22 ms·

Vilified early over Covid-19 strategy, Sweden seems to have scourge controlled

• tertiary 6y ago
  I'm confused why stories about Sweden's success keep popping up here. The country had TEN TIMES the per capita death rate of its neighbors and still has the highest unemployment of all the Nordic countries. Seems to me like the worst of both worlds.
  • officialchicken 6y ago
    I too call B.S. There is an ongoing concerted and heavily proactive campaign being orchestrated in the press about Sweden, at their own behest (I'm sure other foreign governments that like to meddle in elections). And it seems almost entirely to prevent comparing them to their more successful neighbors.
    • paul7986 6y ago
      Exactly and why I've tuned out all media minus local weather and or emergency reports.
  • vkou 6y ago
    It's also sporting a GDP contraction that is... A little worse than some of its neighbors, a little better than others, but entirely in the same ballpark.
    • Gwypaas 6y ago
      I really wonder what GDP really means in todays world when money is "free" and there are no limits on government spending. For example Denmark had less bankruptcies than previous years back in March and April. Looking at government debt both Finland and Denmark loaned about double compared to Sweden, while having half the population, essentially 4x the loaning per inhabitant with similar results. Sweden: https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-debt https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-debt Denmark: https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/government-debt https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/government-debt Finland: https://tradingeconomics.com/finland/government-debt https://tradingeconomics.com/finland/government-debt
  • jacques_chester 6y ago
    > I'm confused why stories about Sweden's success keep popping up here. I'm not.
  • centimeter 6y ago
    What was their relative unemployment rate before covid? It doesn't make sense to compare absolute rates - you should compare the change.
  • jlmorton 6y ago
    Because the outbreak slowed without any strong controls. Sweden had a light response to the pandemic, and it quickly found itself with a major outbreak, and a high rate of deaths. Yet without implementing any major controls, with significantly less social distancing among the population, without significant mask usage, the outbreak seems to have slowed substantially. It's almost impossible to make these comparisons in real-time, without the benefit of hindsight. We won't know if this approach made sense until after the pandemic is over. But it's certainly an interesting data point. One thing that is clear is that it's far too complex to look at a couple metrics, compare them against wildly different populations, and form a conclusion. Sweden had a higher unemployment rate than many of its peers before the pandemic. Exports are a staggering 47% of GDP in Sweden. Sweden made the same mistake as many other countries, putting COVID-positive patients in nursing homes. But the longer the pandemic remains under control in Sweden, with comparatively little social distancing and mask usage, the more interesting it becomes, particularly as countries which implemented strong lockdowns see renewed outbreaks.
    • addicted 6y ago
      The uncertainty was all the more reason to be more aggressive! We are freaking lucky that COVID’s death rate is by the lower end of all the estimates. If the actual rate was closer to what Italy was seeing, or even a smaller fraction of thst, Sweden would have had far more dead. And the death rate is down because we understand the virus better and so are able to take actions that do not involve locking down to control it. And also it wasn’t a massive emergency at this time with massive shortages of PPE etc.
      • jlmorton 6y ago
        I agree with you, I supported the lockdowns in the United States, and I think, for instance, the SF Bay Area did a good job. But it's still an interesting data point.
      • btilly 6y ago
        We are freaking lucky that COVID’s death rate is by the lower end of all the estimates. If the actual rate was closer to what Italy was seeing, or even a smaller fraction of thst, Sweden would have had far more dead. If you think that was luck, then you didn't understand the difference between CFR and IFR. The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is the fraction of reported cases that result in death. This is easier to measure. And if you're sick enough to become a reported case, it is the best back of the envelope estimate of how likely you are to die. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is the fraction of infected people that will die. For estimating how many will wind up dead if you hit herd immunity, that is the relevant figure. It is also harder to produce. Early on we were seeing CFRs in the 5-10% range. That is the figure that you remember But the first estimates of the IFR was an analysis of the Diamond Princess. It estimated an IFR of around 0.5%. In late March, Fauci reported that it was about 1%. Both estimates had significant error bars. The figures that Neil Ferguson used in his model was in the same range. All of this happened while we saw CFRs in the 5-10% range. And therefore there should have been no surprise from the beginning that the CDC estimate of the IFR for the Spring would come out where it did, 0.65%.
  • gridlockd 6y ago
    If you compare it to its more sparsely populated immediate neighbors, sure, Sweden looks bad. If you compare it to UK, France, Spain, Italy, who all did a severe lockdown, Sweden does not look bad.
    • jeremysalwen 6y ago
      Which is exactly the point: Why would you compare it to dramatically different countries instead of ones that mainly differed on the axis of interest, unless you had an axe to grind?
      • aga98mtl 6y ago
        Stockholm is actually the only big, dense, international city in the Nordic countries. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populated_municipalities_in_the_Nordic_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populated_mun... The disease likes dense urban areas with a lot of poor immigrants working in big care homes. Comparing countries is not really "fair". In Canada, Montreal got hit hard. In the USA, NYC, Philadelphia and Boston got it hard. It's a urban centric disease. So yes it's fair to compare to Sweden to Germany, France, UK and Belgium.
        • HarryHirsch 6y ago
          Sweden has 11 million citizens, 2.5 millions in Stockholm metropolitan area. Norway has 5 million people, 1.8 millions living in Oslo metropolitan area. Finland has 5.5 million citizens, 1.7 millions living in Greater Helsinki. Lots of countryside elsewhere. The Nordic countries are quite comparable.
          • gridlockd 6y ago
            Perhaps we should also be looking at population density: Stockholm: 11,802/sqm Oslo: 4,268/sqm Helsinki: 3,670/sqm
            • 6y ago
  • BurningFrog 6y ago
    Yes they had a terrible phase early on. The stories now is about how they've gone to almost no cases the last few months.
    • tyfon 6y ago
      Except they are now rising again rapidly in Stockholm for instance [1]. You can use the html console to remove the overlay to read the article. They also were never on "almost no cases", they have been higher than the neighbours all the time except for a very brief period where they were on the same level. [1] https://www.dn.se/sthlm/antalet-coronafall-har-fordubblats-i-stockholm-vi-ar-allvarligt-bekymrade/ https://www.dn.se/sthlm/antalet-coronafall-har-fordubblats-i...
      • irq11 6y ago
        They are not. Cases are up slightly in the past few weeks, but on par with where they were in July (after which they saw a decline). You have to be extrapolating wildly to call this a rapid increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102193/coronavirus-cases-development-in-sweden/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102193/coronavirus-case...
        • morsch 6y ago
          Sweden started July with a bit more than double their current cases, and ended it with a bit less than half. Four weeks ago was as low as it ever got in Sweden, and since then it has risen steadily, up to more than double what it was. It's also 30% higher than the last local maximum, in the middle of August. Here's a better source, which also isn't out of date by 6 days: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&time=2020-06-01..latest&country=FRA~DEU~USA~SWE~ESP&region=World&casesMetric=true&interval=smoothed&hideControls=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=...
          • BurningFrog 6y ago
  • addicted 6y ago
    And their numbers are going back up. And their economy was the worst performing among their comparable neighbors. It makes no sense at all because for a few weeks their case numbers are lower. And even if they remain, say 50% of what their neighbors’ case loads are, their response will still have been worse in outcomes because we know much more about how to handle COVID which has led to significantly better results for people who get it today vs a few months ago. Even if the total number of cases are exactly the same, having those cases later is a huge win in itself.
  • oxymoran 6y ago
    Maybe because you are only looking at it’s immediate neighbors. Sweden had nearly exactly the same population size and death rate as Michigan but Michigan had a strong and lengthy lockdown.
    • gnat 6y ago
      America had an appallingly incompetent Covid response, with poor testing, tracing, and compliance. This makes it a poor benchmark for updating your priors, unless one of your previous beliefs was "America can muster a coordinated response to a pandemic".
      • creddit 6y ago
        You can count on one hand the number of countries with a “good” COVID response.
        • Synaesthesia 6y ago
          Most Asian countries did pretty well.
          • pvaldes 6y ago
            And many countries in Africa also
    • triceratops 6y ago
      Sweden's population is far healthier than Michigan's and has better access to high-quality care. This can be seen from the differences in their life expectancy (82 vs 78). Imagine how bad Michigan would've been if they followed the Swedish model.
      • lsllc 6y ago
        For comparison with the US, Massachusetts might be a better choice. World class healthcare, highly educated population, average life expectancy of 80yrs 8 months [0], and a similar-ish sized population (6.8M in MA vs 10.3M in Sweden). Despite a lengthy lockdown, excellent social distancing and fairly high mask compliance MA hasn't done so well. As of Sept 29 MA has recorded 9423 deaths vs 5893 in Sweden [1][2]. Unfortunately, like Sweden, MA was not able to prevent COVID19 from spreading to nursing homes with over 64% of deaths (6K+) occurring in long term care (LTC) facilities alone. In fact MA was #1 in the US for deaths in LTC homes with 12.35% of the _entire_ LTC population in the state dying from COVID19 and #3 in the US for COVID19 infections in LTC homes with 35% of _all_ LTC residents contracting COVID19 [2]. This is really a terrible, awful (and avoidable) failure on the Commonwealth's part. [0] https://www.mass.gov/news/life-expectancy-rises-in-massachusetts-breaking-with-national-trend https://www.mass.gov/news/life-expectancy-rises-in-massachus... [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/massachusetts/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/massachusetts/ [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ [3] https://data.cms.gov/stories/s/COVID-19-Nursing-Home-Data/bkwz-xpvg https://data.cms.gov/stories/s/COVID-19-Nursing-Home-Data/bk...
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > I'm confused why stories about Sweden's success keep popping up here. The country had TEN TIMES the per capita death rate of its neighbors and still has the highest unemployment of all the Nordic countries. Seems to me like the worst of both worlds. Because a lot of people, mainly for ideological reasons, would have preferred the US and the rest of Europe have done similar. A key part of justifying that view is to be convinced it was a success, true or not.
    • troughway 6y ago
      To put it in a _slightly_ more direct way: HN is just as delusional as the rest of the world, more so in topics they have no understanding of whatsoever.
      • kalaido 6y ago
        Agree. Obama stopped testing for swine flu - pandemic gone.
      • rtp 6y ago
        It's amazing how quickly people forget about Dunning-Kruger effect and how often people widely acclaimed for their academic prowess will reveal themselves ignorant when trying to act as an authority outside their field.d
        • troughway 6y ago
          Turns from amazing to expected after awhile. The more I read the comments the more I agree with the Gell Man Amnesia Effect. I don't trust HN with any commentary about anything anymore - not even software development.
          • dang 6y ago
            HN is an internet forum. Obviously you shouldn't trust it.
        • Loughla 6y ago
  • eightysixfour 6y ago
    Not only that, but according to the JHU dashboard, the number of infections are increasing again and not that far off of their previous peak, unlike their neighbors whose new peaks appear to be lower so far. Dashboard here: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...
    • ketamine__ 6y ago
      They had zero deaths yesterday. Sweden is not aiming for a suppression strategy with cases like New Zealand and Australia.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • eightysixfour 6y ago
        I understand, and there's not going to be a way to judge the outcome until after this is all "over." I think articles saying that they've been successful are premature, for the reasons I mentioned before, but it is too early to call it a loss either. My personal forecast is that by the end I think they're going to have similar levels of economic damage (can't export to closed countries) and higher death rates than their direct neighbors who implemented more restrictive policies and we will never have a clear way to decide if that was better or worse because there is no answer to "how many deaths are worth it?"
        • ghaff 6y ago
          >there is no answer to "how many deaths are worth it?" And, in many cases, there may not be a clear answer to why outcomes were so good in Place A and so poor in Place B.
        • ketamine__ 6y ago
          It depends on how you define success. How about happiness and freedom of movement?
  • claudeganon 6y ago
    Or compared to Vietnam, which has 100 million people and less than 40 deaths. People have just hung their hat on Sweden’s approach out of some ideological attachment that’s completely independent from how countries across the world have performed.
    • lsllc 6y ago
      Vietnam is interesting, they initially were very successfully contained COVID, but have had a resurgence over the summer that they put down to a "more infectious" strain (the "G" strain that has been prevalent in the US, Italy/Europe vs the supposedly less infectious "D" strain in Asia): https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Vietnam-fights-new-COVID-19-strain-with-higher-infection-rate https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Vietnam-fights... https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Vietnam-deploys-elite-team-to-Danang-to-curb-new-wave-of-COVID-19 https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Vietnam-deploy... But regardless, Vietnam has done quite well.
      • SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
        You need to look the excess death. The only true indicator. There might be hidden deaths, keeping in mind that Vietnam is not a country where the press is free.
  • mabbo 6y ago
    It's because they loudly didn't do what experts recommended, and things turned out okay. Just like sometimes when you drive drunk, you don't die in a horrible accident and actually get home safely. Doesn't mean you did the right thing.
    • epistasis 6y ago
      I think that the OP's point is that they are emphatically not OK, and worse in every way.
  • Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    The comparatively higher death rate was mainly elderly in care homes. Some are simply OK with sacrificing the elderly to avoid restrictions on the lives of younger generations. Others would hold that, yes, failing to protect care homes was a screwup on the part of the Swedish authorities, but the avoiding of a lockdown still seems sound.
    • null_object 6y ago
      This is the line that the Swedish authorities repeat at every possible opportunity: effectively victim-blaming the elderly, and implying that “if only all those old people hadn’t died, we’d have been fine”. But in fact deaths are higher across all age groups, compared to other comparable countries.
      • Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        Again, some people are prepared to sacrifice both some portion of elderly in care homes, and some (much smaller even in Sweden) amount of other people across younger generations. As a top-rated comment points out, one of the aims with which a broad segment of the public sympathizes is “flattening the curve“, not trying to prevent any and all deaths whatsoever at any cost.
    • twblalock 6y ago
      > The comparatively higher death rate was mainly elderly in care homes. The same was true in New York, which locked down.
      • finder83 6y ago
        New York also sent the elderly with covid back into their nursing/care homes. So New York probably isn't the best example, since they handled the elderly situation so poorly
        • Loughla 6y ago
          This is exactly why I have zero faith in any substantive knowledge coming from this pandemic until, what, a hundred years afterward? So many variables that change the narrative if ignored. This is going to be like everything else (at least in the US). People will seek out sources that confirm their already established belief. It's hard being positive about, well, anything right now. Is this depression, or is this just a realistic view of humanity?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • jamescontrol 6y ago
    Exactly, and news headlines praise them for not having the same second surge of cases as denmark right now. While 5800 people dies versus 650 in Denmark.
  • twblalock 6y ago
    > The country had TEN TIMES the per capita death rate of its neighbors and still has the highest unemployment of all the Nordic countries. So far. Lockdown strategies will always look better than Sweden's strategy at the beginning, because Sweden's strategy gets most of the deaths over with in the first few months. If a vaccine takes long enough, the countries that locked down might eventually catch up to Sweden's per-capita death rate, although it's worth noting that some of them have already surpassed it. If you look at the charts here, you will see that Sweden had a big spike in deaths at the beginning of the outbreak and now it's daily death rate is far below that of most other countries: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/sweden?country=~SWE#daily-confirmed-deaths-are-countries-bending-the-curve https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/sweden?countr... Sweden's approach looks better relative to other countries with every passing day. The longer it takes for a vaccine to be developed and distributed, the better Sweden's strategy will look. People who insist that Sweden made a horrible mistake are overconfident. Whether or not it was a mistake really depends on how long the pandemic lasts.
    • Synaesthesia 6y ago
      Pretty safe to say we're far enough along to be able to declare it a failure.
      • twblalock 6y ago
        By what metric? The metric that matters to me is this: what was the death rate, per capita, in a country during the entire duration of the pandemic? Since the pandemic is not over yet, and may not be over for another year or even more, it is far to early to tell. We may still be in the first half of the duration of the pandemic.
    • rndmio 6y ago
      You seem to falsely assume that all the deaths Sweden has suffered so far would have happened at some point regardless. Given the development of better treatments already some of those who died would, if they had caught it later, have survived. Given three GDP hot is similar to their neighbours all they've done is needlessly kill some of their population.
  • rossdavidh 6y ago
    Well, a few reasons. One is that their death rates per capita were better than several major western European countries, such as Spain, Belgium, Italy, and the U.K., that did a lot more lockdown, and this suggests that the "if you don't lock down you get more deaths" idea cannot be right. The other is that, for example, Denmark opened up their elementary schools again in late April, and Finland in early May. So even the comparison to other Scandinavian countries is missing a lot of nuance. Plus, I am led to believe that Sweden DID close their high schools and colleges, since it was easier for older kids to do distance learning. The nasty secret that neither most news articles, nor this one, admits to is that, if you take all available evidence, national policy doesn't seem to have mattered much one way or the other. Sweden is in the middle of the pack among western Europe. Belarus is in the middle of the pack among Eastern Europe. Japan is in the middle of the pack (or better) in east Asia. If national policy were important, they all should be either the best or the worst. I think maybe we just did stuff, pretending it would matter, while the virus went about its normal pandemic business, and nothing we did really mattered that much.
    • ajmurmann 6y ago
      I wonder if another interpretation might be that culture matters regardless what policies get enforced. I hear that people in Sweden stayed at home more and distanced themselves regardless of enforcement. Similarly asian countries likely already had higher acceptance of mask wearing regardless of what was enforced and so on. The praising of swedish policies seems to largely come from folks in the US wear we have no social/cultural consensuses because the country is so divided
      • ghaff 6y ago
        You're still making an assumption that those culture matters have an effect. For pretty much any country (or smaller region) it's easy to construct an after the fact rationalization of the outcomes. Asia did better because people accept mask wearing--true but it's still pretty minimal in normal times. But somehow lack of mask wearing probably didn't matter in Sweden--but that's because they hate getting anywhere near another person anyway. But in the US Trump supporters not wearing masks is a big problem. Etc. I'm not going to argue that nothing matters. (Certainly protecting especially vulnerable populations is something a lot of places totally whiffed on early.) But I expect that some things people are really polarized about don't matter much.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • throwawaysea 6y ago
    Focusing on comparisons to geographically nearby countries doesn't make sense to me, and feels arbitrary. That's also not controlling for all the factors that differ between the countries. Reducing the conversation to total deaths and unemployment rates also doesn't give credit for the various benefits of having permissive COVID guidelines. Sweden had a big spike in COVID deaths very early on, and it was in large part from adult nursing homes, where appropriate precautions were not taken. As of late July, 70% of COVID deaths in Sweden were from adult nursing homes (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7369443/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7369443/). But they first hit no excess mortality in early June (https://news.yahoo.com/sweden-records-first-week-no-155441443.html https://news.yahoo.com/sweden-records-first-week-no-15544144...), while still retaining many of their freedoms. That's noteworthy. As for unemployment - making a comparison across countries doesn't control for all the other confounding factors that are relevant to economic health. And in a globalized economy where we have suppliers and customers in foreign countries, it is hard to remove all exposure to OTHER countries' COVID economic impacts. Perhaps if more countries implemented Sweden's plan, everyone's economic outcomes would be better. Getting back to the unrecognized value of Sweden's approach: there is value in having the freedom to move around, in holding gatherings, in patronizing businesses, in having kids receive a normal education, and so forth. I am shocked Americans have accepted top-down authoritarian restrictions on their lives so readily, as the goals changed from flattening the curve to seemingly trying to save every last life. I would rather individuals make decisions about their own lives while assessing the risks for themselves. Those who are risk averse are free to restrict their own lives - but they shouldn't impose restrictions or demand actions of others. We can't operate society around trying to save every last life. If that is the bar, then even in a typical flu season we should be keeping everything on lockdown. Could you imagine living like that permanently? Clearly that isn't acceptable. But if THAT isn't acceptable, then we are already saying that there is a finite value in saving a life (rather than infinite), which has to be taken in balance against the value in everything else. Moreover, given how low the infection mortality rates are for those under 70 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...), we are simply robbing the young [of socialization, education, summer vacations, memories with their family, etc.] to keep the old alive longer. I don't think that tradeoff makes sense, and we should simply ask those at risk to stay home while others are free to go about their lives.
  • codeulike 6y ago
    Sweden seems to have become a Dem/Rep arguing point in the USA and unfortunately that means you can't discuss it anywhere online without loads of hot takes. But I think there is stuff worth looking at in Sweden's approach. It certainly can't be dismissed as trivially as you are trying to dismiss it. Here's a Guardian article from a few days ago https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/15/sweden-records-its-fewest-daily-covid-19-cases-since-march https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/15/sweden-records... And here's a blog post giving some pro-swedish-approach arguments https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-thing-about-sweden-and-coronavirus.html https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-thing-a... However, here's a good twitter thread about how you can't really translate Swedens approach to the USA https://twitter.com/ChrChristensen/status/1309668851387334663 https://twitter.com/ChrChristensen/status/130966885138733466... [Sweden’s COVID] policy can only be understood as inseparable from Sweden’s developed welfare state, social system: universal healthcare, paid sick leave, paid leave to care for sick kids, subsidized daycare & pre/after-school care.
  • JoshuaDavid 6y ago
    Do you expect the 10x number to still be true 6 months from now?
  • surfsvammel 6y ago
    The numbers cannot really be compared. In Sweden they count any death where the patient had the virus, or had it in the last two weeks, as a COVID death. The other countries count differently. Most deaths in Sweden where in care homes of elderly. In Finland, for example, I believe only deaths at hospitals are counted as COVID deaths. We will see in a couple of years what is up and what was down of this whole debacle.
    • mcguire 6y ago
      Yep. It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings. Where "fat lady" is probably a vaccine and "sings" means generally available.
  • 5thaccount 6y ago
    There is an idea many hold that we all knew how to fight COVID and for various reasons simply failed to implement it. The reality is that we didn't know much about it, there was no overt strategy forward, and like all good science, we need controls to understand what happened and what the affect of various policies are. There are lots of variables at play here, and understand the affects of different policy is important. Countries that did the exact same thing have a natural control for activity, meaning differences in outcome should be environmental, Milan vs Rome, structural, Norway vs Sweden, and/or genetic differences, Norway vs Vietnam. Things like population density, multi-generational homes can be better understood, as can racial and environmental differences (theories that some countries had a COVID-19 precursor that provided some immunity). This is also true for regions within a country, e.g. Milan vs Rome. Where responses vary, we get a data point for the response's effectiveness. This is true right down to specifics e.g. a 50 person group limit vs 25. Sweden is a different data point, and that is extremely valuable, not just short term but longer term as well. In 2-10 years, the death rate for COVID in Scandinavia vs GDP growth will be useful to compare. I am thankful Sweden chose a different path. It took courage, as choosing a safe middle of the road path would teach us little, and given how little we know about pandemic response, the long term value of better understanding could potentially save millions over the next 100 or so years of human existence.
  • juancn 6y ago
    Really? Because they're back to normal while the rest of us don't have lives anymore. There's so much fear of dying that nobody is living, we survive and endure, but that's about it. There are worse things than dying, life is risk.
• woeirua 6y ago
  Yeah... Not sure I'd be spiking the football in the endzone yet on Sweden. Case count is slowly going back up. Looking likely that they'll have another wave here in another month or so.
  • arkitaip 6y ago
    Every single country has had a second wave. No, the reason why Sweden's covid-19 strategy is flawed, is the high number of deaths per capita, the government refusing to even suggest wearing masks, and failing to protect the elderly at our care facilities. Our neighboring countries have enacted strict restrictions against Swedish travelers and workers and I totally get why: not only have our numbers been horrible but the government has been so irational at times that it must have been difficult to trust them to make reasonable decisions that wouldn't jepordize the lives of citizens in our neighboring countries.
    • booboolayla 6y ago
      >failing to protect the elderly at our care facilities This right here is the main reason for a high death count here in the U.S. too. Who would have thought that sending viral patients into nursing homes would have disastrous effects, right? Our politicized medicine obviously did not think through something so obvious, in 2020 nonetheless.
    • UrsaMedius 6y ago
      What a silly comment. The comment about masks seems particularly misguided now that it should be obvious that it was indeed possible to flatten the curve without mask mandates (or even recommendations). The travel restrictions that countries had enacted are, at least now, unnecessary and are a serious harm to the global community and trust between peoples. At least in Sweden the cases coming from travelers have been insignificant since well before the peak of the first wave. It is now clear that the Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish governments do not care much about the stability of the Nordic cooperation and anyone might hesitate when choosing a job across the border.
      • 6y ago
• matz1 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQat0vX-wjM&t=31s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQat0vX-wjM&t=31s Hardly any mask, shops open normally, they are doing a very good job. One of the rare country that still can stay rational and sensible during this covid.
• ketamine__ 6y ago
  > "They continue not to wear masks," he said. "That can be a big drawback in the Swedish strategy if masks prove effective and key in fighting the pandemic." There aren't any randomized trials that look at cloth masks. There is one trial enrolling in Guinea Bissau. It seems likely we may never know because there isn't an interest in doing trials. This article from Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine discusses the issues with masks: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-politics/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/masking-lack-of-evidence-with-...
  • fsh 6y ago
    The current working hypothesis seems to be that wearing a mask protects other people from getting infected by the wearer, rather than the wearer himself. Testing this hypothesis in a randomized control trial sounds extremely difficult, since it is usually not known who infected whom. On the other hand, masks are basically free and reducing the amount of saliva we spit at each other sounds like a resonable measure during a pandemic.
    • elcritch 6y ago
      I agree It's difficult to experimentally test using an RTC. Unfortunately the attitude you mention also results (in my observations) in undermining the trustworthiness of the CDC/Government (in the US) for many people who see there is no real data for it, nor do they really see cause effect. It reinforces "pop science" for media outlets. People see ineffective rules such as "wearing a mask walking to a table, but not at the table while dinning" and realize it's not consistent and result in many not trusting other policies that may actually be helfpul. Extrapolating from small studies of reducing particles to being an effective countermeasure is a big unsubstantiated leap and may result in unintended consequences (e.g. say less healthy people exposed and gaining partial immunity during summer months that). Perhaps it's somewhat effective, but the big problem to me is undermining the credibility of the scientific process and institutions. In the future, it also may lead to less research on truly effective methods as many people (and governments) assume social distancing and masks are effective without backing data and research. For example of research suggesting lack of effectiviness of masks and social distancing as anti-pandemic methods, there's a research article on my reading queue that by using a non-heterogeneous infection susceptibility over the classic very simplified SIR model shows that the number of US infections is essentially what would be expected of a natural infection based on current parameter estimations [1]. There are several other points of data indicating similar lack of effectiveness, form the considering raw graphs and timelines, to the much lower "soft-immunity" numbers of ~10-25% of the population, to Sweden's numbers being 15x lower than predicted by standard SIR models. I'd list more data but my lunch is over, and if you're interested it's not too difficult to find. There's a lot of research that is needed in other words, not "pop science" which is hard. Giving in to easy answers is an emotional palliative but not a good societal strategy in my mind. To quote the Royal Societies motto: " Nullius in verba". From the linked preprint: > Allowing for heterogeneity reduces the estimate of "counterfactual" deaths that would have occurred if there had been no interventions from 3.2 million to 262,000, implying that most of the slowing and reversal of COVID-19 mortality is explained by the build-up of herd immunity. The estimate of the herd immunity threshold depends on the value specified for the infection fatality ratio (IFR): a value of 0.3% for the IFR gives 15% for the average herd immunity threshold. 1: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.26.20202267v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.26.20202267v...
• keithnoizu 6y ago
  Meanwhile where I live there is a single active imported case, and contact tracing being done for every he came into contact with directly or indirectly. Thailand and Vietnam, Hong Kong, Korea etc. have also done a excellent job at controlling the virus and opening society back up. But all you hear about is Sweden and New Zealand.
  • karateka 6y ago
    Yeah, as a Kiwi it's a bit annoying to have the local media only compare us to Sweden and places that have had a terrible time with the virus. I'd like to see us compared more with the places you mentioned, as well as Taiwan. If you want to have the best response to the virus you need to look to the other success stories.
• pengaru 6y ago
  People keep moving the goal posts on this. Unless Sweden's health system implodes because the pandemic overwhelms it, their approach has obviously not been a total failure. The rationale for the brute force lock-downs, AIUI, has always been to preserve the ability to treat patients. i.e. to not have all hospitals resembling the early scenes coming out of Lombardy Italy or Wuhan China. Sweden didn't institute draconian lock-downs, and never lost the ability to treat patients, never devolved into the utter chaos many predicted. We can't meaningfully compare other statistics like total deaths and economic impacts until the pandemic has run its course.
  • soperj 6y ago
    How is it goal post moving? They have one of the highest death per capita in the world from Coronavirus. It's roughly equal to Italy's. To say it hasn't been a total failure doesn't mean it's something to emulate. >We can't meaningfully compare other statistics like total deaths and economic impacts until the pandemic has run its course. We can. Otherwise you wouldn't do anything differently at any time.
    • throwawaysea 6y ago
      He means the goal posts moved from "flattening the curve" to "save every last life". Maybe the goal shouldn't be to save every last life but to strike a better balance between living our lives freely and containing COVID to some extent.
      • pwinnski 6y ago
        They also have the highest unemployment rate among neighboring countries, so it doesn't seem like they continued living their lives freely, either. In some places, like Sweden, many people have voluntarily adopted policies much more strict than required by law. In other places, like the US, many people have chosen to live lives much less strict than required by law. Government mandates alone don't make as good a basis for comparison as actual activity.
        • 6y ago
• chasd00 6y ago
  Wasn't the whole point that by the time the pandemic ends Sweden would come out about the same as everyone else but with a more sustainable strategy? Instead of lockdown then no-lockdown, then back to lockdown Sweden just put in place recommendations that can remain the same throughout the pandemic. Only when the pandemic is over can you evaluate whether Sweden's strategy worked or not.
• Yver 6y ago
  > The per capita rate is far lower than nearby Denmark or the Netherlands (if higher than the negligible rates in Norway and Finland). According to this article, Sweden's per capita infection rate is far lower than Denmark and the Netherlands, and slightly higher than Norway and Finland. Compare that to population density: (numbers from Wikipedia) Netherlands: 521/km² Denmark: 137/km² Sweden: 25/km² Finland: 16/km² Norway: 14/km² Not so coincidentally in my opinion, Sweden has a far lower population density than Denmark and the Netherlands, and slightly higher than Norway and Finland.
  • emtel 6y ago
    This comparison is too simplistic to be useful. Sweden and Norway have a couple of large cities, and then endless swaths of nearly-uninhabited tundra. If you count Greenland as part of Denmark, its density probably drops to below that of Norway or Sweden, but it's easy to see why that wouldn't tell you anything useful about covid. It's much better to compare metro regions (e.g. stockholm metro vs copenhagen metro) against each other, if you can find the appropriate case data.
  • rightbyte 6y ago
    You should compare persons/km2 for each person really. E.g. median amount of people in a 10 km circle around each person or w/e. Having a lot of empty forest doesn't help much. I can't find any such data though.
    • samatman 6y ago
      y'know that's too bad, isn't it. As soon as you described that statistic I realized that normalized population density is a really interesting fact about countries and states, and it isn't one I've seen laid out that way.
  • dawidw 6y ago
    Density in Swedish cities is similar to density in cities in other European countries.
  • mcguire 6y ago
• cwhiz 6y ago
  The goals have fundamentally drifted on covid. In the beginning it was flatten the curve so that hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. The goal wasn’t to eradicate covid but to slow the growth to an acceptable level. We are way beyond the point where hospitals are horribly overwhelmed, and yet the desire to continue lockdowns persists. I’m left with the conclusion that people are some combination of 1) scared, and 2) spiteful. Wanting to see the economy fail to punish rich people and corporations. The goal wasn’t ever to save every last life no matter the economic consequences. Unemployment kills, too. I think we’ve effectively lost our minds on covid.
  • andrewnicolalde 6y ago
    > We are way beyond the point where hospitals are horribly overwhelmed I ask as someone who genuinely doesn't know either way, but is there a realistic risk of this happening again?
    • cwhiz 6y ago
      Yes. If the numbers creep up past a certain point, you roll back. Or you do like Sweden and just let free citizens make their own decisions.
      • mcguire 6y ago
        87% of the deaths in Sweden were over 70, and they are a net drain on the economy anyway. -- Jonathan Swift
    • albemuth 6y ago
      The “spiteful” people wanting to watch rich people fail are preventing this from happening by being responsible
      • mistermann 6y ago
        How might one go about knowing such a thing?
    • 6y ago
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• tunesmith 6y ago
  I've always thought the whole Sweden debate is kind of pointless, because there seems to be some implicit assumption that what's true for Sweden would be true for any other country if they adopted the same policy. And that assumption is pretty clearly false, isn't it? They're relatively sparse, they are disciplined, they listen to and trust recommendations. Relatively. And also, isn't it also true that Sweden is also somewhat limited in their ability to impose regulations on their population? So it's kind of pointless in both directions - "Sweden should have locked down a lot more", well maybe they weren't even able to, and "We should have done what Sweden did", well, if we had, the results might have been a lot worse.
• wesleywt 6y ago
  Its interesting how people focus on Sweden as a 'success story', which had a high death rate and a second wave is not out of the question yet. While people ignore the countries that were hit first, like Italy, Spain and Belgium who had horrific death rates too. Are they not success stories for not doing anything either?
• deleted 6y ago
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• just-juan-post 6y ago
  Infection Fatality Ratios for COVID-19 Among Noninstitutionalized Persons 12 and Older: Results of a Random-Sample Prevalence Study Sept 2020, Annals of Internal Medicine https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5352 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5352 People aged 40 or below have a 0.01% chance of dying. People over the age of 70 have a 1.17% chance of dying. Overall the chance of dying from the virus is 0.26%.
• socialdemocrat 6y ago
  The desperate attempts to glorify the failed Swedish strategy will never end. The people who claimed COVID19 was nothing to worry about refuse to admit they where wrong despite hundreds of thousands of deaths. Fact is other Nordic nations took less economic hit than Sweden due to quick lockdown and quicker reopening. Thanks to the time this bought is health workers are able to treat COVID19 victims more effectively now than in the early phase leading to lower mortality rate. Sweden was the lab rat, having to deal with lots of sick people while the disease was poorly understood. It was a poor strategy. Sure the rest of us will have an uptick now but we know much more about how to treat people effectively than Sweden knew and we are just few months away from vaccines . So don’t tell me the Swedish strategy was worth it. More people died than necessary for no economic gain.
• mcguire 6y ago
  "For their part, the Swedes admit to making some mistakes, particularly in nursing homes, where the death toll was staggering. Indeed, comparative analyses show that Sweden's death rate at the height of the pandemic in the spring far surpassed the rates in neighbouring countries and was more protracted." IIRC, Sweden prevented their medical system from becoming overwhelmed by only offering palliative care to the elderly---not including oxygen. Many countries would not find that acceptable.
• HanShotFirst 6y ago
  It is endlessly frustrating to see the tenor of argument around COVID: mask vs. no mask, lockdown vs. no lockdown, flattening the curve vs. eliminating the virus. All of these strategies have arisen and evolved over a relatively short period of time, necessarily with incomplete data, and in places both different and affected by the virus differently. No sane person should be talking about these terms in black and white. Speaking as someone from New York City: Doing nothing (as in the very early stages) quickly resulted in overwhelmed hospitals and morgues. Doing a fairly serious lockdown along with masking then reduced cases to a very manageable level. The fine balance between these two extremes is somewhere in between, and will be different for each locale depending on demographic details such as population density, number of multigenerational households, etc. The goal of flattening the curve while still keeping the economy healthy, as some commenters here seem to desire, surely will be easier the closer we are to eradicating the disease.
  • samatman 6y ago
    "Doing nothing" is, alas, overly generous. Putting infectious covid patients back into nursing homes isn't nothing. It was a baffling and callous decision, which happened to kill the mother of a good friend, so I'm not exactly neutral on the subject.
    • HanShotFirst 6y ago
      I am speaking of the time before that decision, which was only made in response to overcrowded hospitals once COVID was widespread here. I understand the reasoning at the time was to prevent hospitals from needing to turn more people away, by shifting patients who didn't need intensive care back to other facilities (nursing homes) that could handle them. But I agree 100% it was a bad decision and made the situation much worse in NY.
• achenatx 6y ago
  People vilified texas as well. We were sideways for 2 months then we definitely opened too quickly. It seemed that bars were the culprit so bars closed and restaurants went to 25% and masks became mandatory in businesses. As far as I know all other businesses are open. Generally speaking the virus is under control and decreasing. I firmly believe we have found close to the minimum rules necessary to get the R0 under 1. Our unemployment in aug was 6.8% compared to > 10% for areas with much stricter lockdowns. The value of having 50 states is the states are "competing" with different solutions and therefore can find the best solutions (e.g. legalizing marijuana).
• cgrealy 6y ago
  I live in NZ, which has taken the opposite approach. We locked down early and hard, and there was a definite hit to the economy (although not as bad as some had feared). We eliminated Covid in the country. There was a tiny second wave which forced our largest city back into lockdown, but that has been lifted. Aside from international travel, Covid now has basically zero impact on my day to day life. Because there is effectly 0 chance of communitry transmission at the moment, life has essentially returned to normal. Bars, restaurants, etc are open and buzzing. All this and our case numbers are lower than almost any other countries death numbers. There is no way I would rather live in Sweden.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • vkou 6y ago
    The same thing has happened in China. A hard lockdown, a near-eradication of the virus, followed by a lifting of economic restrictions.
    • sudosysgen 6y ago
      Why is someone being downvoted for saying factual information? Vietnam has also done so.
      • mrguyorama 6y ago
        I'm guessing some people are skeptical about China's claims about having no more cases. It's hard to trust anything they say. That or they are so hardcore crazy "My freedoms above all else" that they would rather 250k die than they be asked to stay in for a few weeks
        • sudosysgen 6y ago
          Sure, but this isn't evidence based skepticism, it's just unfounded skepticism. In any case, Vietnam used the same tactics and arrived to the same result, so I don't understand why anything else would be expect for the same tactics being implemented in China.
• refurb 6y ago
  I love how anyone is trying to make claims about which approach is best. We are probably 30% of the way through the Covid epidemic. We have a long way to go. We'll likely see an effective vaccine early next year, with several candidates dropping out before then due to toxicity or lack of efficacy. And even when the FDA approves a vaccine, it's going to take over a year to vaccination a large percentage of the population. Maybe by 2022 we'll have enough immunity to go somewhat back to normal. And that's if a vaccine get approved in the next few months. And we'll see more and more social strife as people push back against lockdown, mainly because of the slow pulled back on assistance. Canada's deficit will be 10x what it was the year before. That's not sustainable. Come back in 2022 and see where each country is. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
• xutopia 6y ago
  I don't get why this keeps coming back. They're 14th in the world in deaths per million. If anyone is to argue that they did a good job we might want to look at those numbers too! Then the economy! Their numbers are as bad as their neighbours. Why oh why is Sweden touted as some success?
• vemv 6y ago
  I'd really want to believe that the Swedish strategy is a good one, but so many countries that were too lax, either by bad regulations or citizens' poor following have suffered dramatic consequences throughout the year. It's as if the Swedes were simply lucky (due to their demographic characteristics), with no useful insight that we could extract for the rest of us.
• kekub 6y ago
  > Britain, with about six times the population, tested only 587,000 people in the most recent week, far fewer per capita than Sweden. And Britain conducted far more tests than France, Germany or Spain in that period. Britain has a population of 66 Mio. Germany has a population of 83 Mio. Germany conducted more than a million tests in that period [1]. It does not look like Britain conducted far more tests in that period neither absolute nor relative. [1]: https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/Sept_2020/2020-09-23-de.pdf?__blob=publicationFile https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...
  • morsch 6y ago
    Germany did test more than a million people in that period and so did the UK[1]. The article is way off. UK does test more than Germany both absolute and relative. This isn't surprising since the UK has four times as many cases as Germany. But they also test more than the US and France, both of which have (much) higher case numbers. [2] [1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing [2] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&time=2020-06-01..latest&country=FRA~DEU~GBR~USA~SWE&region=World&testsMetric=true&interval=smoothed&hideControls=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=...
    • kekub 6y ago
      Thanks for clarification. I was not sure about a valid source for UK numbers, so I did not check that figure.
• dragonsh 6y ago
  All the remedies adopted in one country cannot be replicated in another given differences in systems. But it’s always good to learn from them. Besides Sweden, New Zealand, China is the only country which is able to control COVID-19 and return to normal. The golden week holiday is coming and local tourism is booming. Difficult to book hotels, domestic air tickets, fast speed train tickets. Also no need to wear masks, but some people still do when taking airplane or fast trains. Based on first hand information from friends living in China can say life is normal except for imported cases. All international travellers need to do COVID-19 test and wait in isolation areas until the result came back. If results are negative need to quarantine in designated hotels for 14 days, except for travellers from few countries which needs 7 days if it’s for essential pre-approved business travel.
• just-juan-post 6y ago
  Thought exercise: Do you want Covid-positive people rounded up and isolated in order to stop the spread? Sure, Trump can do that. And he will start with Democrats and Liberals because it's not practical do to everyone at the same time. And there will be limited space so it will mostly be Liberals and Democrats in the Covid Ghettos. You sure you want a national lockdown?
• RickJWagner 6y ago
  This is a long game, with many variables in play. I seriously wonder if we'll ever know who took the 'optimal' approach if we are being honest. It seems you definitely need to protect the very vulnerable. Beyond that, not much is clear.