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It's not misleading. Sweden's "peers" are all rich western countries, because there's nothing different about the Nordics that a virus would care about. That's

It's not misleading. Sweden's "peers" are all rich western countries, because there's nothing different about the Nordics that a virus would care about. That's why he ridicules this illogical form of obfuscation by pro-maskers/pro-lockdowners: it's just obviously nonsense on its face but it's the only thing left they can think of, so the blind insistence that everyone ignore data proving them wrong remains. "Unlike Sweden, most of them reached a threshold where further spread of the disease would mean hospitals exceed capacity" No they didn't. Epidemiologists and their models claimed such thresholds would be reached but those models were wrong about everything. It never actually happened. Look at Switzerland for an obvious counter example. Lockdowns happened, then they didn't, but hospitals never went above 80% utilization no matter what. Or at the UK. Freedom day came and the experts said it was an unethical experiment on the entire world because cases would surely soar. They dropped dramatically and immediately. "It's simply incorrect to use the number of deaths as the single measure of effectiveness of lockdowns" Reducing that one number was the entire justification for lockdowns! Now it's "simply incorrect" to observe that there is no link between them. Absurd.

spupe 4y ago
> It's not misleading. Sweden's "peers" are all rich western countries, because there's nothing different about the Nordics that a virus would care about. Sweden's GDP per capita is more than double of Portugal and 40% bigger than Italy, two countries prominently noted in his analysis. There are two huge factors here other than wealth that are vastly different between Scandinavian countries and the rest of Europe: socialization patterns and weather, with both tending to make the virus way less likely to spread in the North. > Epidemiologists and their models claimed such thresholds would be reached but those models were wrong about everything. It never actually happened. Italy's healthcare system was overwhelmed early on in the epidemic, causing a ton of deaths, and hospitals all over the world approached 100% ICU capacity at several points in the last two years. I don't know where you pulled your numbers from, but they are wrong, and so is your conclusion. >> "It's simply incorrect to use the number of deaths as the single measure of effectiveness of lockdowns" > Reducing that one number was the entire justification for lockdowns! Now it's "simply incorrect" to observe that there is no link between them. Absurd. It's basic logic: if we had to use lockdowns in the most extreme cases where hospitals were reaching capacity, then these countries would have experienced a higher death rate regardless of what they did. The question is whether the lockdowns had any effect on easing the burdens in the hospitals or not, but you cannot compare Portugal with Sweden and say "oh hey, more people died in Portugal and they did a lockdown, therefore lockdowns are bad/useless".
- native_samples 4y ago
  "Sweden's GDP per capita is more than double of Portugal" You're still scrabbling about to try and hide this with cherry picking. There's no scientifically valid reason to only compare Sweden with Norway, or Portugal, or Italy. That's why the blog post shows it relative to all European countries (and they could have included the USA, Canada etc too). Moreover you have no scientific or biological basis to claim that GDP is the reason lockdowns weren't necessary in Sweden. No epidemiologist ever claimed some GDP dependence existed when justifying the policy nor have they done since. "Italy's healthcare system was overwhelmed early on in the epidemic" No, it wasn't. I kept waiting for news reports to switch from "hospitals are nearly full" to "hospitals are full and people are queuing outside" but it never happened actually (except maybe for one or two very small local hospitals? even then it's unclear). Certainly the whole of Italy was never overwhelmed. That was the impression the press wanted to give but if you watched carefully it wasn't the case. "hospitals all over the world approached 100% ICU capacity at several points in the last two years" Hospitals are always approaching 100% utilization because ICU capacity is flexible (it's partly a designation related to staffing levels), and having unused capacity is wasteful. Again, this is a talking point that was spun to try and justify the catastrophic policies, but they aren't valid. Hospitals weren't actually overloaded and especially not in Sweden which didn't bother with most of the mitigations. "It's basic logic: if we had to use lockdowns in the most extreme cases where hospitals were reaching capacity, then these countries would have experienced a higher death rate regardless of what they did." Huh? There's nothing logical about what you just wrote. The whole point is that we did not have to use lockdowns because they don't do anything, and comparing places that used them vs places that didn't (not just Portugal) shows this clearly. It's logical that lockdowns don't work. SARS-CoV-2 spreads like a gas and can hang in the air for hours. Lockdowns didn't stop people interacting nor did it stop airflows. SARS-1 could spread through drainage pipes in apartment buildings, it literally didn't matter if nobody left their room, they'd still be exposed. And of course even in lockdowns people still had to pass through places recently vacated by the sick, like shops, apartment building lobbies etc. The justification for lockdown was the droplet model of spread, which is wrong.
  - spupe 4y ago
    > You're still scrabbling about to try and hide this with cherry picking. There's no scientifically valid reason to only compare Sweden with Norway, or Portugal, or Italy. That's why the blog post shows it relative to all European countries (and they could have included the USA, Canada etc too). I'm sorry but this is my main point, and it is crystal clear. I'm not sure why it's eluding you. No, you cannot compare highly disparate countries like that. Are you willing to compare China and Vietnam with Sweden too? Or maybe we should say that Norway, which did impose a lockdown, was the model to be followed in Europe? Cherry-picking is taking data you know is not appropriate and using it, I'm arguing for the opposite here. There is of course subjectivity involved, but you absolutely cannot claim that an imagined "default" (ie, all European countries) is unbiased or automatically valid. The best comparison for Sweden for most metrics, not only COVID, is among Scandinavian countries. > Hospitals are always approaching 100% utilization because ICU capacity is flexible (it's partly a designation related to staffing levels), and having unused capacity is wasteful. Again, this is a talking point that was spun to try and justify the catastrophic policies, but they aren't valid. Hospitals weren't actually overloaded and especially not in Sweden which didn't bother with most of the mitigations. You are absolutely wrong in your claims about hospitals. A non-exhaustive list of countries where the healthcare system neared collapse at rates much different than baseline: [1][2][3][4]. Your point about Sweden is literally what I wrote before, which is that Sweden did not face this problem, and therefore never had the same issues as other countries that issued lockdowns. The jury is still out about the effects of the lockdowns. In order to find out, we have to be intellectually honest, which in my opinion is the opposite of what the author of this piece is doing. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/europe/12italy-coronavirus-health-care.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/europe/12italy-coro... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/world/europe/portugal-coronavirus-surge-hospitals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/world/europe/portugal-cor... [3] https://www.thelocal.es/20200329/where-in-spain-hospitals-are-on-the-brink-of-being-overwhelmed/ https://www.thelocal.es/20200329/where-in-spain-hospitals-ar... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/americas/virus-brazil-bolsonaro.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/americas/virus-braz...

spupe 4y ago

> It's not misleading. Sweden's "peers" are all rich western countries, because there's nothing different about the Nordics that a virus would care about. Sweden's GDP per capita is more than double of Portugal and 40% bigger than Italy, two countries prominently noted in his analysis. There are two huge factors here other than wealth that are vastly different between Scandinavian countries and the rest of Europe: socialization patterns and weather, with both tending to make the virus way less likely to spread in the North. > Epidemiologists and their models claimed such thresholds would be reached but those models were wrong about everything. It never actually happened. Italy's healthcare system was overwhelmed early on in the epidemic, causing a ton of deaths, and hospitals all over the world approached 100% ICU capacity at several points in the last two years. I don't know where you pulled your numbers from, but they are wrong, and so is your conclusion. >> "It's simply incorrect to use the number of deaths as the single measure of effectiveness of lockdowns" > Reducing that one number was the entire justification for lockdowns! Now it's "simply incorrect" to observe that there is no link between them. Absurd. It's basic logic: if we had to use lockdowns in the most extreme cases where hospitals were reaching capacity, then these countries would have experienced a higher death rate regardless of what they did. The question is whether the lockdowns had any effect on easing the burdens in the hospitals or not, but you cannot compare Portugal with Sweden and say "oh hey, more people died in Portugal and they did a lockdown, therefore lockdowns are bad/useless".

native_samples 4y ago
"Sweden's GDP per capita is more than double of Portugal" You're still scrabbling about to try and hide this with cherry picking. There's no scientifically valid reason to only compare Sweden with Norway, or Portugal, or Italy. That's why the blog post shows it relative to all European countries (and they could have included the USA, Canada etc too). Moreover you have no scientific or biological basis to claim that GDP is the reason lockdowns weren't necessary in Sweden. No epidemiologist ever claimed some GDP dependence existed when justifying the policy nor have they done since. "Italy's healthcare system was overwhelmed early on in the epidemic" No, it wasn't. I kept waiting for news reports to switch from "hospitals are nearly full" to "hospitals are full and people are queuing outside" but it never happened actually (except maybe for one or two very small local hospitals? even then it's unclear). Certainly the whole of Italy was never overwhelmed. That was the impression the press wanted to give but if you watched carefully it wasn't the case. "hospitals all over the world approached 100% ICU capacity at several points in the last two years" Hospitals are always approaching 100% utilization because ICU capacity is flexible (it's partly a designation related to staffing levels), and having unused capacity is wasteful. Again, this is a talking point that was spun to try and justify the catastrophic policies, but they aren't valid. Hospitals weren't actually overloaded and especially not in Sweden which didn't bother with most of the mitigations. "It's basic logic: if we had to use lockdowns in the most extreme cases where hospitals were reaching capacity, then these countries would have experienced a higher death rate regardless of what they did." Huh? There's nothing logical about what you just wrote. The whole point is that we did not have to use lockdowns because they don't do anything, and comparing places that used them vs places that didn't (not just Portugal) shows this clearly. It's logical that lockdowns don't work. SARS-CoV-2 spreads like a gas and can hang in the air for hours. Lockdowns didn't stop people interacting nor did it stop airflows. SARS-1 could spread through drainage pipes in apartment buildings, it literally didn't matter if nobody left their room, they'd still be exposed. And of course even in lockdowns people still had to pass through places recently vacated by the sick, like shops, apartment building lobbies etc. The justification for lockdown was the droplet model of spread, which is wrong.
- spupe 4y ago
  > You're still scrabbling about to try and hide this with cherry picking. There's no scientifically valid reason to only compare Sweden with Norway, or Portugal, or Italy. That's why the blog post shows it relative to all European countries (and they could have included the USA, Canada etc too). I'm sorry but this is my main point, and it is crystal clear. I'm not sure why it's eluding you. No, you cannot compare highly disparate countries like that. Are you willing to compare China and Vietnam with Sweden too? Or maybe we should say that Norway, which did impose a lockdown, was the model to be followed in Europe? Cherry-picking is taking data you know is not appropriate and using it, I'm arguing for the opposite here. There is of course subjectivity involved, but you absolutely cannot claim that an imagined "default" (ie, all European countries) is unbiased or automatically valid. The best comparison for Sweden for most metrics, not only COVID, is among Scandinavian countries. > Hospitals are always approaching 100% utilization because ICU capacity is flexible (it's partly a designation related to staffing levels), and having unused capacity is wasteful. Again, this is a talking point that was spun to try and justify the catastrophic policies, but they aren't valid. Hospitals weren't actually overloaded and especially not in Sweden which didn't bother with most of the mitigations. You are absolutely wrong in your claims about hospitals. A non-exhaustive list of countries where the healthcare system neared collapse at rates much different than baseline: [1][2][3][4]. Your point about Sweden is literally what I wrote before, which is that Sweden did not face this problem, and therefore never had the same issues as other countries that issued lockdowns. The jury is still out about the effects of the lockdowns. In order to find out, we have to be intellectually honest, which in my opinion is the opposite of what the author of this piece is doing. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/europe/12italy-coronavirus-health-care.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/europe/12italy-coro... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/world/europe/portugal-coronavirus-surge-hospitals.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/world/europe/portugal-cor... [3] https://www.thelocal.es/20200329/where-in-spain-hospitals-are-on-the-brink-of-being-overwhelmed/ https://www.thelocal.es/20200329/where-in-spain-hospitals-ar... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/americas/virus-brazil-bolsonaro.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/world/americas/virus-braz...