the best point, and I would concede that. For those countries I took the Statista at the time of this post (plus extra data for Swizterland of 23.57). Using the Excel quartile on these countries the quartiles are: 1st: 4.95-14.51, 2nd: 14.51-36.03, 3rd: 36.03-57.85, 4th: 57.85-86.4. Sweden at 56.89 falls into the 3rd quartile, though just barely. When speaking, I consider 2nd and 3rd quartiles to be "middle of the pack" as a general statement (rather than the median or average). As in if one were talking of say, student grades, or variations in parts productions I'd give them a "B" and say they're middle of the pack. Almost in the "A" group, but not quite. You could say it's close enough that it doesn't matter, but by the numbers and using quartiles the math would put it there. Personally I'm happy my eye ball estimation as it'd getting very close to where I'd say Sweden is in the top of the pack. A valid criticism would be that Belgium appears to be an outlier and likely counts their numbers differently (w/o Belgium Sweden is pushed into the bottom of the 4th quartile)), but I have not method to control for that nor the time to do so unfortunately. To my overall point, despite being downvoted, I still consider Sweden's policy not a resulting in complete outlier to be a "win". It's close, but yes, that's my conclusion. If a vaccine had similar ratios of effectives vs no vaccine it'd likely not be considered an effective vaccine or deterrent. Unfortunately I've yet to see good thorough counter-arguments in this or in scientific arguments. Also, other arguments often don't consider what how policies in health care are or aren't generally considered effective.

elcritch 6y ago

According to this Statista data, they’re roughly in the middle for Western Europe, not precisely but they certainly aren’t ahead of the pack: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat... Just because your bordering countries do better, is a possible indicator there methods worked better but there’s a lot more confounding variables that would need to be isolated, as I mention in another comment. For example perhaps the Nordic countries have similar age distributions (or not). They do have what seems to about 1/3 more immigrants than the other nordics per capita (https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-publikasjoner/_attachment/204333?_ts=1497ab86428 https://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/artikler-og-publikasjoner/_...). Immigrants aren’t bad, just this particular virus hits elderly people more severely so having more elderly living in stratified homes means more elderly exposed. Certainly stricter and government enforced lockdowns slow down progression rate of the disease for a while, but other factors also appear to have a larger cumulative effect. Timing, population composition, age distribution. It’s more akin to anti-depressants, as in clinical studies of many potential anti-depressants show they have similar rates of effect as placebos. The degree of the covid deaths per capita has as much to do with societal, geographical, and even luck in many countries. I grant that well executed lockdowns have better success, especially in as in New Zealand, but they’re more of an anomaly I’d say. Now presuming, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy weren’t completely incompetent in their governmental lockdowns then other factors appear to be as big a factor as those policies. France from the Statista data only has a per capita mortality rate that 25% larger, which isn’t a large effect given the uncertainty of the data, and especially for epidemics which generally follow exponential curves (e.g. a tiny initial difference in starting conditions can lead to large differences very quickly). Take this (older graph) and it’d difficult to statistically say which countries have lockdowns or not. Again just including nearest neighbors isn’t sufficient since other neighboring countries like Germany, Belgium, and Netherlands have pretty big variations between them as large as Sweden to Norway. So do say the US and Canada. I don’t believe the absolute number of COVID-19 cases matters as much given a virus where 5-80% of cases are mild or asymptotic (https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion-are-asymptomatic/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion-are-a...). Many serological studies point to 10x the number of cases, which if so, all the cases numbers are off by an order of magnitude (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-suggesting-vast-undercount-coronavirus-infections-may-be-unreliable https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-sug...). A bit callous perhaps, but the more cases of sars-cov-2 overall with the same number of fatalities means the less deadly it is overall. Also, the countries that had/have stricter lockdowns will likely continue having larger waves of deaths until their overall numbers look more like Sweden (your point of achieving herd immunity sooner).

pedrocr 6y ago
> According to this Statista data, they’re roughly in the middle for Western Europe I stopped right here. You linked data that shows them 5th of a list of 31 countries, with values that are 5x larger than 2/3 of the list. You linked that to argue they are "roughly in the middle". At that point facts don't matter and there's no point in having a discussion.
- elcritch 6y ago
  > I stopped right here. You linked data that shows them 5th of a list of 31 countries, with values that are 5x larger than 2/3 of the list. You linked that to argue they are "roughly in the middle". At that point facts don't matter and there's no point in having a discussion. The facts do matter, though your comment doesn't give my point fair consideration that I'd expect of a genuine discussion. I provided a link to raw data for all of Europe which requires a bit of interpretation since Statista doesn't have a convenient link for Western European. Croatia is not part of Western Europe by most metrics, so saying they're 5x smaller isn't a valid criticism. For sake of completeness, I took data from the first Statista link and a common list of Western European countries: Luxembourg, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Sweden, Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium. These lists vary of course, and if you were critiquing my argument that would be the best point, and I would concede that. For those countries I took the Statista at the time of this post (plus extra data for Swizterland of 23.57). Using the Excel quartile on these countries the quartiles are: 1st: 4.95-14.51, 2nd: 14.51-36.03, 3rd: 36.03-57.85, 4th: 57.85-86.4. Sweden at 56.89 falls into the 3rd quartile, though just barely. When speaking, I consider 2nd and 3rd quartiles to be "middle of the pack" as a general statement (rather than the median or average). As in if one were talking of say, student grades, or variations in parts productions I'd give them a "B" and say they're middle of the pack. Almost in the "A" group, but not quite. You could say it's close enough that it doesn't matter, but by the numbers and using quartiles the math would put it there. Personally I'm happy my eye ball estimation as it'd getting very close to where I'd say Sweden is in the top of the pack. A valid criticism would be that Belgium appears to be an outlier and likely counts their numbers differently (w/o Belgium Sweden is pushed into the bottom of the 4th quartile)), but I have not method to control for that nor the time to do so unfortunately. To my overall point, despite being downvoted, I still consider Sweden's policy not a resulting in complete outlier to be a "win". It's close, but yes, that's my conclusion. If a vaccine had similar ratios of effectives vs no vaccine it'd likely not be considered an effective vaccine or deterrent. Unfortunately I've yet to see good thorough counter-arguments in this or in scientific arguments. Also, other arguments often don't consider what how policies in health care are or aren't generally considered effective.