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Because it’s misleading, countries have different methodologies and different coverage for testing Sweden doesn’t test vaccinated and only tests symptomatic unv

Because it’s misleading, countries have different methodologies and different coverage for testing Sweden doesn’t test vaccinated and only tests symptomatic unvaccinated, it also doesn’t do testing for children on any substantial level. In the UK for example children are tested with lateral flow tests multiple times a week and each lateral flow test that isn’t negative also then requires a PCR test. Also it seems that Sweden only accounts for PCR tests for reporting of cases, many countries now report positives from both PCR and antigen testing. So this is still pushing the narrative that Sweden was right to not enforce a lockdown, which can easily be used to push the narrative that the looming lockdowns across Europe aren’t needed or won’t help.

rossdavidh 5y ago
Well, the relevant point was that it's different than what we saw a year ago. So, unless there's been a big change in how Sweden measures now compared to a year ago, or a big change in how the rest of Europe measures now compared to a year ago, the change in per capita cases is still interesting. The CDC estimate of US cases, by the way, is that there are 4.2 times as many actual cases as we catch via PCR. So I'm quite certain that Sweden (and every other country in Europe) miss a lot of cases, but unless their methodology changes over time, the change in the ratio over time indicates that _something_ has changed.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  Yes there has been a big change in both which is mentioned in my comment. Most countries still do testing for everyone and encourage it, many countries do tests at schools for children. Sweden is now only testing unvaccinated people that show symptoms and doesn’t do testing for school going children. Our world in data isn’t a good source for anything out of context. Same goes for vaccine coverage you can see countries with 90%> vaccination coverage but a limited scope or eligibility whilst other countries with a far wider eligibility criteria have lower coverage. And with the booster shots things get even more complicated. You can’t compare apples with oranges…
  - rossdavidh 5y ago
    Interesting! Do you know when (about) this change happened? In the U.S. we only do testing (normally) for people who feel symptoms and go to get tested, so the lack of testing for school going children didn't register with me as unusual. Do most European countries require testing for school going children? Looking into this, it appears that Sweden has recently backtracked on that change, so it will be interesting to see what kind of uptick we see in the next week or so! https://news.trust.org/item/20211117120236-6wk93 https://news.trust.org/item/20211117120236-6wk93
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      I don’t know about the US, I live in the UK which reports all testing including the at home self reported LF test results. I don’t think that our world in data being a rubbish data source on its own is a new thing (any data source is rubbish without context), even in the beginning of the pandemic you had major discrepancies. Perhaps other than for a short time when everyone was basically doing mass testing during the initial lockdown period around mid 2020 but pretty much since then and especially since the vaccine was rolled out every country has been doing their own thing. Just to put things into perspective for the past month the UK averaged about 900K tests per day, Sweden averaged about 15,000… even if you account for Sweden having about 6.5 times fewer people it’s still a drastic difference. And whilst not everyone went as nuts as the UK, Italy is still doing about half a million tests a day. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?time=2021-10-19..latest&country=GBR~BEL~DNK~FRA~IRL~ITA~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-...
tinus_hn 5y ago
> So this is still pushing the narrative that Sweden was right to not enforce a lockdown, which can easily be used to push the narrative that the looming lockdowns across Europe aren’t needed or won’t help. So is this an ‘unwanted’ narrative?

rossdavidh 5y ago

Well, the relevant point was that it's different than what we saw a year ago. So, unless there's been a big change in how Sweden measures now compared to a year ago, or a big change in how the rest of Europe measures now compared to a year ago, the change in per capita cases is still interesting. The CDC estimate of US cases, by the way, is that there are 4.2 times as many actual cases as we catch via PCR. So I'm quite certain that Sweden (and every other country in Europe) miss a lot of cases, but unless their methodology changes over time, the change in the ratio over time indicates that _something_ has changed.

dogma1138 5y ago
Yes there has been a big change in both which is mentioned in my comment. Most countries still do testing for everyone and encourage it, many countries do tests at schools for children. Sweden is now only testing unvaccinated people that show symptoms and doesn’t do testing for school going children. Our world in data isn’t a good source for anything out of context. Same goes for vaccine coverage you can see countries with 90%> vaccination coverage but a limited scope or eligibility whilst other countries with a far wider eligibility criteria have lower coverage. And with the booster shots things get even more complicated. You can’t compare apples with oranges…
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Interesting! Do you know when (about) this change happened? In the U.S. we only do testing (normally) for people who feel symptoms and go to get tested, so the lack of testing for school going children didn't register with me as unusual. Do most European countries require testing for school going children? Looking into this, it appears that Sweden has recently backtracked on that change, so it will be interesting to see what kind of uptick we see in the next week or so! https://news.trust.org/item/20211117120236-6wk93 https://news.trust.org/item/20211117120236-6wk93
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    I don’t know about the US, I live in the UK which reports all testing including the at home self reported LF test results. I don’t think that our world in data being a rubbish data source on its own is a new thing (any data source is rubbish without context), even in the beginning of the pandemic you had major discrepancies. Perhaps other than for a short time when everyone was basically doing mass testing during the initial lockdown period around mid 2020 but pretty much since then and especially since the vaccine was rolled out every country has been doing their own thing. Just to put things into perspective for the past month the UK averaged about 900K tests per day, Sweden averaged about 15,000… even if you account for Sweden having about 6.5 times fewer people it’s still a drastic difference. And whilst not everyone went as nuts as the UK, Italy is still doing about half a million tests a day. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-per-day?time=2021-10-19..latest&country=GBR~BEL~DNK~FRA~IRL~ITA~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-covid-19-tests-...

tinus_hn 5y ago

> So this is still pushing the narrative that Sweden was right to not enforce a lockdown, which can easily be used to push the narrative that the looming lockdowns across Europe aren’t needed or won’t help. So is this an ‘unwanted’ narrative?