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Sweden did worse than the other Scandinavian countries that enacted stricter Covid restrictions, including lockdowns. Sweden had roughly 5-7x as many deaths pe

Sweden did worse than the other Scandinavian countries that enacted stricter Covid restrictions, including lockdowns. Sweden had roughly 5-7x as many deaths per capita as its immediate neighbors of Norway and Finland. Germany had less deaths per capita as well: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

jseban 5y ago
And what is expected deaths per capita? That relative measure is irrelevant unless you compare it to some kind of normal death rate in the past. Are you expecting deaths per capita to drastically drop and be kept much lower from 2020 and forward, compared to the past?
mythrwy 5y ago
I'll be curious to know what these numbers are in 5 years.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tomohawk 5y ago
What is this obsession with limiting comparison of Sweden with "other scandanavian countries"? Is there some sort of special risk factor that only applies to scandanavia? Does COVID know what people look like? Why not compare stats of major metro areas with other similar metro areas in the world?
- mijamo 5y ago
  Because the density of the metro areas are similar. Stockholm is not comparable to Paris or London when it comes to density for instance. Culture is also very similar between Scandinavian countries and much different from western Europe, with people much more isolated (which is tough to adjust to for immigrants there actually).
  - pigeonhole123 5y ago
    People work in offices and go to shops in Scandinavia too. Maybe compare to the dozens of US states with lower population density than Sweden?
  - vcdimension 5y ago
    Sweden has much higher ethnic & cultural diversity than Norway & Finland, and hence more people passing through it's borders potentially bringing in new infections from abroad. It also has fewer hospital beds per population, and higher population density. All these factors and more need to be taken into account when doing country comparisons. We won't really know how much effect the difference in policies had until someone has done a proper causal analysis using some regression model or other econometric technique. I got the stats from here: https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/norway.sweden/demographics https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/norway.sweden/de...
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  For the same reason that their vaccination rates and wealth and gini coefficients and all types of other metrics closely resemble each other more than some random country like Ethiopia or Peru.
  - pigeonhole123 5y ago
    We’re talking about Germany and France. Right across the water. Sweden had lower deaths in earlier years than their neighboring countries and this was a reversion to the mean. Speaking as a Norwegian people in this country like to look smart but they’re not getting the last laugh this time.
- notahacker 5y ago
  Because they have similar risk factors, which are much, much lower than the other countries people are noting Sweden appeared to have fared better than. The UK, which imported a lot more cases, has more crowded commuter trains and bars and probably a less sensible population tried the Swedish strategy for a few weeks, but gave up because the deaths were mounting.
- jseban 5y ago
  Yeah and avoiding looking at the statistics for mortality to see if it's actually higher than usual, which it isn't. I looked at the statistics of mortality for sweden, 2020 was high but well within standard deviation, and there were several more deadly years in recent history, 2008 and much more deadly years in the 1990s, without this ever even making headlines. What stood out the most in the statistics, actually, was that 2019 had an unusually low death rates, if you add up 2020 and 2019 they basically even out to an average death rate. I bet mortality has been abnormally low during 2021 so now we have a bunch of dry tinder again which will cause another "crisis" and lockdown as soon as weather is cold and viruses making the rounds again. Never ending cycle of panicking when old people die.
- jseban 5y ago
  It's always cherry picking to deliberately misinterpret statistics to make the most dramatic headline, it has been during the whole pandemic. Nobody is even trying to make accurate and relevant conclusions with the numbers, quite the opposite it's like a sport now who can lie the most with statistics.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
A lot of that can be attributed to a relatively huge early spike in deaths at nursing homes. Rightly, Sweden decided it was a bad idea to do go about business as usual at nursing homes. After this, their relative difference to other Scandinavian countries is much smaller.
- jseban 5y ago
  And are those spikes in deaths at nursing homes not normal? Is that not how things always and usually work? Do people at nursing homes not die mostly in the winter and flu season, since forever? What are the statistics of excess mortality, is it higher than usual or not. Old people die. I read headlines in the papers "10 people have died since moving into a nursing home" That's what nursing homes are for. Everyone who moves into a nursing home dies...
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    The average death rate for people in nursing homes for an entire year wasn't even as high as the death rate was for just a few week period: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-nursinghome/swedish-watchdog-finds-serious-failures-in-covid-care-at-nursing-homes-idUSKBN2841FN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden... Almost ~3200 people died in nursing homes in a couple of months at the beginning of the pandemic. There's ~95k people in nursing homes. That's 3.3%... These deaths still account for ~1/5th of all Sweden's covid deaths. Hence, when people say 5x as many people died in Sweden - a full 1x of that is from the early nursing home no-strategy.
    - jseban 5y ago
      Doesn't say anything, death rates are not constant, it always varies a lot ever year by year. Did 2020 have excessive mortality per capita compared to other years or not? No it didn't. It doesn't matter if you find some anecdote. Everyone knows death rate was high in peak covid. As it always is in peak flu season, so what, the year was well within standard deviation
tomp 5y ago
This is often repeated fake news. Take a look at this graph - cumulative deaths since, I don't know, start of 2021 or something. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-03-15..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~DNK~FIN~NOR~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Sweden is just barely worse than other Scandinavian countries (definitely not 5-7x). Germany is 50-100% worse than Sweden. So while you might use "total deaths" as an argument that the Swedish "no lockdowns" strategy was worse at the beginning of the pandemic, it's clearly superior now.
- thisiszilff 5y ago
  The linked graph shows Sweden at 7x norway's rate, 5x finland's rate and 3x denmarks rate. Am I reading that right? How are you concluding that Sweden's strategy was clearly superior?
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  To paraphrase you: it was great to have all those vulnerable people in care homes die immediately from Covid in 2020 since it avoids a few of them dying in 2021. You realise how nonsensical (and callous) that sounds?

jseban 5y ago

And what is expected deaths per capita? That relative measure is irrelevant unless you compare it to some kind of normal death rate in the past. Are you expecting deaths per capita to drastically drop and be kept much lower from 2020 and forward, compared to the past?

mythrwy 5y ago

I'll be curious to know what these numbers are in 5 years.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tomohawk 5y ago

What is this obsession with limiting comparison of Sweden with "other scandanavian countries"? Is there some sort of special risk factor that only applies to scandanavia? Does COVID know what people look like? Why not compare stats of major metro areas with other similar metro areas in the world?

mijamo 5y ago
Because the density of the metro areas are similar. Stockholm is not comparable to Paris or London when it comes to density for instance. Culture is also very similar between Scandinavian countries and much different from western Europe, with people much more isolated (which is tough to adjust to for immigrants there actually).
- pigeonhole123 5y ago
  People work in offices and go to shops in Scandinavia too. Maybe compare to the dozens of US states with lower population density than Sweden?
- vcdimension 5y ago
  Sweden has much higher ethnic & cultural diversity than Norway & Finland, and hence more people passing through it's borders potentially bringing in new infections from abroad. It also has fewer hospital beds per population, and higher population density. All these factors and more need to be taken into account when doing country comparisons. We won't really know how much effect the difference in policies had until someone has done a proper causal analysis using some regression model or other econometric technique. I got the stats from here: https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/norway.sweden/demographics https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/norway.sweden/de...
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
For the same reason that their vaccination rates and wealth and gini coefficients and all types of other metrics closely resemble each other more than some random country like Ethiopia or Peru.
- pigeonhole123 5y ago
  We’re talking about Germany and France. Right across the water. Sweden had lower deaths in earlier years than their neighboring countries and this was a reversion to the mean. Speaking as a Norwegian people in this country like to look smart but they’re not getting the last laugh this time.
notahacker 5y ago
Because they have similar risk factors, which are much, much lower than the other countries people are noting Sweden appeared to have fared better than. The UK, which imported a lot more cases, has more crowded commuter trains and bars and probably a less sensible population tried the Swedish strategy for a few weeks, but gave up because the deaths were mounting.
jseban 5y ago
Yeah and avoiding looking at the statistics for mortality to see if it's actually higher than usual, which it isn't. I looked at the statistics of mortality for sweden, 2020 was high but well within standard deviation, and there were several more deadly years in recent history, 2008 and much more deadly years in the 1990s, without this ever even making headlines. What stood out the most in the statistics, actually, was that 2019 had an unusually low death rates, if you add up 2020 and 2019 they basically even out to an average death rate. I bet mortality has been abnormally low during 2021 so now we have a bunch of dry tinder again which will cause another "crisis" and lockdown as soon as weather is cold and viruses making the rounds again. Never ending cycle of panicking when old people die.
jseban 5y ago
It's always cherry picking to deliberately misinterpret statistics to make the most dramatic headline, it has been during the whole pandemic. Nobody is even trying to make accurate and relevant conclusions with the numbers, quite the opposite it's like a sport now who can lie the most with statistics.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

A lot of that can be attributed to a relatively huge early spike in deaths at nursing homes. Rightly, Sweden decided it was a bad idea to do go about business as usual at nursing homes. After this, their relative difference to other Scandinavian countries is much smaller.

jseban 5y ago
And are those spikes in deaths at nursing homes not normal? Is that not how things always and usually work? Do people at nursing homes not die mostly in the winter and flu season, since forever? What are the statistics of excess mortality, is it higher than usual or not. Old people die. I read headlines in the papers "10 people have died since moving into a nursing home" That's what nursing homes are for. Everyone who moves into a nursing home dies...
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  The average death rate for people in nursing homes for an entire year wasn't even as high as the death rate was for just a few week period: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-nursinghome/swedish-watchdog-finds-serious-failures-in-covid-care-at-nursing-homes-idUSKBN2841FN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden... Almost ~3200 people died in nursing homes in a couple of months at the beginning of the pandemic. There's ~95k people in nursing homes. That's 3.3%... These deaths still account for ~1/5th of all Sweden's covid deaths. Hence, when people say 5x as many people died in Sweden - a full 1x of that is from the early nursing home no-strategy.
  - jseban 5y ago
    Doesn't say anything, death rates are not constant, it always varies a lot ever year by year. Did 2020 have excessive mortality per capita compared to other years or not? No it didn't. It doesn't matter if you find some anecdote. Everyone knows death rate was high in peak covid. As it always is in peak flu season, so what, the year was well within standard deviation

tomp 5y ago

This is often repeated fake news. Take a look at this graph - cumulative deaths since, I don't know, start of 2021 or something. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-03-15..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=SWE~DNK~FIN~NOR~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... Sweden is just barely worse than other Scandinavian countries (definitely not 5-7x). Germany is 50-100% worse than Sweden. So while you might use "total deaths" as an argument that the Swedish "no lockdowns" strategy was worse at the beginning of the pandemic, it's clearly superior now.

thisiszilff 5y ago
The linked graph shows Sweden at 7x norway's rate, 5x finland's rate and 3x denmarks rate. Am I reading that right? How are you concluding that Sweden's strategy was clearly superior?
MagnumOpus 5y ago
To paraphrase you: it was great to have all those vulnerable people in care homes die immediately from Covid in 2020 since it avoids a few of them dying in 2021. You realise how nonsensical (and callous) that sounds?