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I didn't realize until I looked it up just now that the Nordic countries have a population density 1/10th that of Germany and the UK: https://www.worldatlas.com

I didn't realize until I looked it up just now that the Nordic countries have a population density 1/10th that of Germany and the UK: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-population-density.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-po...

Gwypaas 6y ago
Population density really doesn't matter in these discussions regarding spread. How does the huge Canadian arctic influence any spread happening in public transportation in Toronto? It doesn't. Same with Sweden and the other Nordic countries with vast forests between towns. A more general measure is urbanization, and by that measure Sweden is more urbanized at 88% than both Germany at 77.5% and United Kingdom at 84%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country
- clairity 6y ago
  urbanization doesn't matter either. it's indoor mixing density (which population density and urbanization poorly approximate in this case) that matters. that's again why the key mitigation is to avoid breathing others' direct exhaust, which is most directly heuristicized by distancing indoors (which implicitly addresses density, unlike masks which only help at the margins and are mostly performative due to their counterintuitive failure modes, such as every breath rehydrating and potentially dislodging virus particles otherwise caught in the mask).
- Retric 6y ago
  The most useful metric is the density as relating to people not land. Aka how many people are within 1 mile of each other on average. As such nationwide population density isn’t that important, but local population density can be a very useful metric. Norway has 5,432,580 people and Óslo Norway is by far the the most populous city has 952,000 people or 17.5% of the population in the urban area at 8,500/square mile. London has 8,961,989 people out of 63,182,000 (14.2%) in the Uk at 14,670/sq mile. And Birmingham at 1,141,816 people at 11,040/sq mi and you see the UK might have similar rates of urbanization, but it’s significantly more densely packed. As to Stockholm Sweden, again the largest city out of 10,367,232 people in Sweden 1,605,030 million (15.5%), are living at 11,000/sq mi. Of course this is still just an approximation. 1,000 people in a single apartment building sharing elevators adds a risk of transmission those same people living in duplex housing doesn’t.

Gwypaas 6y ago

Population density really doesn't matter in these discussions regarding spread. How does the huge Canadian arctic influence any spread happening in public transportation in Toronto? It doesn't. Same with Sweden and the other Nordic countries with vast forests between towns. A more general measure is urbanization, and by that measure Sweden is more urbanized at 88% than both Germany at 77.5% and United Kingdom at 84%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country

clairity 6y ago
urbanization doesn't matter either. it's indoor mixing density (which population density and urbanization poorly approximate in this case) that matters. that's again why the key mitigation is to avoid breathing others' direct exhaust, which is most directly heuristicized by distancing indoors (which implicitly addresses density, unlike masks which only help at the margins and are mostly performative due to their counterintuitive failure modes, such as every breath rehydrating and potentially dislodging virus particles otherwise caught in the mask).
Retric 6y ago
The most useful metric is the density as relating to people not land. Aka how many people are within 1 mile of each other on average. As such nationwide population density isn’t that important, but local population density can be a very useful metric. Norway has 5,432,580 people and Óslo Norway is by far the the most populous city has 952,000 people or 17.5% of the population in the urban area at 8,500/square mile. London has 8,961,989 people out of 63,182,000 (14.2%) in the Uk at 14,670/sq mile. And Birmingham at 1,141,816 people at 11,040/sq mi and you see the UK might have similar rates of urbanization, but it’s significantly more densely packed. As to Stockholm Sweden, again the largest city out of 10,367,232 people in Sweden 1,605,030 million (15.5%), are living at 11,000/sq mi. Of course this is still just an approximation. 1,000 people in a single apartment building sharing elevators adds a risk of transmission those same people living in duplex housing doesn’t.