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What I find particularly interesting is that Sweden wasn't the only country that did this -- Brazil also did a no-lockdown strategy, and it was basically a disa

What I find particularly interesting is that Sweden wasn't the only country that did this -- Brazil also did a no-lockdown strategy, and it was basically a disaster there. Evidently, there must have been some other factors at play besides the boolean of lockdown true/false. Better healthcare, maybe?

marjoripomarole 5y ago
Not true. Many Brazilian cities and states had lockdown measures at various times this past 20 months.
slim 5y ago
Some people have better resistance to the virus. Maybe there's more of them in sweden
marderfarker2 5y ago
China did the opposite by sealing everything up in the beginning, and now everything has gone back to normal for them bar international travel. Probably it’s down to developed countries having a well-defined response protocol AND its citizen sticking to it.
- neither_color 5y ago
  They've had regular city-wide/regional lockdowns all throughout. If someone in your apartment complex tests positive SURPRISE you cant leave for two weeks. Normal is gone, it's not coming back. When you move the goal post from "not overwhelming our medical system" to attempting "covid zero" this is the new normal you end up with, somewhere between China and Australia. August 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/02/millions-under-strict-lockdown-china-covid-outbreak https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/02/millions-under... June 2021 https://www.scmp.com/coronavirus/greater-china/article/3138002/flights-cancelled-and-districts-locked-down-amid-fresh https://www.scmp.com/coronavirus/greater-china/article/31380... January 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-covid-lockdown.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-covid-lo...
- audunw 5y ago
  > and now everything has gone back to normal Right now it seems quite the opposite. Their vaccines are not very effective against the Delta variant, and they're having several outbreaks. They recently shut down a huge port. They never learned how to do partial lockdowns and just dealing with low levels of infection, so if they don't manage to eliminate the virus, they're screwed. What are they going to do with the Delta variant? Import foreign vaccines? Wait for better domestic vaccines? What if a new more infectious variant comes along that's even less affected by their vaccines? I think China may be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. We know their approach has killed people, and the huge amount of resources spent on these lockdowns and massive amount of testing may have been better spent saving lives elsewhere. But we'll never know because they don't publish reliable data on excess mortality.
azinman2 5y ago
The article talks about this at the end. They have very low population density, a tiny population to start with, and most people live alone. Compared to their immediate neighbors with similar densities and culture, they did far worse in deaths.
spookthesunset 5y ago
See but since there was no actual randomized test the fact that Brazil did a no-lockdown strategy (which I guess some say is false)… it could have been just as big of a disaster even with a lockdown. There is basically no real way to prove that lockdowns did a single thing. The fact so many countries were so willing to jump onto a completely unproven non pharmaceutical intervention that has massive negative side effects is pretty scary. The fact so many people get hot and bothered by this and just assume that lockdowns worked at all… it’s quite disturbing.
- richardw 5y ago
  Its proven. It’s physics. I can’t catch covid from you because we’re probably on different continents. Living across the street works as well if I don’t open the door. This has been tested for every transmissible disease every organism has had that we’ve managed to witness. Similarly, fewer interactions result in fewer opportunities for transmission. Reduce transmission and the numbers go down. What’s to prove here? Didn’t vote you down.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    Also there's graphs, lockdown enacted, cases go down, lockdown stopped, cases go up, repeat.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      Oh really? https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
      - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
        (This should be a submission in its own right.) Really interesting data.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
tpmx 5y ago
I'm Swedish. I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the population here thought the government was being incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown, much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions. Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did, along with pretty much everone who was able to do WFH. Possibly related: the current social democrat prime minister Stefan Löfven made a surprise announcement today that he'll be stepping down in November, a mere ten months before the next election. I think it's natural that it would play out differently in Brazil - so many differences in the structure of the work force, access to information, English language skills, personal economic reserves, etc etc.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  That doesn’t prove the people doing these voluntary lockdowns had any different of an outcome than if they did nothing at all. Way to many people just blindly assume these interventions worked. The fact is we have zero clue if they did anything or the outcomes experienced by different regions was a result of a bunch of stuff that is completely out of our control. If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns not doing anything. The virus did what it did no matter how hard humans tried to control it. We had as little control over covid as we have control over other natural disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes.
  - wldlyinaccurate 5y ago
    > If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns not doing anything. The virus did what it did no matter how hard humans tried to control it Tell that to New Zealand, who have had less than 3,000 cases in a population of 5 million. They did this with strict border controls (people on inbound flights must isolate for 2 weeks) and quick response to community transmission (several lockdowns totalling 40 days).
    - mavhc 5y ago
      The UK made incoming people isolate in March....2021
cinntaile 5y ago
This is speculation from my side, based on my interactions with health care in Sweden over the past year. They are good at distancing and precautions in situations where it probably matters a lot, health care settings. People that had cold symptoms didn't get mixed up with regular patients. Like sitting in a waiting room. If you were going to have a child and you were going to have a meeting with a nurse then you were the only one allowed in, not even your husband/boyfriend was allowed to accompany you.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  Hey downvoters, come and discuss instead. That makes for more intellectually curious discussions! edit: It was fixed, thanks ;)
Hamuko 5y ago
What's the definition of "lockdown" anyways? Because I can't name that many COVID-19 restrictions that have been enacted in Finland.
deltree7 5y ago
Also good genes. But that's a blasphemy to bring up
- sumedh 5y ago
  Is it good genes or a healthy population because of good nutrition and exercise?
  - lmm 5y ago
    Consider which of those possibilities would make it easier to publish experimental results, and consider the distinct lack of clear published results despite this being a topic of significant interest.
catears 5y ago
"no-lockdown" is unfortunately "technically true but far from the truth". I consider poor journalistic reporting a major contributor to this... I can't remember the exact date, but I think in march or april 2020 there were restrictions put in place by government to limit the number of people that could attend a public event. Organizers and event-goers would commit a crime if they attended an event with more than 50 people. Sure infected people did not get literally locked into their own homes, but "lockdown" is clearly more of a scale where some governments effectively locked the doors to everyones homes and some told everyone to stay home.

marjoripomarole 5y ago

Not true. Many Brazilian cities and states had lockdown measures at various times this past 20 months.

slim 5y ago

Some people have better resistance to the virus. Maybe there's more of them in sweden

marderfarker2 5y ago

China did the opposite by sealing everything up in the beginning, and now everything has gone back to normal for them bar international travel. Probably it’s down to developed countries having a well-defined response protocol AND its citizen sticking to it.

neither_color 5y ago
They've had regular city-wide/regional lockdowns all throughout. If someone in your apartment complex tests positive SURPRISE you cant leave for two weeks. Normal is gone, it's not coming back. When you move the goal post from "not overwhelming our medical system" to attempting "covid zero" this is the new normal you end up with, somewhere between China and Australia. August 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/02/millions-under-strict-lockdown-china-covid-outbreak https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/02/millions-under... June 2021 https://www.scmp.com/coronavirus/greater-china/article/3138002/flights-cancelled-and-districts-locked-down-amid-fresh https://www.scmp.com/coronavirus/greater-china/article/31380... January 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-covid-lockdown.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-covid-lo...
audunw 5y ago
> and now everything has gone back to normal Right now it seems quite the opposite. Their vaccines are not very effective against the Delta variant, and they're having several outbreaks. They recently shut down a huge port. They never learned how to do partial lockdowns and just dealing with low levels of infection, so if they don't manage to eliminate the virus, they're screwed. What are they going to do with the Delta variant? Import foreign vaccines? Wait for better domestic vaccines? What if a new more infectious variant comes along that's even less affected by their vaccines? I think China may be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. We know their approach has killed people, and the huge amount of resources spent on these lockdowns and massive amount of testing may have been better spent saving lives elsewhere. But we'll never know because they don't publish reliable data on excess mortality.

azinman2 5y ago

The article talks about this at the end. They have very low population density, a tiny population to start with, and most people live alone. Compared to their immediate neighbors with similar densities and culture, they did far worse in deaths.

spookthesunset 5y ago

See but since there was no actual randomized test the fact that Brazil did a no-lockdown strategy (which I guess some say is false)… it could have been just as big of a disaster even with a lockdown. There is basically no real way to prove that lockdowns did a single thing. The fact so many countries were so willing to jump onto a completely unproven non pharmaceutical intervention that has massive negative side effects is pretty scary. The fact so many people get hot and bothered by this and just assume that lockdowns worked at all… it’s quite disturbing.

richardw 5y ago
Its proven. It’s physics. I can’t catch covid from you because we’re probably on different continents. Living across the street works as well if I don’t open the door. This has been tested for every transmissible disease every organism has had that we’ve managed to witness. Similarly, fewer interactions result in fewer opportunities for transmission. Reduce transmission and the numbers go down. What’s to prove here? Didn’t vote you down.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Also there's graphs, lockdown enacted, cases go down, lockdown stopped, cases go up, repeat.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Oh really? https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/ https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
    - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
      (This should be a submission in its own right.) Really interesting data.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

tpmx 5y ago

I'm Swedish. I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the population here thought the government was being incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown, much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions. Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did, along with pretty much everone who was able to do WFH. Possibly related: the current social democrat prime minister Stefan Löfven made a surprise announcement today that he'll be stepping down in November, a mere ten months before the next election. I think it's natural that it would play out differently in Brazil - so many differences in the structure of the work force, access to information, English language skills, personal economic reserves, etc etc.

spookthesunset 5y ago
That doesn’t prove the people doing these voluntary lockdowns had any different of an outcome than if they did nothing at all. Way to many people just blindly assume these interventions worked. The fact is we have zero clue if they did anything or the outcomes experienced by different regions was a result of a bunch of stuff that is completely out of our control. If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns not doing anything. The virus did what it did no matter how hard humans tried to control it. We had as little control over covid as we have control over other natural disasters like tornadoes and hurricanes.
- wldlyinaccurate 5y ago
  > If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns not doing anything. The virus did what it did no matter how hard humans tried to control it Tell that to New Zealand, who have had less than 3,000 cases in a population of 5 million. They did this with strict border controls (people on inbound flights must isolate for 2 weeks) and quick response to community transmission (several lockdowns totalling 40 days).
  - mavhc 5y ago
    The UK made incoming people isolate in March....2021

cinntaile 5y ago

This is speculation from my side, based on my interactions with health care in Sweden over the past year. They are good at distancing and precautions in situations where it probably matters a lot, health care settings. People that had cold symptoms didn't get mixed up with regular patients. Like sitting in a waiting room. If you were going to have a child and you were going to have a meeting with a nurse then you were the only one allowed in, not even your husband/boyfriend was allowed to accompany you.

cinntaile 5y ago
Hey downvoters, come and discuss instead. That makes for more intellectually curious discussions! edit: It was fixed, thanks ;)

Hamuko 5y ago

What's the definition of "lockdown" anyways? Because I can't name that many COVID-19 restrictions that have been enacted in Finland.

deltree7 5y ago

Also good genes. But that's a blasphemy to bring up

sumedh 5y ago
Is it good genes or a healthy population because of good nutrition and exercise?
- lmm 5y ago
  Consider which of those possibilities would make it easier to publish experimental results, and consider the distinct lack of clear published results despite this being a topic of significant interest.

catears 5y ago

"no-lockdown" is unfortunately "technically true but far from the truth". I consider poor journalistic reporting a major contributor to this... I can't remember the exact date, but I think in march or april 2020 there were restrictions put in place by government to limit the number of people that could attend a public event. Organizers and event-goers would commit a crime if they attended an event with more than 50 people. Sure infected people did not get literally locked into their own homes, but "lockdown" is clearly more of a scale where some governments effectively locked the doors to everyones homes and some told everyone to stay home.