4 ms·

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

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...
yongjik 6y ago
Deaths per 100,000 for selected countries: 66.84 Spain 63.26 UK 62.50 US 59.27 Italy 57.74 Sweden 36.92 Ireland 11.30 Germany 8.81 Turkey 6.14 Finland 5.79 Egypt 3.23 Greece 1.05 Japan 0.45 New Zealand 0.04 Vietnam 0.03 Taiwan The group of countries with better response than Sweden (or the US) comprise the majority of the world, and also diverse in terms of regions, government systems, economic development, culture, population, and area. It's hard to argue that Sweden actually did well in any subgroup. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...
- smaryjerry 6y ago
  Deaths attributed to the disease. Every country counts them differently. In the us if you died while having the disease you counted as a COVID death. In some countries it’s only if the disease is what killed you that you get attributed, in some they haven’t had testing available to test deaths during their peaks, and some just want to keep their numbers low to avoid getting their exports and borders shut down.

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...

yongjik 6y ago

Deaths per 100,000 for selected countries: 66.84 Spain 63.26 UK 62.50 US 59.27 Italy 57.74 Sweden 36.92 Ireland 11.30 Germany 8.81 Turkey 6.14 Finland 5.79 Egypt 3.23 Greece 1.05 Japan 0.45 New Zealand 0.04 Vietnam 0.03 Taiwan The group of countries with better response than Sweden (or the US) comprise the majority of the world, and also diverse in terms of regions, government systems, economic development, culture, population, and area. It's hard to argue that Sweden actually did well in any subgroup. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...

smaryjerry 6y ago
Deaths attributed to the disease. Every country counts them differently. In the us if you died while having the disease you counted as a COVID death. In some countries it’s only if the disease is what killed you that you get attributed, in some they haven’t had testing available to test deaths during their peaks, and some just want to keep their numbers low to avoid getting their exports and borders shut down.