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Why was anyone talking about Sweden in the first place? Because it was the only example of a developed nation whose health officials came out and said "given o

by bloaf 5y ago

Why was anyone talking about Sweden in the first place? Because it was the only example of a developed nation whose health officials came out and said "given our circumstances, we think our country will be ok without anti-covid measures." People who wanted (for a variety of reasons) to denounce anti-covid measures took those statements, stripped out the "given our circumstances" and said "see, Sweden thinks everyone will be ok without anti-covid measures." The anti-covid groups, recognizing that nuance is doomed, did not respond by saying "Sweden might be ok, but we won't" and instead said "Sweden is wrong." So why did people stop talking about it? Because the policy decisions have already been made. The political tool that is "Sweden says otherwise" isn't useful anymore. Now obviously the academics and public policy experts have not stopped talking about Sweden (and the verdict is not even close to rendered), but since they are doing so out of the public eye it doesn't so much count. So why should we have more public discussion about Sweden? It looks to me like this author believes it is evidence for the assertion "if the experts are struggling, the amateurs must be right." It is not. This kind of reasoning is virtually always the kind of justification someone comes up with when they need an explanation for why someone should trust a fringe conspiratorial theory of events over a mainstream expert-endorsed one.

native_samples 5y ago
There were no Sweden-specific cirumstances that mattered. The belief that Sweden is somehow uniquely special or that it can only be compared to its neighbours is a tired, unconvincing talking point that must surely come mostly from people who have never actually been there. Swedes are normal Europeans who live in normal cities in a normal western country, and the virus is tiny. To the extent Sweden is "different" to its neighbours it's only in things like the proportion of non-Swedes who live there, which it seems inherently raises their numbers relative to their more anti-immigration neighbours (given that COVID seems to hurt African immigrants more in all regions of the world including the USA). "obviously the academics and public policy experts have not stopped talking about Sweden (and the verdict is not even close to rendered), but since they are doing so out of the public eye it doesn't so much count." The academics and policy experts are refusing to talk about Sweden, because it reveals that they aren't really experts at all - just playing at being experts. It is easy to see this. Here's one of the only recent academic pronouncements on Sweden, published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9 Except it's not really recent at all. Despite being published in August the first sentence of the article is a false claim about public statistics and it goes downhill from there. The reason is, to build its argument it has to simply ignore all data from after July 2020. If it didn't then it couldn't possibly make the arguments it's trying to make. Also, it cherry picks its countries and its calculations aren't even consistent with each other. It's not science. It's policy advocacy pretending to be science. These people deserve to be raked over the coals in public because their credibility is zero.
- bloaf 5y ago
  ...You do know that Sweden implemented more "mainstream" anti-covid measures as 2020 went on, right? A decision in July 2020 gave Swedish local authorities the right to shut down bars/restaurants. By Dec. 2020, the government was shutting down public facilities, putting mask mandates on public transportation, encouraging remote education/work, and further limiting groups in bars/restaurants. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03003930.2021.1964477 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03003930.2021.1... So if the goal is to compare "no restrictions" to "restrictions", only amateurs would think you could use "all" the data from Sweden.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Ah yes, you're right: professionals simply ignore any data that contradicts them. Only the amateurs are doing any actual science in epidemiology these days. Sweden was never at any point as tough as most other countries, and even if they had adopted e.g. UK style measures afterwards (which they didn't), it wouldn't matter: they should have still ended up worse than other countries due to their early stance. What actually happened is that Sweden has significantly lower per-capita COVID mortality than the EU average. Seeing how desperately people try to rationalize this is fundamentally very depressing. Lockdowns do not work. Masks do not work. They have never worked. Swedes are not biologically different to Brits or the French. You don't actually need Sweden to see this, there are many other examples from the USA, e.g. the differences between North and South Dakota (no outcome differences, very different policies). Or just look at graphs of case curves. You cannot figure out from looking at cases when policies were changed, even though being able to do so was the only goal of the changes. These policies directly failed on their own terms, and no studies or inter-country comparisons are even needed to prove that.
    - bloaf 5y ago
      >What actually happened is that Sweden has significantly lower per-capita COVID mortality than the EU average. Sweden is also significantly higher than all its immediate neighbors who have 1/3rd to 1/10th the mortality. >These policies directly failed on their own terms, and no studies or inter-country comparisons are even needed to prove that. ...So we don't need to talk about Sweden after all? >e.g. the differences between North and South Dakota (no outcome differences, very different policies). North Dakota (with late lockdowns) beat South Dakota (no lockdowns) by about the same margin that Sweden beat the EU average (10~15%). Why is the difference "significant" for Sweden, but "nonexistent" for the Dakotas?

by bloaf 5y ago

native_samples 5y ago

There were no Sweden-specific cirumstances that mattered. The belief that Sweden is somehow uniquely special or that it can only be compared to its neighbours is a tired, unconvincing talking point that must surely come mostly from people who have never actually been there. Swedes are normal Europeans who live in normal cities in a normal western country, and the virus is tiny. To the extent Sweden is "different" to its neighbours it's only in things like the proportion of non-Swedes who live there, which it seems inherently raises their numbers relative to their more anti-immigration neighbours (given that COVID seems to hurt African immigrants more in all regions of the world including the USA). "obviously the academics and public policy experts have not stopped talking about Sweden (and the verdict is not even close to rendered), but since they are doing so out of the public eye it doesn't so much count." The academics and policy experts are refusing to talk about Sweden, because it reveals that they aren't really experts at all - just playing at being experts. It is easy to see this. Here's one of the only recent academic pronouncements on Sweden, published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95699-9 Except it's not really recent at all. Despite being published in August the first sentence of the article is a false claim about public statistics and it goes downhill from there. The reason is, to build its argument it has to simply ignore all data from after July 2020. If it didn't then it couldn't possibly make the arguments it's trying to make. Also, it cherry picks its countries and its calculations aren't even consistent with each other. It's not science. It's policy advocacy pretending to be science. These people deserve to be raked over the coals in public because their credibility is zero.

bloaf 5y ago
...You do know that Sweden implemented more "mainstream" anti-covid measures as 2020 went on, right? A decision in July 2020 gave Swedish local authorities the right to shut down bars/restaurants. By Dec. 2020, the government was shutting down public facilities, putting mask mandates on public transportation, encouraging remote education/work, and further limiting groups in bars/restaurants. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03003930.2021.1964477 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03003930.2021.1... So if the goal is to compare "no restrictions" to "restrictions", only amateurs would think you could use "all" the data from Sweden.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Ah yes, you're right: professionals simply ignore any data that contradicts them. Only the amateurs are doing any actual science in epidemiology these days. Sweden was never at any point as tough as most other countries, and even if they had adopted e.g. UK style measures afterwards (which they didn't), it wouldn't matter: they should have still ended up worse than other countries due to their early stance. What actually happened is that Sweden has significantly lower per-capita COVID mortality than the EU average. Seeing how desperately people try to rationalize this is fundamentally very depressing. Lockdowns do not work. Masks do not work. They have never worked. Swedes are not biologically different to Brits or the French. You don't actually need Sweden to see this, there are many other examples from the USA, e.g. the differences between North and South Dakota (no outcome differences, very different policies). Or just look at graphs of case curves. You cannot figure out from looking at cases when policies were changed, even though being able to do so was the only goal of the changes. These policies directly failed on their own terms, and no studies or inter-country comparisons are even needed to prove that.
  - bloaf 5y ago
    >What actually happened is that Sweden has significantly lower per-capita COVID mortality than the EU average. Sweden is also significantly higher than all its immediate neighbors who have 1/3rd to 1/10th the mortality. >These policies directly failed on their own terms, and no studies or inter-country comparisons are even needed to prove that. ...So we don't need to talk about Sweden after all? >e.g. the differences between North and South Dakota (no outcome differences, very different policies). North Dakota (with late lockdowns) beat South Dakota (no lockdowns) by about the same margin that Sweden beat the EU average (10~15%). Why is the difference "significant" for Sweden, but "nonexistent" for the Dakotas?