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>Sweden has just tracked the same path as everybody else That's very much false. You compare apples to apples to get a useable result, not apples to sour grape

by Daho0n 6y ago

>Sweden has just tracked the same path as everybody else That's very much false. You compare apples to apples to get a useable result, not apples to sour grapes. Sweden's policy have caused much much worse results compared to the countries you should compare it to: Norway, Denmark and Finland. For example deaths per 100k citizens is 12 in Norway and 134 in Sweden. Sweden is the perfect counterexample to your point. Nice graphs (Sweden is the yellow line that always stand out): https://www.vg.no/spesial/corona/norden/ https://www.vg.no/spesial/corona/norden/

neilwilson 6y ago
Why not Belgium, Peru, Poland, Hungary, Romania, even Gibraltar or the UK? Why do you want to compare to those specific countries you quote rather than the countries, say, that Sweden has distant transport links to? See what I mean about myths propagating.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  Because Nordic countries are very similar culturally and compare between each other all the time. I have a Finnish girlfriend and my impression is that first thing that Finnish people do when considering a policy is to ask how it's done in Sweden. They overall rejected Swedish approach with good results. All the other countries you mentioned have vastly different cultures. E.g. I'm Polish and I can say that Polish government doesn't care about law and Polish people are fine with it. It's not to the extent Ukraine or Russia does it, but still. Poles also do not respect authority. This is in exact opposite to how things go in Finland or Sweden. It's almost a taboo to question authorities in Sweden or Finland.
mike_hearn 6y ago
There's no biological theory underpinning cherry picking of a handful of Sweden's neighbours. It's not like Sweden is ground zero of some genetically identical but non-deadly strain of SARS-CoV-2 that inexplicably can only spread within physical proximity of Stockholm. So not surprisingly, if you do the cherry picking honestly by including all Sweden's neighbours, including Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania etc, then Sweden stops being the worst in that little bounding box and we're back to Sweden disproving the models. Which it has done, comprehensively, because no model or theory postulates a Nordic exception.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  Comparing between Nordic countries is not specific to COVID-19. They do it all the time with everything. Their cultures are very similar so the comparisons are very apples to apples. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania are post soviet republics. Vastly different influences.
- newacct583 6y ago
  > There's no biological theory underpinning cherry picking of a handful of Sweden's neighbours. Uh... the whole premise was to cherry pick Sweden and try to make a broad determination based on that one data point! You don't get to demand broad statistics if you didn't do it originally.
  - mike_hearn 6y ago
    Sweden isn't cherry picked because there are only a handful of regions that chose not to lock down and the relevant argument is about the impact of locking down or not. Therefore looking at it specifically follows naturally from the question being investigated. The converse, attempting to argue that Sweden suffered harshly by looking only at physical neighbours, doesn't follow naturally from any scientific question anyone is actually raising. For that comparison to be useful you'd need a theory of the form, "Nordic peoples are genetically superior to other peoples in ways that makes them naturally resistant to COVID, and thus whilst original models neglected that factor, Nordic Exceptionalism means Sweden should have been identical to Norway and they weren't therefore their decision was a bad one". But obviously such an argument would be nonsense and nobody is claiming that - just implying it. It's irrelevant for another reason: Sweden only looks like it did "badly" compared to Norway when using percentages. If you look at it in terms of absolute change in excess death, it's small, and depending on how you calculate, you can actually argue COVID had no effect on excess death in Sweden ([1] has an example of such calculations). The impact on Sweden of not locking down, even if you ascribe all differences between these arbitrarily chosen countries to that, is so tiny that it cannot justify the costs of the policy. At any rate, if you like there are other examples and they all support the same argument. For example, in the USA Florida is a reasonable choice. They released their restrictions relatively early without disaster. Or South Dakota (=identical curves to North Dakota despite very different levels of restrictions), or the recent example of Texas unlocking, or Belarus. Sweden is a popular choice because it's a very clear counter-example that's been widely discussed in Europe, and because - as I already noted - no model predictions or epidemiological theories make any exceptions for Sweden or Nordic countries. In fact modellers predicted specifically that Sweden would have had 90,000 deaths from COVID by May, but in fact they had about 98,000 deaths in total from all causes by the end of the year. It's therefore sufficient by itself to disprove the models. [1] https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/final-report-on-swedish-mortality-2020-anno-covid/ https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01...

by Daho0n 6y ago

neilwilson 6y ago

Why not Belgium, Peru, Poland, Hungary, Romania, even Gibraltar or the UK? Why do you want to compare to those specific countries you quote rather than the countries, say, that Sweden has distant transport links to? See what I mean about myths propagating.

Isinlor 6y ago
Because Nordic countries are very similar culturally and compare between each other all the time. I have a Finnish girlfriend and my impression is that first thing that Finnish people do when considering a policy is to ask how it's done in Sweden. They overall rejected Swedish approach with good results. All the other countries you mentioned have vastly different cultures. E.g. I'm Polish and I can say that Polish government doesn't care about law and Polish people are fine with it. It's not to the extent Ukraine or Russia does it, but still. Poles also do not respect authority. This is in exact opposite to how things go in Finland or Sweden. It's almost a taboo to question authorities in Sweden or Finland.

mike_hearn 6y ago

There's no biological theory underpinning cherry picking of a handful of Sweden's neighbours. It's not like Sweden is ground zero of some genetically identical but non-deadly strain of SARS-CoV-2 that inexplicably can only spread within physical proximity of Stockholm. So not surprisingly, if you do the cherry picking honestly by including all Sweden's neighbours, including Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania etc, then Sweden stops being the worst in that little bounding box and we're back to Sweden disproving the models. Which it has done, comprehensively, because no model or theory postulates a Nordic exception.

Isinlor 6y ago
Comparing between Nordic countries is not specific to COVID-19. They do it all the time with everything. Their cultures are very similar so the comparisons are very apples to apples. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania are post soviet republics. Vastly different influences.
newacct583 6y ago
> There's no biological theory underpinning cherry picking of a handful of Sweden's neighbours. Uh... the whole premise was to cherry pick Sweden and try to make a broad determination based on that one data point! You don't get to demand broad statistics if you didn't do it originally.
- mike_hearn 6y ago
  Sweden isn't cherry picked because there are only a handful of regions that chose not to lock down and the relevant argument is about the impact of locking down or not. Therefore looking at it specifically follows naturally from the question being investigated. The converse, attempting to argue that Sweden suffered harshly by looking only at physical neighbours, doesn't follow naturally from any scientific question anyone is actually raising. For that comparison to be useful you'd need a theory of the form, "Nordic peoples are genetically superior to other peoples in ways that makes them naturally resistant to COVID, and thus whilst original models neglected that factor, Nordic Exceptionalism means Sweden should have been identical to Norway and they weren't therefore their decision was a bad one". But obviously such an argument would be nonsense and nobody is claiming that - just implying it. It's irrelevant for another reason: Sweden only looks like it did "badly" compared to Norway when using percentages. If you look at it in terms of absolute change in excess death, it's small, and depending on how you calculate, you can actually argue COVID had no effect on excess death in Sweden ([1] has an example of such calculations). The impact on Sweden of not locking down, even if you ascribe all differences between these arbitrarily chosen countries to that, is so tiny that it cannot justify the costs of the policy. At any rate, if you like there are other examples and they all support the same argument. For example, in the USA Florida is a reasonable choice. They released their restrictions relatively early without disaster. Or South Dakota (=identical curves to North Dakota despite very different levels of restrictions), or the recent example of Texas unlocking, or Belarus. Sweden is a popular choice because it's a very clear counter-example that's been widely discussed in Europe, and because - as I already noted - no model predictions or epidemiological theories make any exceptions for Sweden or Nordic countries. In fact modellers predicted specifically that Sweden would have had 90,000 deaths from COVID by May, but in fact they had about 98,000 deaths in total from all causes by the end of the year. It's therefore sufficient by itself to disprove the models. [1] https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01/15/final-report-on-swedish-mortality-2020-anno-covid/ https://softwaredevelopmentperestroika.wordpress.com/2021/01...