31 ms·

No excess deaths in Sweden compared to the last ten years

200 points by mrfusion 6y ago

pw6hv 6y ago
Well, I would say that two months are still missing before the end of the year, so we are comparing 10 vs 12 months if my understanding is correct.
- wobbegongz 6y ago
  Lag in reporting also. So more like 9 vs 12.
- TheCapn 6y ago
  Are there direct comparisons with other countries for the same reporting period?
  - pmontra 6y ago
    Some sources that could be useful https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Weekly_death_statistics&stable https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Weekly_death_statistics&stable#Number_of_deaths_higher_than_in_previous_years https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- sharkmerry 6y ago
  Technically yes, but dividing by number of days past and multiplying by total in the year you get ~88,411, so technically under. they also noted this "Sweden was the Nordic country that reported the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020."
- diegoperini 6y ago
  Also, deaths caused by non-covid flu like diseases should have decreased due to lockdowns and hygiene awareness.
  - piker 6y ago
    > should have decreased due to lockdowns and hygiene awareness Point is, Sweden arguably opted for none of this.
    - davrosthedalek 6y ago
      Mandated lockdown != lockdown. I would be quite surprised if Swedes didn't use more soap this year, and went to restaurants less.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Sweden had no lockdowns.
    - roca 6y ago
      People keep saying this but it's misleading. Swedish authorities have issued many directives that weren't legally enforceable but which they expected Swedes to follow, and most Swedes did follow them. Surely whether or not a directive formally has legal backing is not that important to whether we call a measure "a lockdown"; what is important is the impact on behavior. For example Swedes in many regions have been asked to refrain from social contact outside their household for the last month. When that happens in other countries it's called a "lockdown". From April to October no visitors to rest homes were permitted; regardless of the legal status that seems like a kind of lockdown. Anyway the "no legally enforced lockdown" era just ended in Sweden. They have introduced law-backed restrictions: https://www.thelocal.se/20201116/breaking-sweden-introduces-limit-of-eight-coronavirus https://www.thelocal.se/20201116/breaking-sweden-introduces-...
      - zepto 6y ago
        I think it’s pretty fair to say they had no lockdowns. I suspect the fact that they weren’t legally enforcable may have increased responsible behavior.
        6y ago
- sdenton4 6y ago
  Yeah, posting this with a different title from the page is forcing an editorialized view onto data which just doesn't support the title. There's no way to tell excess deaths from this one incomplete chart. I've flagged the post as a result. That said, 12/10 * 77.5k = 92.7k, which is at the high end for the charted period. Adding an extra month's worth of late reports gives 13/10 * 77.5k = 100.5k. So, probably reasonable to guess that the real deaths are somewhere between these two, which definitely doesn't support the 'no excess deaths' claim in the post title. It would be nice to see something closer to the CDC's ongoing excess deaths tracking: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
just-juan-post 6y ago
Enjoy https://i.redd.it/gzv67r948ty51.jpg https://i.redd.it/gzv67r948ty51.jpg
- ta988 6y ago
  Why was that downvoted?
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Because they excluded the other Nordic countries, who all look much better than Sweden: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=FIN~SWE~NOR~DNK&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=total_cases&pickerSort=desc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... Especially if you include the period around April, which the grandparent poster omitted.
    - johndevor 6y ago
      Are they better off simply because they are colder climates?
      - HarryHirsch 6y ago
        The climates of Oslo and Stockholm are very similar. Helsinki is a few degrees (not that much) less, so you would expect higher transmission, but it's not what we see.
    - ta988 6y ago
      Thanks, I totally missed those points.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Please stop baitposting.
- wffurr 6y ago
curiousllama 6y ago
PSA that decontextualized numbers are not really a great way to approach just about any issue. Also, given my inkling as to why this was posted, please keep in mind that incomplete bar charts (alone) are a bad way to do important statistical tests.
thcleaner999 6y ago
Please if you do comparisons, it should be done against comparable countries like, Denmark and Norway. If you compare it against Spain and Italy, whose countries have a far worse health system, distrust of authorities and are much more vulnerable against economic downturns. the fact is Sweden is still doing far worse than Norway and Denmark
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  What about compared to itself lol
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  > If you compare it against Spain and Italy, whose countries have a far worse health system, distrust of authorities and are much more vulnerable against economic downturns. Minor nitpick, I agree on the other points but Spain objectively does not have a "far worse" Healthcare system than Sweden in 2020. You might need to revise your assumptions. Looking at the data available up to 2015, Denmark already had a worse HAQ index than Spain in 2015, and Spain had a negligible difference compared to Sweden [0]. Spanish longevity has kept increasing and competing with Japan [1], beyond 'mediterranean diet' effects, which again many attribute to Healthcare quality. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-quality-index?tab=table https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-qua... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/16/spain-to-beat-japan-2040-world-life-expectancy-league-table https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/16/spain-to-beat-...
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  Good thing the data isn't comparing Sweden to Spain and Italy, but Sweden 2020 to 2010-2019. Also, I think there are a lot of problems when conducting comparisons between countries, and it is best to be avoided unless conducted in a extremely rigours way. There are absolutely ways ways in which Sweden is more like Spain or Italy than Denmark or Norway, and it take a through analysis to even attempt a comparison.
- Darmody 6y ago
  Spain has a better health system than both Denmark and Norway.
transitus 6y ago
Euromomo draws weekly z-values per country. From graph you can get the data. Data says mean of z-scores for weeks 01-45: Sweden 2.02 Finland -0.10 Norway -0.26 https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps (notice that mean of z-score per week is not the same z-score for the whole year, as deaths per week have seasonal variance thus are not evenly distributed) Euromomo description of z-score https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/what-is-a-z-score https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/what-is-a-z-score
gojomo 6y ago
Somewhat deceptive submission title ("No Excess Deaths in Sweden Compared to the Last the Years") and presentation, which might lead the inattentive to think 2020 is on a pace for fewer total deaths in Sweden than all or most previous years. Chart declares itself to be data "as of November 6". That's the 311th day of our 365-day leap-year 2020. Thus naively scaling the 77,300 number to the full year would predict ((365/311) * 77300 =) 90,721 deaths in 2020. That's higher than 5 of the shown previous 10 years. But also, the deaths as of November 6 may not be a complete total: often such data series continue to be updated (increased) for a few weeks after the calendar date. And further: looking at US figures for 2017, November tends to have about an average number of daily deaths, but December is one of the deadliest months, with about 15% more deaths-per-day than is typical in the lowest-deaths Summer months of June-July-August. So even my extrapolation to 90,721 is likely to be a floor on the true end-of year number, if lagged reporting or a typical December death acceleration means these November 6 numbers aren't an accurate sample for the full year. (And that's not even counting the Covid-19 case surge happening now in Sweden as with most of Europe.) Everyone trying to draw final conclusions from Sweden is making a call too soon based on incomplete data. We probably won't truly understand whether Sweden is on-net a Covid-19 success or disaster until retrospective analyses balancing all factors in late 2022 or 2023.
- marioletto 6y ago
  Not to mention that any comparison should be done April 2020 to March 2021 not Jan to Dec.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Why? Do you think that delaying the analysis will make a difference in anyone's conclusions? Do you think COVID will be over in March 2021? If not, why not do a running tally from April 2020 until the disease is eradicated?
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      Because they're talking about the number of excess deaths in a year. If it's in order to debate a question about Sweden's approach, it should be dated from when Sweden's approach diverged from the approach of others. And it should last 12 months, because that's how long a year is.
yoz-y 6y ago
Assuming the numbers are correct and taking the headline as it is, what is an actionable takeaway from this? Sweden did nothing to prevent Covid and had very few deaths. Some other countries had lockdowns, face coverings and had a lot of deaths. What is the correlation then? Sweden has less dense population for one, maybe healthier overall too? Younger? Is there any takeaway from this?
- sampo 6y ago
  > Sweden did nothing to prevent Covid This is not true. Sweden limited mass gatherings to 50 people, high schools and universities went to remote learning, large part of white-collar work switched to remote (companies did this voluntarily), and many people voluntarily limited their activities. Also, their sick pay system allows every worker to stay home when they are sick.
- ardit33 6y ago
  Have you ever been in Sweden? Swedes practice social distancing in regular daily life. Also, it is a very introverted, borderline anti social type of society. I had a couple of French co-workers that said it was very hard to form friendships outside work there (in Stockholm), while in the US (NYC) they had no problem. Compare this to Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Albania, or other Mediterranean countries, which are polar opposite. People are friendlier, that talk to each other more, they hug, they kiss more. If you go to smaller towns, you regularly see older people hanging out with each other, playing chess and socializing. You just don't see that in Sweden. I think this is one of the main reasons that some countries like Germany and Sweden are not fairing that bad, but the south gets hit harder. Also, from my understanding, many folks in Sweden are practicing some form of social distancing, and many are working from home when they can. It is a 'voluntary' type of thing. Swedes tend to follow civi rules well in general, and are a homogeneous society, so I think that is contributing to the lower rates of transmission as well. while the US attitude varies from wear a mask, to 'don't take my freedom away', i do what i want, type of attitude. Ps. Here is what bus line looks like in Sweden (before the pandemic): https://i.redd.it/4q36jg5ofi831.jpg https://i.redd.it/4q36jg5ofi831.jpg Their culture just wants/respects people spaces more, and are more 'introverted' by nature. Swedes are friendly/polite, but not necessary 'warm'. And you can see with their social interactions as well. Hope that makes sense. Good luck trying to replicate that type of distancing in most of the Europe or the US unless it is mandated (i.e. you will get kicked out of a store if you don't respect the line).
golf1052 6y ago
This is taken as a yearly number but looking at week over week numbers [1] Sweden did have excess deaths in March and April. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...
- ggrrhh_ta 6y ago
  Other countries already have excess deaths (e.g. US: https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcauses_11112020/WeeklyNumberByAge?:embed=y&:jsdebug=y&:toolbar=n&:tabs=n&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcause...) indicating that not only people have died sooner than they would have (which is irreparable), but more people will have died within this year than in a year without Covid. It could be argued that US & Sweden's policies are not that distant. I guess that US has cities with much higher population density & much more unavoidable commute (as in the higher affected areas in Europe).
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Sure, that makes sense, although I think the annualized number is quite interesting too as it appears a risk-off approach has led to a commensurate decrease in other fatalities.
  - benlivengood 6y ago
    The tail at the end of the reporting period graph looks like lag, not a sudden drop in death rate.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, is that not just that this year's total is only 10.25 months of data as compared to prior year's full 12 months?
      - DanBC 6y ago
        Don't these death stats have a built in lag because of coroners, medical examiners, and stats authorities?
marianov 6y ago
Typo in the title? " to the Last the Years "
chubot 6y ago
You get a really different picture on Twitter. And I'm not saying I know which one is right! https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1328048295109824512 https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1328048295109824512 I follow Gary Marcus because I respect his views on AI, but I don't really appreciate the editorializing. One of the most horrifically inaccurate predictions in the history of public health. The obvious difference is that cases aren't deaths (and the amount of testing affects the number of cases, etc.). But if the plot is to be believed, then you could imagine that Sweden might NOT have excess deaths for 2020 (which is interesting in itself), but it could have many in the beginning of 2021. Or maybe almost all these cases will be mild and cause few deaths. There seems to be an extremely wide range of COVID outcomes.
- koyote 6y ago
  The testing rate in Sweden has skyrocketed in such a way that comparing case numbers between April and November is completely useless. That being said, deaths are going up as well at the moment. Still a far cry from April levels though.
_Microft 6y ago
This does not necessarily mean that there are no Covid deaths. It could as well mean that despite lower overall deaths from other causes (e.g. because people actually do less stuff that could get them killed), they arrive at a similar number because of additional deaths caused by Covid. My first idea would be to try a difference-in-differences approach with other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences
- Sporktacular 6y ago
  That's a good point
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  One factor could be people who were about to die from cancer or something in a week died of covid instead.
fullshark 6y ago
Financial times has been doing this exact analysis country by country / city by city: https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938 https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... They estimate about a 20% increase in deaths so far this year for Sweden.
- tcbawo 6y ago
  Some people have argued that hospitals are skewing the numbers to inflate the number of people that are dying of Covid-19 vs other causes, or that these are people that would died anyways. Neither of these arguments are supported by the FT data. To be fair, it's not clear how to quantify people that might be dying due to lockdown-related causes (eg. suicide, untreated health issues), but this appears to be smaller than Covid-19 deaths. Edit: I'm curious why this is getting downvoted.
  - drivebycomment 6y ago
    I didn't downvote, but I can see why. It seems like you didn't read the FT graph. It's showing the total death rates in a graph, and during initial spike in COVID, Sweden showed 20% increase during the peak. By definition, there's no "skewing" possible, since it's all death - unless you're claiming hospitals are making up death. If your main point is that reported death due to COVID might be inflated, sure, that's possible but that doesn't mean there's no increase due to COVID related death. If you want to point out the reported number due to COVID might be slightly higher than it really is, you should at least acknowledge that there is meaningful and substantial increase in death due to COVID as there absolutely is. By omitting that, your post can't be distinguished from someone posting with a conspiracy mindset and ignoring actual data on substantial increase in death.
    - tcbawo 6y ago
      Clearly, I must not have articulated myself well enough, since you took away the exact opposite of my point: I have heard the suggestion of inflated death numbers within the US in casual conversation multiple times and I frequently refer to this specific article as a counterargument. Fwiw - I have been a subscriber to the FT for ages and I've followed that chart (which is free to all) since the beginning.
sampo 6y ago
If you look at Sweden in Euromomo, there is a clear spike in mortality in the spring. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country
mcguire 6y ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1112-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1112-0 [Note: data to May] "With our consistent and comparable analysis, we identified four groups of countries in terms of the overall death toll of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first group comprises countries that have avoided a detectable rise (with a posterior probability of at least 90%) in all-cause mortality and includes Bulgaria, New Zealand, Slovakia, Australia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The second and third groups of countries experienced a low-to-medium effect of the pandemic on overall deaths and include Austria, Switzerland and Portugal (low effect) and France, the Netherlands and Sweden (medium effect). The fourth group of countries, which experienced the highest mortality toll, consists of Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Spain and England and Wales."
- gojomo 6y ago
  5 month old data is pretty stale, for regional comparisons, in this evolving situation.
biolurker1 6y ago
Can we stop the pseudoscience? If people stay home there are no accidents, no murders, no party drugs etc. Comparing oranges to apples. Unless the article wants to say that covid is actually good for you. Just stop it, it's bad for everyone.
- spikels 6y ago
  Your point that Covid (and our responses to it) have both plus and minuses is valid. But then you undermine it with this: > If people stay home there are no accidents, no murders, no party drugs etc. There are still accidents, murders, etc. In some places they have even increased. And other causes of death like suicide and heart disease are up because people are staying home. Then you end by contradicting your own good point (i.e. impacts are complex) with "it's bad for everyone" which is obviously untrue.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    The Law of Averages looks a lot like "moderation" to some people.
  - biolurker1 6y ago
    My position is crystal clear. You can't compare people at home with people living normal life and deduct anything about the covid mortality effect. You can nitpick all you want.
cm2187 6y ago
I think you need to wait a little longer to make these comparison. Given the demographics of Covid victims, it may only have accelerated deaths by a few months. But to me it's not even the relevant comparison. Being partisan of Sweden's approach doesn't mean believing Covid doesn't exist. Even a bad flu season will have an impact on year-end mortality stats. The question is rather how much worse did Sweden do vs countries that enforced severe restriction of civil liberties. And not only Sweden didn't do particularly bad, but it's done better than many major European countries like France, Italy, Spain or the UK.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  Yeah, soooo restrictive of civil liberties that half the country refused to wear masks, partied hard, and caused not one, but two resurges. You know what, man? I'm getting so sick of hearing this, "but muh civil liberties" line from the anti-lockdown crowd. You weren't planning on going to any protests. You're not pretty enough to consider "showin' muh face in the grocery store" to be protected speech. This is just childish feet kicking. It's ex-post-facto rationalization to come up with some way of complaining about being asked to care about the other people in your community.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    You are a hero!
  - gotoeleven 6y ago
    If old and fat people have a high risk and everyone else is basically fine, why not just lock down the old and fat people?
    - FDSGSG 6y ago
      For the same reason why you're expected to wear a mask even if you had COVID-19 a month ago.
    - imglorp 6y ago
      If young and healthy people exercising on the road are at high risk for being struck by drunk drivers, why not lock down the young healthy people?
blendo 6y ago
These charts compare overall death rates over time, by country: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores... It appears that since September 2020, Sweden’s death rate has been about 5-10% LOWER than average, which would push overall yearly rate down a bit
modzu 6y ago
this is weird, i was looking at this exact question earlier today on our world in data, and i was seeing roughly 50,000 a year for the last 5 years and then already over 70k this year. anyone else? i will try to find link...
- modzu 6y ago
  i couldn't find the exact chart i saw earlier today, but here is a weekly comparison against the past 5 years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=2020-01-05..2020-12-27&country=~SWE&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... without some context and understanding, it raises more questions than it answers. like why the spike in deaths every februrary?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mdifrgechd 6y ago
This whole discussion is a good reminder why any analysis is always subjective. If there is an actual fault in the underlying numbers, fine, but what I see reading the thread is people finding ways to justify why the data is incomplete, there are still more people dying, we need to fear covid, etc. I've seen the articles that talk about excess deaths, and then the posts are all affirming that yes, we need to fear covid, people are dying, etc. I think there is obvious evidence that covid is a real disease that kills people, but the cherry picked reactions that people have to data saying different things drives home that analysis is always political, not some kind of objective thing we can hold up as beyond criticism. See climate change...
- Sporktacular 6y ago
  We are seeing climate change.
  - umvi 6y ago
    I think OP's point is that there is a strong bias/narrative in favor of confirming climate change. Which means dissenting opinions or alternative explanations other than climate change for various phenomenon are more quickly dismissed and shut down. For example, say a massive forest fire happens. We see people try very hard to attribute the root cause to climate change, even if the true cause is decades of fire suppression. Repeat for literally anything that could plausibly be explained by climate change. Similarly, there is a very strong narrative/bias surrounding covid. Any data or study going against the narrative has to fight 10x as hard for survival vs. a study confirming the narrative. This is not unique to science polarized across political parties. A similar thing happened (is still happening?) with Alzheimer's research. Basically research dissenting from the prevailing theory were systematically denied funding and shut down by the most influential figures in the field.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225
    - mempko 6y ago
      Climate change is a global phenomenon and therefore impacts everything. Every event is impacted by our planet warming.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
LOL. Quoting Max Roser: "Tegnell in May: “In the autumn there will be a second wave. Sweden will have a high level of immunity and the number of cases will probably be quite low. … But Finland will have a very low level of immunity. Will Finland have to go into a complete lockdown again?” Autumn: https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1328045594099724289/photo/1 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1328045594099724289/pho...
namesbc 6y ago
This is a tech enthusiast site, not a COVID denial site. Why is this here, and who upvoted it?
- yeetman21 6y ago
  Just because the facts do not support one argument or the other, does not make it false.
  - namesbc 6y ago
    This post is completely unrelated to tech though. If you want to discuss various COVID conspiracies they made a whole website for that called Facebook.
    - yeetman21 6y ago
      Many things here unfortunately no longer relate to tech at all, this is slowing devolving into r*ddit 2.0
chrisbrandow 6y ago
This is a great comparison to make, but 2 major outstanding questions are: 1. Is the data through Nov. 6 actually complete or is there the expected backfilling yet to be done? 2. Sweden is in the middle of another wave, so excess deaths at end of 2020 may not look the same as now
- nemetroid 6y ago
  The raw data they're using is from this source: https://scb.se/be0101 https://scb.se/be0101 Download "Preliminär statistik över döda", the sheet "Tabell 1" has deaths per day. Both this source and the linked page have been updated to extend to 13/11, and you can sum the 2020 column yourself to end up at the same figure as the linked page (79 268). Earlier comments suggest that previously the data extended to 6/11 with a total of 77 300, the sum up to that date is now 78 647 (and quite likely not finalized). Looking naively at the source, I would disregard at least the last 14 days of reporting or so.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Other people have been commenting to this effect, but I'd take a step back and make a broader point: when something makes a bold claim (i.e. "No excess deaths in Sweden compared to the last ten years") using deliberately obfuscated data, we should call it what it is: lying with statistics. That is, the graph you would really want to look at is one that shows weekly deaths as a line graph over many previous years, that way it's easy to see, at any week in the year, whether the current year is higher or lower than previous years or averages. That is what the Financial Times graphs show that another commenter posted, and they very clearly show the excess deaths in 2020 vs previous years for Sweden (and many other countries). What's the point of the graphs in this post? I mean, 2020 isn't even done yet, so the graphs literally tell you nothing about Covid because there are no previous graphs to compare to. So what's the point of posting this, with this title, besides being deliberately deceptive?
- stmfreak 6y ago
  Whether weekly or annual, you wouldn’t be wrong to expect 2020 to have a noticeable uptick from Covid deaths. The fact that it does not points to one of two things: reporting deaths has a lag time or, covid didn’t kill an unusual number of people compare to flu and pneumonia. I will point out that the US CDC tracks excess deaths on a weekly basis and you can clearly see we are above average from March until the present, as well as for the year overall.
  - meroes 6y ago
    Too black and white. You need some measure of general population health, ICU capacity, access to affordable healthcare, etc to compare two populations' strategies and effects of covid. Any of these and more could easily be a confounding variable. Covid may not have produced excess deaths so far in Sweden compared to US, but maybe they have better work from home and thus fewer car accidents compared to a larger portion of people driving to work in the US.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      I think you may be missing my point, though. If you look at the set of graphs that another commenter posted that compare weekly rates, https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938 https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... (go halfway down the page), you'll see that Sweden HAS produced excess deaths so far in 2020: 20% by this estimate, vs. 24% for the US.
agytvfr 6y ago
So comparing the year to date with previous years neglects the fact that they had almost no cases most of the year and do now. Of I count my weight before I was obsese until now I would not be obese
grey-area 6y ago
So far Sweden has 5700 excess deaths in 2020 (pop 10m) compared to the last few years according to the FT. For the US that figure is 277k (pop 325m). https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938 https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... It’s very hard to say which strategies will be the best at this point in the pandemic, but it is easy to see the worst failures from the excess death figures, like the US, Peru, and a few European countries where the epidemic got out of control initially. Sweden has not done terribly, but this chart and headline is grossly misleading as it attempts to compare an incomplete year to other full years.
AntiImperialist 6y ago
Not so fast. November and December are the months (in the Northern hemisphere) when death rate is the highest. Yesterday, they have decided to introduce stricter measures.
abosley 6y ago
JFC...why don't we have multi-dimensional (TBD :)) scoring of stories based on submitter history?
bjoli 6y ago
Just today Socialstyrelsen in sweden presented the statistics of mortality january 1st to June 30th. There was excess mortality of about 14% for men and 10% for women compared to the same period 2019. Swedish article: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/har-ar-dodsorsakerna-i-sverige-1 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/har-ar-dodsorsakerna-i-sv...
lowdose 6y ago
Could excess deaths in other countries be explained by the residual life expectancy of the baby boomer generation?
madengr 6y ago
Don’t the mandate lots of added vitamin D in foods? I was reading vitamin D deficiency is correlated with COVID deaths. The UK is mailing out 400 IU doses to the elderly, but it ought to be 5000 IU.
jjk166 6y ago
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~SWE&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores...

200 points by mrfusion 6y ago

Well, I would say that two months are still missing before the end of the year, so we are comparing 10 vs 12 months if my understanding is correct.

wobbegongz 6y ago
Lag in reporting also. So more like 9 vs 12.
TheCapn 6y ago
Are there direct comparisons with other countries for the same reporting period?
- pmontra 6y ago
  Some sources that could be useful https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Weekly_death_statistics&stable https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Weekly_death_statistics&stable#Number_of_deaths_higher_than_in_previous_years https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
sharkmerry 6y ago
Technically yes, but dividing by number of days past and multiplying by total in the year you get ~88,411, so technically under. they also noted this "Sweden was the Nordic country that reported the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020."
diegoperini 6y ago
Also, deaths caused by non-covid flu like diseases should have decreased due to lockdowns and hygiene awareness.
- piker 6y ago
  > should have decreased due to lockdowns and hygiene awareness Point is, Sweden arguably opted for none of this.
  - davrosthedalek 6y ago
    Mandated lockdown != lockdown. I would be quite surprised if Swedes didn't use more soap this year, and went to restaurants less.
- zepto 6y ago
  Sweden had no lockdowns.
  - roca 6y ago
    People keep saying this but it's misleading. Swedish authorities have issued many directives that weren't legally enforceable but which they expected Swedes to follow, and most Swedes did follow them. Surely whether or not a directive formally has legal backing is not that important to whether we call a measure "a lockdown"; what is important is the impact on behavior. For example Swedes in many regions have been asked to refrain from social contact outside their household for the last month. When that happens in other countries it's called a "lockdown". From April to October no visitors to rest homes were permitted; regardless of the legal status that seems like a kind of lockdown. Anyway the "no legally enforced lockdown" era just ended in Sweden. They have introduced law-backed restrictions: https://www.thelocal.se/20201116/breaking-sweden-introduces-limit-of-eight-coronavirus https://www.thelocal.se/20201116/breaking-sweden-introduces-...
    - zepto 6y ago
      I think it’s pretty fair to say they had no lockdowns. I suspect the fact that they weren’t legally enforcable may have increased responsible behavior.
      - 6y ago
sdenton4 6y ago
Yeah, posting this with a different title from the page is forcing an editorialized view onto data which just doesn't support the title. There's no way to tell excess deaths from this one incomplete chart. I've flagged the post as a result. That said, 12/10 * 77.5k = 92.7k, which is at the high end for the charted period. Adding an extra month's worth of late reports gives 13/10 * 77.5k = 100.5k. So, probably reasonable to guess that the real deaths are somewhere between these two, which definitely doesn't support the 'no excess deaths' claim in the post title. It would be nice to see something closer to the CDC's ongoing excess deaths tracking: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

just-juan-post 6y ago

Enjoy https://i.redd.it/gzv67r948ty51.jpg https://i.redd.it/gzv67r948ty51.jpg

ta988 6y ago
Why was that downvoted?
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Because they excluded the other Nordic countries, who all look much better than Sweden: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=FIN~SWE~NOR~DNK&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=smoothed&perCapita=true&smoothing=7&pickerMetric=total_cases&pickerSort=desc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... Especially if you include the period around April, which the grandparent poster omitted.
  - johndevor 6y ago
    Are they better off simply because they are colder climates?
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      The climates of Oslo and Stockholm are very similar. Helsinki is a few degrees (not that much) less, so you would expect higher transmission, but it's not what we see.
  - ta988 6y ago
    Thanks, I totally missed those points.
anigbrowl 6y ago
Please stop baitposting.
wffurr 6y ago

curiousllama 6y ago

PSA that decontextualized numbers are not really a great way to approach just about any issue. Also, given my inkling as to why this was posted, please keep in mind that incomplete bar charts (alone) are a bad way to do important statistical tests.

thcleaner999 6y ago

Please if you do comparisons, it should be done against comparable countries like, Denmark and Norway. If you compare it against Spain and Italy, whose countries have a far worse health system, distrust of authorities and are much more vulnerable against economic downturns. the fact is Sweden is still doing far worse than Norway and Denmark

sushshshsh 6y ago
What about compared to itself lol
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
> If you compare it against Spain and Italy, whose countries have a far worse health system, distrust of authorities and are much more vulnerable against economic downturns. Minor nitpick, I agree on the other points but Spain objectively does not have a "far worse" Healthcare system than Sweden in 2020. You might need to revise your assumptions. Looking at the data available up to 2015, Denmark already had a worse HAQ index than Spain in 2015, and Spain had a negligible difference compared to Sweden [0]. Spanish longevity has kept increasing and competing with Japan [1], beyond 'mediterranean diet' effects, which again many attribute to Healthcare quality. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-quality-index?tab=table https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-qua... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/16/spain-to-beat-japan-2040-world-life-expectancy-league-table https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/16/spain-to-beat-...
s1artibartfast 6y ago
Good thing the data isn't comparing Sweden to Spain and Italy, but Sweden 2020 to 2010-2019. Also, I think there are a lot of problems when conducting comparisons between countries, and it is best to be avoided unless conducted in a extremely rigours way. There are absolutely ways ways in which Sweden is more like Spain or Italy than Denmark or Norway, and it take a through analysis to even attempt a comparison.
Darmody 6y ago
Spain has a better health system than both Denmark and Norway.

transitus 6y ago

Euromomo draws weekly z-values per country. From graph you can get the data. Data says mean of z-scores for weeks 01-45: Sweden 2.02 Finland -0.10 Norway -0.26 https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps (notice that mean of z-score per week is not the same z-score for the whole year, as deaths per week have seasonal variance thus are not evenly distributed) Euromomo description of z-score https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/what-is-a-z-score https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/what-is-a-z-score

gojomo 6y ago

Somewhat deceptive submission title ("No Excess Deaths in Sweden Compared to the Last the Years") and presentation, which might lead the inattentive to think 2020 is on a pace for fewer total deaths in Sweden than all or most previous years. Chart declares itself to be data "as of November 6". That's the 311th day of our 365-day leap-year 2020. Thus naively scaling the 77,300 number to the full year would predict ((365/311) * 77300 =) 90,721 deaths in 2020. That's higher than 5 of the shown previous 10 years. But also, the deaths as of November 6 may not be a complete total: often such data series continue to be updated (increased) for a few weeks after the calendar date. And further: looking at US figures for 2017, November tends to have about an average number of daily deaths, but December is one of the deadliest months, with about 15% more deaths-per-day than is typical in the lowest-deaths Summer months of June-July-August. So even my extrapolation to 90,721 is likely to be a floor on the true end-of year number, if lagged reporting or a typical December death acceleration means these November 6 numbers aren't an accurate sample for the full year. (And that's not even counting the Covid-19 case surge happening now in Sweden as with most of Europe.) Everyone trying to draw final conclusions from Sweden is making a call too soon based on incomplete data. We probably won't truly understand whether Sweden is on-net a Covid-19 success or disaster until retrospective analyses balancing all factors in late 2022 or 2023.

marioletto 6y ago
Not to mention that any comparison should be done April 2020 to March 2021 not Jan to Dec.
- nickff 6y ago
  Why? Do you think that delaying the analysis will make a difference in anyone's conclusions? Do you think COVID will be over in March 2021? If not, why not do a running tally from April 2020 until the disease is eradicated?
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Because they're talking about the number of excess deaths in a year. If it's in order to debate a question about Sweden's approach, it should be dated from when Sweden's approach diverged from the approach of others. And it should last 12 months, because that's how long a year is.

yoz-y 6y ago

Assuming the numbers are correct and taking the headline as it is, what is an actionable takeaway from this? Sweden did nothing to prevent Covid and had very few deaths. Some other countries had lockdowns, face coverings and had a lot of deaths. What is the correlation then? Sweden has less dense population for one, maybe healthier overall too? Younger? Is there any takeaway from this?

sampo 6y ago
> Sweden did nothing to prevent Covid This is not true. Sweden limited mass gatherings to 50 people, high schools and universities went to remote learning, large part of white-collar work switched to remote (companies did this voluntarily), and many people voluntarily limited their activities. Also, their sick pay system allows every worker to stay home when they are sick.
ardit33 6y ago
Have you ever been in Sweden? Swedes practice social distancing in regular daily life. Also, it is a very introverted, borderline anti social type of society. I had a couple of French co-workers that said it was very hard to form friendships outside work there (in Stockholm), while in the US (NYC) they had no problem. Compare this to Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Albania, or other Mediterranean countries, which are polar opposite. People are friendlier, that talk to each other more, they hug, they kiss more. If you go to smaller towns, you regularly see older people hanging out with each other, playing chess and socializing. You just don't see that in Sweden. I think this is one of the main reasons that some countries like Germany and Sweden are not fairing that bad, but the south gets hit harder. Also, from my understanding, many folks in Sweden are practicing some form of social distancing, and many are working from home when they can. It is a 'voluntary' type of thing. Swedes tend to follow civi rules well in general, and are a homogeneous society, so I think that is contributing to the lower rates of transmission as well. while the US attitude varies from wear a mask, to 'don't take my freedom away', i do what i want, type of attitude. Ps. Here is what bus line looks like in Sweden (before the pandemic): https://i.redd.it/4q36jg5ofi831.jpg https://i.redd.it/4q36jg5ofi831.jpg Their culture just wants/respects people spaces more, and are more 'introverted' by nature. Swedes are friendly/polite, but not necessary 'warm'. And you can see with their social interactions as well. Hope that makes sense. Good luck trying to replicate that type of distancing in most of the Europe or the US unless it is mandated (i.e. you will get kicked out of a store if you don't respect the line).

golf1052 6y ago

This is taken as a yearly number but looking at week over week numbers [1] Sweden did have excess deaths in March and April. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...

ggrrhh_ta 6y ago
Other countries already have excess deaths (e.g. US: https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcauses_11112020/WeeklyNumberByAge?:embed=y&:jsdebug=y&:toolbar=n&:tabs=n&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcause...) indicating that not only people have died sooner than they would have (which is irreparable), but more people will have died within this year than in a year without Covid. It could be argued that US & Sweden's policies are not that distant. I guess that US has cities with much higher population density & much more unavoidable commute (as in the higher affected areas in Europe).
arcticbull 6y ago
Sure, that makes sense, although I think the annualized number is quite interesting too as it appears a risk-off approach has led to a commensurate decrease in other fatalities.
- benlivengood 6y ago
  The tail at the end of the reporting period graph looks like lag, not a sudden drop in death rate.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, is that not just that this year's total is only 10.25 months of data as compared to prior year's full 12 months?
    - DanBC 6y ago
      Don't these death stats have a built in lag because of coroners, medical examiners, and stats authorities?

marianov 6y ago

Typo in the title? " to the Last the Years "

chubot 6y ago

You get a really different picture on Twitter. And I'm not saying I know which one is right! https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1328048295109824512 https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1328048295109824512 I follow Gary Marcus because I respect his views on AI, but I don't really appreciate the editorializing. One of the most horrifically inaccurate predictions in the history of public health. The obvious difference is that cases aren't deaths (and the amount of testing affects the number of cases, etc.). But if the plot is to be believed, then you could imagine that Sweden might NOT have excess deaths for 2020 (which is interesting in itself), but it could have many in the beginning of 2021. Or maybe almost all these cases will be mild and cause few deaths. There seems to be an extremely wide range of COVID outcomes.

koyote 6y ago
The testing rate in Sweden has skyrocketed in such a way that comparing case numbers between April and November is completely useless. That being said, deaths are going up as well at the moment. Still a far cry from April levels though.

_Microft 6y ago

This does not necessarily mean that there are no Covid deaths. It could as well mean that despite lower overall deaths from other causes (e.g. because people actually do less stuff that could get them killed), they arrive at a similar number because of additional deaths caused by Covid. My first idea would be to try a difference-in-differences approach with other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences

Sporktacular 6y ago
That's a good point
jimmaswell 6y ago
One factor could be people who were about to die from cancer or something in a week died of covid instead.

fullshark 6y ago

Financial times has been doing this exact analysis country by country / city by city: https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938 https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... They estimate about a 20% increase in deaths so far this year for Sweden.

tcbawo 6y ago
Some people have argued that hospitals are skewing the numbers to inflate the number of people that are dying of Covid-19 vs other causes, or that these are people that would died anyways. Neither of these arguments are supported by the FT data. To be fair, it's not clear how to quantify people that might be dying due to lockdown-related causes (eg. suicide, untreated health issues), but this appears to be smaller than Covid-19 deaths. Edit: I'm curious why this is getting downvoted.
- drivebycomment 6y ago
  I didn't downvote, but I can see why. It seems like you didn't read the FT graph. It's showing the total death rates in a graph, and during initial spike in COVID, Sweden showed 20% increase during the peak. By definition, there's no "skewing" possible, since it's all death - unless you're claiming hospitals are making up death. If your main point is that reported death due to COVID might be inflated, sure, that's possible but that doesn't mean there's no increase due to COVID related death. If you want to point out the reported number due to COVID might be slightly higher than it really is, you should at least acknowledge that there is meaningful and substantial increase in death due to COVID as there absolutely is. By omitting that, your post can't be distinguished from someone posting with a conspiracy mindset and ignoring actual data on substantial increase in death.
  - tcbawo 6y ago
    Clearly, I must not have articulated myself well enough, since you took away the exact opposite of my point: I have heard the suggestion of inflated death numbers within the US in casual conversation multiple times and I frequently refer to this specific article as a counterargument. Fwiw - I have been a subscriber to the FT for ages and I've followed that chart (which is free to all) since the beginning.

sampo 6y ago

If you look at Sweden in Euromomo, there is a clear spike in mortality in the spring. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country

mcguire 6y ago

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1112-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1112-0 [Note: data to May] "With our consistent and comparable analysis, we identified four groups of countries in terms of the overall death toll of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first group comprises countries that have avoided a detectable rise (with a posterior probability of at least 90%) in all-cause mortality and includes Bulgaria, New Zealand, Slovakia, Australia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The second and third groups of countries experienced a low-to-medium effect of the pandemic on overall deaths and include Austria, Switzerland and Portugal (low effect) and France, the Netherlands and Sweden (medium effect). The fourth group of countries, which experienced the highest mortality toll, consists of Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Spain and England and Wales."

gojomo 6y ago
5 month old data is pretty stale, for regional comparisons, in this evolving situation.

biolurker1 6y ago

Can we stop the pseudoscience? If people stay home there are no accidents, no murders, no party drugs etc. Comparing oranges to apples. Unless the article wants to say that covid is actually good for you. Just stop it, it's bad for everyone.

spikels 6y ago
Your point that Covid (and our responses to it) have both plus and minuses is valid. But then you undermine it with this: > If people stay home there are no accidents, no murders, no party drugs etc. There are still accidents, murders, etc. In some places they have even increased. And other causes of death like suicide and heart disease are up because people are staying home. Then you end by contradicting your own good point (i.e. impacts are complex) with "it's bad for everyone" which is obviously untrue.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  The Law of Averages looks a lot like "moderation" to some people.
- biolurker1 6y ago
  My position is crystal clear. You can't compare people at home with people living normal life and deduct anything about the covid mortality effect. You can nitpick all you want.

cm2187 6y ago

I think you need to wait a little longer to make these comparison. Given the demographics of Covid victims, it may only have accelerated deaths by a few months. But to me it's not even the relevant comparison. Being partisan of Sweden's approach doesn't mean believing Covid doesn't exist. Even a bad flu season will have an impact on year-end mortality stats. The question is rather how much worse did Sweden do vs countries that enforced severe restriction of civil liberties. And not only Sweden didn't do particularly bad, but it's done better than many major European countries like France, Italy, Spain or the UK.

moron4hire 6y ago
Yeah, soooo restrictive of civil liberties that half the country refused to wear masks, partied hard, and caused not one, but two resurges. You know what, man? I'm getting so sick of hearing this, "but muh civil liberties" line from the anti-lockdown crowd. You weren't planning on going to any protests. You're not pretty enough to consider "showin' muh face in the grocery store" to be protected speech. This is just childish feet kicking. It's ex-post-facto rationalization to come up with some way of complaining about being asked to care about the other people in your community.
- cm2187 6y ago
  You are a hero!
- gotoeleven 6y ago
  If old and fat people have a high risk and everyone else is basically fine, why not just lock down the old and fat people?
  - FDSGSG 6y ago
    For the same reason why you're expected to wear a mask even if you had COVID-19 a month ago.
  - imglorp 6y ago
    If young and healthy people exercising on the road are at high risk for being struck by drunk drivers, why not lock down the young healthy people?

blendo 6y ago

These charts compare overall death rates over time, by country: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores... It appears that since September 2020, Sweden’s death rate has been about 5-10% LOWER than average, which would push overall yearly rate down a bit

modzu 6y ago

this is weird, i was looking at this exact question earlier today on our world in data, and i was seeing roughly 50,000 a year for the last 5 years and then already over 70k this year. anyone else? i will try to find link...

modzu 6y ago
i couldn't find the exact chart i saw earlier today, but here is a weekly comparison against the past 5 years: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=2020-01-05..2020-12-27&country=~SWE&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... without some context and understanding, it raises more questions than it answers. like why the spike in deaths every februrary?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mdifrgechd 6y ago

This whole discussion is a good reminder why any analysis is always subjective. If there is an actual fault in the underlying numbers, fine, but what I see reading the thread is people finding ways to justify why the data is incomplete, there are still more people dying, we need to fear covid, etc. I've seen the articles that talk about excess deaths, and then the posts are all affirming that yes, we need to fear covid, people are dying, etc. I think there is obvious evidence that covid is a real disease that kills people, but the cherry picked reactions that people have to data saying different things drives home that analysis is always political, not some kind of objective thing we can hold up as beyond criticism. See climate change...

Sporktacular 6y ago
We are seeing climate change.
- umvi 6y ago
  I think OP's point is that there is a strong bias/narrative in favor of confirming climate change. Which means dissenting opinions or alternative explanations other than climate change for various phenomenon are more quickly dismissed and shut down. For example, say a massive forest fire happens. We see people try very hard to attribute the root cause to climate change, even if the true cause is decades of fire suppression. Repeat for literally anything that could plausibly be explained by climate change. Similarly, there is a very strong narrative/bias surrounding covid. Any data or study going against the narrative has to fight 10x as hard for survival vs. a study confirming the narrative. This is not unique to science polarized across political parties. A similar thing happened (is still happening?) with Alzheimer's research. Basically research dissenting from the prevailing theory were systematically denied funding and shut down by the most influential figures in the field.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225
  - mempko 6y ago
    Climate change is a global phenomenon and therefore impacts everything. Every event is impacted by our planet warming.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

LOL. Quoting Max Roser: "Tegnell in May: “In the autumn there will be a second wave. Sweden will have a high level of immunity and the number of cases will probably be quite low. … But Finland will have a very low level of immunity. Will Finland have to go into a complete lockdown again?” Autumn: https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1328045594099724289/photo/1 https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1328045594099724289/pho...

namesbc 6y ago

This is a tech enthusiast site, not a COVID denial site. Why is this here, and who upvoted it?

yeetman21 6y ago
Just because the facts do not support one argument or the other, does not make it false.
- namesbc 6y ago
  This post is completely unrelated to tech though. If you want to discuss various COVID conspiracies they made a whole website for that called Facebook.
  - yeetman21 6y ago
    Many things here unfortunately no longer relate to tech at all, this is slowing devolving into r*ddit 2.0

chrisbrandow 6y ago

This is a great comparison to make, but 2 major outstanding questions are: 1. Is the data through Nov. 6 actually complete or is there the expected backfilling yet to be done? 2. Sweden is in the middle of another wave, so excess deaths at end of 2020 may not look the same as now

nemetroid 6y ago
The raw data they're using is from this source: https://scb.se/be0101 https://scb.se/be0101 Download "Preliminär statistik över döda", the sheet "Tabell 1" has deaths per day. Both this source and the linked page have been updated to extend to 13/11, and you can sum the 2020 column yourself to end up at the same figure as the linked page (79 268). Earlier comments suggest that previously the data extended to 6/11 with a total of 77 300, the sum up to that date is now 78 647 (and quite likely not finalized). Looking naively at the source, I would disregard at least the last 14 days of reporting or so.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

Other people have been commenting to this effect, but I'd take a step back and make a broader point: when something makes a bold claim (i.e. "No excess deaths in Sweden compared to the last ten years") using deliberately obfuscated data, we should call it what it is: lying with statistics. That is, the graph you would really want to look at is one that shows weekly deaths as a line graph over many previous years, that way it's easy to see, at any week in the year, whether the current year is higher or lower than previous years or averages. That is what the Financial Times graphs show that another commenter posted, and they very clearly show the excess deaths in 2020 vs previous years for Sweden (and many other countries). What's the point of the graphs in this post? I mean, 2020 isn't even done yet, so the graphs literally tell you nothing about Covid because there are no previous graphs to compare to. So what's the point of posting this, with this title, besides being deliberately deceptive?

stmfreak 6y ago
Whether weekly or annual, you wouldn’t be wrong to expect 2020 to have a noticeable uptick from Covid deaths. The fact that it does not points to one of two things: reporting deaths has a lag time or, covid didn’t kill an unusual number of people compare to flu and pneumonia. I will point out that the US CDC tracks excess deaths on a weekly basis and you can clearly see we are above average from March until the present, as well as for the year overall.
- meroes 6y ago
  Too black and white. You need some measure of general population health, ICU capacity, access to affordable healthcare, etc to compare two populations' strategies and effects of covid. Any of these and more could easily be a confounding variable. Covid may not have produced excess deaths so far in Sweden compared to US, but maybe they have better work from home and thus fewer car accidents compared to a larger portion of people driving to work in the US.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    I think you may be missing my point, though. If you look at the set of graphs that another commenter posted that compare weekly rates, https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938 https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... (go halfway down the page), you'll see that Sweden HAS produced excess deaths so far in 2020: 20% by this estimate, vs. 24% for the US.

agytvfr 6y ago

So comparing the year to date with previous years neglects the fact that they had almost no cases most of the year and do now. Of I count my weight before I was obsese until now I would not be obese

grey-area 6y ago

So far Sweden has 5700 excess deaths in 2020 (pop 10m) compared to the last few years according to the FT. For the US that figure is 277k (pop 325m). https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938 https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386... It’s very hard to say which strategies will be the best at this point in the pandemic, but it is easy to see the worst failures from the excess death figures, like the US, Peru, and a few European countries where the epidemic got out of control initially. Sweden has not done terribly, but this chart and headline is grossly misleading as it attempts to compare an incomplete year to other full years.

AntiImperialist 6y ago

Not so fast. November and December are the months (in the Northern hemisphere) when death rate is the highest. Yesterday, they have decided to introduce stricter measures.

abosley 6y ago

JFC...why don't we have multi-dimensional (TBD :)) scoring of stories based on submitter history?

bjoli 6y ago

Just today Socialstyrelsen in sweden presented the statistics of mortality january 1st to June 30th. There was excess mortality of about 14% for men and 10% for women compared to the same period 2019. Swedish article: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/har-ar-dodsorsakerna-i-sverige-1 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/har-ar-dodsorsakerna-i-sv...

lowdose 6y ago

Could excess deaths in other countries be explained by the residual life expectancy of the baby boomer generation?

madengr 6y ago

Don’t the mandate lots of added vitamin D in foods? I was reading vitamin D deficiency is correlated with COVID deaths. The UK is mailing out 400 IU doses to the elderly, but it ought to be 5000 IU.

jjk166 6y ago

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~SWE&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores...