[HN Gopher] Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to ...
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Sweden: higher Covid-19 death rate while failing to collect on
economic gains
Author : vonmoltke
Score : 110 points
Date : 2020-07-07 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| h3ll0k4ll3 wrote:
| Disclaimer. I am Swedish.
|
| The amount of deaths in Sweden from Covid19 have been very high
| and many of the deaths has been completely unnecessary. This is
| nothing else than a cruel state sponsored murder on parts of the
| elderly population. Its also likely that the actual death toll is
| significantly higher than reported since many of the elderly
| dying at institutions was never tested for Covid19 In-fact at
| many regions of Sweden autopsies has been suspended during parts
| of the spring. The recommended treatment for these elderly has
| been injection of morphine (yes to elders with breathing
| difficulties).
|
| There are stories of staff sometimes opening the windows while
| elderly confined to their rooms grasping for air. Family was not
| allowed to visit but staff was moving without protection gear
| between the rooms of sick and healthy ( because in Sweden the
| government early decided that masks are ineffective ways of
| protection ). Its still the official stance of Sweden that masks
| does not help against Covid19. But apparently sneasing in your
| armpit and washing your hands helps. In the beginning this was
| applied also at the institutions for the elderly. Some heroes
| objected and bought gear and significantly lowered the death rate
| early on. Others followed the advice from the "experts" as a good
| swede does. And the result sometimes was 50-75% dead in the total
| population of residents at the care facilities.
|
| The Architect behind these state sponsored acts of murder is a
| man called Anders Tegnell. And you will be surprised to learn
| that this is the second time this very dangerous narcissist has
| been causing suffering and deaths in Sweden. Back in 2009 during
| H1N1 influenza (swine-flue) he was the person responsible for the
| purchasing and injecting the unsafe Pandemrix vaccine in the
| Swedish population as head of the vaccine department. Today it
| has amounted to a total of 600 then children and youths
| developing narcolepsy. He spent the following years defending the
| government against the victims who was seeking economic indemnity
| from the Swedish state medical insurance. When the Swedish
| newspaper Svenska Dagbladet later acquired emails of this mater
| he was caught on record emailing that the goverment agency he was
| working for at the time "was at a point of no return
| politically".
|
| He was then recruited as the State Epidemiologist of the Public
| Health Agency of Sweden in 2013 as a thank you for his service.
| Now in 2020 he is directly responsible for the deaths of about
| 5500 swedes. You could argue that he is also responsible for some
| of the deaths in neighboring countries where there have been
| imported cases from Sweden.
|
| This person already before the beginning of 2020 had caused 600
| direct cases of mistreatment can now add 5500 deaths to his CV.
| And likely 1000s of people with lung-damages, muscle damaged and
| other severe trauma damage from intensive care. There are also
| reports of increased diabetes onset among Covid19 survivors and
| the ME/CFS that will likely be the result for many who got the
| disease.
|
| If you are interested of the numbers and statistics you can check
| https://c19.se/ it has deaths and infected on a regional level.
| It can be helpful to understand that the city of Stockholm has
| had 2344 officially dead and 21490 official cases among its
| population of 975904. Tests results of antibodies have been
| reported in ranges from about 10% - 17%. But since testing was
| not allowed for most people until very recently the numbers can
| be either spot on or very off.
| mettamage wrote:
| Edit: I'm letting my original comment stand as it shows how I was
| subtly misinformed regarding the situation of Sweden. I don't
| think I'd be the only one.
|
| Wait, with all due respect, 5420 deaths on 10 million people? On
| a country left completely unchecked? That doesn't sound like the
| impending doom I thought the virus would bring.
|
| I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1% to
| 2% and a bigger spreading rate that was bigger than 1, if no
| measures were taken. So, I'd expect between 100,000 to 200,000 to
| have died. I'm really happy that didn't happen. It also makes me
| curious as to why. Is it because of Sweden's demographics (people
| living alone)? Or is it because the virus isn't as deadly as we
| think it is?
|
| How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that
| the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean
| 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths.
|
| It's awful what happened, but the highest flu season in The
| Netherlands, for example, killed an estimated 9444 people [1] on
| 17,280,000 people, which is slightly higher than what the Swedes
| had to go through now (also rounded to 0.05%). I know that the
| novel coronavirus is not a flu, but if this is it, then well,
| I've seen worse, apparently.
|
| I know the virus isn't done, but it had months to roam free in
| Sweden. One would expect it would double up every 5 days in terms
| of how many people would be infected.
|
| Edit: they did need to maintain social distance apparently. I
| wouldn't call that "doing nothing". Sure a lot more can be done,
| but I feel the media are framing the Swedes a bit inaccurately.
| Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people, ~0.1%
| is getting truly uncomfortable)
|
| [1] In Dutch, unfortunately: https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-
| sterftecijfers-nederland
| mtgp1000 wrote:
| Handwashing practices, physical greetings (kissing in some
| cultures), sharing of eating utensils, personal space, city
| density; There's no reason to expect R0 values to be the same
| all over the world.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Our treatment of race is quite sensical given that it's
| misuse in the past has lead to totally nonsensical slaughter
| and destruction.
| booboolayla wrote:
| "Sensical, but with a caveat"
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| > prevents scientists from exploring the possibility that R0
| values are culturally dependent
|
| This is just not true at all. Let's call a spade a spade: you
| are abusing fears about COVID-19 to take a political shot
| against antiracists. The Lancet published "Ethnicity and
| COVID-19: an urgent public health research priority" in
| April: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS
| 0140-6...
|
| It is true that scientists can't expect to publish about the
| _racial_ aspects of coronavirus spread, for the same reasons
| they couldn't publish about coronavirus differences between
| wizards and Muggles. Humans only have one race.
| capableweb wrote:
| > I thought the novel corona virus had a death rate of about 1%
| to 2%
|
| That's the guess at least. But we don't know. The argument for
| being careful about covid-19 isn't because we know it's more
| dangerous than other things, it's because we don't know.
|
| It's still novel, we've only been tracking it since last
| December. The flu been around for a long time. Maybe we'll live
| with covid-19 for a long time, or maybe we'll find a vaccine.
|
| As it seems right now, it's deadlier than the flu and we
| weren't really ready for it, so it caused a ripple effect of
| problems. No matter if a country implemented a quarantine or
| not, they took a lot of damage one way or another.
|
| It's too early to make any conclusions around this, time will
| tell what was the best way considering the circumstances
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| It's really deeply misleading to say that Sweden let the virus
| go "unchecked." Sweden didn't enforce a hard lockdown but
| strongly encouraged social distancing, mask wearing, staying at
| home, etc. Sweden did have a strong (if likely inadequate)
| national response to coronavirus. And Sweden was subject to EU-
| wide travel restrictions, including virtually no foreign
| tourism.
| mettamage wrote:
| I see, that's how I understood it. I never checked the media
| super carefully regarding the Swedes. But now I'm seeing that
| they did do stuff.
| swinglock wrote:
| False regarding mask wearing; wearing a mask has always been
| and is still strongly discouraged, instead one should only
| "stay home if feeling sick".
| basch wrote:
| If someone is feeling sick, are they encouraged to go out,
| but with a mask, elsewhere?
| swinglock wrote:
| I don't know. That's the policy. Only those that wear a
| mask in their profession should do so. Not otherwise,
| regardless of how you feel. Instead of using masks,
| Swedes stay home if the feel sick.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| It has not been running rampant in Sweden, because many
| individuals altered their behaviors as well. Which is to say,
| Sweden is nowhere close to herd immunity, so it stands to lose
| many more lives in the future as well. So far: it has lost many
| more lives per capita than its neighbors, and is economically
| worse off.
|
| There are also two other important reasons to have locked down
| early in the pandemic: - with time, we have already learned how
| to treat patients better and reduce mortality. This includes
| proning, dexamethasone and remdesivir which will reduce deaths.
| So exposing people to it in spring 2020 will produce very
| different mortality outcomes compared to fall or spring 2021 -
| We also have important therapeutic advances happening in
| monoclonal antibodies, and of course phase 3 trials of
| vaccines.
|
| I would bet that, with some luck, other European communities
| avoid ever accumulating the deaths Sweden did.
|
| Finally, it's more than deaths: many long-haul COVID patients
| are facing permanent disability and diminished capacity. The
| statistics aren't capturing this yet, but collectively, I think
| it was very foolish to have tried to push for herd immunity so
| early in a pandemic.
| nodamage wrote:
| Remember that IFR (infection fatality rate) is the (total
| number of deaths / total number of infections). You can't use
| 10 million as the denominator because not everyone in Sweden
| has actually been infected.
|
| An antibody study[1] indicated that 7.3% of Stockholm has been
| infected, but that number is 1) from April and 2) is going to
| be higher than average because Stockholm was harder hit than
| the rest of the country.
|
| [1] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/nyheter-och-
| press/nyhets...
| msbarnett wrote:
| > How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence
| that the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I
| mean 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths.
|
| Naive death rate is deaths/totally cases of infection, not
| deaths/total population. Most of Sweden never contracted covid
| in the first place.
|
| A first approximation of Sweden's covid death rate would be
| around ~7.4% to date.
| jariel wrote:
| "On a country left completely unchecked?" not unchecked. There
| were a lot of closures and measures taken. Just not the same as
| elsewhere.
|
| That would be almost 200 000 were it to be in America, and
| that's quite a lot of people to die in 3 or so months.
|
| More than Vietnam+Korean wars put together and those wars
| lasted years.
|
| So it's not a small number.
| Svip wrote:
| > Belgium seems to be way worse (9774 on 11,460,000 people,
| ~0.1% is getting truly uncomfortable)
|
| Belgium counts all suspected deaths as well, including those
| that have not been tested for COVID-19. Which means Belgium is
| the country closest matching their excess death with COVID-19
| fatalities. The Netherlands, for example, leaves about 50%
| unexplained due to their counting.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-the-challenge-
| of...
| lsllc wrote:
| For comparison, Massachusetts with 8000 deaths out of a
| population of 6.9M (which is #4 for deaths per-capita worldwide
| after NY, NJ and CT).
|
| For some reason MA is now being held up as "the exception to
| America's coronavirus failure":
|
| https://theweek.com/articles/923075/massachusetts-exception-...
| toss1 wrote:
| Massachusetts is the exception because our re-infection rates
| (Rt) have been successfully driven down to well below 1.00
| (~0.90 in a recent report), despite having started with a
| nearly out of control situation. We've gone from thousands of
| new cases per day to now averaging ~100.
|
| The doubling days started out at around 2.4, stayed
| stubbornly in the dozens for many weeks, then rise, to now
| averaging well over 400. The original terrifying exponential
| growth has clearly been halted.
|
| New levels of opening ("Level 3") are now happening this week
| - gyms, movies, restaurants, all w/large spacing
| requirements. In the few times I've gone out (making heavy
| use of delivery), seeing generally very good mask compliance
| - 75-90%, but less on one recent trip, which is worrying.
|
| I'm concerned about the opening, but confident that the plan
| is really data driven, and this is as far as they will go
| until a vaccine, and they'll quickly roll back if numbers
| slide.
|
| source: MA resident, track & analyze data daily.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >How come 0.05% died and not 1% to 2%? Isn't this evidence that
| the coronavirus isn't as big as a threat as we thought? I mean
| 0.05% deaths is 40 times smaller than 2% deaths.
|
| Because the 1% death rate is a reference to people catching the
| disease, not the size of the population. Sweden as of now
| appears to have about 73k officially confirmed cases.
|
| Swedes still voluntarily distanced and closed down, hence the
| economic damage mentioned in the article. Given that there is
| no widespread immunity still with total infections in the
| single digits, those deaths will eventually go up.
|
| I'm not sure if the American attitude of indifference is taking
| hold here now, but 5000 deaths when 4000 of them could have
| been avoided is no matter to brush aside, it's in fact a
| straight up disaster. This is an unprecedent amount of needless
| death in modern Swedish history.
| mettamage wrote:
| I'm not American, I'm Dutch. And there's a huge difference
| between WOII levels (which is what 2% deathrate in The
| Netherlands would be), versus an extra amount of death people
| comparable to the worst flu season.
|
| In The Netherlands, the worst flu seasons still have a higher
| death toll than corona. I hope it stays that way for
| everyone.
| DanBC wrote:
| > the worst flu seasons still have a higher death toll than
| corona.
|
| Do you have a link to the statistics please? I think you're
| comparing two different methods of counting death. I think
| for covid-19 you're counting people who died after testing
| positive, or people where covid-19 is listed as the cause
| on the death certificate. But for flu I think you're
| counting excess mortality.
| nkurz wrote:
| Not a scientific article, but this blog post gives some
| numbers for Sweden: https://emanuelkarlsten.se/more-
| swedes-died-in-one-month-199....
|
| One big question would be why they chose April 2020 as
| the comparison point rather than May or June -- did the
| number of deaths per month in Sweden actually drop?
|
| (I haven't read the article closely, and don't have a
| horse in this race --- I just thought it was apropos.
| Feel free to tear it to shreds if appropriate.)
| DanBC wrote:
| I'm not going to tear it to shreds!
|
| When people say "covid is like flu" sometimes they mean
| "flu is a big deal, and a bad flu year kills lots of
| people". (I agree with that).
|
| But sometimes they mean "flu isn't so bad, it's a bit
| like a cold, doesn't kill so many people".
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Yes, the death rate has dropped and is now down to
| normal.
| Svip wrote:
| The average high for the flu is 650,000 fatalities a
| year.[0] COVID-19 has so far caused 540,000
| fatalities,[1][2] and the year is far from over. Quick
| napkin math would suggest at least 1 million will have died
| from COVID-19 at year's end, globally.
|
| That's far higher than all regular flu seasons, although
| nowhere near as bad as previous flu pandemics.
|
| [0]
| http://jogh.org/documents/issue201902/jogh-09-020421.pdf
|
| [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
|
| [2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
| Pepe1vo wrote:
| This is empirically false. It's at least 25% worse than the
| 2018 flu season, which was the worst flu season in decades,
| and that's with unprecedented mitigation measures in place.
|
| https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland
| tinus_hn wrote:
| The peak in the graph is higher but the area under the
| graph, the total number of fatalities, is almost the same
| because the flu season lasted longer.
|
| > De oversterfte in week 10 tot en met 19 van de COVID-19
| epidemie was 9.768
|
| > De oversterfte tijdens de 18 weken griepepidemie werd
| geschat op 9.444
|
| Anyway definitely not 25% worse.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > Because the 1% death rate is a reference to people catching
| the disease, not the size of the population.
|
| No, 1% - 2% death rate refers to expected death rate in total
| population including old people.
|
| For younger people it's like 0.1%.
|
| It's irritating how HN keeps pushing their narrative that
| corona is the end of the world. For younger people, it's just
| the flu.
|
| In fact the 2017 flu was almost as deadly as corona - for old
| people. You can see the spike in any CDC chart.
| cm2187 wrote:
| To me this is moving the goalpost.
|
| The stated objective of the lockdown was not to overwhelm the
| ICUs. As far as I know the ICUs in Sweden have not been
| overwhelmed. So how is that a failure?
|
| As for the economic impact, given the amount of life support
| injections into the economy, I think the real economic impact of
| the shock is yet to be seen. Defaults are only starting to rise.
| vmception wrote:
| I have been willing to be frustrated with moving the goal post,
| but there is new information that mayors and governors know
| that the general public doesn't have a good way to know:
|
| The low mortality rate and managed ICU capacity isn't the whole
| story. there is a large population of recovering and recovered
| that have serious complications, that seem random and are
| unproductive to our society. Blood clots resulting in
| amputations. 90 day recovery time periods. Other unknown and
| randomly targeted blood oxygen issues.
|
| The mayors and governors and public health ministers are
| reacting to that in their own municipalities and countries. The
| outcomes are not equal, the variables have many different names
| between jurisdictions, and therefore the stats are not easily
| collectable. But for people on the front line and getting
| briefed by those on the front line, they see something horrible
| that they need to move the goal post to "cases" instead of just
| deaths and ICU capacity.
| mips_avatar wrote:
| One interesting thing about Sweden is the high percentage of
| people who live alone. It's a big deal because in China most
| deaths came from an infected person spreading it to their family.
| Makes you think that if Sweden's numbers are as bad as they are
| without large-scale family spread, it would be absolutely
| horrific elsewhere.
| frereubu wrote:
| One thing missing from this report is that a large proportion of
| the deaths were in care homes, and ministers have publicly stated
| that not entirely locking down care homes from the outset was a
| big mistake. If they had done this, the figures may well not look
| nearly as bad.
|
| Also, what will count is not the first few months but the entire
| lifetime of this pandemic. I'll be interested to see where
| countries are a year or two from now.
|
| This isn't to say I support the Swedish government's strategy - I
| don't feel like I know enough to say what the best strategy is,
| although I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no
| strategy, seemingly like the USA and UK.
| makomk wrote:
| This. It's pretty obvious at this point that a general lockdown
| is worthless as a replacement for locking down care homes
| specifically - Spain had one of the strictest lockdowns in
| Europe but massively screwed up their handling of their care
| homes, and ended up with an even worse per-capital death toll
| than Sweden. Unfortunately, mainstream media publications have
| been spinning this instead as evidence that herd immunity
| wouldn't work by taking the incredibly high infection fatality
| rate from Spain, scaling it up, and claiming this is the best
| measure of how many people would die to achieve herd immunity.
| mirimir wrote:
| Right. From what I've read, it seems like the most effective
| strategy would be locking down elder care homes tightly. And
| also tightly locking down staff at elder care homes. Because
| once one resident gets infected, there's no way to prevent
| other residents, and staff who care for them, from getting
| infected. At least, short of staff wearing ebola level
| protection, and changing between residents. Which would be
| impossibly expensive and time consuming.
|
| Others in the general population who are at serious risk of
| complications, such as elderly and those with preexisting
| conditions, should also isolate themselves. As I gotta say, I
| have done.
|
| But I suspect that it will turn out that general lockdown is
| neither good enough, nor worth the long term economic
| consequences. Except of course that those long term
| consequences will arguably mitigate global climate change.
| simonh wrote:
| > But I suspect that it will turn out that general lockdown
| is neither good enough, nor worth the long term economic
| consequences.
|
| Hang on, this is an article showing that a looser lockdown
| still ends up with your economy hammered anyway. This
| should not be surprising, analysts if the Spanish Flu
| pandemic showed that cities that locked down later and
| lighter actually suffered more economically. This is
| because the higher infection and death rate, and larger
| number of people caring for sick relatives. People ended up
| Locking themselves down anyway out of fear, and the
| epidemic dragged on for longer.
|
| Now we know this wasn't due to special conditions back
| then, it's true now too. There simply isn't an option to
| 'choose the economy'.
| addicted wrote:
| It's so simple. (1) Your economy will be hit whether or
| not you lockdown. People are gonna reduce their activity
| due to the threat of the disease.
|
| The lockdown affects behavior at the margins. And at the
| margins, the economic gains are linear to the additional
| activity due to not having a lockdown, but the growth of
| the virus is exponential.
|
| Then the fact that the virus persists longer means places
| without a lockdown that did not drastically reduce the
| spread of the disease continue suffering economically.
| ljf wrote:
| Don't forget that deaths are just one measure of the damage
| covid brings. My wife is/was a fit and healthy 40yo no
| underlying conditions - she had covid 4 months ago and has
| barely been able to climb the stairs some days. The 'crazy'
| thing is that her actual covid infection wasn't hat bad and
| she had no shortness of breath etc at the time. But here
| she is with symptoms very like ME some 100+ days later.
|
| Obviously that doesn't happen to everyone but it appears a
| significant proportion of those getting ill have serious
| symptoms some time after the illness, with no clear end in
| sight.
| aaaxyz wrote:
| The same thing happened in Quebec and it lead to one of the
| highest per-capita death rates in the world (5,500/8,500,000)
|
| The previous government gutted budgets for care homes which
| lead to chronic understaffing. When the pandemic hit, the
| current government enacted a fairly strict lockdown but still
| did nothing to help the situation in care homes, which was
| worsened by caretakers staying home by fear of catching the
| virus. This in turn lead to patients being neglected and to
| caregivers working in both "cold" and "hot" facilities,
| causing even more outbreaks.
| Moru wrote:
| Sweden has been doing this a long time too. Some areas have
| a pool of extras that travel around the whole city to
| different places to work. This might have spread the virus
| very effectively to the most vulnerable.
|
| Heard on the radio today that we have less educated people
| working with elder care compared to our neighbours and that
| this could have made a difference too.
| usrusr wrote:
| How do you completely lock down a care home? It's a labor-
| intensive industry and you can't just put care on hold for a
| few weeks like you could with an assembly line. The only way to
| keep a virus like this away from care homes is to keep it away
| from friends and families of caretakers and from their friends
| and families. You can't focus prevention when you are dealing
| with presymptomatic spread.
| vondur wrote:
| I believe there was one place in France where the care
| workers moved into the facilities and then the movement of
| people and items into it were strictly controlled. I believe
| no one died from Covid-19 at the facility.
| dvdplm wrote:
| This is exactly what needed to be done, in Sweden and
| elsewhere. Pay staff triple and have them stay with the old
| folks and get everything delivered by externals with as
| little contact as possible. And no new admissions into the
| care homes.
| frereubu wrote:
| Ban visits, quarantine any goods coming into the building for
| three days, strict hygiene requirements for staff entering
| and existing the building. It would be really difficult, but
| when the other alternative is letting a highly contagious
| virus spread rapidly through a susceptible population I'd say
| that's worth it. As others have pointed out in this thread,
| strict lockdowns haven't prevented a horrifying number of
| deaths in care homes.
| atourgates wrote:
| I don't think it was really possible in the early stages of
| the pandemic, and might not be possible now.
|
| Care workers have to go in and out of elderly care
| facilities. We still don't have much data on how good
| COVID-19 testing at tracking pre-symptomatic cases, but the
| data points at "certainly not 100% accurate".
|
| Even if you tested _every_ care worker before they entered
| the building, you'd likely miss some asymptomatic cases who
| could go on to transmit to the elderly. Nevermind the fact
| that earlier in the pandemic, the kinds of near-instant
| tests we have now (allbet with unimpressive reliability)
| weren't available.
| frereubu wrote:
| Sure, it's not going to be perfect. But at the other end
| of the scale in the UK, for example, they were
| discharging people they knew to be infected into care
| homes. If you tested everyone you would miss some, but
| you'd catch some. You'd provide proper PPE to everyone
| (that is, if you hadn't cancelled pandemic preparedness
| measures as in the US and UK) and so on. The risk
| wouldn't be eliminated, but you could at least reduce it
| with some relatively simple measures.
| microtherion wrote:
| > a large proportion of the deaths were in care homes
|
| ... which is no different from other countries. I seem to
| recall articles comparing the numbers, and the proportions seem
| similar in many places.
|
| > Also, what will count is not the first few months but the
| entire lifetime of this pandemic.
|
| Considering only the improvements in treatments made between
| March and now, it seems fairly evident that a strategy of
| front-loading deaths was ill-considered. Even if all countries
| eventually end up with the same percentage of the population
| infected (which is far from certain), it's likely that those
| with a late wave will have considerably fewer deaths.
| sjg007 wrote:
| There's been no real progress in clinical treatment since
| March.
| microtherion wrote:
| There have been numerous improvements, summarized here:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
| lesson...
|
| * Some medication which appears to be effective, i.e.
| dexamethasone and remdesivir
|
| * Proning
|
| * An increased focus on avoiding blood clots, e.g. by using
| blood thinners.
| claudeganon wrote:
| Taiwan. 7 people have died. No major economic impact. Now
| exporting masks to other countries. No brushing aside deaths of
| the elderly and disabled as if those people's lives were
| nothing.
|
| Their's was demonstrably the best strategy and everyone else is
| just making excuses.
| simonh wrote:
| Taiwan and Germany have the advantage that they have strong
| domestic medical testing industries. This allowed Germany to
| do 5x to 10x as many tests as France, Italy and Spain. In
| turn this enabled them to accurately map the spread of the
| disease and use targeted tactical lockdowns to eliminate
| outbreaks at the local level. Korea did the same.
|
| Without the same testing capacity, this strategy simply
| wasn't available in most other countries. However now that
| testing capacity has ramped up, we should be able to employ
| more efficient lockdowns from now on. It's still not a magic
| wand though, Germany's economy has still suffered
| significantly even with a relatively efficient lockdown.
| claudeganon wrote:
| Ok, now do Vietnam.
|
| Also, the choice to offshore medical supply infrastructure
| was a deliberate one by many wealthy countries. That this
| was foolish and short-sighted is not any more of an excuse
| than anything else with their poor responses.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| A very large percentage of US deaths are _also_ from the same
| type of residents - care homes, elderly communities and such. I
| read that it was as much as 40%. I need to find source.
| bhupy wrote:
| > I do think that that the worst strategy is to have no
| strategy, seemingly like the USA
|
| The USA does not have "no strategy", it just depends from State
| to State[1]. Every state has had some form of lockdown and
| school closure.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/states-reopen-
| ma...
| triceratops wrote:
| That is the same as "no strategy". Without coordination of
| the lockdowns, travel monitoring, national testing and
| contact tracing, you're just going to have shifting hotspots
| of infection. This also leaves behind an embittered
| population whose lockdown sacrifices were for nothing.
| irrational wrote:
| I don't think that is true. In my state the governor shut
| things down quickly and completely and we haven't started
| opening back up yet. The result is very very very few cases
| of Covid-19.
| bhupy wrote:
| That's not the same as "no strategy", because this level of
| decentralization is how nation-states work today.
|
| It's also, incidentally, how the EU works. There are open
| borders between member states -- and while some member
| states "closed" their borders, this has been largely
| unenforceable in land crossings because there are no border
| patrol agents between every single land crossing between EU
| member states. Border enforcements have only been enforced
| at airports.
|
| In the US, nationwide air travel came to a near complete
| stand-still during the outset of the pandemic, so inter-
| state travel was already at the same levels you had in the
| EU.
|
| The US's strategy has been the same as the EU's, and it has
| been to let the member States define the strategy.
|
| As of right now, 36 out of 50 US states have a lower per
| capita death rate[1] than France, Sweden, Italy, Spain, the
| Netherlands, and Ireland[2]. 15 States have a lower per
| capita death rate than Germany and Denmark, who have seen
| the best COVID outcomes in the EU.
|
| The US, to date, has administered more tests per capita
| than Belgium, Australia, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand,
| Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Norway, and Sweden
| (to name a handful). This is not because the US has a
| nationwide testing regime, rather it's because testing
| systems have been administered at the State level, with
| varying strategies (some focusing on nursing homes, some
| focusing on drive-thru testing etc).
|
| [1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
|
| [2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
| aazaa wrote:
| > That's not the same as "no strategy", because this
| level of decentralization is how nation-states work
| today.
|
| It's one thing to leave pandemic response to member
| countries like the EU does. Each country knows it's
| responsible for its own response. Money is budgeted and
| spent specifically for this purpose.
|
| That's not the system in the US - or hasn't been. The
| Federal government maintains what, until recently, was
| the world's premier infectious disease-fighting
| organization - the CDC. The implication was that pandemic
| response occurs through this organization. In the past,
| this is exactly what happened.
|
| You may recall the one state (Washington) earlier this
| year whose brave scientists decided to test for COVID on
| their own. They were told in no uncertain terms from the
| feds to stand down or else.
|
| So the idea that this pandemic response is up to the
| states doesn't hold water. Had the states known that
| they'd be left twisting in the wind, they could have
| taken steps beforehand.
|
| That's one likely outcome of this event (assuming it has
| a clean endpoint): states realizing they really are on
| their own - and acting like it.
| PeterisP wrote:
| In the EU, land crossings were re-manned on many borders
| and during the main lockdown (which is now mostly over)
| passenger travel on many land borders was stopped. On
| many borders (though not all) physical border checkpoints
| still exist even if they're widely open almost always,
| and the legal and administrative framework for
| controlling land borders is still maintained. Of course,
| it is now much easier to cross the border illegally
| outside of these checkpoints than before, but this still
| allows effective control of travel as most people are not
| criminals.
|
| "Border enforcements have only been enforced at
| airports." is absolutely not true. For example, I recall
| the international issue of making transit arrangements
| through Poland when back in March many people were
| stranded as the Poland-German border was suddenly closed;
| if I recall correctly, the agreed solution to repatriate
| these people was a police-escorted car column that was
| allowed to transit through Poland without these people
| being allowed "proper entry", but before that they were
| stuck for days in their cars as they could not get
| through the border.
|
| This is a key difference between EU and USA - the
| Schengen agreement allows member states to temporarily
| "opt out" of the free travel, reinstate border controls
| and impose travel restrictions (up to a full closure of
| borders) for various purposes, and many EU countries did
| just that due to Covid; while in USA, as far as I
| understand, the constitution greatly limits the right of
| states to prohibit interstate travel.
| brundolf wrote:
| It's all been reactionary. Individual states and even cities
| are opening up when people clamor for summertime fun, and
| then frantically closing back down when the inevitable spike
| hits a couple weeks later. There is no attempt at cohesion or
| long-term planning. There is no leadership. They're all just
| winging it.
| celticninja wrote:
| I'm not sure that the UK has had no strategy, it's just that
| the strategy they chose may possibly be worse than no strategy
| at all.
| frereubu wrote:
| As someone more erudite than me put it, the UK has
| "government by press release". They may have tactics, but no
| strategy.
| heavyavocado wrote:
| Swede here. The leadership in Sweden has consistently tried to
| find different ways of justifying the strategy. Blaming the
| results on failing elderly care has been one such tactic. When
| you compare the raw numbers the proportion of elderly care
| deaths is actually in line with (or even less than) neighboring
| countries.
| addicted wrote:
| I feel like Tegnell's original mistake was his disbelief that
| asymptomatic spreaders existed. His entire strategy was based
| on this and worse, he loudly and publicly criticized other
| countries that chose to lockdown because unlike him they were
| fully convinced about the existence of asymptomatic
| spreaders.
|
| Once his strategy to protect the vulnerable failed
| dramatically due to asymptomatic carriers (and the fact that
| people make bad decisions), it was too late for him to back
| down and it's been Iraq war all over again. One day he is
| criticizing other countries saying that what they are doing
| is not sustainable and then in the next breath complaining
| that his strategy has been misrepresented and what he is
| doing isn't different from what the rest of the world is
| doing.
|
| It's been unfortunate to watch his inability to admit his
| initial mistake lead to so much unnecessary suffering and
| pain.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| You know, it feels like bullshit to give this counterfactual.
|
| One of the reasons other countries locked down like they did
| was to give themselves time to figure out what actually needed
| to be done to save lives.
|
| Saying "well if they had done this other thing fewer people
| would've died" means they made the wrong decision. Full stop.
| addicted wrote:
| Yeah. Every country had vast majority of deaths in care
| homes.
|
| In fact, this is a complete repudiation of the Swedish
| experiment because the one thing they did say they would do
| was protect the vulnerable. It was the only goal they had.
| And they failed miserably.
| bjourne wrote:
| You have to look at the excess deaths figures. That is, how many
| usually dies from January to June in a normal year and compare
| that to how many extra that died in 2020. For Sweden the excess
| deaths almost exactly matches the number of Covid deaths, give or
| take 10%.
|
| That is not the case for many other countries. For example, the
| UK had almost twice the number of excess deaths as Covid deaths
| in a few weeks in April. That indicates that Covid deaths were
| under reported in the UK. There are also some indications that
| Covid deaths have been under reported in other countries.
|
| In other words, comparing countries by their Covid deaths/capita
| rates is meaningless. The statistics are likely completely wrong
| because different countries use different definitions of "Covid
| deaths" and different reporting procedures.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2020/may/29...
| bosie wrote:
| Considering that the health care systems were partially shut
| down too, how do you determine that covid was the culprit
| rather a change in the health care system for those counted as
| excess deaths?
| sixo wrote:
| Those are covid deaths
| jariel wrote:
| Sweden still did very poorly on that basis especially compared
| to it's most direct 'peer' - Denmark.
|
| The differences are quite a lot and worthy of consideration.
| leto_ii wrote:
| This is an important observation. In the Netherlands, where I
| live, I've had a number of people look at me with great
| surprise and mistrust when I mentioned that the Dutch have done
| a terrible job with this epidemic. The Guardian plots show that
| the Netherlands is one of the worst when it comes to under-
| reporting.
|
| This is not to say however that the Swedes have done a good
| job. While their numbers are credible, their magnitude is still
| unacceptably large: 0.5/1000 Swedes have so far died of the
| corona virus.
| nradov wrote:
| What is the criteria for defining an acceptable number of
| deaths?
| ncallaway wrote:
| I would generally go for "as few as possible given the
| circumstances".
|
| Given how much higher they are over other nations--even
| taking into account excess deaths--I would say they have
| failed that metric.
| leto_ii wrote:
| Any death is unacceptable. This is, of course, unattainable
| in practice, so I would suggest looking at Eastern European
| or East Asian societies for a rule of thumb (e.g. Czechia,
| Slovakia, Greece, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam etc.).
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > Any death is unacceptable.
|
| This is not how society works. We could drastically
| curtail the number of deaths by outlawing cars, alcohol,
| and social interaction indefinitely, regardless of covid,
| but we don't. Refusing to understand that tradeoffs are
| involved is not helpful.
| leto_ii wrote:
| While not explicitly specified, my comment was referring
| to deaths caused by the coronavirus. If you read past the
| first sentence you will also notice that I explicitly
| said that this is an unattainable standard and I have
| provided a number of countries that can be taken as
| reference for what an acceptable death rate might be.
| londons_explore wrote:
| In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die _anyway_.
|
| Considering COVID has closed many of life's fun things, there
| will be an entire generation of people who have effectively
| "lost" a year of the things they hoped they would do in their
| lifetime. By stating open, Sweden might decrease life
| expectancy in years, but increase it in terms of 'things
| achieved in a lifetime'
| [deleted]
| wbronitsky wrote:
| The argument that some people die so it's ok if more people
| die is not only horrific, but it makes very little sense.
| VectorLock wrote:
| The argument that "its okay for more of other people to
| die so some people don't miss out on some fun" I find
| even more abhorrent.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's an argument you have to accept on some level, unless
| you propose to make more radical changes to society. How
| many thousands of people could we have saved from car
| accidents in 2019 by banning nonessential driving?
| VectorLock wrote:
| At a fundamental level, yes. By degree of magnitude not
| even in the same galaxy. If you take a 200 million mile
| road trip you might contribute to one death, vs. going to
| a party and risk contracting and spreading a pandemic
| that has has already claimed hundreds of thousands of
| lives.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| I'd love to see you get decapitated very slowly with a
| warm butterknife.
| tomrod wrote:
| It also completely ignores the knock on effect of
| increased poor health due to COVID. Organ damage leads to
| reduced quality of life and economic output.
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| Such an odd argument. I wonder how would you reply to such
| a statement when you reach 65 years of age.
| ralph84 wrote:
| At age 65 (or any age) I'd evaluate my risk and modify my
| own activities. I wouldn't even dream of asking others to
| give up their work or school or favorite activities
| because of my own frailty.
| glofish wrote:
| this is exactly how see it as well.
|
| My mother is 77 at risk from COVID - does she expect the
| neighbors kid not go to school to keep her "safe"? Or
| that a 20 year old not have fun at the beach from now on
| so that she is "safe"?
|
| Of course not, not a least bit, and she told me that
| herself. I admire her for it.
|
| The morality of other deciding for everyone what is best
| for them is deeply flawed.
| username90 wrote:
| People smoke, drink alcohol and do drugs. Those are much
| much worse than covid for your health. Sweden will still
| have much higher life expectancy than Denmark and Finland
| this year even though they got higher covid deaths since
| Sweden is much better at policing those drugs.
| leto_ii wrote:
| > In an average year, 13/1000 Swedes die anyway.
|
| Yes, people die. That's true of all countries and all
| times. What we might call civilized societies have however
| strived to reduce those numbers as much as possible. This
| was done by trying to avoid violence, improving lifestyles
| and developing better medical techniques in order to
| prevent or repair diseases and injuries.
|
| Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is just
| one aspect of what we might call a civilized attitude
| towards human life. Conversely, not doing so is uncivilized
| and I might add immoral and irresponsible.
|
| > there will be an entire generation of people who have
| effectively "lost" a year of the things they hoped they
| would do in their lifetime
|
| This almost doesn't merit a reply. A few months of not
| going to festivals and the cinema is by no measure a
| catastrophe. It's not fun, but suggesting that your right
| to fun should trump others' right to life is, again,
| uncivilized, immoral and irresponsible.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| The problem is, covid has tons of indirect negative
| consequences on people's health. Folks overall stopped
| moving around and exercising so much. Tons of people with
| all kinds of medical complications stayed at home rather
| than receiving checks and treatment in hospitals. Imagine
| finding some lump on your body, but staying at home. Or
| missing regular health check.
|
| Probably impossible to estimate how many people died
| because of this, and how many will have their lives
| shorter because they didn't get treatment earlier. Here
| at local cantonal hospital, this has been recognized as a
| big failure of general directions given to the
| population, and is a huge problem for old people.
|
| Its far from the trivialization you make out of it about
| some kids missing some festivals and parties.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| >What we might call civilized societies have however
| strived to reduce those numbers as much as possible
|
| Unless you're claiming that no civilised society exists,
| that's not true at all. A civilisation built around
| minimising death as much as possible would look very
| differently to any that currently exists.
|
| Resources are always a trade off. People working at those
| festivals and cinemas could have went in to medical care
| pre corona virus. People building festival stages and
| cinemas could have been building hospitals. If festivals
| and cinemas didn't exist then that would be less driving
| and less road deaths.
|
| At some level festivals and cinemas existing is putting
| some peoples fun over others right to life, corona virus
| or no.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| I think it was implied that we try to reduce deaths as
| much as is _reasonably_ possible, not at the cost of
| everything else.
| austhrow743 wrote:
| What's reasonable is exactly what's up for debate though
| and they didn't say "society should aim for a 5000 fun
| utils to 1 QALY saved ratio but doing nothing about
| corona virus actually costs you 3 QALY for every 5000 fun
| utils so that's disgusting, what they said was
|
| >It's not fun, but suggesting that your right to fun
| should trump others' right to life is, again,
| uncivilized, immoral and irresponsible.
| grapehut wrote:
| > It's not fun, but suggesting that your right to fun
| should trump others' right to life is, again,
| uncivilized, immoral and irresponsible.
|
| That's not the argument he was making. And as a society
| we have to accept some negative externalities and weigh
| up the benefits, otherwise things like (recreational)
| road-trips would be banned.
| revnode wrote:
| > Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is
| just one aspect of what we might call a civilized
| attitude towards human life. Conversely, not doing so is
| uncivilized and I might add immoral and irresponsible.
|
| This is acting under the assumption that something can be
| done, that the thing done is effective, or for that
| matter, isn't harmful. There were, of course, many things
| done. Were all of them effective? Were some of them
| harmful?
|
| Doing something harmful, like for example forcefully
| depriving many of a livelihood during a pandemic, can be
| considered immoral and irresponsible.
| leto_ii wrote:
| There are many ways of mitigating the harmful effects of
| the lock down. State aid targeted directly towards
| individuals (and not corporations) is a good idea, I
| think. The same goes for a freeze on mortgage payments,
| rents, evictions etc.
|
| These are all measures that a modern state can take to
| prevent people from suffering economically.
| jlmorton wrote:
| > Containing and minimizing the effects of a pandemic is
| just one aspect of what we might call a civilized
| attitude towards human life. Conversely, not doing so is
| uncivilized and I might add immoral and irresponsible.
|
| The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow others
| to die for their own convenience. I intentionally phrased
| that harshly, but it is indisputably true. In the US,
| 70,000 people died from the influenza season of
| 2018-2019. We could have sharply reduced that through
| quarantine measures. But no one wants to do that.
|
| Once you accept that everyone is prepared to allow others
| to die preventable deaths for their own convenience, then
| all you are talking about is a matter of degree. It can't
| be immoral to believe 1 death is okay, but 2 is wrong.
| That's just an opinion. The only difference between
| believing 70,000 is okay, and 700,000 is not is a gut
| feeling about how much preventable death is worth it to
| maintain our living standards.
| leto_ii wrote:
| All preventable deaths should be prevented - this is the
| gold standard. In reality, of course, things don't work
| out that way. The analogy with a flu season is deeply
| misleading. The coronavirus has, in half a year, killed
| more people than the worst flu seasons, with
| extraordinary measures in place all over the world. It's
| completely reasonable to assume that without lockdowns we
| would have had millions of deaths already.
|
| > The reality is that everyone is prepared to allow
| others to die for their own convenience.
|
| It may be so. Those people are morally wrong however.
| This is a deep point that I have insisted on in other
| comments as well. Casually weighing human life against
| economic cost is not acceptable in what we might call a
| civilized society.
|
| > The only difference between believing 70,000 is okay,
| and 700,000 is not is a gut feeling about how much
| preventable death is worth it to maintain our living
| standards.
|
| That is not true. Deaths caused by the regular flu are
| deeply regrettable and should be prevented as much as
| possible. If you dig into the data however, you will see
| that the coronavirus not only kills many more people than
| the flu, but it also kills people who would otherwise
| have many more years left to live. Diabetes, a heart
| condition or age > 65 yrs. shouldn't be death sentences
| in a modern civilized society.
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| Keep in mind that years of life lost by dying sooner are
| actually a complete loss, while a year in quarantine is
| still partially lived. It varies a lot from person to
| person. If it was all about yourself, what do you think
| would be a reasonable exchange rate?
| username90 wrote:
| The exchange rate for the most successful lock-downs of
| corona is about 60 years of lock-down for 1 year of life.
|
| Edit: Note that USA is doing much worse since so many are
| dying there even though you lock down.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Btw, here's a couple charts similar to the one you posted that
| have been updated more recently:
|
| *
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...
|
| * https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-
| aeb3-955839e06...
| sampo wrote:
| EU has a project to track excess mortality: EuroMOMO. They
| have time series for countries:
|
| https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/#z-scores-by-country
|
| Here is how they explain what the z-score is:
|
| https://www.euromomo.eu/how-it-works/what-is-a-z-score/
| ptx wrote:
| Taiwan has 7 COVID-19 deaths[1]. It seems far-fetched to
| suppose that they would be somehow covering up the 12000
| additional deaths that would be required to reach Sweden's per-
| capita numbers.
|
| South Korea would have had to neglect to report 99% of COVID-19
| deaths.
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En
| [deleted]
| bjourne wrote:
| True. And Sweden stands out when you compare it to other
| Nordic countries. My point is only that you can't draw too
| many conclusions from just looking at leaderboards at
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ and similar sites.
| [deleted]
| latchkey wrote:
| Vietnam is zero deaths and <400 total, with no new infections
| in 80+ days. At first, I thought it was the govt covering
| something up, but after so many months, along with closely
| monitoring things, I trust their numbers. It is literally a
| source of national pride for them to have done so well, it
| would be very hard for them to hide things.
| amiga_500 wrote:
| This is particularly bad for the UK as our numbers were already
| dire.
|
| Some may be due to the halt of the NHS for other stuff.
| cs702 wrote:
| _> In other words, comparing countries by their Covid deaths
| /capita rates is meaningless. The statistics are likely
| completely wrong because different countries use different
| definitions of "Covid deaths" and different reporting
| procedures._
|
| Very true. Consider only that North Korea is reporting ZERO
| Covid-19 deaths and also ZERO Covid-19 cases, so its official
| rates of infection and mortality are 0% and 0%.[a] If we judge
| only by those official figures, the country has done an
| incredible job at combating Covid-19.
|
| [a] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
| northk...
| ojhughes wrote:
| Sweden are a model of pragmatism, taking a sensible choice to not
| have an authoritarian lockdown. Freedom of choice, freedom of
| movement and freedom of commerce are sacred.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I don't believe the article has addressed Sweden's main argument
| for not shutting down: that herd immunity should be the prime
| driver. Essentially, that everyone is going to eventually have
| roughly the same death rate, so might as well get it over with.
|
| That remains to be seen; if Sweden's peers can prevent flare-ups,
| it looks like Sweden was wrong.
| Traster wrote:
| Well it's not only that, if you overwhelm your healthcare
| system you're going to end up with excess deaths even if the
| same number of people get the virus in the end. Also, we've
| learned _some_ mitigation techniques over the last few months
| (like steroids in late stage treatment) which means that the
| idea that 'everyone will get it eventually' just isn't
| relevant - its likely that our survival rate will go up over
| time even without a proper vaccine.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Whether this is an issue for Sweden should be clear from the
| death rate among the infected, but that data isn't mentioned
| in the article. I assume that figure is difficult to
| calculate without a precise/consistent case count for
| multiple countries.
| nradov wrote:
| Ironically, medical researchers wouldn't have learned those
| mitigation techniques (like Dexamethasone) without a large
| population of patients to use as experimental subjects. In
| other words, if we succeed in slowing down the spread (which
| would be a good thing) then medical research into treatments
| and vaccines will also slow down.
| wk_end wrote:
| Yes, although Sweden never came close to overwhelming its
| health care system.
| grecy wrote:
| Exactly. It also means that we can't judge Sweden's approach
| for another 12-24-48 months.
|
| Who knows how many times other countries will go in and out of
| lockdown in the coming years, and how long that will drag on.
| Melbourne just fully locked down again due to a rise in cases.
|
| It's clear every country will eventually give up and go with
| Sweden's approach because they'll run out of "free" money, it's
| just a question of how long they will drag it out, or if a
| mass-produced vaccine can be effective and arrives in time.
| jooize wrote:
| Sweden's strategy nor argument has not been herd immunity. In
| my understanding, Sweden's intentions are to recommend or
| mandate measures deemed sustainable for a long time ahead.
|
| Arguments in favor of minimal restrictions include: avoid
| exhaustion of compliance in the population; avoid disrupting
| the economy, and negative effects on economy likely will affect
| population health; ...
| martindbp wrote:
| As a Swede that did not agree with the strategy at the time (it
| was hugely risky), given what we know now, I'm starting to think
| it was the right decisions (for the wrong reasons). The reason
| the economy is in trouble has more to do with that the rest of
| the word shut down, it being a highly export dependent economy.
| Sweden did not shut down, practically nobody wears a mask
| (still), social distancing is minimal (crammed subways, buses and
| beaches), schools have remained open, yet there has not been a
| single death in the worst hit area of Stockholm for the past 5
| days. Again, I think given the uncertainty and lack of evidence
| in March, not shutting down was an extremely stupid risk, and
| Tegnell and crew have shown to been wrong at practically every
| turn, but at this point you have to look at the evidence and
| reassess. It would seem Stockholm has reached the point of
| significant herd immunity, which is probably true for other hard
| hit areas like NYC. Less hit areas will probably have second
| waves, and unless a vaccine is here soon, my guess is most of the
| world will go through the same thing eventually.
| kanox wrote:
| > I'm starting to think it was the right decision
|
| Sweden is #6 by deaths/population according to this page:
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
|
| This would indicate that the swedish response is among the
| worst. Several countries with comparable health systems have a
| death rate which is many times lower, for example Germany. This
| saved many thousands of lives.
|
| What am I missing?
| drewg123 wrote:
| The same data source also shows that Sweden's per-capita
| death rates are lower than Spain and Italy, which had full
| scale lockdowns.
| watwut wrote:
| They had lockdowns after country systems were completely
| overwhelmed. Up to inability to handle dead people in some
| places.
|
| Their situations was strong argument for other countries to
| lock down much sooner.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The question is whether locking down sooner actually
| solves the problem. As Melbourne heads into another 6
| weeks of lockdown, I'm growing skeptical.
| [deleted]
| marcusverus wrote:
| If the pandemic is expected to continue for many months,
| isn't it a bit premature to talk about current death rates as
| a metric for success? Given Sweden's 'herd immunity' plan,
| higher death rates _at the beginning_ would seem to be a
| given. They didn 't flatten their curve. But as they approach
| something like herd immunity, the number of possible carriers
| should plummet permanently (assuming immunity is a thing with
| COVID), and infections and deaths would permanently decline.
|
| Nations which have held down infection numbers with shutdowns
| have, of course, flattened their curves. But they may well
| suffer from second/third waves which will hike up their total
| numbers.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Herd immunity cannot be considered the plan given that herd
| immunity has not been proven to be possible
| noodlenotes wrote:
| Indefinite lockdowns, vaccines haven't been "proven
| possible" either. At some point you have to make a plan
| with the best information you have.
|
| The fact that spread in New York has slowed down compared
| to other states that weren't initially hit hard implies
| that there's some immunity effect going on.
| martindbp wrote:
| Simple: it's not over yet, but it might be for some hard hit
| areas of Sweden. We'll see. Then there is another question
| whether it was worth it to shut down the world economy over a
| 0.05% death rate, or a few years worth of flu at once. I'd
| say probably no. We didn't know this back in Feb/March, which
| is why I was very much for a quarantine then, but not now. I
| don't think the powers that be would have done a complete
| shutdown if they'd known what they know now.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > it might be for some hard hit areas of Sweden
|
| The long-term success of Sweden's approach appears to hinge
| on this question. What evidence is there which supports
| that their hardest hit locales have achieved herd immunity?
| wk_end wrote:
| Numbers and projections show things slowing down in
| Sweden [1]. The obvious explanation for this would be
| that herd immunity is kicking in, isn't it?
|
| [1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden
| martindbp wrote:
| My own observeration from Stockholm is: beaches crowded
| during heatwave, public transit is crowded as usual. Lots
| of movement of people, travel within Sweden etc.
| Practically nobody is wearing a mask. People are still
| generally careful, washing hands, keeping the distance in
| lines etc, but I don't think this can explain the cases
| going down. In March-April, I think people were the most
| careful, when hundreds were dying every day. Since then
| people have gradually become more relaxed, but the
| numbers keep going down.
|
| Of course, it could be that these rather small measures
| have pushed r0 a bit under 1 ever since March. But there
| have also been reports that for each person tested with
| antibodies, two more are actually immune, which would put
| the immunity at maybe 30% two weeks ago. At least it's in
| the right ball-park, as some have proposed that herd
| immunity could be reached at much lower percentages than
| previously thought.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| Not really: I would much rather get the coronavirus today than
| three months ago. And would much rather get it 6 months or a
| year from now than today. Survival rates are measurably
| improving due to both improved procedures (proning) and better
| protocols on steroid use, as well as emerging therapies like
| remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies (in addition to
| convalescent plasma). Not to mention that many vaccines are
| barreling into phase 3 trials soon. I suspect history will not
| be kind to Sweden's approach.
| throw-away_42 wrote:
| Sweden's total per-capita death rate is 50% higher than the
| Netherlands, 500% higher than Germany and Denmark, and 900+%
| higher than Finland, Norway, and Poland. All those deaths have
| not made you safer--your daily per-capita death rate is still
| several times that of those countries. Source:
| https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data
| [deleted]
| standardUser wrote:
| "All those deaths have not made you safer..."
|
| I'd hold back from making grand proclamations in the middle
| (beginning?) of the pandemic.
| postalrat wrote:
| Its not over. For all we know Sweden might have fewer deaths
| per capita than those countries a year from now.
| martindbp wrote:
| The current death rate, 10-15 people a day, is insignificant
| compared to other causes of death. It is not reasonable to
| talk about percentage differences when we're talking 15 vs 3
| deaths a day.
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| Really? 4500 hundred extra death a year is not
| insignifcant.
| alltakendamned wrote:
| Do note that there's easily a 15-day delay when it comes to
| Sweden reporting somewhat correct number of deaths, so
| let's not focus on the "current" death rate too much. And I
| expect the reporting delay to actually be worse right now
| as we're in the middle of vacation time.
|
| Source: https://adamaltmejd.se/covid/
| drummer wrote:
| Sweden did the right thing. Covid-19 is not worse than the flu.
| Norway recently also admitted the lockdown there was not
| neccesary according to the data they have now. In March they
| thought differently.
| drummer wrote:
| Norway: 'Lockdown was not necessary to tame Covid-19'
|
| According to Camilla Stoltenberg, the Director-General of the
| Norwegian Institute of Public Health (Folkehelseinstituttet),
| similar results would have been achieved in her country
| without a lockdown. She bases that statement on a study by
| her institution.
|
| The study collected data on confirmed cases of coronavirus
| registered in Norway, the number of hospital admissions, the
| reproduction rate, etc. At the beginning of March it was
| feared that one person infected with the virus would infect
| four others. Only strict lockdown rules could bring that
| figure down. This hypothesis came from the Imperial College
| in London and gave forecasts for a number of European
| countries, including Norway.
|
| Virus never spread as fast as was feared
|
| In their report, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health now
| comes to a completely different conclusion: the virus never
| spread as quickly as was feared and was already on its way
| back when the lockdown was announced.
|
| 'Our conclusion now is that we could have achieved a similar
| effect without lockdown. By staying open and taking a series
| of precautions to prevent the spread. It's important that we
| admit that. Because should the number of infections rise
| again in winter or should there be a second wave, we have to
| be honest in our analysis whether such a lockdown has proven
| to be effective'.
|
| According to Stoltenberg, who is herself a doctor and the
| sister of former Norwegian Prime Minister and current NATO
| Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, such draconian measures
| should only be announced in the future if there is an
| academic basis for them. And that was missing now, according
| to Stoltenberg.
|
| https://businessam.be/noorwegen-lockdown-was-niet-nodig-
| om-c...
| berdario wrote:
| "Virus never spread as fast as was feared"
|
| Except in the US, in Italy, etc. where it's spreading or it
| has been spreading exactly as fast as feared.
| drummer wrote:
| This is what was happening in Italy:
|
| "The figures are questionable
|
| Angelo Borrelli, the head of Civil Protection, who
| announces the latest figures every day at 6 p.m., said
| Saturday night that the 793 new deaths have been caused
| "by and with" the coronavirus. "We count all the dead, we
| make no distinction between with and by the coronavirus."
| However, one wonders whether these daily figures reflect
| the situation correctly. The dead are said to have almost
| all had one or more other diseases, which leaves a
| question mark as to exactly how deadly the coronavirus
| is. At the same time, it has become clear that a large
| number of people who die at home (which is often a
| retirement home) do not undergo a coronavirus test."
|
| https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/03/22/als-italie-het-
| voorland...
|
| "On Friday, April 24, 2020, Vittorio Sgarbi, a member of
| the Italian Chamber of Deputies, denounced what he claims
| are false coronavirus death statistics. Sgarbi feels that
| fake statistics are being propagated by the government
| and the media to terrorize the citizens of Italy and
| establish a dictatorship.
|
| The member of the Forza Italia party slammed the closure
| of 60% of Italian businesses for 25,000 Chinese-
| Coronavirus deaths from the floor of the legislature.
| "It's not true," he said. "Don't use the deaths for
| rhetoric and terrorism." According to the National
| Institute of Health, 96.3% did not die of coronavirus,
| but of other pathologies stated Sgarbi - which means that
| only 925 have died from the virus and 24,075 have died of
| other things claimed Sgarbi, "....the virus was little
| more than an influenza. Don't lie! Tell the truth!""
|
| https://rairfoundation.com/italian-leader-slams-false-
| corona...
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| Yawn. You look at the excess death and it is actually
| higher than counted coronavirus death numbers.
| martindbp wrote:
| It is definitely many times worse than the flu, but probably
| not 10 and definitely not 100 times.
| drummer wrote:
| Nope: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32201354/
|
| Some quotes:
|
| "Under these conditions, there does not seem to be a
| significant difference between the mortality rate of SARS-
| CoV-2 in OECD countries and that of common coronaviruses
| (kh2 test, P=0.11). Of course, the major flaw in this study
| is that the percentage of deaths attributable to the virus
| is not determined, but this is the case for all studies
| reporting respiratory virus infections, including SARS-
| CoV-2."
|
| "Under these conditions, and all other things being equal,
| SARS-CoV-2 infection cannot be described as being
| statistically more severe than infection with other
| coronaviruses in common circulation."
|
| "Finally, in OECD countries, SARS-CoV-2 does not seem to be
| deadlier than other circulating viruses."
| berdario wrote:
| You're omitting one important quote:
|
| "less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of
| writing"
|
| That paper is worthless.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| This is not the first time you've been called out on HN
| for quoting that outdated paper. The last time was 70
| days ago (it was outdated 2+ months ago).
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Another quote (from the abstract): "It is concluded that
| the problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably being
| overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory
| infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths
| for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing. "
|
| As of the Mar 19th 2020 issue of the Journal of
| Antimicrobial Agents.
|
| Even without reading the paper, I can tell you that if
| this analysis were to be repeated, we would get different
| results, given that we are now (four months later) at
| 540,000 (confirmed, which is definitely an underestimate)
| deaths, rather than 4000.
| text70 wrote:
| It's ten times worse.
| https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-
| material/publ...
| addled wrote:
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
|
| For US data, I like how this table compares deaths from
| covid, flu, and pneumonia against the total deaths for all
| causes each week. I especially like that they show the
| ratio of current deaths vs the average of the 3 years prior
| for the same week.
|
| The downside is how the data is slowly updated as each
| state trickles in data, so the most recent 4-8 weeks look
| lower now than if you check back later.
|
| Still if you look back to April, flu deaths each week were
| in the hundreds, while covid deaths 9-15k. Saying it is 10x
| or more worse, doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
|
| What really grabbed me is that the total US deaths in April
| from all causes was +40% compared to prior 3 year average.
| drummer wrote:
| Unfortunately covid deaths are highly unreliable as there
| is lots of evidence worldwide that people dying with
| covid are also counted with those dying of covid. Also
| lots of cases of dead people being counted while not
| being tested or positively tested for covid.
| addled wrote:
| That's exactly why I like the link I posted. It tries to
| provide context on how many people die with covid, flu,
| pneumonia, or some combination of the 3.
|
| Then more importantly, it looks at the overall death
| rate. Because even if you completely ignore the covid
| count, the fact that there are so many more people dying
| than normal should grab people's attention.
| saalweachter wrote:
| During the peak of crisis in NYC, the death rate was ~6
| times normal.
|
| If those extra deaths weren't from COVID-19, what were
| they from?
| hyanaroo wrote:
| see this too ,the debunk of the nurse in the previous
| youtube link ;)
| hyanaroo wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPqfY2F2KR8
| drummer wrote:
| You won't like the answer:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=kIngGuof9E0
| hyanaroo wrote:
| also this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4gGxRlzoKI
| watwut wrote:
| How do you think flu deaths are counted? Because that
| numbers shows also _estimated_ death people - people who
| were never even tested on flu. Like, percentage of
| pneumonia deaths. And they contain also people also
| having other health issues and not just flu.
| makomk wrote:
| Flu deaths are counted as the number of people who die
| because of the flu - that is, they represent people who
| wouldn't have died if they didn't catch the flu. This is
| of course an estimate, and there are some pretty
| fundamental reasons why it has to be such as the fact
| that flu causes heart attacks and strokes but also just
| happens to be present in patients who have one for
| unrelated reasons, but it should be a pretty robust one
| because flu is an old and well researched disease and we
| have a vey good idea of how it behaves at a population
| level.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The CDC includes pneumonia deaths during flu season
| because not all death certificates record influenza as
| the cause.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _people dying with covid are also counted with those
| dying of covid_
|
| Generic "flu" deaths are also counted the same way. Why
| do you think Covid deaths should be counted differently?
| vonmoltke wrote:
| FYI, you double-pasted the link. The correct one is
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
| addled wrote:
| Ah, sorry. Fixed above now as well. Thanks!
| drummer wrote:
| Let's not forget Germany:
|
| "A report on the coronavirus by the German Ministry of the
| Interior was leaked on May 9th 2020 by officer Stephan Kohn
| to the magazine Tichys Einblick, one of the most popular
| alternative media in Germany. The report, on which a dozen or
| so doctors and professors from various universities in
| Germany have worked, states that "the state has failed in the
| coronavirus crisis in an almost grotesque way." In a press
| release, the scientists concerned stated that "the observable
| effects and consequences of COVID-19 do not provide
| sufficient evidence that it is more than a false alarm in
| terms of health effects on society as a whole. The new virus
| has probably never posed a risk to the population in excess
| of normal levels [...]. The people dying from corona are
| mainly those who are statistically dying this year because
| they have reached the end of their lives and their weakened
| bodies are no longer able to withstand random daily exposure
| (including to the approximately 150 viruses currently in
| circulation). The danger of COVID-19 has been overestimated.
| (No more than 250,000 deaths from COVID-19 worldwide within a
| quarter of a year, compared to 1.5 million deaths during the
| flu wave in 2017/18). Of course, the risk is no greater than
| that of many other viruses. In all likelihood, we are dealing
| with a global false alarm that has gone unnoticed for a long
| time."
|
| They also didn't have anything positive to say about the
| 'protective' measures of the German criminal government. "The
| collateral damage [because of the measures] is now enormous
| and far greater than any observable benefit. [...] Just a
| comparison of previous deaths due to the virus with deaths
| due to the protective measures prescribed by the State [...]
| supports this finding. Much of this damage will continue to
| manifest itself even in the near and distant future. This can
| no longer be prevented but can only be minimized. [...] The
| shortcomings and failures in crisis management have
| consequently led to the dissemination of unsubstantiated
| information, and thus disinformation, to the public. [...]
| The State turned out to be one of the biggest fake-news
| producers in the coronacrisis.""
|
| https://www.achgut.com/artikel/das_corona_papier_wissenschaf.
| ..
|
| https://www.ichbinanderermeinung.de/Dokument93.pdf
| sjg007 wrote:
| In this case then the flu would've killed em..
| detaro wrote:
| Just to be clear: that is a "report on the coronavirus by
| the German Ministry of the Interior" in the sense that the
| "leaker" works there, wrote that report on his own (he
| wasn't part of the groups working on COVID specifically)
| based on at least partially questionable or misrepresented
| data and then sent out on the official letterhead without
| permission.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| This highly cited April 11th study projected that Sweden would
| have 96,000 deaths by July 1st if it didn't institute a lockdown:
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v...
|
| The actual death toll was 5,400. Of course every death is a
| tragedy, but the harm done from a national lockdown, which
| includes youth missing out on a year of school, and thousands of
| small businesses being destroyed, would have been more of one.
|
| Like Michael Levitt, who's the 2013 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for
| research in complex systems, says, society has forgotten that
| people die.
|
| 10,000 people per million die every year in Sweden. That rate
| increasing by 500 is not that abnormal - it happens in bad
| influenza seasons. If every one was forced to stop working and
| shelter at home every time an infection claimed rose the death
| rate by 10%, it would lead to disaster over the long run.
|
| 90% of deaths in Sweden have been of those over the age of 70. If
| the statistics are anything like those in Italy, almost all of
| these victims had pre-existing conditions.
|
| This is not to lessen the tragedy of their death. This is to
| point out that most of this tragedy predated their coronavirus
| infection - their life expectancy was already very limited due to
| other factord.
| glofish wrote:
| Sweden is much hated because it demonstrates how the scientific
| epidemiological models, the studies on mask effectiveness,
| lockdown estimations etc are all junk science. None of their
| models would have predicted the trajectory for Sweden, not even
| close.
|
| And that is because none are based on sound science but are
| guesstimates at best yet are paraded around as the product of the
| best minds in the world.
|
| Much is made about the growing anti-science sentiment in the
| world, the rushed pseudo scientific justification will only
| strengthen that.
|
| Give it a year and most of the justification will be walked back,
| it will turn out that wearing a mask is actually detrimental to
| public health. It boggles the mind that people assume there must
| be no ill effects to breathing through a mucus-laden cotton sheet
| filled with microorganisms captured from the air, ...
| latchkey wrote:
| > I don't understand how people assume it is healthy to breathe
| through a mucus-laden cotton sheet filled with microorganisms
| captured from the air, ...
|
| Tell that to the millions of people who go skiing every year,
| or the people who work in hospitals all day long, every day.
|
| I wash my mask every time I use it and I rotate through several
| of them. Nobody is asking you to wear a dirty mask.
| oxymoran wrote:
| I find this article a little disingenuous and here is why:
| Sweden-5420 deaths out of a population of 10 million while no
| lock down. Michigan-6005 deaths out of a population of 10 million
| and we have been locked down since mid March.
|
| To be clear, I was in favor of the lockdown at first and I still
| am in favor of keeping things like bars and casinos closed but
| it's become clear that the virus doesn't have much affect on
| younger populations and that the death rate has been dropping.
| Here in Michigan, while our daily new cases is still creeping up,
| our 7 day moving average of deaths has continued to plummet.
| triceratops wrote:
| Sweden and Michigan have about an equal number of cases (~74k)
| but Sweden has a better survival rate so far.
|
| Is it possible Sweden just has a healthier population than
| Michigan? Life expectancy in Sweden is about 4 years higher
| than Michigan. This also means their population skews older,
| but means people are healthier on average.
| nradov wrote:
| The obesity rate in Michigan is about 50% higher than Sweden.
| Numerous studies have shown that obesity is a significant
| risk factor for COVID-19 death.
| fulafel wrote:
| Sweden also has better healthcare. Are there stats on
| survival rates of patients with serious symptoms?
| akmarinov wrote:
| Well Sweden closed its borders, where Michigan can't close its
| borders to other states, so Michigan's is naturally higher.
| Svip wrote:
| Sweden did not close its borders, although it followed EU
| guidelines to close its borders beyond the EU. The US closed
| its borders to certain areas of the world, which is what this
| is comparable to.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Well all other countries in the EU closed their borders to
| them, so it's effectively the same thing.
| nradov wrote:
| US states can impose mandatory quarantines on people arriving
| from other states. However as a practical matter that will be
| difficult to enforce in any state with a long border.
|
| https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-
| in...
| oxymoran wrote:
| All the states around Michigan were locked down too. I'm sure
| there were a small amount of people crossing but we were
| effectively closed.
|
| We had a pretty strict lock down here and people followed it
| better than I expected they would. I'm not sure what to think
| but I do find it odd that 2 similar sized populations took
| radically different approaches and ended up in essentially
| the same spot.
| sjg007 wrote:
| The problem is that people ignored the lockdown. Also the virus
| doesn't discriminate. Younger people will die but may take
| longer to do so. Also we are detecting cases earlier than back
| in March where you had to be really sick to get a test.
| bjtitus wrote:
| > Also the virus doesn't discriminate
|
| I mean, of course the virus "discriminates" in the sense that
| there is a huge disparity in mortality rate between age and
| pre-existing condition groups.
|
| Sure, it can infect anyone but it's obviously false to act
| like the effects are equal across demographics.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Younger/healthier people are far less likely to die.
|
| But they can be a great vector of infection to others.
| basch wrote:
| >it's become clear that the virus doesn't have much affect on
| younger populations
|
| That was something expected before the lockdowns. The lockdowns
| were sold as a way to buy hospitals time, by flattening and
| slowing down the spread.
|
| How can you even compare Swedens rate until the whole thing is
| over, everywhere? A flattened curve will take longer. Sweden
| purposely chose the frontloaded, higher initial rate.
| pengaru wrote:
| It seems obviously wasteful to keep such businesses open where
| most the paying customers won't be showing up during a pandemic
| anyways. Why even pay to have the lights on? You need to mothball
| the operation ASAP and lobby for government assistance for the
| duration.
|
| I was just poking at rough figures last night out of curiosity
| regarding when the other end of this arrives in terms of 60% herd
| immunity for the US. Just pulling numbers out of my ass, like
| 200,000,000 for 60% and an avg infection rate of 100,000/day.
| With those figures it's 5.5yrs before 60% gets infected. We're at
| more like 50,000/day last I checked, but who knows how accurate
| that is.
|
| Either way, it looks like this is going to be a life of masks and
| social distancing for a long time. Hopefully a vaccine arrives in
| volume before 5+ years go by.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I feel like we should just start building a life of social
| distance. I really hate getting the normal flu so would like to
| prevent that too.
| thepangolino wrote:
| Sweden has half the COVID death of Belgium despite having had
| some of the more lax restrictions.
|
| The only reason Sweden is facing economic hardship is because of
| its starting position and the fact most of the world decided to
| go full retard on their own.
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| Belgium overcounts its cases, deliberately so.
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