4 ms·

20k deaths for a population of 10M in Sweden is 0.2% right? USA has had just under 1M deaths for 330M people or closer to 0.3%. I'm not saying that Sweden did

20k deaths for a population of 10M in Sweden is 0.2% right? USA has had just under 1M deaths for 330M people or closer to 0.3%. I'm not saying that Sweden did the totally right 100% perfect thing. But it seems to have done much less catastrophically horrible than many predicted at least as far as I can see.

ianbooker 5y ago
It would be a better benchmark to compare Sweden with Denmark, since societies and health care capabilities are more alike.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Since I looked it up out of curiousity: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... deaths per million inhabitants: Sweden: 1,755.2 Denmark: 924.97 Finland: 521.89 Norway: 405.58
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    Maybe add Netherlands and Germany ... And in DK we are now doing 20-50 corona dead pr. day - leaving us at 365*20-50 / 5.5 at 1,327 - 3.318 added for this year.
  - sampo 5y ago
    There's a recent large study in The Lancet, where they estimate 2020-2021 excess mortality, and compare these to reported Covid19 deaths. The study covers a large number of countries, but here I only look at your four. excess excess/reported excess/(1 million) Denmark: 10 400 308% 1784 Finland: 8780 503% 1587 Norway: 742 57% 138 Sweden: 18 100 118% 1719 Either the study methodology to estimate excess mortality has some problems with Denmark and Finland. Or, if the study is correct, the official numbers from Finland and Denmark are bad in estimating their own Covid19 deaths: Denmark underestimating by 3x, Finland underestimating by 5x. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Direct link to results table: https://www.thelancet.com/action/showFullTableHTML?isHtml=true&tableId=tbl1&pii=S0140-6736%2821%2902796-3 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showFullTableHTML?isHtml=tr...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Lewton 5y ago
      Denmark tested way more than any other country in the world. They most likely have the most accurate picture of how many people actually died with covid I'd strongly question their method of calculating excess mortality, look at denmark on https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps and compare it to other countries
    - specialist 5y ago
      Agree on using excess deaths data. Also, it'll be years before knockoff effects can be more fully assessed.
    - jltsiren 5y ago
      I would assume methodological flaws. Just by looking at the number of authors and the publication date, the authors simply did not have enough time to control for area-specific factors for 191 countries and 252 subnational units. Finland reported 53949 deaths from all causes in 2019, 55488 deaths in 2020, and 57343 deaths in 2021. (The figure for 2021 is preliminary.) The total increase from the 2019 level in 2020-2021 is ~5000 deaths, and a large part of that is explained by aging population.
- timr 5y ago
  "Better" in the sense that it makes them look worse, and some people prefer this version of events? Perhaps. But if you compare across all of Europe by deaths per capita, they're near the best performers on the list (#13; #12 in continental Europe), and the only reason those specific countries look better is because they're the top three in continental Europe (they're also smaller countries; see below): https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat... In particular, the UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Portugal all did worse, despite far more significant impositions on society. It's also important to know that worldwide, there's a clear dependence of per-capita deaths on population (greater population -> greater deaths per capita): https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality (second plot; deaths per 100k population tab) And that Denmark has a population of ~5.8M, Norway 5.4M, and Sweden 10.4M. This alone should make you question any simple narrative involving interventions and outcome.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Societies and health care aren’t as similar as one might think in the Nordics. Sweden is surprisingly diverse, unequal, urbanized etc. It’s more “continental” than its neighbors in a lot of ways.
melling 5y ago
I like what you’re doing here. Take a country like the United States with a horrible outcome and use them for comparison. More people died after vaccines than before in the United States. How does that happen? One thing is absolutely clear: 1 million Americans never needed to die from coronavirus.
- throwaway111023 5y ago
- pmorici 5y ago
  It's not clear to me the total deaths number is accurate in the US because the government was reimbursing hospitals for COVID treatment and paying for people's funerals who "died of covid". It incentivized people to list the cause of death as COVID even when covid didn't play a role in the death or was at best incidental to it. Anecdotally this happened with the father of a friend of mine. He had cancer since before the pandemic and it became terminal after exhausting treatment options last year. As his condition deteriorated, they planned to move him to hospice, did a routine covid test and found he was positive. He died a few days later. He was going to die of cancer in days no matter what. He is counted among the million US covid deaths and the US government paid for a portion of the cost of the funeral. What percentage of that million are cases like this? I don't know, but it is pretty clear it wasn't uncommon and in the context of your original comment I wouldn't call cases like this preventable deaths.
  - jmull 5y ago
    Look up excess deaths
    - refurb 5y ago
      You act like excess deaths is an easy analysis, but deaths vary significantly year or year. What you baseline are makes a big difference. And considering we’re not even through the epidemic it seems like it’s a bit early to call winners and losers.
lament76 5y ago
The US has like 5 times the obesity rate and obesity is a relatively strong predictor of adverse outcomes with C19.

ianbooker 5y ago

It would be a better benchmark to compare Sweden with Denmark, since societies and health care capabilities are more alike.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Since I looked it up out of curiousity: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... deaths per million inhabitants: Sweden: 1,755.2 Denmark: 924.97 Finland: 521.89 Norway: 405.58
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  Maybe add Netherlands and Germany ... And in DK we are now doing 20-50 corona dead pr. day - leaving us at 365*20-50 / 5.5 at 1,327 - 3.318 added for this year.
- sampo 5y ago
  There's a recent large study in The Lancet, where they estimate 2020-2021 excess mortality, and compare these to reported Covid19 deaths. The study covers a large number of countries, but here I only look at your four. excess excess/reported excess/(1 million) Denmark: 10 400 308% 1784 Finland: 8780 503% 1587 Norway: 742 57% 138 Sweden: 18 100 118% 1719 Either the study methodology to estimate excess mortality has some problems with Denmark and Finland. Or, if the study is correct, the official numbers from Finland and Denmark are bad in estimating their own Covid19 deaths: Denmark underestimating by 3x, Finland underestimating by 5x. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02796-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... Direct link to results table: https://www.thelancet.com/action/showFullTableHTML?isHtml=true&tableId=tbl1&pii=S0140-6736%2821%2902796-3 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showFullTableHTML?isHtml=tr...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Lewton 5y ago
    Denmark tested way more than any other country in the world. They most likely have the most accurate picture of how many people actually died with covid I'd strongly question their method of calculating excess mortality, look at denmark on https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps and compare it to other countries
  - specialist 5y ago
    Agree on using excess deaths data. Also, it'll be years before knockoff effects can be more fully assessed.
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    I would assume methodological flaws. Just by looking at the number of authors and the publication date, the authors simply did not have enough time to control for area-specific factors for 191 countries and 252 subnational units. Finland reported 53949 deaths from all causes in 2019, 55488 deaths in 2020, and 57343 deaths in 2021. (The figure for 2021 is preliminary.) The total increase from the 2019 level in 2020-2021 is ~5000 deaths, and a large part of that is explained by aging population.
timr 5y ago
"Better" in the sense that it makes them look worse, and some people prefer this version of events? Perhaps. But if you compare across all of Europe by deaths per capita, they're near the best performers on the list (#13; #12 in continental Europe), and the only reason those specific countries look better is because they're the top three in continental Europe (they're also smaller countries; see below): https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat... In particular, the UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Portugal all did worse, despite far more significant impositions on society. It's also important to know that worldwide, there's a clear dependence of per-capita deaths on population (greater population -> greater deaths per capita): https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality (second plot; deaths per 100k population tab) And that Denmark has a population of ~5.8M, Norway 5.4M, and Sweden 10.4M. This alone should make you question any simple narrative involving interventions and outcome.
alkonaut 5y ago
Societies and health care aren’t as similar as one might think in the Nordics. Sweden is surprisingly diverse, unequal, urbanized etc. It’s more “continental” than its neighbors in a lot of ways.

melling 5y ago

I like what you’re doing here. Take a country like the United States with a horrible outcome and use them for comparison. More people died after vaccines than before in the United States. How does that happen? One thing is absolutely clear: 1 million Americans never needed to die from coronavirus.

throwaway111023 5y ago
pmorici 5y ago
It's not clear to me the total deaths number is accurate in the US because the government was reimbursing hospitals for COVID treatment and paying for people's funerals who "died of covid". It incentivized people to list the cause of death as COVID even when covid didn't play a role in the death or was at best incidental to it. Anecdotally this happened with the father of a friend of mine. He had cancer since before the pandemic and it became terminal after exhausting treatment options last year. As his condition deteriorated, they planned to move him to hospice, did a routine covid test and found he was positive. He died a few days later. He was going to die of cancer in days no matter what. He is counted among the million US covid deaths and the US government paid for a portion of the cost of the funeral. What percentage of that million are cases like this? I don't know, but it is pretty clear it wasn't uncommon and in the context of your original comment I wouldn't call cases like this preventable deaths.
- jmull 5y ago
  Look up excess deaths
  - refurb 5y ago
    You act like excess deaths is an easy analysis, but deaths vary significantly year or year. What you baseline are makes a big difference. And considering we’re not even through the epidemic it seems like it’s a bit early to call winners and losers.

lament76 5y ago

The US has like 5 times the obesity rate and obesity is a relatively strong predictor of adverse outcomes with C19.