7 ms·

Sweden's Pandemic Experiment

32 points by cercatrova 6y ago

akmarinov 6y ago
Would someone tldr it?
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Sweden were convinced their approach of not really doing anything would yield an infection mortality rate of 0.1%. They were extremely wrong. They then thought their approach would avoid a second wave. They were wrong about that as well. They're now pinning their hats on being 'not the worst off'. A lot of people are dead. Others are angry.
  - gerikson 6y ago
    Total deaths pM Belgium: 1,999 Total deaths pM Sweden: 1,399 Similar country size, but BE has had full lockdown, curfew, police fining.
    - hollerith 6y ago
      What was your process for choosing Belgium from the countries that have had full lockdowns, etc?
      - gerikson 6y ago
        I think it's a representative comparison.
        arethuza 6y ago
        Sweden has a much lower population density than Belgium - 25 vs 383 per sq. km of land area. Belgium seems pretty small and crowded when compared to Sweden.
        gerikson 6y ago
        Stockholm has a population density 5,200/sq km, while Brussels has 7,400/sq km (source: Wikipedia). Most deaths are in densely populated areas, because that's where people tend to live.
        Uberphallus 6y ago
        Actually, while most infections happen in densely populated areas, most deaths don't. Healthcare access out of densely populated areas involves delays, transportation, sometimes airlifts or is just simply sub-par. Also densely populated areas tend to have younger population which is overall less likely to die. All of which shifts a significant part of the death rate towards sparsely populated areas. Death rate by population density is basically a shapeless scatterplot [0]. Even superdense micronations (Monaco, Singapore, Liechtenstein, etc) don't seem to have significantly high rates, with the notable exception of San Marino, which is still "just" at the level of Czechia. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-population-density?yScale=linear https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-po...
        HPsquared 6y ago
        Raw population density (total population / total land area) is a meaningless statistic, as people are clustered together in cities and not evenly spaced around the countryside. The figure you want is population weighted density, which is the density where the "average citizen" lives.
        Uberphallus 6y ago
        Of course that's a naive analysis, but so was grandparent's. Actually that's why I mention Singapore, Monaco or Liechtenstein, all of their surface is inhabited, or their population concentrated around a single city, but their death rates aren't dissimilar from those of their surrounding countries.
    - barbazoo 6y ago
      That's quite some cherry picking you're doing there. ... Total deaths pM Norway: 123 Total deaths pM Finland: 148 Total deaths pM Germany: 915 ... Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
      - gerikson 6y ago
        Why not include Japan? 71.9 deaths pM.
        Uberphallus 6y ago
        Because Japanese people wear masks without being told.
      - snakeboy 6y ago
        Both the EU average deaths pM and Sweden deaths pM are pretty similar, around 1300. I'm not sure why you consider Belgium cherry-picking but not Norway, Germany, and Finland. You could make an argument for Finland and Norway as more culturally similar (even if personally I find this logic suspect for explaining Covid outcomes), but I don't see how, between Germany and Belgium, one is obviously better than the other for comparison. It appears you chose a country that fits your narrative, and them, theirs.
        barbazoo 6y ago
        > I'm not sure why you consider Belgium cherry-picking but not Norway, Germany, and Finland. > You could make an argument for Finland and Norway as more culturally similar Exactly that. Germany I simply chose because that's where I'm from originally. The data couldn't be more clear that's why I thought it wouldn't be necessary to list many more countries with a stricter Covid19 policy and a considerably lower death rate.
        snakeboy 6y ago
        If we're just choosing our personal favorite countries, we can also discuss France, who is still in lockdown (albeit weakened) with ~1450 deaths pM. :) > The data couldn't be more clear I don't mean to be rude, so please take this as an honest, albeit blunt, response. No one who is honestly analyzing this situation is making such a strong statement. Be them epidemiologists, statisticians, or independent analysts. The only ones saying this are politicians whose job depend on proving that their strategy works. I would really encourage you to have a bit more humility at the complexity of this problem and the variables (and messy data) involved and the fact that we're still actively learning more every day about the effectiveness of different policy strategies.
    - scarmig 6y ago
      Culturally, it makes more sense to compare to Norway and Denmark. I'm pretty sure those numbers look really different.
    - naturalauction 6y ago
      Total deaths pM Norway: 123.41 Total deaths pM Denmark: 414.88 Total deaths pM Sweden: 1,399 Similar cultures, but Denmark and Norway implemented more strict lockdown measures. Two can play this game
    - mabbo 6y ago
      The problem with comparing Belgium is that, by their own admission, they may be inflating numbers where other countries are deflating numbers. Belgium considered anyone that died with something that might be COVID-19, that death is in their stats. Meanwhile, other countries are saying anyone who has not been positively tested as having died with COVID-19 in their system did not die from the pandemic. But tests are fallible, and many people die of the after effects of COVID-19, after the virus has ravaged them but been dealt with. The true measure is going to be the death rate compared to the previous ten years. And even that has to be considered by numerous conflating variables.
      - gerikson 6y ago
        Thanks, I did not know this.
      - mekkkkkk 6y ago
        AFAIK this is the same attribution strategy that sweden uses. It has likewise been cited over here (sweden) as contributing to the comparitevely high numbers.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- medstrom 6y ago
  I enjoyed this paragraph: > Tegnell, who is sixty-four and tall, with round glasses, has often said that lockdowns are not supported by science and that the evidence for mask-wearing is “weak.” His stance is a startling departure from the scientific consensus, but he maintains that if other countries were led by experts rather than politicians, more nations would have policies like Sweden’s. The world has been left gawking. American liberals were shocked that the country of Greta Thunberg could seem so scientifically backward. Right-wing activists in Minnesota held up signs during anti-lockdown protests reading “Be Like Sweden.” Within the country, Tegnell has become an icon of Swedish exceptionalism, believed to be excessively reasonable, levelheaded, and rational.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    Why did you enjoy it? It's a complete lie. We are in a pandemic and scientific consensus should require randomized trials. I think we can rewrite this to say: "experts disagreed with other experts on mitigation strategies."
    - medstrom 6y ago
      I agree the scientific consensus is debatable, but I enjoy the way the man turns the policy debate upside down. At the very least, he's helped to de-politickize the debate.
    - at-fates-hands 6y ago
      > We are in a pandemic and scientific consensus should require randomized trials. The entire pandemic has been politicized, science be damned when it doesn't conform to a political narrative.
      - dehrmann 6y ago
        What if I said the pandemic is more of a political issue than an epidemiological one? A year of restrictions (or not) for a .5%-1% IFR disease is a political decision.
CogitoCogito 6y ago
Every country's response was an "experiment". Every country's approach has been unique. Distilling Sweden's strategy to simply "the country decided not to implement lockdowns or recommend masks" is ludicrous. I'm personally not a fan of Sweden's response, but I feel like these simplistic and superficial descriptions of Sweden's approach getting are getting a bit ridiculous.
- fnordsensei 6y ago
  There’s at least one group (probably more) of people in Sweden working diligently to feed foreign media, particularly US media, with information (and arguably disinformation) about what a failure Sweden is. It seems to be some kind of play for domestic power. I’m not a fan of Sweden’s strategy either, but the above has made me be a bit wary of opinions of the same in international media.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    The same thing is happening with the EU. The narrative is no longer that foreign companies under contract are shipping vaccines from the EU. That has been replaced with the narrative that the EU is exporting vaccines and other countries are not. This is of course because the EU completely fucked up the contracts by being slow, inept, and not understanding how manufacturing is booked.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    This happens quite a lot these days. I mostly see it happen with international political events where another country/politician/etc is not aligned with the US progressive left. The reason I am singling out this political segment is that they've come to influence/control many US institutions (news, universities, corporations) and also because they are well-organized, which gives them pathways to amplify messages. So activists in other countries tie causes and build coalitions with those on the US progressive left to get their (usually biased) version of some domestic story out into the world. A good example of this can be seen with India, where the current party in power is regularly unfairly attacked by US media with one-sided stories told from a progressive political perspective. As an example, John Oliver ran a very cringe-worthy segment about Narendra Modi (the Prime Minister of India), without any introspection about how it looks for a British white man to mock the democratically elected leader of a country freed from British colonization only recently (in 1947). This carried on to the farmers protests in India, where US celebrities like NBA basketball players started posting their support for violent protests on Twitter and Instagram without understanding the laws in question, how they address numerous complex problems, how Indian politics works, and other relevant details. Even Greta Thunberg got involved, tweeting a "toolkit" (https://nypost.com/2021/02/04/greta-thunberg-faces-probe-in-india-over-farm-protest-tweets/ https://nypost.com/2021/02/04/greta-thunberg-faces-probe-in-...) that amounted to undermining the government of India, and setting off investigations of sedition. Everyone seems to cry wolf about foreign influence on their own political system but are willing to do the same to others, seemingly. Apart from the peculiar case of Sweden in coronavirus politics, we are now also seeing other European leaders recognize the influence of US media and the threat it poses to their political systems, societies, and culture. Macron and other French leaders spoke about this publicly when Twitter banned Trump (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...), warning against an "intellectual matrix from American universities". Angela Merkel railed against the immense influence of American tech companies, and the threat it poses to free societies (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problematic-and-perplexing-european-leaders-side-with-trump-over-twitter-ban/?sh=f2f3c2b13b59 https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problemat...).
Grim-444 6y ago
This is apparently what counts as journalism nowadays. A collection of anecdotes and emotion filled stories. For an article that's supposedly talking about whether Sweden made the correct decisions or not, note how many paragraphs you have to read before a single number/piece of data is even mentioned. But they have lots of heart-wrenching stories about 80 year old grandmas getting sick. Ironically, they use this emotion-based strategy in an article about how Sweden decided not govern via emotion and panic and instead use facts/data/logic/reason instead.
- adevx 6y ago
  Great analysis. It's sad to see how easily the general public is influenced with poorly presented numbers. Take for instance the absolute number of positive PCR tests in the Netherlands, used as a benchmark despite ever increasing number of tests since the start of the pandemic.
  - Pyramus 6y ago
    I'm not sure I understand. The absolute number of positive test cases is a best guess, a temperature gauge, no absolute truth. The true number of cases is unknown and estimated to be 1.5-3 times the number of positive cases (from sero-prevalence studies). Contrary to popular belief policy decisions are not made on cases alone, but percentage of positive tests, hospital capacities, fatalities, test & trace capacities etc. taken together.
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      No they are not. The presentations designed to get government to approve measures are public, anyone can see them. Policy decisions are based on bullshit and fraudulent predictions. The current lockdown was started on December 15 based on a bullshit prediction, then the curfew was started based on another bullshit prediction that was even falsified before it was shown, and then everything was extended based on bullshit, first the statement ‘we need to go on longer so we can see if it works’ and then ‘we are sure it works’ and then ‘well we will never know if it works, but it’s scary to stop’. It’s bullshit through and through. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
refurb 6y ago
What’s fun to me is to watch different country’s get on their high horses about how they handled things while we’re still in the middle of a pandemic. Those in Canada are currently being knocked off their high horses by a massive 3rd wave worse than anything before it. Some of this is likely due to the rapid removal of restrictions back in February when cases were on a downward trend. Well likely know who handled it best in 4-5 years. And even then the answer will likely be “it’s all trade offs, depends what’s important to you”.
- makomk 6y ago
  It certainly has been interesting. Last I heard, the worst country in Europe in terms of deaths per capita was the Czech Republic, which was also the country everyone pointed to earlier in the pandemic as the European success story which all the other countries in Europe should imitate and which showed they'd all failed miserably at dealing with Covid.
  - jhrozek 6y ago
    I am Czech but I’ve been living in Sweden for the past 6 or so years. The biggest difference I see is consistency and trust between population and the agencies and government. Sweden did this: - we now have to do XYZ, this is the new normal. The things we ask you to do are designed to be sustainable in the long term (the fact they didn’t close schools is a perfect example. Closing schools is absolutely not sustainable long term) Cz did this: - cases are up, close everything - when cases are down, open up everything. Chest beating ensued as you wrote. We won, why should we help Italians who didn’t manage as well as we did etc.. - when cases are up close everything - repeat with confusing variations on what is allowed or banned this time This eroded the (already weak) trust between people and the government IMO and nobody gives a shit about following even the regulations that make sense. Listening to my family describing what is going on in CZ gives a very Kafkaesque feeling.
- Pyramus 6y ago
  "It will impact country X but not us" has been a consistent pattern in this pandemic, and it does not make me optimistic going forward. I'd argue that the countries that did face SARS have handled SARS-Cov-2 better than the ones that didn't.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
When an article lays out exact figures like this, it is hard to sympathize with those interviewed who were outraged about the lack of heavier restrictions. 12,000 victims in a country of 10 million people. That is a relatively tiny number, and many citizens may well choose to accept that level of morbidity in order to preserve something of a normal life for younger people, allowing them their big group events and courtship rituals so important for their coming of age. (Throughout this pandemic year I myself have opposed certain restrictions because I see it as the biggest betrayal of our youth since May ’68.) Often it has been claimed that while the flu takes victims every year, COVID cannot be compared to the flu because its victim count is higher. Yet modern populations have also become larger, and so the proportions are not so different than with common seasonal ailments of times past, when society did not feel a pressure to impose lockdowns as opposed to other public-health measures.
- pbuzbee 6y ago
  12,000 victims is small in an absolute sense, but per capita it is close to the US's numbers (US is about 25% higher: 1681/M vs 1340/M).
- lordnacho 6y ago
  But if they did like Taiwan there'd be barely any deaths and people could do as they liked within the borders.
  - e40 6y ago
    This, 12,000x.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    "Within the borders". No thanks. Besides the fact that European countries are not self-sufficient in basic goods and they rely on a steady daily stream of cross-border freight, ordinary Europeans should not be walled off from their fellow Europeans.
- gerikson 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, why was May ‘68 a “betrayal of our youth”?
bryanlarsen 6y ago
One anecdote I heard is that Sweden got better compliance by asking people nicely to distance & mask than the US got by forcing people to distance & mask.
- Kiro 6y ago
  Distancing maybe but masks are still a pretty rare sight. Mask compliance in the US is on a different scale, it's not even comparable.
  - gerikson 6y ago
    They're more and more common now (I live in Stockholm).
    - Kiro 6y ago
      Still, saying mask compliance is better in Sweden is just so far off. We're not remotely close to countries with mask mandates.
      - imartin2k 6y ago
        100 %. I’m in Berlin right now. Compliance with mandatory mask rules here is now basically 99 % on public transport and in public indoor spaces. I would have never thought this could happen in such an otherwise rebelliously spirited city. But most people seem to understand that mask use is about protecting others as much or more than about protecting oneself. In Sweden on the other hand, mask use is neither mandatory, nor has the messaging been about that mask use is about protecting others primarily, nor seem Swedes to care a lot about protecting others. This whole mask issue has revealed a rather ugly, selfish side of Swedish mentality to me. In addition to the stubbornness and widely internalized national exceptionalism.
- clairity 6y ago
  it wasn’t just being nice, but rather being frank, objective, and trusting. give people the information we have as we have it and with the multidimensional confidence we have in that information, and trust that people will broadly, but not perfectly uniformly (that’d be fascist), do the right thing.
nabla9 6y ago
Compared to other Nordic countries Sweden went horribly wrong. On EU-level, about average. Finland did much better without strict lockdowns. Just limit group events limit restaurants open hours, shut down schools for the worst times etc. Sweden could have saved thousand of people with just slightly more restrictions. Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 as of 6 April 2021. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality Iceland 8.20 Norway 12.72 Finland 15.33 Denmark 41.93 Canada 62.29 Germany 93.02 Netherlands 97.50 Sweden 132.55 France 144.81 UK 191.17 US 169.82 Belgium 203.13 Hungary 224.47 Czech Rep. 254.64
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The numbers here go from 8 to 254. Couldn't you make most of the countries on this list look good or bad by just adjusting the comparison set?
  - nabla9 6y ago
    Sweden has relevant peer group to compare against. Sweden had the ability and resources to get into line with other Nordic countries, but it didn't. The difference is caused by political choices. Sweden fucked up. How Sweden did against Kenya or India is not not as relevant. Kenya and India don't have the same capabilities as Sweden.
    - cjblomqvist 6y ago
      What about Belgium? What's the big difference between Belgium compared to the Nordic countries? Because they've had it a lot worse than Sweden. TLDR; It's possible to cherry pick. And it doesn't lead us anywhere (neither for nor against your hypothesis).
      - nabla9 6y ago
        Belgium did worse. >TLDR; It's possible to cherry pick. I didn't cherry pick. I selected the best reference group. Other Nordic countries are very similar to Sweden. Then I added some other countries to show that Sweden is roughly average in genera.
chmod600 6y ago
I've also been watching Florida. Schools open since August, only a brief lockdown, few mandates. Middle-of-the-pack death rate results slightly worse than California which has major mandates and lockdowns. Florida is also a large state with a large senior population, so it can't be easily dismissed. Death numbers ticking up slightly, but absent a major increase in deaths, it will be hard to say that Florida made a bad decision. Note that I'm only looking at death numbers, not case numbers. I know it's a trailing indicator, but is a much better indicator of the actual results.
sto_hristo 6y ago
On principle lockdowns work. If everyone is in a bubble, isolated from everyone else, no transmission of anything occurs, no disease, no nothing. Utopia. In practice this is impossible. The lockdowns you impose eventually get lifted and the ultra contagious disease catches up, then you impose new lockdowns, rinse and repeat. It's unsustainable. These lockdowns make sense when you're caught unprepared at the very beginning of a pandemic and are used to reorganize nation's resources and capabilities to be able to take care as much as possible for the minority of people at risk. What is sustainable is being a sparsely populated nation in a dry climate, heat, summer, sun, most importantly - healthy non-obese people and not everyone being 90 years old with a list of chronic illnesses. Most nations aren't like that. So sorry to burst your Jesus insecurity, but nobody is saving anyone by #stayathome. And this will be evident in a year or two when you draw the line and find out that nations with severe lockdowns ended up being not that better than those without any lockdowns. This is the most highly contagious virus and it won't magically disappear. Mutations already kick in and there is little insight how current vaccines will fare in the long run. Lockdowns and mass vaccination every cold season? Good luck with that. I don't even visit the dentist that often.
nadezhda18 6y ago
Based on the Excess Mortality across Countries in 2020, Sweden did surprisingly good, with only 1.5%. For comparison, the US was much worse with 12.5%. And Finland had -3.1% for some reason [1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countries-in-2020/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countr...

32 points by cercatrova 6y ago

akmarinov 6y ago

Would someone tldr it?

chrisseaton 6y ago
Sweden were convinced their approach of not really doing anything would yield an infection mortality rate of 0.1%. They were extremely wrong. They then thought their approach would avoid a second wave. They were wrong about that as well. They're now pinning their hats on being 'not the worst off'. A lot of people are dead. Others are angry.
- gerikson 6y ago
  Total deaths pM Belgium: 1,999 Total deaths pM Sweden: 1,399 Similar country size, but BE has had full lockdown, curfew, police fining.
  - hollerith 6y ago
    What was your process for choosing Belgium from the countries that have had full lockdowns, etc?
    - gerikson 6y ago
      I think it's a representative comparison.
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Sweden has a much lower population density than Belgium - 25 vs 383 per sq. km of land area. Belgium seems pretty small and crowded when compared to Sweden.
        gerikson 6y ago
        Stockholm has a population density 5,200/sq km, while Brussels has 7,400/sq km (source: Wikipedia). Most deaths are in densely populated areas, because that's where people tend to live.
        Uberphallus 6y ago
        Actually, while most infections happen in densely populated areas, most deaths don't. Healthcare access out of densely populated areas involves delays, transportation, sometimes airlifts or is just simply sub-par. Also densely populated areas tend to have younger population which is overall less likely to die. All of which shifts a significant part of the death rate towards sparsely populated areas. Death rate by population density is basically a shapeless scatterplot [0]. Even superdense micronations (Monaco, Singapore, Liechtenstein, etc) don't seem to have significantly high rates, with the notable exception of San Marino, which is still "just" at the level of Czechia. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-population-density?yScale=linear https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-19-death-rate-vs-po...
        HPsquared 6y ago
        Raw population density (total population / total land area) is a meaningless statistic, as people are clustered together in cities and not evenly spaced around the countryside. The figure you want is population weighted density, which is the density where the "average citizen" lives.
        Uberphallus 6y ago
        Of course that's a naive analysis, but so was grandparent's. Actually that's why I mention Singapore, Monaco or Liechtenstein, all of their surface is inhabited, or their population concentrated around a single city, but their death rates aren't dissimilar from those of their surrounding countries.
  - barbazoo 6y ago
    That's quite some cherry picking you're doing there. ... Total deaths pM Norway: 123 Total deaths pM Finland: 148 Total deaths pM Germany: 915 ... Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
    - gerikson 6y ago
      Why not include Japan? 71.9 deaths pM.
      - Uberphallus 6y ago
        Because Japanese people wear masks without being told.
    - snakeboy 6y ago
      Both the EU average deaths pM and Sweden deaths pM are pretty similar, around 1300. I'm not sure why you consider Belgium cherry-picking but not Norway, Germany, and Finland. You could make an argument for Finland and Norway as more culturally similar (even if personally I find this logic suspect for explaining Covid outcomes), but I don't see how, between Germany and Belgium, one is obviously better than the other for comparison. It appears you chose a country that fits your narrative, and them, theirs.
      - barbazoo 6y ago
        > I'm not sure why you consider Belgium cherry-picking but not Norway, Germany, and Finland. > You could make an argument for Finland and Norway as more culturally similar Exactly that. Germany I simply chose because that's where I'm from originally. The data couldn't be more clear that's why I thought it wouldn't be necessary to list many more countries with a stricter Covid19 policy and a considerably lower death rate.
        snakeboy 6y ago
        If we're just choosing our personal favorite countries, we can also discuss France, who is still in lockdown (albeit weakened) with ~1450 deaths pM. :) > The data couldn't be more clear I don't mean to be rude, so please take this as an honest, albeit blunt, response. No one who is honestly analyzing this situation is making such a strong statement. Be them epidemiologists, statisticians, or independent analysts. The only ones saying this are politicians whose job depend on proving that their strategy works. I would really encourage you to have a bit more humility at the complexity of this problem and the variables (and messy data) involved and the fact that we're still actively learning more every day about the effectiveness of different policy strategies.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    Culturally, it makes more sense to compare to Norway and Denmark. I'm pretty sure those numbers look really different.
  - naturalauction 6y ago
    Total deaths pM Norway: 123.41 Total deaths pM Denmark: 414.88 Total deaths pM Sweden: 1,399 Similar cultures, but Denmark and Norway implemented more strict lockdown measures. Two can play this game
  - mabbo 6y ago
    The problem with comparing Belgium is that, by their own admission, they may be inflating numbers where other countries are deflating numbers. Belgium considered anyone that died with something that might be COVID-19, that death is in their stats. Meanwhile, other countries are saying anyone who has not been positively tested as having died with COVID-19 in their system did not die from the pandemic. But tests are fallible, and many people die of the after effects of COVID-19, after the virus has ravaged them but been dealt with. The true measure is going to be the death rate compared to the previous ten years. And even that has to be considered by numerous conflating variables.
    - gerikson 6y ago
      Thanks, I did not know this.
    - mekkkkkk 6y ago
      AFAIK this is the same attribution strategy that sweden uses. It has likewise been cited over here (sweden) as contributing to the comparitevely high numbers.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
medstrom 6y ago
I enjoyed this paragraph: > Tegnell, who is sixty-four and tall, with round glasses, has often said that lockdowns are not supported by science and that the evidence for mask-wearing is “weak.” His stance is a startling departure from the scientific consensus, but he maintains that if other countries were led by experts rather than politicians, more nations would have policies like Sweden’s. The world has been left gawking. American liberals were shocked that the country of Greta Thunberg could seem so scientifically backward. Right-wing activists in Minnesota held up signs during anti-lockdown protests reading “Be Like Sweden.” Within the country, Tegnell has become an icon of Swedish exceptionalism, believed to be excessively reasonable, levelheaded, and rational.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Why did you enjoy it? It's a complete lie. We are in a pandemic and scientific consensus should require randomized trials. I think we can rewrite this to say: "experts disagreed with other experts on mitigation strategies."
  - medstrom 6y ago
    I agree the scientific consensus is debatable, but I enjoy the way the man turns the policy debate upside down. At the very least, he's helped to de-politickize the debate.
  - at-fates-hands 6y ago
    > We are in a pandemic and scientific consensus should require randomized trials. The entire pandemic has been politicized, science be damned when it doesn't conform to a political narrative.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      What if I said the pandemic is more of a political issue than an epidemiological one? A year of restrictions (or not) for a .5%-1% IFR disease is a political decision.

CogitoCogito 6y ago

Every country's response was an "experiment". Every country's approach has been unique. Distilling Sweden's strategy to simply "the country decided not to implement lockdowns or recommend masks" is ludicrous. I'm personally not a fan of Sweden's response, but I feel like these simplistic and superficial descriptions of Sweden's approach getting are getting a bit ridiculous.

fnordsensei 6y ago
There’s at least one group (probably more) of people in Sweden working diligently to feed foreign media, particularly US media, with information (and arguably disinformation) about what a failure Sweden is. It seems to be some kind of play for domestic power. I’m not a fan of Sweden’s strategy either, but the above has made me be a bit wary of opinions of the same in international media.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  The same thing is happening with the EU. The narrative is no longer that foreign companies under contract are shipping vaccines from the EU. That has been replaced with the narrative that the EU is exporting vaccines and other countries are not. This is of course because the EU completely fucked up the contracts by being slow, inept, and not understanding how manufacturing is booked.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  This happens quite a lot these days. I mostly see it happen with international political events where another country/politician/etc is not aligned with the US progressive left. The reason I am singling out this political segment is that they've come to influence/control many US institutions (news, universities, corporations) and also because they are well-organized, which gives them pathways to amplify messages. So activists in other countries tie causes and build coalitions with those on the US progressive left to get their (usually biased) version of some domestic story out into the world. A good example of this can be seen with India, where the current party in power is regularly unfairly attacked by US media with one-sided stories told from a progressive political perspective. As an example, John Oliver ran a very cringe-worthy segment about Narendra Modi (the Prime Minister of India), without any introspection about how it looks for a British white man to mock the democratically elected leader of a country freed from British colonization only recently (in 1947). This carried on to the farmers protests in India, where US celebrities like NBA basketball players started posting their support for violent protests on Twitter and Instagram without understanding the laws in question, how they address numerous complex problems, how Indian politics works, and other relevant details. Even Greta Thunberg got involved, tweeting a "toolkit" (https://nypost.com/2021/02/04/greta-thunberg-faces-probe-in-india-over-farm-protest-tweets/ https://nypost.com/2021/02/04/greta-thunberg-faces-probe-in-...) that amounted to undermining the government of India, and setting off investigations of sedition. Everyone seems to cry wolf about foreign influence on their own political system but are willing to do the same to others, seemingly. Apart from the peculiar case of Sweden in coronavirus politics, we are now also seeing other European leaders recognize the influence of US media and the threat it poses to their political systems, societies, and culture. Macron and other French leaders spoke about this publicly when Twitter banned Trump (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...), warning against an "intellectual matrix from American universities". Angela Merkel railed against the immense influence of American tech companies, and the threat it poses to free societies (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problematic-and-perplexing-european-leaders-side-with-trump-over-twitter-ban/?sh=f2f3c2b13b59 https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/01/11/problemat...).

Grim-444 6y ago

This is apparently what counts as journalism nowadays. A collection of anecdotes and emotion filled stories. For an article that's supposedly talking about whether Sweden made the correct decisions or not, note how many paragraphs you have to read before a single number/piece of data is even mentioned. But they have lots of heart-wrenching stories about 80 year old grandmas getting sick. Ironically, they use this emotion-based strategy in an article about how Sweden decided not govern via emotion and panic and instead use facts/data/logic/reason instead.

adevx 6y ago
Great analysis. It's sad to see how easily the general public is influenced with poorly presented numbers. Take for instance the absolute number of positive PCR tests in the Netherlands, used as a benchmark despite ever increasing number of tests since the start of the pandemic.
- Pyramus 6y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. The absolute number of positive test cases is a best guess, a temperature gauge, no absolute truth. The true number of cases is unknown and estimated to be 1.5-3 times the number of positive cases (from sero-prevalence studies). Contrary to popular belief policy decisions are not made on cases alone, but percentage of positive tests, hospital capacities, fatalities, test & trace capacities etc. taken together.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    No they are not. The presentations designed to get government to approve measures are public, anyone can see them. Policy decisions are based on bullshit and fraudulent predictions. The current lockdown was started on December 15 based on a bullshit prediction, then the curfew was started based on another bullshit prediction that was even falsified before it was shown, and then everything was extended based on bullshit, first the statement ‘we need to go on longer so we can see if it works’ and then ‘we are sure it works’ and then ‘well we will never know if it works, but it’s scary to stop’. It’s bullshit through and through. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

refurb 6y ago

What’s fun to me is to watch different country’s get on their high horses about how they handled things while we’re still in the middle of a pandemic. Those in Canada are currently being knocked off their high horses by a massive 3rd wave worse than anything before it. Some of this is likely due to the rapid removal of restrictions back in February when cases were on a downward trend. Well likely know who handled it best in 4-5 years. And even then the answer will likely be “it’s all trade offs, depends what’s important to you”.

makomk 6y ago
It certainly has been interesting. Last I heard, the worst country in Europe in terms of deaths per capita was the Czech Republic, which was also the country everyone pointed to earlier in the pandemic as the European success story which all the other countries in Europe should imitate and which showed they'd all failed miserably at dealing with Covid.
- jhrozek 6y ago
  I am Czech but I’ve been living in Sweden for the past 6 or so years. The biggest difference I see is consistency and trust between population and the agencies and government. Sweden did this: - we now have to do XYZ, this is the new normal. The things we ask you to do are designed to be sustainable in the long term (the fact they didn’t close schools is a perfect example. Closing schools is absolutely not sustainable long term) Cz did this: - cases are up, close everything - when cases are down, open up everything. Chest beating ensued as you wrote. We won, why should we help Italians who didn’t manage as well as we did etc.. - when cases are up close everything - repeat with confusing variations on what is allowed or banned this time This eroded the (already weak) trust between people and the government IMO and nobody gives a shit about following even the regulations that make sense. Listening to my family describing what is going on in CZ gives a very Kafkaesque feeling.
Pyramus 6y ago
"It will impact country X but not us" has been a consistent pattern in this pandemic, and it does not make me optimistic going forward. I'd argue that the countries that did face SARS have handled SARS-Cov-2 better than the ones that didn't.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

When an article lays out exact figures like this, it is hard to sympathize with those interviewed who were outraged about the lack of heavier restrictions. 12,000 victims in a country of 10 million people. That is a relatively tiny number, and many citizens may well choose to accept that level of morbidity in order to preserve something of a normal life for younger people, allowing them their big group events and courtship rituals so important for their coming of age. (Throughout this pandemic year I myself have opposed certain restrictions because I see it as the biggest betrayal of our youth since May ’68.) Often it has been claimed that while the flu takes victims every year, COVID cannot be compared to the flu because its victim count is higher. Yet modern populations have also become larger, and so the proportions are not so different than with common seasonal ailments of times past, when society did not feel a pressure to impose lockdowns as opposed to other public-health measures.

pbuzbee 6y ago
12,000 victims is small in an absolute sense, but per capita it is close to the US's numbers (US is about 25% higher: 1681/M vs 1340/M).
lordnacho 6y ago
But if they did like Taiwan there'd be barely any deaths and people could do as they liked within the borders.
- e40 6y ago
  This, 12,000x.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  "Within the borders". No thanks. Besides the fact that European countries are not self-sufficient in basic goods and they rely on a steady daily stream of cross-border freight, ordinary Europeans should not be walled off from their fellow Europeans.
gerikson 6y ago
Out of curiosity, why was May ‘68 a “betrayal of our youth”?

bryanlarsen 6y ago

One anecdote I heard is that Sweden got better compliance by asking people nicely to distance & mask than the US got by forcing people to distance & mask.

Kiro 6y ago
Distancing maybe but masks are still a pretty rare sight. Mask compliance in the US is on a different scale, it's not even comparable.
- gerikson 6y ago
  They're more and more common now (I live in Stockholm).
  - Kiro 6y ago
    Still, saying mask compliance is better in Sweden is just so far off. We're not remotely close to countries with mask mandates.
    - imartin2k 6y ago
      100 %. I’m in Berlin right now. Compliance with mandatory mask rules here is now basically 99 % on public transport and in public indoor spaces. I would have never thought this could happen in such an otherwise rebelliously spirited city. But most people seem to understand that mask use is about protecting others as much or more than about protecting oneself. In Sweden on the other hand, mask use is neither mandatory, nor has the messaging been about that mask use is about protecting others primarily, nor seem Swedes to care a lot about protecting others. This whole mask issue has revealed a rather ugly, selfish side of Swedish mentality to me. In addition to the stubbornness and widely internalized national exceptionalism.
clairity 6y ago
it wasn’t just being nice, but rather being frank, objective, and trusting. give people the information we have as we have it and with the multidimensional confidence we have in that information, and trust that people will broadly, but not perfectly uniformly (that’d be fascist), do the right thing.

nabla9 6y ago

Compared to other Nordic countries Sweden went horribly wrong. On EU-level, about average. Finland did much better without strict lockdowns. Just limit group events limit restaurants open hours, shut down schools for the worst times etc. Sweden could have saved thousand of people with just slightly more restrictions. Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 as of 6 April 2021. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality Iceland 8.20 Norway 12.72 Finland 15.33 Denmark 41.93 Canada 62.29 Germany 93.02 Netherlands 97.50 Sweden 132.55 France 144.81 UK 191.17 US 169.82 Belgium 203.13 Hungary 224.47 Czech Rep. 254.64

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The numbers here go from 8 to 254. Couldn't you make most of the countries on this list look good or bad by just adjusting the comparison set?
- nabla9 6y ago
  Sweden has relevant peer group to compare against. Sweden had the ability and resources to get into line with other Nordic countries, but it didn't. The difference is caused by political choices. Sweden fucked up. How Sweden did against Kenya or India is not not as relevant. Kenya and India don't have the same capabilities as Sweden.
  - cjblomqvist 6y ago
    What about Belgium? What's the big difference between Belgium compared to the Nordic countries? Because they've had it a lot worse than Sweden. TLDR; It's possible to cherry pick. And it doesn't lead us anywhere (neither for nor against your hypothesis).
    - nabla9 6y ago
      Belgium did worse. >TLDR; It's possible to cherry pick. I didn't cherry pick. I selected the best reference group. Other Nordic countries are very similar to Sweden. Then I added some other countries to show that Sweden is roughly average in genera.

chmod600 6y ago

I've also been watching Florida. Schools open since August, only a brief lockdown, few mandates. Middle-of-the-pack death rate results slightly worse than California which has major mandates and lockdowns. Florida is also a large state with a large senior population, so it can't be easily dismissed. Death numbers ticking up slightly, but absent a major increase in deaths, it will be hard to say that Florida made a bad decision. Note that I'm only looking at death numbers, not case numbers. I know it's a trailing indicator, but is a much better indicator of the actual results.

sto_hristo 6y ago

On principle lockdowns work. If everyone is in a bubble, isolated from everyone else, no transmission of anything occurs, no disease, no nothing. Utopia. In practice this is impossible. The lockdowns you impose eventually get lifted and the ultra contagious disease catches up, then you impose new lockdowns, rinse and repeat. It's unsustainable. These lockdowns make sense when you're caught unprepared at the very beginning of a pandemic and are used to reorganize nation's resources and capabilities to be able to take care as much as possible for the minority of people at risk. What is sustainable is being a sparsely populated nation in a dry climate, heat, summer, sun, most importantly - healthy non-obese people and not everyone being 90 years old with a list of chronic illnesses. Most nations aren't like that. So sorry to burst your Jesus insecurity, but nobody is saving anyone by #stayathome. And this will be evident in a year or two when you draw the line and find out that nations with severe lockdowns ended up being not that better than those without any lockdowns. This is the most highly contagious virus and it won't magically disappear. Mutations already kick in and there is little insight how current vaccines will fare in the long run. Lockdowns and mass vaccination every cold season? Good luck with that. I don't even visit the dentist that often.

nadezhda18 6y ago

Based on the Excess Mortality across Countries in 2020, Sweden did surprisingly good, with only 1.5%. For comparison, the US was much worse with 12.5%. And Finland had -3.1% for some reason [1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countries-in-2020/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/excess-mortality-across-countr...