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While I agree comparing countries can be apples and oranges, it makes sense to compare the Scandinavian countries. That Norway and Finland were much lower stron

by inpdx 5y ago

While I agree comparing countries can be apples and oranges, it makes sense to compare the Scandinavian countries. That Norway and Finland were much lower strongly suggests Sweden's strategies worsened things.

yxhuvud 5y ago
Only if you assume the countries are similar in every other way that matter. But that is not the case, Sweden is for example by far the most urbanized country in Scandinavia - the share of people living in big or medium sized cities is 10% higher than other Scandinavian countries. Countries with high level of urbanisation have (so far, and especially early on) been hit way harder than more rural countries.
- hedora 5y ago
  I’d be interested in seeing a scatter plot of excess mortality vs urbanization, income, single family housing, etc, etc. in one of these articles. Without that, they seem pretty lazy, or designed to drive a political point regardless of the evidence.
wk_end 5y ago
What’s frustrating is that the people who insist you should only compare Sweden to its Scandinavian peers are the same who insist that the US or Europe should use have used remote islands in the Pacific as their pandemic model. This goes the other way too, of course - people who are keen to compare Sweden to the UK instead of Denmark cry foul whenever New Zealand is brought up. The problem though is that there’s no bulletproof explanation for why lockdowns were so effective in the rest of Scandinavia and less so elsewhere in Europe (or many American states for that matter). Without that, the counterfactual is still a bit of a question mark. If Sweden had adopted Denmark’s strategy, maybe they would’ve indeed come out looking like Denmark - or maybe they would’ve come out looking like the UK. Vaguely gesturing towards “they’re all Scandinavian” doesn’t have much explanatory power.
xorcist 5y ago
What you say makes sense when we think of geographic locality. But is that really what should guide the pandemic response? Sweden is much more like UK, the Netherlands and Germany than it is like Norway or Finland when we look at things like urbanisation, demographic diversity and immigration. In part because much more of the population is centralized to a few areas. The organization of public health care, especially that of old people's homes, is completely different between those countries. If we look at the regional differences, you'd see that the areas of Sweden which demographically is similar to Norway indeed followed the pandemic outbreak of Norway very closely, with a very low incidence for the longest time, and then scattered outbreaks with increasing magnitude. During those first crucial months, the pandemic outbreak in Sweden almost exlusively took place in the two most populous and urbanized areas. The rest of the country was pretty much spared. With the differently implemented lockdown in place, it was interesting to compare incidence in smaller geographic areas separated by the border but otherwise much more similar than the countries are. It is quite clear that any correlation can not be substantiated by data.

by inpdx 5y ago

yxhuvud 5y ago

Only if you assume the countries are similar in every other way that matter. But that is not the case, Sweden is for example by far the most urbanized country in Scandinavia - the share of people living in big or medium sized cities is 10% higher than other Scandinavian countries. Countries with high level of urbanisation have (so far, and especially early on) been hit way harder than more rural countries.

hedora 5y ago
I’d be interested in seeing a scatter plot of excess mortality vs urbanization, income, single family housing, etc, etc. in one of these articles. Without that, they seem pretty lazy, or designed to drive a political point regardless of the evidence.

wk_end 5y ago

What’s frustrating is that the people who insist you should only compare Sweden to its Scandinavian peers are the same who insist that the US or Europe should use have used remote islands in the Pacific as their pandemic model. This goes the other way too, of course - people who are keen to compare Sweden to the UK instead of Denmark cry foul whenever New Zealand is brought up. The problem though is that there’s no bulletproof explanation for why lockdowns were so effective in the rest of Scandinavia and less so elsewhere in Europe (or many American states for that matter). Without that, the counterfactual is still a bit of a question mark. If Sweden had adopted Denmark’s strategy, maybe they would’ve indeed come out looking like Denmark - or maybe they would’ve come out looking like the UK. Vaguely gesturing towards “they’re all Scandinavian” doesn’t have much explanatory power.

xorcist 5y ago

What you say makes sense when we think of geographic locality. But is that really what should guide the pandemic response? Sweden is much more like UK, the Netherlands and Germany than it is like Norway or Finland when we look at things like urbanisation, demographic diversity and immigration. In part because much more of the population is centralized to a few areas. The organization of public health care, especially that of old people's homes, is completely different between those countries. If we look at the regional differences, you'd see that the areas of Sweden which demographically is similar to Norway indeed followed the pandemic outbreak of Norway very closely, with a very low incidence for the longest time, and then scattered outbreaks with increasing magnitude. During those first crucial months, the pandemic outbreak in Sweden almost exlusively took place in the two most populous and urbanized areas. The rest of the country was pretty much spared. With the differently implemented lockdown in place, it was interesting to compare incidence in smaller geographic areas separated by the border but otherwise much more similar than the countries are. It is quite clear that any correlation can not be substantiated by data.