35 ms·

Sweden Covid-19 Update

65 points by elsewhen 6y ago

beaner 6y ago
We really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death. So long as there are people who die from unrelated causes, while happening to have Covid, being marked as a Covid death, there will be a lot of people skeptical of the statistics.
- gchokov 6y ago
  You included?
- sb52191 6y ago
  What do you mean by this? What unrelated causes are people dying from that aren't exacerbated by COVID? I've heard this argument before but it's never made sense to me. If you have AIDS, it's not the AIDS that kills you, it's the fact that AIDS weakened your immune system to the point that something else can kill you. But to say that AIDS wasn't paramount to killing the victim is just wrong. Seems to me like COVID is a similar situation...
  - Y-bar 6y ago
    Not OP, but in the first half of this year (not sure if this is still the case, I have heard they have attempted to fix this): Anyone in Sweden who had been either diagnosed with Covid 19 and died of any cause, e.g. a traffic incident would be counted as a Covid death. Or if they died of any cause and the autopsy revealed Covid 19 it would also be counted as a Covid death. Edit, source: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utbrott/aktuella-utbrott/covid-19/statistik-och-analyser/bekraftade-fall-i-sverige/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb... In the link "Ingång för Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox m.fl." it says: > Statistiken visar antalet personer med bekräftad covid-19 som avlidit, oavsett dödsorsak. Translated: > The stats shows the number of deaths with confirmed Covid-19, regardless of cause of death.
    - tshaddox 6y ago
      That's the example everyone always brings up, and even if it's true, do you think there are a huge portion of people with COVID who are dying in car accidents? That seems very unlikely to make a significant difference in the figures, and for a new virus that is spreading very quickly and isn't yet well-understood, it's probably worth using a definition that errs slightly (but probably not significantly) on the inclusive side.
      - Y-bar 6y ago
        Car accidents were just the clearest example I could think of. At https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/statistik-om-covid-19/statistik-over-antal-avlidna-i-covid-19/ https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/... they do calculate the difference: > Av dessa har 90 procent (5 514 av 6 128) laboratoriebekräftad covid-19 enligt Folkhälsomyndighetens databas över smittade. 90% are due to Covid 19. 10% not. Edit: I misunderstood, tsimionescu has corrected me, thanks!
        tsimionescu 6y ago
        That is not in any way what that 90% means. > "Of these, 90 percent (5,514 out of 6,128) have laboratory-confirmed covid-19 according to the Swedish Public Health Agency's database of infected people." That is 90% of: > The statistics show the deceased where the underlying cause of death was covid-19, according to the cause of death certificates received by the National Board of Health and Welfare. So in 10% of cases, the doctors were sure enough that the cause of death was Covid19 to write a legal document certifying it, even though they didn't order laboratory work to confirm with 100% certainty. This could mean many things, from medical malpractice (doctor lied on a legal document) to simple common sense (patient is husband of person with confirmed case, died of clear Covid19 symptoms). But there is no way to read that 10% number as meaning what you claimed. In fact, if a person were hit by a car, confirmed Covid19 positive, died of their wounds on their way to hospital, and got a death certificate claiming they died of Covid19, they would be part of 90% number, NOT part of the 10% number.
      - beaner 6y ago
  - dx87 6y ago
    I think the point is that the comorbidities aren't mentioned when talking about COVID deaths. The statistics are being presented as though it's random chance who dies from it, instead of it being reported as something that primarily kills people who already have other health issues, like obesity. It would probably make people less anxious if we were told that people without existing issues have a lower chance of dying or hospitilization.
- nemothekid 6y ago
  For anyone who is skeptical of the statistics, the response is to ask them to explain excess deaths. In America there are over 200k excess deaths; if not COVID, then why did so many more people die?
  - minkzilla 6y ago
    Preface: I believe the pandemic is real and covid is deadly. People argue that increases in death could also be attributed to suicide, deteriorating health from mental hardship of stress and quarantine, and people not seeking medical treatment they need because they are scared of covid or because they cannot afford it with so much unemployment. I think the last one holds some water. I know of one person in my hometown who chose not to go to the hospital because he was scared of covid and ended up dying of a heart attack.
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      A lot of clinics are doing "video only" visits. These are not nearly sufficient to accurately diagnose a patient. A good deal of clinical visits is assessing the overall manner and appearance of a patient. This can't be done remotely. Nor can BP, EKG, O2 or any other basic diagnostic tools be done remotely. Minor things that could be detected in a normal office visit are missed and turn into things which can kill.
    - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
      If the US were to get the epidemic under control, then those people would be able to go to the hospital without fearing CoVID-19.
      - minkzilla 6y ago
        I think they could also go to the hospital right now. But I think that needs to be communicated; some sort of message telling people “Covid is serious but so are a lot of other health issues if you think you need medical help get it!”
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
- aplummer 6y ago
  You don't die from these co-morbidities suddenly in the 2 weeks you have covid - but for the covid. This amounts to a baseless conspiracy theory against doctors that accurately understand and record the cause of death. Blunt trauma in a car accident is not being recorded as covid.
  - geewee 6y ago
    That's different from country to country. In Denmark hospitalizations are counted as covid hospitalizations for example, even if you arrive due to e.g. a broken leg, but you have covid. Not sure about deaths though.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Of course they are counted as Covid hospitalizations, because they requires the same special care as all other Covid cases - you can't just put a Covid-infected patient in the regular orthopedics ward, you need to quarantine them and all the staff that comes into contact with them. Also, I doubt the amount of people suffering from broken legs are really skewing those Covid numbers. Most people sick enough to require hospitalization while also infected with Covid will have much higher risks of Covid-related symptoms as well.
      - geewee 6y ago
        Certainly it makes sense when talking about hospital capacity - but it does give a bit of a skewed impression when you're looking at the hospitalizations re: cases. You'd be surprised. Around 1/7th of the covid hospitalizations in Denmark[0] are hospitalized for "other reasons" - where covid is not the primary factor - I'd say that is significant. [0] - https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-centralt-coronatal-hver-syvende-er-indlagt-af-andre-grunde https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-cent... (link only in danish, sorry)
  - nsxwolf 6y ago
    In Illinois, it's pretty cut and dry: ""If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who's listed as a COVID death doesn't mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death." Dr. Ezike outlined." -- Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of Illinois Department of Public Health
- acqq 6y ago
  Let's make it clear: if your relative has some illness and is expected to live with that illness for years, but gets Covid and dies right now, do you consider that a Covid death? If not, why? Also, if you get Covid and you end up with permanently damaged health, as it is documented time and again, would you keep your skepticism? What will you say if somebody tells you that you anyway had some precondition, even if you weren't aware? And are you aware how big percentage of the U.S. population has one or more risk factors?
- sixothree 6y ago
  Would a person with diabetes or asthma have _died_ from those conditions if they were not infected? I believe you are making an incredibly disingenuous argument here.
  - beaner 6y ago
    My argument is not disingenuous at all. Rather, I think you're being assumptive. I'm not talking about the case where a person's prospects are that they'll live for quite some time. I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, for heart problems, for fatal car injuries or shootings, or even other viruses, who are going to die imminently anyway.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      > I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, Are you additionally claiming that this makes up some significant percentage of total covid deaths? Like, if 2% of the deaths due to covid are indeed people who were going to die anyway, but may or may not have died a week earlier due to covid, well 1. They may have died a week earlier due to covid. Whose place is it to judge that? (there are measures that try to take into account loss of livable years, but they agree that Covid is pretty terrible) 2. Who cares if the estimate is off by a few percent? So concern about this overcounting is predicated on an assumption that some significant number of people are on death's door already, and that basically only those people are dying of covid. Most covid-deaths are of people under 85 years old, and even an 85 year old has a life expectancy of 6 years though, so that seems unlikely.
      - Kranar 6y ago
        40% of COVID-19 related deaths are from people in LTC facilities [1] where the median life expectancy is 21 months (average is 29 months). Now that doesn't mean we should entirely downplay the risk here, but there are alternative solutions that can allow us to take care of the vast majority of people who are seriously at risk from COVID-19 without absolutely ruining the economy and harming the majority of people's way of life in a manner that may very well be irreparable for a decade, if not longer. [1] https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare
- modzu 6y ago
  all of the replies to this comment misunderstand the point. if you get hit by a bus and have covid, you are still counted as a "covid death" in the statistics, at least in my province, because there isnt a simple means to separate the two
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    You might be misunderstanding the point. Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. They ignore the overwhelming "excess deaths" number and pretend that unless a person had COVID and COVID alone listed, with no co-morbidity, it doesn't count, and therefore 99+% of COVID deaths aren't COVID at all. This is, of course, not true, as the excess deaths numbers clearly demonstrate. If anything, we're under-counting COVID.
    - ravitation 6y ago
      > Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. This is comically illustrated by the examples being used... Hit by a bus? Hospice patients with weeks to live? The truth is that the typical comorbidities, that have a noticeable effect on the actual total number of deaths, are things like obesity, hyptertension, and diabetes... Things that literally will not kill an otherwise healthy adult in the same time period as COVID-19.
      - beaner 6y ago
        The biggest comorbidity by far is old age, which definitely will imminently kill those it affects on its own.
        ravitation 6y ago
        I mean... No, it won't... Being 75+ doesn't kill someone in weeks like COVID-19 does...
- tshaddox 6y ago
  Isn't this exactly how all death statistics of all diseases and conditions work? People with other conditions are presumably more likely to die from some given condition. And, of course, every cause of death is really just causing the person to die earlier than they would have otherwise died.
- legerdemain 6y ago
  At this point it's becoming pretty clear that the world will not see such a definition. It is in the interest of governments to exercise control over people by calling anything and anything a Covid "case" and a Covid "fatality." The numbers go up and down and up again at the convenience of government policymakers. LIBERATE MICHIGAN!
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  I think we can make our own decisions on that provided we can get US data on deaths in a simple csv file with age, gender, race, state and comorbidities. Does anyone know where to find a dataset like this?
  - hnuser847 6y ago
    This is exactly what you're looking for: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
- jmull 6y ago
  I think this should put you concerns to rest: Excess deaths in the United States were at 299K as of October 15. What’s your explanation for this, if it isn’t Covid? https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm6942e2_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
  - legerdemain 6y ago
    Literally any other explanation would suffice! For example, the lockdowns put stress on Americans, exacerbate depression and anxiety, worsen health conditions associated with sedentary lifestyles, and keep people out of healthful bars and restaurants where they could consume a more diverse diet and nourish their psychological need for social interaction.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      It would. But than you have the official COVID deaths which match the excess deaths quite neatly. So why not just accept what numbers are clearly telling us?
      - josephcsible 6y ago
        You're missing the point. The point is that some of the excess deaths were caused by Covid, and the rest were caused by the lockdown, and the numbers are intentionally being skewed to make all of the lockdown deaths look like Covid deaths. This obviously leaves the total of excess deaths the same.
        oblio 6y ago
        How do you explain excess deaths not during periods of lockdown? Also not in the US where Covid-19 is for some reason a political talking point? :-)
        josephcsible 6y ago
        What state/region and specific timeframe do you have in mind? Weren't lockdowns instituted in most places before recorded deaths got really high?
- Tepix 6y ago
  In the city i live in in Germany they do differentiate between "death by covid" and "ill with covid but other cause of death". Ask your city to do the same. (FYI the total numbers so far are 25 deaths by Covid-19 and 14 deaths by other additional causes)
- GuB-42 6y ago
  There are people who die from Covid and are not counted, there are people who die of something else and are counted as Covid deaths. And there are cases it is ambiguous, for example they may have recovered from Covid (negative PCR) but died later from complications. You will never have precise statistics, however, excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. Worth noting that there are indirect effects. For instance because of the overworked health system, some completely unrelated diseases may not be treated as well, causing extra deaths. On the other hand, lockdowns may lower the risk of accident, transmission of other diseases, and even the nasty effect of pollution. But the general idea is that these deaths are real.
  - misiti3780 6y ago
    Where can I find the data to see excess mortality?
    - rwcarlsen 6y ago
      I use https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm for the U.S. and https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ has a bit of european data.
      - misiti3780 6y ago
        thanks!
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    > excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. This doesn't follow. It just means that the number of falsely-claimed Covid deaths is roughly equal to the number of deaths caused by the lockdowns, not that either of those numbers are small.
    - oblio 6y ago
- qwerty1234599 6y ago
  The average person doesn't die within 30 days. If a covid-positive person dies after testing positive, it's pretty obvious what the cause of death is.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  I am in favor of having better definitions and statistics, but frankly, there will be a lot of people skeptical of Covid no matter what happens.
- nostromo 6y ago
  I’d like to see reporting on healthy years of life lost. During the worst of the HIV epidemic, we saw people in their 30s dying left and right. Malaria kills mostly young children. All lives are valuable and worth fighting for, but it does seem that these losses are fundamentally worse than COVID. If we would count healthy years of life lost, rather than raw number of deaths, I think that would be more apparent.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    A human life is a human life. If you start assigning values, you'll quickly go down bizarre paths. Old people still have a right to a free and healthy life.
    - josephcsible 6y ago
      If this is what our decision-makers believe, then why isn't there a lockdown every winter to stop flu deaths?
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        Because we have grown accustomed to the flu, it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. People can even get vaccinated, and we try to vaccinate as many as we can every year - not an option we have with Covid19. A new disease with unpredictable long-term effects, that kills at least twice as many people as the flu despite unprecedented preventive measures is bound to cause more alarm. Remember that regions hit early and unprepared were carting dead people by the truck load, most notably in Northern Italy. If we didn't have lockdowns and other measures, that would have continued and escalated all over the world - we would have probably easily had 10 million or more dead just this year if we had treated this just like a flu.
        umvi 6y ago
        > it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. Over what timeframe? Novel viruses come but once per century, flu kills consistently year after year after year, always mutating to escape eradication... and the flu deaths pile up to astronomical heights over the decades
- JamisonM 6y ago
  Do we really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death? We can accurately project case numbers to hospitalizations and then to deaths as a rough approximation. Who frankly cares if the exact number of COVID deaths are being recorded properly when much of the western world is running out of hospital capacity. Really, who cares? Don't quibble over bullshit, move on to stuff that matters.
  - beaner 6y ago
    Wasn't there a period where there were actually a lot of hospitals closing, because they were too empty, because we had kicked everyone out anticipating a huge covid hospitalization wave that never came? What's the status on that, now?
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      The status is that the wave has now come in most of North America. You clearly have a connection to the Internet so you must know this, I am not sure what you are on about here.
      - beaner 6y ago
        What's the status with hospitals? That was the question. Are they closing? How many have already closed? Are they at full capacity? Are they projected to get to full capacity? Are people with nonessential surgeries still being pushed out? Who else, if any, is also still being pushed out? Etc. You answered a question that wasn't being asked.
        JamisonM 6y ago
        The status with the hospitals is that the ICU's are filling up or full. Nonessential surgeries were brought back in after the 1st wave didn't develop in the size and strength expected and are now getting pushed back or cancelled because this wave is overwhelming the system. But you can just read the news and see that this is what is happening so I don't understand why you are asking it in the first place. (The risk of permanent hospital closures & bankruptcies in the USA was about losing revenue from certain type of procedures because of COVID risks, but that's a separate issue that has little to do with this.) So again, why do you need to quibble over rounding errors in cause of death paperwork when the hospitals are filling up or full? Why? What's the point?
nickff 6y ago
I am a little confused, because the post says: "Swedish deaths seem to be 40% above the U.S. equivalent." and backs it up with the following tweet. https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1326896531765665792 https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1326896531765665792 But as mentioned in one of the comments on the post, Sweden seems to have a (weekly) mortality rate of about 1/3 the US'. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... edit: it looks like a follow-up tweet contends that Sweden's back-filling of deaths is skewing their numbers down, though I am not really sure what to make of it. edit2: Sweden seems to have a fewer COVID mortalities (per million population) than the USA, coming in just after France, which seems to further confuse the situation.
- rendang 6y ago
  The tweet says the Swedish rate is more than 40% OF the US rate, which the blogger appeared to misinterpret as "more than 40% GREATER than the US rate"
  - nostromo 6y ago
    Thank you both for checking the sources. Yes, the tweet is saying Sweden is 60% better than the US in terms of daily deaths. The source for claiming immunity is temporary is also just a link to some random tweet with no data. I flagged the article as it’s making pretty big claims based on no real data and a misunderstood tweet.
    - lacker 6y ago
      The referenced tweet is not the main point, the main source is the Financial Times article talking about cases rather than deaths, so I think the main points raised by the post are still valid.
- bazzert 6y ago
  right, looks like Sweden is doing pretty well compared to the USA. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&time=earliest..latest&country=SWE~USA&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=smoothed&aligned=true&hideControls=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...
ptx 6y ago
At the same press conference where they announced that the number of infections per day in Stockholm had been doubling every week for the past few weeks, they also announced that they would start to loosen the restrictions and start allowing visits to nursing homes again. How did they expect that this was going to turn out?
- core-questions 6y ago
  Maybe they're just not worried about it anymore, much as we never worried at this level about the flu, common cold, or really anything else? > How did they expect that this was going to turn out? Maybe exactly like it is, and maybe it's not a real problem? There's no nuance in a graph that simply shows "infections" - there's no discussion of it being relative to the number of tests, no error bars for false positives/negatives, nothing to show how severe it is.
  - oblio 6y ago
    I can't believe that people are still parroting the "common flu, common cold" talking points from 6-8 months ago. Covid has a much higher mortality rate.
    - josephcsible 6y ago
      > Covid has a much higher mortality rate. Only if you're high-risk. If you're not, its mortality rate is much lower than the flu. The problem that most people have with the lockdowns is that we know who's high-risk and who's not, but we lock everyone down anyway.
      - oblio 6y ago
        Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category? Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus? Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations?
matz1 6y ago
Daily case are meaningless when vast majority are asymptotic or only have mild symptom. How many that are actually require hospitalization ? How many death (death as in due to covid not with covid) ? Then there is false positive from the test.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  The numbers of hospitalizations and deaths unfortunately are quite proportional to the number of positive tests. Depending on the testing regime the exact factor varies a bit, but unfortunately, not very much. By now we really have enough international data to show that. And the positive tests are leading hospitalisation and deaths by a couple of weeks. So they are a good indicator about what to expect. And obviously, during an epedemic, raising infection numbers mean even higher numbers following until something reduces further infections.
  - belorn 6y ago
    Yes and no. The numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are proportional to the number of tests, but only if the amount of testing is constant. As linked elsewhere, https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6..., the numbered of confirmed new positive tests are around 5k compared to April, and the number of deaths are 10-20 compared to April 100-120 per day. What the graphs would need is normalization to the amount of testing being done. Such graphs would then have hospitalizations and deaths proportional to the number of positive tests.
    - _ph_ 6y ago
      Perhaps I was a bit short, but the numbers of the badly affected are proportional to the number of positive tests. The proportionality factor does indeed change over time, but very slowly. Unfortunately, we have a plentiful of data internationally, as many countries handled the epedimic differently. But the fundamental data looks very similar between countries. In Germany, there is about a factor of 4 between positive/death in April and in November. The number of people in intense care has reached April levels. But on shorter time scales the variation is much smaller. And if the number of positive tests doubles within a week and nothing fundmental had happened in testing, then this is extremely relevant. Especially if the trend follows an exponential curve closely.
RamRodification 6y ago
While this is clearly a second wave, "New cases" are kind of meaningless as it is very much tied to the amount of testing performed. Here are the stats for number of deaths and also patients in ICU which gives a different picture. Still alarming but not as crazy as this "New cases"-graph might make you believe. (two links to the same image on separate image hosting services) https://postimg.cc/rzyCv57W https://postimg.cc/rzyCv57W https://imgbox.com/zI14ri2b https://imgbox.com/zI14ri2b Sources: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6... Public Health Agency of Sweden
- _ph_ 6y ago
  New cases are not meaningless. They might just not be 1:1 comparable in numeric values to the numbers a couple of months before. But if you are an an exponential raise, even pretty large factors are caught up with literally within a couple of days.
  - RamRodification 6y ago
    You are correct. That's why I went with "kind of meaningless". Maybe a bit too harsh by me. What I really meant was "not as meaningful as people make it out to be." (or "seem to want it to be"). The post kind of goes from straight talk about deaths to "and here are stats" which are not at all showing deaths. Comes off a little dishonest to me. And the stat on deaths being "40% above the U.S. equivalent" just seem plain wrong. See the comments on the post for that.
  - sharken 6y ago
    New cases do not say anything about how many dead you can expect, case in point Czech Republic: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/czech-republic/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/czech-repu...
    - _ph_ 6y ago
      How is this a case in point? The curve of the deaths follows the curve of infections closely.
kanjus 6y ago
What do people think of Marginal Revolution? I get quite a lot of value from the link roundups, but find that the original content (the non-roundup posts) are about praising their ability to make predictions and their own opinion pieces (“recommended throughout”), brushing away criticism, regurgitating opinions of other experts on things they have no clue about, taking low-brow jabs at “the left“, etc. Case in point: MR authors spent the last months arguing for the herd immunity approach, and bringing up Sweden once a week, and now apparently they were just waiting for data. I just don’t get why they get so much readership and are seen to be similar to Slate Star Codex, Gwern, etc. (which have their own shortcomings, but are on a different level in terms of their reasoning ability).
- unsrsly 6y ago
  I certainly agree with you. Part of the core MR game is to flirt with right wing talking points but keep on playing both sides to get attention. This is really unfortunate and distracting when it comes to something like covid that is already so politicized. Their actual analysis of the pandemic has been hopelessly naive and lacking in rigor. If there's one good contribution they've made, it's been pointing out the ways in which certain regulations have hindered the response without adding value. Otherwise, it's only good for the links.
- erterbest 6y ago
  I agree. It feels like a case of someone who've had too much recognition or respect (deserved or not), and now believe they are without fault despite a clear regression in reasoning ability...
- jjtheblunt 6y ago
  What's Marginal Revolution?
  - foogazi 6y ago
    Tyler Cowen‘s blog
- lacker 6y ago
draw_down 6y ago
It has been pretty interesting (that's a euphemism) to see people say over and over again that Sweden has got it figured out. But countries' fortunes have shifted back and forth over time, those who seemed to be doing worse than everyone reversed course, and vice versa. There are exceptions, Vietnam appears to be one. My thought on Sweden was not so much "wait until the fall", but to note that even though they didn't shut down, the economic impact was broadly similar to that of neighboring counties who did. So from my view this all seems very "pick your poison". I suspect the correlations we keep implying between shutdowns and the economy may actually have more to do with the fact of the pandemic itself. I don't care if the movie theaters are shut down or not, I'm not going to one.
jeremiahlee 6y ago
Also, Sverige still does not recommend people wear face masks. It recommends people not go to gyms, but does not force the gyms to close. It would be comical if so many people were not suffering. (I am an American living in Stockholm.)
irrational 6y ago
My daughter is working in Sweden as an aupair. She is pretty certain that she has covid (no sense of taste or smell to start with), but they are so backed up that she can't get tested until sometime next week.
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  It is true they are swamped, but I ordered a test Monday morning, had it delivered Tuesday morning, picked up again (after my doing the test) an hour later, and then I had the results Wednesday afternoon. This is in Stockholm. Where is she? Not all regions are equally organized.
  - irrational 6y ago
    She is in Stockholm. She went to some clinic and they told her to come back next Thursday. Maybe it is because she is not Swedish.
    - CogitoCogito 6y ago
      Yeah if she feels symptoms she should probably use the app "Alltid Öppet" to book a test. She probably needs a personal number for this (which I assume she has if she's working as an aupair). I can try to help out if she needs it. My email is twn at thomasnyberg dot com.
Gwypaas 6y ago
Welcome to the pandemlympics, where every country is comparable down to the day and everyone is a combined epidemiologist and statistician. Yes Sweden has a second wave, although still in an earlier stage than most other places. Hopefully it can be turned around before ICU numbers start rising again. New recommendations went in place two weeks ago and personally I see less people around, and the mobility data is trending down. [0] Restrictions on serving alcohol in pubs and clubs will start from the 20th, limiting service to before 22:00. I feel that is mostly for show though, since if it truly had a point it would start today and not after people spent one last weekend partying. The spread is mostly in the age group 20-29 currently, so that is a plus. Although trickles of spread in hospice are coming back, which is worrying. They started to allow some visitors a month or so back because the mental health of elderly were deteriorating quite rapidly due to the forced isolation for their own safety. We can see from the Swedish public health authority page that new ICU admittances have leveled off. Hopefully. [1] "Nya intensivvårdade fall per dag" (New ICU cases per day) For those proposing no actions and using Sweden as their argument: Sweden did things. Not French style military police on the streets with fines though. Here's the mobility data. [0] For those proposing sweeping lock-downs and using Sweden as their argument: Sweden did lockdown less than many other places, that is true. The constitution does not allow for restrictions in freedom of movement unless in war so recommendations were used. Here's the mobility data. [0] [0]: https://www.teliacompany.com/sv/om-foretaget/uppdatering/mobility-analysis/ https://www.teliacompany.com/sv/om-foretaget/uppdatering/mob... [1]: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fairity 6y ago
  > Sweden did things. Not French style military police on the streets with fines though. Here's the mobility data. This point really needs to be hammered home. Sweden basically did a lockdown - it just wasn't enforced. Please, everyone, look at the mobility data in OP's post.
  - 6y ago
exabrial 6y ago
I really do think Case Count is the wrong metric. The data overwhelmingly shows that the risks aren't shared by everyone equally. What I'd like to see is those that are in a vulnerable class their contraction and test rate. I think this would encourage those who are at-risk to stay home or any sort of contact outdoors.
joe_the_user 6y ago
This article is quite instructive. Many people discussing the Swedish approach described it as an experiment. The data here makes it here the experiment failed. This is the inherent problem approaches involving "best guesses" - these might well not be right. The alternative to "best guess" is "most conservative guess". In the case, the most conservative approach is doing everything you can to stop infection. This also may not be the best but it limits the downside.
- draw_down 6y ago
  It’s more complicated than that, there are other downsides to public health and economic well being to consider. We could completely eradicate the virus by welding people into their homes, the question is how to trade off cost and benefit.

65 points by elsewhen 6y ago

We really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death. So long as there are people who die from unrelated causes, while happening to have Covid, being marked as a Covid death, there will be a lot of people skeptical of the statistics.

gchokov 6y ago
You included?
sb52191 6y ago
What do you mean by this? What unrelated causes are people dying from that aren't exacerbated by COVID? I've heard this argument before but it's never made sense to me. If you have AIDS, it's not the AIDS that kills you, it's the fact that AIDS weakened your immune system to the point that something else can kill you. But to say that AIDS wasn't paramount to killing the victim is just wrong. Seems to me like COVID is a similar situation...
- Y-bar 6y ago
  Not OP, but in the first half of this year (not sure if this is still the case, I have heard they have attempted to fix this): Anyone in Sweden who had been either diagnosed with Covid 19 and died of any cause, e.g. a traffic incident would be counted as a Covid death. Or if they died of any cause and the autopsy revealed Covid 19 it would also be counted as a Covid death. Edit, source: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utbrott/aktuella-utbrott/covid-19/statistik-och-analyser/bekraftade-fall-i-sverige/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/smittskydd-beredskap/utb... In the link "Ingång för Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox m.fl." it says: > Statistiken visar antalet personer med bekräftad covid-19 som avlidit, oavsett dödsorsak. Translated: > The stats shows the number of deaths with confirmed Covid-19, regardless of cause of death.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    That's the example everyone always brings up, and even if it's true, do you think there are a huge portion of people with COVID who are dying in car accidents? That seems very unlikely to make a significant difference in the figures, and for a new virus that is spreading very quickly and isn't yet well-understood, it's probably worth using a definition that errs slightly (but probably not significantly) on the inclusive side.
    - Y-bar 6y ago
      Car accidents were just the clearest example I could think of. At https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/statistik-om-covid-19/statistik-over-antal-avlidna-i-covid-19/ https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/statistik-och-data/statistik/... they do calculate the difference: > Av dessa har 90 procent (5 514 av 6 128) laboratoriebekräftad covid-19 enligt Folkhälsomyndighetens databas över smittade. 90% are due to Covid 19. 10% not. Edit: I misunderstood, tsimionescu has corrected me, thanks!
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        That is not in any way what that 90% means. > "Of these, 90 percent (5,514 out of 6,128) have laboratory-confirmed covid-19 according to the Swedish Public Health Agency's database of infected people." That is 90% of: > The statistics show the deceased where the underlying cause of death was covid-19, according to the cause of death certificates received by the National Board of Health and Welfare. So in 10% of cases, the doctors were sure enough that the cause of death was Covid19 to write a legal document certifying it, even though they didn't order laboratory work to confirm with 100% certainty. This could mean many things, from medical malpractice (doctor lied on a legal document) to simple common sense (patient is husband of person with confirmed case, died of clear Covid19 symptoms). But there is no way to read that 10% number as meaning what you claimed. In fact, if a person were hit by a car, confirmed Covid19 positive, died of their wounds on their way to hospital, and got a death certificate claiming they died of Covid19, they would be part of 90% number, NOT part of the 10% number.
    - beaner 6y ago
- dx87 6y ago
  I think the point is that the comorbidities aren't mentioned when talking about COVID deaths. The statistics are being presented as though it's random chance who dies from it, instead of it being reported as something that primarily kills people who already have other health issues, like obesity. It would probably make people less anxious if we were told that people without existing issues have a lower chance of dying or hospitilization.
nemothekid 6y ago
For anyone who is skeptical of the statistics, the response is to ask them to explain excess deaths. In America there are over 200k excess deaths; if not COVID, then why did so many more people die?
- minkzilla 6y ago
  Preface: I believe the pandemic is real and covid is deadly. People argue that increases in death could also be attributed to suicide, deteriorating health from mental hardship of stress and quarantine, and people not seeking medical treatment they need because they are scared of covid or because they cannot afford it with so much unemployment. I think the last one holds some water. I know of one person in my hometown who chose not to go to the hospital because he was scared of covid and ended up dying of a heart attack.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    A lot of clinics are doing "video only" visits. These are not nearly sufficient to accurately diagnose a patient. A good deal of clinical visits is assessing the overall manner and appearance of a patient. This can't be done remotely. Nor can BP, EKG, O2 or any other basic diagnostic tools be done remotely. Minor things that could be detected in a normal office visit are missed and turn into things which can kill.
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    If the US were to get the epidemic under control, then those people would be able to go to the hospital without fearing CoVID-19.
    - minkzilla 6y ago
      I think they could also go to the hospital right now. But I think that needs to be communicated; some sort of message telling people “Covid is serious but so are a lot of other health issues if you think you need medical help get it!”
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
aplummer 6y ago
You don't die from these co-morbidities suddenly in the 2 weeks you have covid - but for the covid. This amounts to a baseless conspiracy theory against doctors that accurately understand and record the cause of death. Blunt trauma in a car accident is not being recorded as covid.
- geewee 6y ago
  That's different from country to country. In Denmark hospitalizations are counted as covid hospitalizations for example, even if you arrive due to e.g. a broken leg, but you have covid. Not sure about deaths though.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Of course they are counted as Covid hospitalizations, because they requires the same special care as all other Covid cases - you can't just put a Covid-infected patient in the regular orthopedics ward, you need to quarantine them and all the staff that comes into contact with them. Also, I doubt the amount of people suffering from broken legs are really skewing those Covid numbers. Most people sick enough to require hospitalization while also infected with Covid will have much higher risks of Covid-related symptoms as well.
    - geewee 6y ago
      Certainly it makes sense when talking about hospital capacity - but it does give a bit of a skewed impression when you're looking at the hospitalizations re: cases. You'd be surprised. Around 1/7th of the covid hospitalizations in Denmark[0] are hospitalized for "other reasons" - where covid is not the primary factor - I'd say that is significant. [0] - https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-centralt-coronatal-hver-syvende-er-indlagt-af-andre-grunde https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/braekket-ben-fylder-i-cent... (link only in danish, sorry)
- nsxwolf 6y ago
  In Illinois, it's pretty cut and dry: ""If you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. It means technically even if you died of a clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death. So, everyone who's listed as a COVID death doesn't mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of the death." Dr. Ezike outlined." -- Dr. Ngozi Ezike, Director of Illinois Department of Public Health
acqq 6y ago
Let's make it clear: if your relative has some illness and is expected to live with that illness for years, but gets Covid and dies right now, do you consider that a Covid death? If not, why? Also, if you get Covid and you end up with permanently damaged health, as it is documented time and again, would you keep your skepticism? What will you say if somebody tells you that you anyway had some precondition, even if you weren't aware? And are you aware how big percentage of the U.S. population has one or more risk factors?
sixothree 6y ago
Would a person with diabetes or asthma have _died_ from those conditions if they were not infected? I believe you are making an incredibly disingenuous argument here.
- beaner 6y ago
  My argument is not disingenuous at all. Rather, I think you're being assumptive. I'm not talking about the case where a person's prospects are that they'll live for quite some time. I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, for heart problems, for fatal car injuries or shootings, or even other viruses, who are going to die imminently anyway.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > I'm talking about the case where somebody is already essentially on their death bed for cancer, Are you additionally claiming that this makes up some significant percentage of total covid deaths? Like, if 2% of the deaths due to covid are indeed people who were going to die anyway, but may or may not have died a week earlier due to covid, well 1. They may have died a week earlier due to covid. Whose place is it to judge that? (there are measures that try to take into account loss of livable years, but they agree that Covid is pretty terrible) 2. Who cares if the estimate is off by a few percent? So concern about this overcounting is predicated on an assumption that some significant number of people are on death's door already, and that basically only those people are dying of covid. Most covid-deaths are of people under 85 years old, and even an 85 year old has a life expectancy of 6 years though, so that seems unlikely.
    - Kranar 6y ago
      40% of COVID-19 related deaths are from people in LTC facilities [1] where the median life expectancy is 21 months (average is 29 months). Now that doesn't mean we should entirely downplay the risk here, but there are alternative solutions that can allow us to take care of the vast majority of people who are seriously at risk from COVID-19 without absolutely ruining the economy and harming the majority of people's way of life in a manner that may very well be irreparable for a decade, if not longer. [1] https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare https://covidtracking.com/data/longtermcare
modzu 6y ago
all of the replies to this comment misunderstand the point. if you get hit by a bus and have covid, you are still counted as a "covid death" in the statistics, at least in my province, because there isnt a simple means to separate the two
- pwinnski 6y ago
  You might be misunderstanding the point. Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. They ignore the overwhelming "excess deaths" number and pretend that unless a person had COVID and COVID alone listed, with no co-morbidity, it doesn't count, and therefore 99+% of COVID deaths aren't COVID at all. This is, of course, not true, as the excess deaths numbers clearly demonstrate. If anything, we're under-counting COVID.
  - ravitation 6y ago
    > Many people have chosen to promote the lie that the vast majority of COVID deaths can be dismissed using this reasoning, rather than a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. This is comically illustrated by the examples being used... Hit by a bus? Hospice patients with weeks to live? The truth is that the typical comorbidities, that have a noticeable effect on the actual total number of deaths, are things like obesity, hyptertension, and diabetes... Things that literally will not kill an otherwise healthy adult in the same time period as COVID-19.
    - beaner 6y ago
      The biggest comorbidity by far is old age, which definitely will imminently kill those it affects on its own.
      - ravitation 6y ago
        I mean... No, it won't... Being 75+ doesn't kill someone in weeks like COVID-19 does...
tshaddox 6y ago
Isn't this exactly how all death statistics of all diseases and conditions work? People with other conditions are presumably more likely to die from some given condition. And, of course, every cause of death is really just causing the person to die earlier than they would have otherwise died.
legerdemain 6y ago
At this point it's becoming pretty clear that the world will not see such a definition. It is in the interest of governments to exercise control over people by calling anything and anything a Covid "case" and a Covid "fatality." The numbers go up and down and up again at the convenience of government policymakers. LIBERATE MICHIGAN!
dr_dshiv 6y ago
I think we can make our own decisions on that provided we can get US data on deaths in a simple csv file with age, gender, race, state and comorbidities. Does anyone know where to find a dataset like this?
- hnuser847 6y ago
  This is exactly what you're looking for: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
jmull 6y ago
I think this should put you concerns to rest: Excess deaths in the United States were at 299K as of October 15. What’s your explanation for this, if it isn’t Covid? https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm6942e2_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
- legerdemain 6y ago
  Literally any other explanation would suffice! For example, the lockdowns put stress on Americans, exacerbate depression and anxiety, worsen health conditions associated with sedentary lifestyles, and keep people out of healthful bars and restaurants where they could consume a more diverse diet and nourish their psychological need for social interaction.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    It would. But than you have the official COVID deaths which match the excess deaths quite neatly. So why not just accept what numbers are clearly telling us?
    - josephcsible 6y ago
      You're missing the point. The point is that some of the excess deaths were caused by Covid, and the rest were caused by the lockdown, and the numbers are intentionally being skewed to make all of the lockdown deaths look like Covid deaths. This obviously leaves the total of excess deaths the same.
      - oblio 6y ago
        How do you explain excess deaths not during periods of lockdown? Also not in the US where Covid-19 is for some reason a political talking point? :-)
        josephcsible 6y ago
        What state/region and specific timeframe do you have in mind? Weren't lockdowns instituted in most places before recorded deaths got really high?
Tepix 6y ago
In the city i live in in Germany they do differentiate between "death by covid" and "ill with covid but other cause of death". Ask your city to do the same. (FYI the total numbers so far are 25 deaths by Covid-19 and 14 deaths by other additional causes)
GuB-42 6y ago
There are people who die from Covid and are not counted, there are people who die of something else and are counted as Covid deaths. And there are cases it is ambiguous, for example they may have recovered from Covid (negative PCR) but died later from complications. You will never have precise statistics, however, excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. Worth noting that there are indirect effects. For instance because of the overworked health system, some completely unrelated diseases may not be treated as well, causing extra deaths. On the other hand, lockdowns may lower the risk of accident, transmission of other diseases, and even the nasty effect of pollution. But the general idea is that these deaths are real.
- misiti3780 6y ago
  Where can I find the data to see excess mortality?
  - rwcarlsen 6y ago
    I use https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm for the U.S. and https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ has a bit of european data.
    - misiti3780 6y ago
      thanks!
- josephcsible 6y ago
  > excess mortality for all causes more or less matches Covid deaths, so the numbers are roughly correct. This doesn't follow. It just means that the number of falsely-claimed Covid deaths is roughly equal to the number of deaths caused by the lockdowns, not that either of those numbers are small.
  - oblio 6y ago
qwerty1234599 6y ago
The average person doesn't die within 30 days. If a covid-positive person dies after testing positive, it's pretty obvious what the cause of death is.
Viliam1234 6y ago
I am in favor of having better definitions and statistics, but frankly, there will be a lot of people skeptical of Covid no matter what happens.
nostromo 6y ago
I’d like to see reporting on healthy years of life lost. During the worst of the HIV epidemic, we saw people in their 30s dying left and right. Malaria kills mostly young children. All lives are valuable and worth fighting for, but it does seem that these losses are fundamentally worse than COVID. If we would count healthy years of life lost, rather than raw number of deaths, I think that would be more apparent.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  A human life is a human life. If you start assigning values, you'll quickly go down bizarre paths. Old people still have a right to a free and healthy life.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    If this is what our decision-makers believe, then why isn't there a lockdown every winter to stop flu deaths?
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      Because we have grown accustomed to the flu, it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. People can even get vaccinated, and we try to vaccinate as many as we can every year - not an option we have with Covid19. A new disease with unpredictable long-term effects, that kills at least twice as many people as the flu despite unprecedented preventive measures is bound to cause more alarm. Remember that regions hit early and unprepared were carting dead people by the truck load, most notably in Northern Italy. If we didn't have lockdowns and other measures, that would have continued and escalated all over the world - we would have probably easily had 10 million or more dead just this year if we had treated this just like a flu.
      - umvi 6y ago
        > it spreads much less, and it kills far fewer people. Over what timeframe? Novel viruses come but once per century, flu kills consistently year after year after year, always mutating to escape eradication... and the flu deaths pile up to astronomical heights over the decades
JamisonM 6y ago
Do we really do need to address what constitutes a proper Covid death? We can accurately project case numbers to hospitalizations and then to deaths as a rough approximation. Who frankly cares if the exact number of COVID deaths are being recorded properly when much of the western world is running out of hospital capacity. Really, who cares? Don't quibble over bullshit, move on to stuff that matters.
- beaner 6y ago
  Wasn't there a period where there were actually a lot of hospitals closing, because they were too empty, because we had kicked everyone out anticipating a huge covid hospitalization wave that never came? What's the status on that, now?
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    The status is that the wave has now come in most of North America. You clearly have a connection to the Internet so you must know this, I am not sure what you are on about here.
    - beaner 6y ago
      What's the status with hospitals? That was the question. Are they closing? How many have already closed? Are they at full capacity? Are they projected to get to full capacity? Are people with nonessential surgeries still being pushed out? Who else, if any, is also still being pushed out? Etc. You answered a question that wasn't being asked.
      - JamisonM 6y ago
        The status with the hospitals is that the ICU's are filling up or full. Nonessential surgeries were brought back in after the 1st wave didn't develop in the size and strength expected and are now getting pushed back or cancelled because this wave is overwhelming the system. But you can just read the news and see that this is what is happening so I don't understand why you are asking it in the first place. (The risk of permanent hospital closures & bankruptcies in the USA was about losing revenue from certain type of procedures because of COVID risks, but that's a separate issue that has little to do with this.) So again, why do you need to quibble over rounding errors in cause of death paperwork when the hospitals are filling up or full? Why? What's the point?

nickff 6y ago

I am a little confused, because the post says: "Swedish deaths seem to be 40% above the U.S. equivalent." and backs it up with the following tweet. https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1326896531765665792 https://twitter.com/thehowie/status/1326896531765665792 But as mentioned in one of the comments on the post, Sweden seems to have a (weekly) mortality rate of about 1/3 the US'. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... edit: it looks like a follow-up tweet contends that Sweden's back-filling of deaths is skewing their numbers down, though I am not really sure what to make of it. edit2: Sweden seems to have a fewer COVID mortalities (per million population) than the USA, coming in just after France, which seems to further confuse the situation.

rendang 6y ago
The tweet says the Swedish rate is more than 40% OF the US rate, which the blogger appeared to misinterpret as "more than 40% GREATER than the US rate"
- nostromo 6y ago
  Thank you both for checking the sources. Yes, the tweet is saying Sweden is 60% better than the US in terms of daily deaths. The source for claiming immunity is temporary is also just a link to some random tweet with no data. I flagged the article as it’s making pretty big claims based on no real data and a misunderstood tweet.
  - lacker 6y ago
    The referenced tweet is not the main point, the main source is the Financial Times article talking about cases rather than deaths, so I think the main points raised by the post are still valid.
bazzert 6y ago
right, looks like Sweden is doing pretty well compared to the USA. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&minPopulationFilter=1000000&time=earliest..latest&country=SWE~USA&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=smoothed&aligned=true&hideControls=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

ptx 6y ago

At the same press conference where they announced that the number of infections per day in Stockholm had been doubling every week for the past few weeks, they also announced that they would start to loosen the restrictions and start allowing visits to nursing homes again. How did they expect that this was going to turn out?

core-questions 6y ago
Maybe they're just not worried about it anymore, much as we never worried at this level about the flu, common cold, or really anything else? > How did they expect that this was going to turn out? Maybe exactly like it is, and maybe it's not a real problem? There's no nuance in a graph that simply shows "infections" - there's no discussion of it being relative to the number of tests, no error bars for false positives/negatives, nothing to show how severe it is.
- oblio 6y ago
  I can't believe that people are still parroting the "common flu, common cold" talking points from 6-8 months ago. Covid has a much higher mortality rate.
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    > Covid has a much higher mortality rate. Only if you're high-risk. If you're not, its mortality rate is much lower than the flu. The problem that most people have with the lockdowns is that we know who's high-risk and who's not, but we lock everyone down anyway.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Do you have the numbers for the "not high risk" category? Also, what about the high risk people? Do we just throw them under the bus? Also, what about spreading a new virus to billions of hosts and praying for no mutations?

matz1 6y ago

Daily case are meaningless when vast majority are asymptotic or only have mild symptom. How many that are actually require hospitalization ? How many death (death as in due to covid not with covid) ? Then there is false positive from the test.

_ph_ 6y ago
The numbers of hospitalizations and deaths unfortunately are quite proportional to the number of positive tests. Depending on the testing regime the exact factor varies a bit, but unfortunately, not very much. By now we really have enough international data to show that. And the positive tests are leading hospitalisation and deaths by a couple of weeks. So they are a good indicator about what to expect. And obviously, during an epedemic, raising infection numbers mean even higher numbers following until something reduces further infections.
- belorn 6y ago
  Yes and no. The numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are proportional to the number of tests, but only if the amount of testing is constant. As linked elsewhere, https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6..., the numbered of confirmed new positive tests are around 5k compared to April, and the number of deaths are 10-20 compared to April 100-120 per day. What the graphs would need is normalization to the amount of testing being done. Such graphs would then have hospitalizations and deaths proportional to the number of positive tests.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    Perhaps I was a bit short, but the numbers of the badly affected are proportional to the number of positive tests. The proportionality factor does indeed change over time, but very slowly. Unfortunately, we have a plentiful of data internationally, as many countries handled the epedimic differently. But the fundamental data looks very similar between countries. In Germany, there is about a factor of 4 between positive/death in April and in November. The number of people in intense care has reached April levels. But on shorter time scales the variation is much smaller. And if the number of positive tests doubles within a week and nothing fundmental had happened in testing, then this is extremely relevant. Especially if the trend follows an exponential curve closely.

RamRodification 6y ago

While this is clearly a second wave, "New cases" are kind of meaningless as it is very much tied to the amount of testing performed. Here are the stats for number of deaths and also patients in ICU which gives a different picture. Still alarming but not as crazy as this "New cases"-graph might make you believe. (two links to the same image on separate image hosting services) https://postimg.cc/rzyCv57W https://postimg.cc/rzyCv57W https://imgbox.com/zI14ri2b https://imgbox.com/zI14ri2b Sources: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6... Public Health Agency of Sweden

_ph_ 6y ago
New cases are not meaningless. They might just not be 1:1 comparable in numeric values to the numbers a couple of months before. But if you are an an exponential raise, even pretty large factors are caught up with literally within a couple of days.
- RamRodification 6y ago
  You are correct. That's why I went with "kind of meaningless". Maybe a bit too harsh by me. What I really meant was "not as meaningful as people make it out to be." (or "seem to want it to be"). The post kind of goes from straight talk about deaths to "and here are stats" which are not at all showing deaths. Comes off a little dishonest to me. And the stat on deaths being "40% above the U.S. equivalent" just seem plain wrong. See the comments on the post for that.
- sharken 6y ago
  New cases do not say anything about how many dead you can expect, case in point Czech Republic: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/czech-republic/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/czech-repu...
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    How is this a case in point? The curve of the deaths follows the curve of infections closely.

kanjus 6y ago

What do people think of Marginal Revolution? I get quite a lot of value from the link roundups, but find that the original content (the non-roundup posts) are about praising their ability to make predictions and their own opinion pieces (“recommended throughout”), brushing away criticism, regurgitating opinions of other experts on things they have no clue about, taking low-brow jabs at “the left“, etc. Case in point: MR authors spent the last months arguing for the herd immunity approach, and bringing up Sweden once a week, and now apparently they were just waiting for data. I just don’t get why they get so much readership and are seen to be similar to Slate Star Codex, Gwern, etc. (which have their own shortcomings, but are on a different level in terms of their reasoning ability).

unsrsly 6y ago
I certainly agree with you. Part of the core MR game is to flirt with right wing talking points but keep on playing both sides to get attention. This is really unfortunate and distracting when it comes to something like covid that is already so politicized. Their actual analysis of the pandemic has been hopelessly naive and lacking in rigor. If there's one good contribution they've made, it's been pointing out the ways in which certain regulations have hindered the response without adding value. Otherwise, it's only good for the links.
erterbest 6y ago
I agree. It feels like a case of someone who've had too much recognition or respect (deserved or not), and now believe they are without fault despite a clear regression in reasoning ability...
jjtheblunt 6y ago
What's Marginal Revolution?
- foogazi 6y ago
  Tyler Cowen‘s blog
lacker 6y ago

draw_down 6y ago

It has been pretty interesting (that's a euphemism) to see people say over and over again that Sweden has got it figured out. But countries' fortunes have shifted back and forth over time, those who seemed to be doing worse than everyone reversed course, and vice versa. There are exceptions, Vietnam appears to be one. My thought on Sweden was not so much "wait until the fall", but to note that even though they didn't shut down, the economic impact was broadly similar to that of neighboring counties who did. So from my view this all seems very "pick your poison". I suspect the correlations we keep implying between shutdowns and the economy may actually have more to do with the fact of the pandemic itself. I don't care if the movie theaters are shut down or not, I'm not going to one.

jeremiahlee 6y ago

Also, Sverige still does not recommend people wear face masks. It recommends people not go to gyms, but does not force the gyms to close. It would be comical if so many people were not suffering. (I am an American living in Stockholm.)

irrational 6y ago

My daughter is working in Sweden as an aupair. She is pretty certain that she has covid (no sense of taste or smell to start with), but they are so backed up that she can't get tested until sometime next week.

CogitoCogito 6y ago
It is true they are swamped, but I ordered a test Monday morning, had it delivered Tuesday morning, picked up again (after my doing the test) an hour later, and then I had the results Wednesday afternoon. This is in Stockholm. Where is she? Not all regions are equally organized.
- irrational 6y ago
  She is in Stockholm. She went to some clinic and they told her to come back next Thursday. Maybe it is because she is not Swedish.
  - CogitoCogito 6y ago
    Yeah if she feels symptoms she should probably use the app "Alltid Öppet" to book a test. She probably needs a personal number for this (which I assume she has if she's working as an aupair). I can try to help out if she needs it. My email is twn at thomasnyberg dot com.

Gwypaas 6y ago

Welcome to the pandemlympics, where every country is comparable down to the day and everyone is a combined epidemiologist and statistician. Yes Sweden has a second wave, although still in an earlier stage than most other places. Hopefully it can be turned around before ICU numbers start rising again. New recommendations went in place two weeks ago and personally I see less people around, and the mobility data is trending down. [0] Restrictions on serving alcohol in pubs and clubs will start from the 20th, limiting service to before 22:00. I feel that is mostly for show though, since if it truly had a point it would start today and not after people spent one last weekend partying. The spread is mostly in the age group 20-29 currently, so that is a plus. Although trickles of spread in hospice are coming back, which is worrying. They started to allow some visitors a month or so back because the mental health of elderly were deteriorating quite rapidly due to the forced isolation for their own safety. We can see from the Swedish public health authority page that new ICU admittances have leveled off. Hopefully. [1] "Nya intensivvårdade fall per dag" (New ICU cases per day) For those proposing no actions and using Sweden as their argument: Sweden did things. Not French style military police on the streets with fines though. Here's the mobility data. [0] For those proposing sweeping lock-downs and using Sweden as their argument: Sweden did lockdown less than many other places, that is true. The constitution does not allow for restrictions in freedom of movement unless in war so recommendations were used. Here's the mobility data. [0] [0]: https://www.teliacompany.com/sv/om-foretaget/uppdatering/mobility-analysis/ https://www.teliacompany.com/sv/om-foretaget/uppdatering/mob... [1]: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fairity 6y ago
> Sweden did things. Not French style military police on the streets with fines though. Here's the mobility data. This point really needs to be hammered home. Sweden basically did a lockdown - it just wasn't enforced. Please, everyone, look at the mobility data in OP's post.
- 6y ago

exabrial 6y ago

I really do think Case Count is the wrong metric. The data overwhelmingly shows that the risks aren't shared by everyone equally. What I'd like to see is those that are in a vulnerable class their contraction and test rate. I think this would encourage those who are at-risk to stay home or any sort of contact outdoors.

joe_the_user 6y ago

This article is quite instructive. Many people discussing the Swedish approach described it as an experiment. The data here makes it here the experiment failed. This is the inherent problem approaches involving "best guesses" - these might well not be right. The alternative to "best guess" is "most conservative guess". In the case, the most conservative approach is doing everything you can to stop infection. This also may not be the best but it limits the downside.

draw_down 6y ago
It’s more complicated than that, there are other downsides to public health and economic well being to consider. We could completely eradicate the virus by welding people into their homes, the question is how to trade off cost and benefit.