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This argument does not make sense. 1) +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area. (https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/e

This argument does not make sense. 1) +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area. (https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/environment/land-use/localities-and-urban-areas/pong/statistical-news/localities-and-urban-areas-2018/ https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje... ) 2) Switzerland which is higher density has almost the same excess death rate (on your image) 3) France which had very strict and long lockdown (and killed/subsidized heavily its economy) has also almost the same figures. As many have said, one of the major factor was how the elderly in home facilities had been protected and the state of the medical infrastructure (rate of intense care beds per capita to handle the peaks for exemple). In the 70s and 80s, the Swedish medical infrastructure was one of the top. They still live on that legend. Please talk to Swedish friends around you and ask them how it is now (Part of my family is Swedish).

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I’ve seen accusations in the US that people were being counted as Covid deaths that died “woth” Covid, and would have even without it - I have no idea if these accusations are true, just that probably-nonsense leads me to the question: Isn’t it tough to compared countries with how strictly or loosely they count a “Covid death”?
- nl 5y ago
  Which is why good analysis looks at excess deaths (ie, compared to the average over the last few years). By that comparison Sweden has done very badly compared to its peers. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores?time=earliest..2021-08-01&country=SWE~NOR~FIN~DNK https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores... As this very article says: However, Dr Bhatt, the University of Copenhagen professor, is keen to point out that for all of its successes, Sweden saw more Covid fatalities than its Nordic neighbours who took a more interventionist approach. The death rate was between three and four times that of Denmark, and nearly 10 times those of Finland and Norway - suggesting Swedes died that didn’t need to.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    > Which is why good analysis looks at excess deaths (ie, compared to the average over the last few years). The excess mortality graph you link to only goes back 19 months, not a few years. Here's an article which [0] references a paper which says that over the past 4 years there's no difference between all cause mortality in Sweden and Norway: > "Our study shows that all-cause mortality was largely unchanged during the epidemic as compared to the previous four years in Norway and Sweden, two countries which employed very different strategies against the epidemic," emphasize study authors in this medRxiv paper. It may be that Sweden had more older people than Norway at the beginning of the pandemic, i.e. a more vulnerable population. Also they admitted to doing a poor job early on in nursing homes. I think you are simplifying this too much, insisting that it is valid to come to a conclusion on lockdowns based on a comparison of Sweden to two nearby countries. That doesn't exactly explain why a bunch of countries like the U.K., France, Spain, and Portugal that did lockdown had more per-capita deaths than Sweden. It ends up looking like you cherry picked your data, ignoring contradictory data, and not really explaining anything. About Dr. Bhatt, from the same article you quoted: > Samir Bhatt, professor of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen, and one of the team at Imperial College who pushed the UK's lockdown strategy. It's too bad nobody asked him why the the U.K. with lockdowns had more deaths that Sweden without lockdowns. [0] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201116/Study-compares-deaths-in-Sweden-and-Norway-before-and-after-COVID-pandemic.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201116/Study-compares-de...
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      > The excess mortality graph you link to only goes back 19 months, not a few years. The excess mortality graph only goes back 19 months, because that's when COVID start. It uses excess mortality, so those numbers are based on numbers in the previous years. It's like looking at a chart showing inflation over the past year and saying "this says nothing about the prices two years ago!" They're used to compute the numbers on the chart, not be shown on the chart.
      - nl 5y ago
        Exactly. I don't really understand what they are thinking there.
wutbrodo 5y ago
Determinants of pandemic performance has proven to be very multi-factorial, but from day one, urban density has not that been significant a factor, especially in richer countries. The initial wave just looked urban because the virus reached each _country_ via internationally-connected urban centers. Given that pandemic spread has almost entirely played out indoor, a much more likely risk factor is multi-member (and especially multi-generational) households. As mentioned in the article, Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia have a small household size and especially high proportion of single-person households.
d_t_w 5y ago
> This argument does not make sense. The OP compares Sweden to its closest neighbours > +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area As do +83% +85% and +88% of the three closest neighbours OP compared Sweden. In what way does that comparison not make sense?
- supperburg 5y ago
  “but a country with very low population density” Wrong!
  - Kye 5y ago
    25 people per square kilometer is a low population density. Look at how they define urban area.
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      That's not an accurate figure for the density where a typical Swede lives. Most of the population lives in the southern part of the country, a quarter of the population lives in the Stockholm metro area as well. It's like using Canadian population density with the whole country when almost the entire population lives within a hundred miles of the US border.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        > quarter of the population lives in the Stockholm metro area You've never been to Stockholm metro area. It's very sparsely populated compared to many big metro areas. Stockholm is a small city (800k people or so) surrounded by villages (another 1.5 million people) spread over 6,519.3 km2. Density is 360/km2 And that's the biggest city in the country. In comparison, Paris (as we were talking about France): 13 mln people over 18,940.7 km2 with a density of 690/km2. That's for metro area. Urban area alone is 10 mln people with density of 21,000/km2
cinntaile 5y ago
If we look at the data Sweden is still one of the top countries in the world regarding health care. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-quality-index https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-qua... https://www.ghsindex.org/ https://www.ghsindex.org/ https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/countries/country-details/GHO/sweden?countryProfileId=e5008464-798e-4368-a32e-f1dc8d594690 https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/countries/country-details/...
- cinntaile 5y ago
  The above was a direct reply to: > In the 70s and 80s, the Swedish medical infrastructure was one of the top. They still live on that legend. Please talk to Swedish friends around you and ask them how it is now (Part of my family is Swedish).
dendriti 5y ago
While I don't doubt you have Swedish family, I would like to see your data for the French economy being "killed". Certainly the economy contracted somewhat, but they seem to be doing just fine now.
- Nemrod67 5y ago
  this comment shows how half of the West's population has entered a foreign dimension. Do you really think the economy only "contracted somewhat"? Can we trust any statistics from people that depend on them to be good?
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    We absolutely cannot trust anything claimed by the crooks in power.
- conradfr 5y ago
  At the cost of an enormous additional debt. Also "just fine" is still not pre-pandemic levels so we'll have to see in a year or two.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  France has increased its public debt enormously (100% to 120% of its GDP). Maintaining the economy had a cost which may have serious consequences.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Isn’t the interest rate close to 0%? If, like in 1918, they come back stronger than places which had more disruption due to deaths and prolonged closures that’s not anywhere near a crushing level of debt for a rich nation-state with a diverse economy.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

I’ve seen accusations in the US that people were being counted as Covid deaths that died “woth” Covid, and would have even without it - I have no idea if these accusations are true, just that probably-nonsense leads me to the question: Isn’t it tough to compared countries with how strictly or loosely they count a “Covid death”?

nl 5y ago
Which is why good analysis looks at excess deaths (ie, compared to the average over the last few years). By that comparison Sweden has done very badly compared to its peers. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores?time=earliest..2021-08-01&country=SWE~NOR~FIN~DNK https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores... As this very article says: However, Dr Bhatt, the University of Copenhagen professor, is keen to point out that for all of its successes, Sweden saw more Covid fatalities than its Nordic neighbours who took a more interventionist approach. The death rate was between three and four times that of Denmark, and nearly 10 times those of Finland and Norway - suggesting Swedes died that didn’t need to.
- mikem170 5y ago
  > Which is why good analysis looks at excess deaths (ie, compared to the average over the last few years). The excess mortality graph you link to only goes back 19 months, not a few years. Here's an article which [0] references a paper which says that over the past 4 years there's no difference between all cause mortality in Sweden and Norway: > "Our study shows that all-cause mortality was largely unchanged during the epidemic as compared to the previous four years in Norway and Sweden, two countries which employed very different strategies against the epidemic," emphasize study authors in this medRxiv paper. It may be that Sweden had more older people than Norway at the beginning of the pandemic, i.e. a more vulnerable population. Also they admitted to doing a poor job early on in nursing homes. I think you are simplifying this too much, insisting that it is valid to come to a conclusion on lockdowns based on a comparison of Sweden to two nearby countries. That doesn't exactly explain why a bunch of countries like the U.K., France, Spain, and Portugal that did lockdown had more per-capita deaths than Sweden. It ends up looking like you cherry picked your data, ignoring contradictory data, and not really explaining anything. About Dr. Bhatt, from the same article you quoted: > Samir Bhatt, professor of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen, and one of the team at Imperial College who pushed the UK's lockdown strategy. It's too bad nobody asked him why the the U.K. with lockdowns had more deaths that Sweden without lockdowns. [0] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201116/Study-compares-deaths-in-Sweden-and-Norway-before-and-after-COVID-pandemic.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201116/Study-compares-de...
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > The excess mortality graph you link to only goes back 19 months, not a few years. The excess mortality graph only goes back 19 months, because that's when COVID start. It uses excess mortality, so those numbers are based on numbers in the previous years. It's like looking at a chart showing inflation over the past year and saying "this says nothing about the prices two years ago!" They're used to compute the numbers on the chart, not be shown on the chart.
    - nl 5y ago
      Exactly. I don't really understand what they are thinking there.

wutbrodo 5y ago

Determinants of pandemic performance has proven to be very multi-factorial, but from day one, urban density has not that been significant a factor, especially in richer countries. The initial wave just looked urban because the virus reached each _country_ via internationally-connected urban centers. Given that pandemic spread has almost entirely played out indoor, a much more likely risk factor is multi-member (and especially multi-generational) households. As mentioned in the article, Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia have a small household size and especially high proportion of single-person households.

d_t_w 5y ago

> This argument does not make sense. The OP compares Sweden to its closest neighbours > +87% of the Swedish population live in urban area As do +83% +85% and +88% of the three closest neighbours OP compared Sweden. In what way does that comparison not make sense?

supperburg 5y ago
“but a country with very low population density” Wrong!
- Kye 5y ago
  25 people per square kilometer is a low population density. Look at how they define urban area.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    That's not an accurate figure for the density where a typical Swede lives. Most of the population lives in the southern part of the country, a quarter of the population lives in the Stockholm metro area as well. It's like using Canadian population density with the whole country when almost the entire population lives within a hundred miles of the US border.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > quarter of the population lives in the Stockholm metro area You've never been to Stockholm metro area. It's very sparsely populated compared to many big metro areas. Stockholm is a small city (800k people or so) surrounded by villages (another 1.5 million people) spread over 6,519.3 km2. Density is 360/km2 And that's the biggest city in the country. In comparison, Paris (as we were talking about France): 13 mln people over 18,940.7 km2 with a density of 690/km2. That's for metro area. Urban area alone is 10 mln people with density of 21,000/km2

cinntaile 5y ago

If we look at the data Sweden is still one of the top countries in the world regarding health care. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-quality-index https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-access-and-qua... https://www.ghsindex.org/ https://www.ghsindex.org/ https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/countries/country-details/GHO/sweden?countryProfileId=e5008464-798e-4368-a32e-f1dc8d594690 https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/countries/country-details/...

cinntaile 5y ago
The above was a direct reply to: > In the 70s and 80s, the Swedish medical infrastructure was one of the top. They still live on that legend. Please talk to Swedish friends around you and ask them how it is now (Part of my family is Swedish).

dendriti 5y ago

While I don't doubt you have Swedish family, I would like to see your data for the French economy being "killed". Certainly the economy contracted somewhat, but they seem to be doing just fine now.

Nemrod67 5y ago
this comment shows how half of the West's population has entered a foreign dimension. Do you really think the economy only "contracted somewhat"? Can we trust any statistics from people that depend on them to be good?
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  We absolutely cannot trust anything claimed by the crooks in power.
conradfr 5y ago
At the cost of an enormous additional debt. Also "just fine" is still not pre-pandemic levels so we'll have to see in a year or two.
yodsanklai 5y ago
France has increased its public debt enormously (100% to 120% of its GDP). Maintaining the economy had a cost which may have serious consequences.
- acdha 5y ago
  Isn’t the interest rate close to 0%? If, like in 1918, they come back stronger than places which had more disruption due to deaths and prolonged closures that’s not anywhere near a crushing level of debt for a rich nation-state with a diverse economy.