[HN Gopher] The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to menta...
___________________________________________________________________
The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to mental health,
healthier economy
Author : mrfusion
Score : 144 points
Date : 2021-08-22 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.telegraph.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.telegraph.co.uk)
| warning26 wrote:
| What I find particularly interesting is that Sweden wasn't the
| only country that did this -- Brazil also did a no-lockdown
| strategy, and it was basically a disaster there.
|
| Evidently, there must have been some other factors at play
| besides the boolean of lockdown true/false. Better healthcare,
| maybe?
| marjoripomarole wrote:
| Not true. Many Brazilian cities and states had lockdown
| measures at various times this past 20 months.
| slim wrote:
| Some people have better resistance to the virus. Maybe there's
| more of them in sweden
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| China did the opposite by sealing everything up in the
| beginning, and now everything has gone back to normal for them
| bar international travel.
|
| Probably it's down to developed countries having a well-defined
| response protocol AND its citizen sticking to it.
| audunw wrote:
| > and now everything has gone back to normal
|
| Right now it seems quite the opposite. Their vaccines are not
| very effective against the Delta variant, and they're having
| several outbreaks. They recently shut down a huge port. They
| never learned how to do partial lockdowns and just dealing
| with low levels of infection, so if they don't manage to
| eliminate the virus, they're screwed. What are they going to
| do with the Delta variant? Import foreign vaccines? Wait for
| better domestic vaccines? What if a new more infectious
| variant comes along that's even less affected by their
| vaccines?
|
| I think China may be a case of the cure being worse than the
| disease. We know their approach has killed people, and the
| huge amount of resources spent on these lockdowns and massive
| amount of testing may have been better spent saving lives
| elsewhere. But we'll never know because they don't publish
| reliable data on excess mortality.
| neither_color wrote:
| They've had regular city-wide/regional lockdowns all
| throughout. If someone in your apartment complex tests
| positive _SURPRISE_ you cant leave for two weeks. Normal is
| gone, it 's not coming back. When you move the goal post from
| "not overwhelming our medical system" to attempting "covid
| zero" this is the new normal you end up with, somewhere
| between China and Australia.
|
| August 2021
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/02/millions-
| under...
|
| June 2021 https://www.scmp.com/coronavirus/greater-
| china/article/31380...
|
| January 2021
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/world/asia/china-covid-
| lo...
| azinman2 wrote:
| The article talks about this at the end. They have very low
| population density, a tiny population to start with, and most
| people live alone. Compared to their immediate neighbors with
| similar densities and culture, they did far worse in deaths.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| See but since there was no actual randomized test the fact that
| Brazil did a no-lockdown strategy (which I guess some say is
| false)... it could have been just as big of a disaster even
| with a lockdown.
|
| There is basically no real way to prove that lockdowns did a
| single thing. The fact so many countries were so willing to
| jump onto a completely unproven non pharmaceutical intervention
| that has massive negative side effects is pretty scary.
|
| The fact so many people get hot and bothered by this and just
| assume that lockdowns worked at all... it's quite disturbing.
| richardw wrote:
| Its proven. It's physics. I can't catch covid from you
| because we're probably on different continents. Living across
| the street works as well if I don't open the door. This has
| been tested for every transmissible disease every organism
| has had that we've managed to witness. Similarly, fewer
| interactions result in fewer opportunities for transmission.
| Reduce transmission and the numbers go down. What's to prove
| here?
|
| Didn't vote you down.
| mavhc wrote:
| Also there's graphs, lockdown enacted, cases go down,
| lockdown stopped, cases go up, repeat.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Oh really?
|
| https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| (This should be a submission in its own right.) Really
| interesting data.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| It will never survive. Looks like we are back to March
| 2020 levels of panic again based on how my comments are
| doing... sad.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| breck wrote:
| Lockdowns are an incredibly fragile "solution". It's a
| multi agent problem with lots of probabilities. All
| lockdowns allow some "essential workers" to not lockdown.
| You could have only 2% of workers deemed essential--and
| there is no general rule since all geographies are
| different and in situations like the exact details matter--
| and have the exact same long term outcomes as no lock down
| at all. It's fun to run multi agent simulations and see how
| easy it is to screw up any centralized plan through the
| injection of little probabilitities.
|
| In my opinion anything that does not allow people to
| exercise conditional probability at the last mile is bound
| to have negative expected value.
|
| Things that I do think make a difference: better airflow,
| more outdoor time, less obesity, better testing, a public
| equipped with better tools to diagnose and treat conditions
| at home, vaccines, better data infra and publishing of
| medical data, etc. Dumb blanket mandates that are applied
| across a population are stupid.
| tpmx wrote:
| I'm Swedish.
|
| I think the most important difference is that ~50% of the
| population here thought the government was being
| incompetent/paralyzed and then performed a voluntary lockdown,
| much harsher than the government-mandated restrictions.
|
| Since lots of those people who disagreed with the government
| (in)actions work as "knowledge workers", it was also relatively
| easy to make the switch to work from home, and they did, along
| with pretty much everone who was able to do WFH.
|
| Possibly related: the current social democrat prime minister
| Stefan Lofven made a surprise announcement today that he'll be
| stepping down in November, a mere ten months before the next
| election.
|
| I think it's natural that it would play out differently in
| Brazil - so many differences in the structure of the work
| force, access to information, English language skills, personal
| economic reserves, etc etc.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| This sounds exactly like what happened where I live in the
| USA. Many people who could WFH did. People who could not, did
| not. Everyone made a personal risk assessment and went about
| his life accordingly.
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah, and the outcome (confirmed cases & deaths) is kinda
| similar.
|
| Confirmed cases:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
|
| Confirmed deaths:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-
| explor...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Such an easy argument. The no lockdown failed, but it also
| succeeded because people locked down anyway.
| LinAGKar wrote:
| Stefan Lofven made a surprise announcement today that he'll
| be stepping down in November
|
| Again? He got kicked out and reelected two months ago. This
| government is a damn yo-yo.
| gerikson wrote:
| His ministry lost a no-confidence vote in parliament, but
| no-one else was able to form a new government so he was
| asked to form a new one.
|
| This latest announcement is that he will be stepping down
| as the leader of the Social Democrats. There's a new
| election in Sep 2022, and to me (a Swede) it looks as if
| no-one is interested in an extra snap election right now
| (the regular election will be held in Sep 2022 as planned
| anyway).
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah.. the electoral situation in the parliament hadn't
| really changed, so that was kinda stupid. Mostly it was
| just a way for the socialist (borderline communist) eternal
| support party to the social democrats to flex its muscles,
| for once.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| That doesn't prove the people doing these voluntary lockdowns
| had any different of an outcome than if they did nothing at
| all.
|
| Way to many people just blindly assume these interventions
| worked. The fact is we have zero clue if they did anything or
| the outcomes experienced by different regions was a result of
| a bunch of stuff that is completely out of our control.
|
| If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns not
| doing anything. The virus did what it did no matter how hard
| humans tried to control it. We had as little control over
| covid as we have control over other natural disasters like
| tornadoes and hurricanes.
| kasperni wrote:
| Of course they have an effect. Take, for example, the UK.
| All three local peaks of covid deaths (Apr 20, Nov 20, Jan
| 21) all came exactly 2-3 weeks after each of the 3 national
| lockdowns.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| That doesn't mean anything at all. It could just be
| random. You'd have no way to tell which of our theories
| are true. None of these lockdowns were proven to work
| prior to everybody jumping on them.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > That doesn't mean anything at all. It could just be
| random.
|
| This is not a serious response. The correlation is far
| too definite to be mere chance; and the mechanisms that
| cause it not hard to understand. Or in plain English:
| it's not random.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| It's a very serious response, and it isn't my job to
| prove. All the lockdown proponents need to prove their
| draconian, Stone Age mitigation's did anything at all. As
| far as I can see it's just blind luck that one region
| "did better" than a other.
| dijit wrote:
| You don't want to be forced to do anything. I get that.
|
| Pandemic response is not coded into us, it's something we
| have to consciously do- and it's draining to fight an
| invisible enemy.
|
| I have issues with authority, so I understand the desire
| to fight against being told what to do.
|
| But you're denying science, this is not helpful.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| The pandemic respond we got was not at all what we
| planned. It was using something completely untested and
| unproven with huge massive negative side effects. It was
| and still is unethical and immoral.
|
| Science has nothing to do with these NPIs because science
| doesn't tell society what do to.
| dTal wrote:
| I made you this chart of the UK pandemic. It's incomplete
| by necessity, but gives the flavor. Do the dates and
| lockdown measures look unrelated?
|
| https://imgur.com/a/026CGjK
| spookthesunset wrote:
| You have that as a log chart?
|
| Here, I'll do you better:
| https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
| skytreader wrote:
| Such dishonest statistics, this source. For example,
|
| > One of these neighboring Southeastern states had a
| statewide mask mandate. The other two did not.
|
| > [Shown: COVID-19 Deaths, per million, 7-day average]
|
| But mask mandates do not claim to prevent COVID-19
| deaths, rather _transmission_. A state with relatively
| low transmission but poor healthcare infra will see
| similarly unintuitive /surprising trends.
| dTal wrote:
| It is a log chart! Look at the y axis. It's hard to see
| anything sensible on a linear chart.
| wldlyinaccurate wrote:
| > If I was gonna bet, my money would be on the lockdowns
| not doing anything. The virus did what it did no matter how
| hard humans tried to control it
|
| Tell that to New Zealand, who have had less than 3,000
| cases in a population of 5 million. They did this with
| strict border controls (people on inbound flights must
| isolate for 2 weeks) and quick response to community
| transmission (several lockdowns totalling 40 days).
| mavhc wrote:
| The UK made incoming people isolate in March....2021
| tomohawk wrote:
| This is not what I think of by "it worked"
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/new-zealand-lockdown-
| one...
|
| At best, its a fragile, brittle, costly "solution" that
| may work in an isolated country like NZ until vaccines
| are available.
|
| It's been 8 months since vaccines have been available,
| and they're still in the low 20s in terms of people
| getting the vaccine.
| lancewiggs wrote:
| New Zealander here.
|
| Yes we locked down over one case. The next day we had a
| few more, and then more and more and more (21 in each of
| the last two days). Delta is amazingly spreadable.
|
| Because we are locked down straight away, every case is
| easily contact traced, and people that did catch COVID
| are already isolated in their bubble, so cannot re-
| transmit easily behind that. As people are diagnosed they
| are taken to isolate in a hotel.
|
| So there will be an end, even though we were unluckily
| enough to have had a number of very large spreader events
| (conferences, churches, schools etc.).
|
| The oft-touted alternative from activists outside NZ is
| to vaccinate and open up. We are vaccinia go quickly, but
| that plan does not work. (NZ had no right/need to get
| vaccines early - we did not need them. We are now ramping
| up quickly, all to the plan.)
|
| But vaccines do not prevent transmission.
|
| Vaccines do not provide population immunity with Delta
| until a very large percentage (90%?) of all people, kids
| included, are vaccinated.
|
| Vaccines do not eliminate illness (including long COVID)
| and death. They do reduce it a lot, but many people will
| die, especially the vaccine hesitant. Meanwhile anti-
| vaxers spread disinformation, much as the similar or
| overlapping anti-lockdown crowd do. (Think about that)
|
| Vaccines are not available to kids, and some very
| vulnerable.
|
| It has been really amazing living essentially a normal
| live while most the rest of the world "lives with COVID".
| We want that back.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Your comment reminds me of the NYC Metro use data that (I
| think) was posted here at the very beginning of the pandemic.
| IIRC it showed subway use plummeted _before_ the city or
| state government enacted any measures to combat the pandemic
| at all.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| Yep. A lot of what got blamed on lockdowns was widely
| happening without government mandates, and I don't get how
| people keep making mistakes about this when looking at the
| effects of policy.
| tomp wrote:
| When I argue with people, I use the term _" lockdown"_ to
| _exclusively_ mean _government_ -imposed lockdowns.
|
| After we've witnessed the experience of northern Italy in
| February / March 2020, most informed/reasonable people
| concluded that the situation is more serious than
| previously indicated, so it's obvious that people's
| habits would change. People are somewhat rational, after
| all.
|
| But arguably self-imposed/-chosen changes in human
| behaviour can both better account for individual
| differences (in health, exposure, and risk aversion) as
| well as respond much faster to short-term, local changes
| of the situation, compared to government policy.
| ls612 wrote:
| And the clearest counter example to this ridiculous
| assertion is the US right now; faced with numbers not
| seen since the winter the population has only minimally
| changed it's behavior over the summer and so far there
| has been no political will for any distancing
| restrictions returning.
| cinntaile wrote:
| This is speculation from my side, based on my interactions with
| health care in Sweden over the past year. They are good at
| distancing and precautions in situations where it probably
| matters a lot, health care settings. People that had cold
| symptoms didn't get mixed up with regular patients. Like
| sitting in a waiting room. If you were going to have a child
| and you were going to have a meeting with a nurse then you were
| the only one allowed in, not even your husband/boyfriend was
| allowed to accompany you.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Hey downvoters, come and discuss instead. That makes for more
| intellectually curious discussions!
| Hamuko wrote:
| What's the definition of "lockdown" anyways? Because I can't
| name that many COVID-19 restrictions that have been enacted in
| Finland.
| black_13 wrote:
| This is not science
| adevx wrote:
| Add to this that babies born during lockdown have found to have a
| significant lower IQ.
|
| "It's not subtle by any stretch," said Deoni. "You don't
| typically see things like that, outside of major cognitive
| disorders."
|
| I think we vastly underestimate the severe long-term effects of
| lockdowns.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/12/children-born-...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Your link doesn't seem to go anywhere.
|
| Also, how accurate are IQ tests on 1 year old and younger
| babies?
|
| I'm not sure why IQs would be lower (if indeed this is the
| case) - parents are still around. In fact parents have been
| more often around during the pandemic given the increase in
| work from home policies.
| adevx wrote:
| I've updated the link to a non-amp link. Details of the study
| can be found here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/20
| 21.08.10.21261846v...
| soared wrote:
| Pretty interesting read and it does make sense intuitively.
| My few thoughts after skimming it that I'd like to learn
| more about:
|
| Does these scores correlate to scores 10 years later/etc,
| or should we expect these children to recover?
|
| > However, since all study visits take place in a clinical
| setting, parents less concerned about the pandemic, and
| those with strong social support networks, may have been
| more likely to participate than those with greater
| concerns.
|
| This seems pretty impactful to me. If you consider that
| people more worried about the pandemic were avoiding doctor
| visits, and the study showed parent's education reduced the
| effect they saw...
|
| They kind of glossed over the fact that children born just
| before the pandemic didn't have lower scores. I'm curious
| about that since the first few weeks/months for newborns
| they are not leaving the house much, so a pandemic
| shouldn't have changed a whole lot there. Why were they
| immune if the stages were they would've expected to start
| leaving the house (4+ months) were taken away, just like
| babies born during the pandemic?
| dmingod666 wrote:
| How do you measure baby IQ?
| jaggs wrote:
| This narrative has been on-going during the pandemic. Easy to
| follow the money - https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-
| covid-19/conservati...
| giorgioz wrote:
| Is it just me or there are A LOT of articles about how Sweden is
| better in doing X coming from the US and the UK recently? What's
| going on here? Frankly it seems a bit of nationalist content
| marketing after the 10th article I read in 3 years. Most of the
| times the articles claim Sweden is doing better X but that X
| could easily be applied to several other countries in Europe.
| "Sweden offers free health care and education"... yeah A LOT of
| countries in Europe do that. For this article too it seems the
| overall achievement of Sweden are shared by many other countries
| by somehow Sweden is being singled out.
|
| I even googled it and found this: https://si.se/en/annual-report-
| of-the-image-of-sweden-abroad... Is there a cultural infatuation
| between the US/UK and Sweden? Is Sweden activally investing
| resources to improve their perceived image?
| throwaway_fjmr wrote:
| Nope, you are looking at an article from the right-wing, anti-
| lockdown, COVID-sceptic Telegraph ;)
| T-A wrote:
| > Is Sweden activally investing resources to improve their
| perceived image?
|
| Yes. Look at the About page on that site you found:
|
| https://si.se/en/about-si/our-mission/
|
| _The Swedish Institute is a public agency that promotes
| interest and trust in Sweden around the world._
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The funny thing is that the people glorifying Sweden's COVID-19
| response historically reject comparisons with the country in
| other areas like human rights, penal policy, economic model,
| taxation policy etc. etc.
| [deleted]
| onemorepasta wrote:
| Can you paste this one more time please. Do it for daddy.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/cL6qp
| drudoo wrote:
| Non-Swede who lived in Sweden basically all of 2020 here. We
| basically self isolated most of the year and only did grocery
| shopping with masks and keeping distance but a lot of people
| really did not care about social distancing or masks. My wife and
| I were often very uncomfortable being out of the house and really
| did not like the relaxed guidelines. We commuted a lot to Denmark
| and the contrast was huge. We felt so much safer and comfortable
| being out shopping in Denmark compared to Sweden.
|
| We moved to Denmark start 2021 and has been back and forth
| between the two countries monthly and there's still a big
| difference in behavior.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| Soy
| jansan wrote:
| So now that Denmark is lifting basically all measures, are you
| planning to move on?
| marvin wrote:
| Practically everyone is vaccinated now, or very soon. Most
| people who were in favor of social distancing measures don't
| want this stuff to be codified indefinitely, just because
| they like limiting people's lifestyles.
|
| The intention has always been to mitigate the worst health
| effects of covid, which means temporary measures.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| Good luck changing the opinion of the cuckdowncels.
| polote wrote:
| Can we ban discussion of covid restrictions on HN ? At that point
| nobody is going to change his position.
|
| Pro lockdown people will not change their opinion even if there
| are proof that masks mandate and lockdowns dont work
|
| Anti lockdown people will not change their opinion even if there
| are proof that masks mandate and lockdowns works.
|
| There is no point keep talking about it, unless you want to loose
| your time arguing with someone who will never agree with you.
|
| There was a post on HN a few days ago "Why it is so hard to be
| rational ?" [1], it perfectly describes the current situation.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28197482
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Telegraph has an anti-lockdown agenda to push in the UK; it is
| not an impartial source here.
|
| In the UK the praise for the "Sweden model" comes particularly
| from the conservative-aligned pro-business anti-lockdown lobby;
| who are producing PR for their proposition that "lockdowns do
| more (economic) harm than they do (public health) good". Right or
| wrong, it's certainly not impartial reporting on a foreign
| country, it's selling the idea that this should be policy at
| home.
|
| If you're reading such an article from a UK publication and
| you're not in the UK, then you are not the target of this
| marketing exercise. You are informational Bycatch.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Your argument is that we should ignore news media with an "anti
| lockdown" agenda?
|
| It may come as a surprise but not every smart, well meaning
| person supports the lockdowns. You can look at all the publicly
| available data and come to the conclusion that they were a
| colossal public health blunder.
|
| I would argue the pro lockdown crowd have a huge bias toward
| ignoring any bit of data that demonstrates lockdowns are a bad
| idea.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| One part of the problem is that the debate got incredibly
| polarized with ad hominem and thinking of the children. The
| majority of people on the internet citing 'science' and
| 'data' (regardless of side) are people who have an opinion
| and found a fact to support it to which they then cling for
| dear life.
|
| Another part of the problem is the degree to which our
| understanding of facts has evolved. Take, for instance, the
| body of evidence for and against PPE of all types and compare
| it to what was being said in March of 2020.
|
| The major failing of public policy was, in my opinion, the
| inability to articulate the difference between what we knew
| and what we thought. This was enhanced and exacerbated by the
| public wanting answers now, and refusing to countenance "we
| don't know".
|
| When historians looks back at this period of history, they
| are going to marvel at the degree to which we lionized people
| who "stuck to their guns" and the degree to which we
| denigrate people who change their opinion when the facts
| change.
| mattmanser wrote:
| The telegraph has pretty much become the raving loony of the
| right in the UK, not just because of this.
|
| It's not a good news source anymore, if you want a rational
| right-wing paper in the UK these days, read The Times.
|
| Used to be the other way around.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Have you ever noticed that the people who reject model-derived
| predictions for things like pandemic and climate are extremely
| confident about their economic forecasting ability? If only
| some of these super-geniuses would share their unquestionable
| brilliance with other fields, not to mention eliminating
| recessions and financial panics.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Why do we reject model-derived projections for the stock
| market and accept them for climate and disease?
| [deleted]
| acdha wrote:
| Which one of those has intelligence?
|
| CO2 doesn't try to stymie your mitigation plans; a virus
| has selective pressure but it's stochastic rather than
| directed by an intelligent adversary. In contrast, the
| stock market has a huge number of people with massive
| resources who can make enormous profits when they find a
| way to exploit some aspect of the system.
| microtherion wrote:
| Sweden not only had many more Covid-19 deaths than other
| Scandinavian countries they also have considerably higher
| unemployment:
|
| https://twitter.com/Andreas_Hopf/status/1429523341510123528
|
| So they traded more deaths for a WORSE economy (though, as far
| as I know, the part about self reported mental health is true).
| tomp wrote:
| Does "conservative-aligned" still mean anything at all in the
| UK, except an ad-hominem jab on a more liberally-oriented
| website like HN?
|
| There's basically no more serious non-conservative political
| parties in the UK (Labour is mired in one scandal after another
| and can't elect a proper leader), whereas the COVID lockdowns
| (lasting roughly 8 months) were enacted by a conservative
| leader.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Does "conservative-aligned" still mean anything at all in
| the UK
|
| When it comes to UK newspapers of course it does.
|
| > There's basically no more serious non-conservative
| political parties in the UK
|
| That's certainly an opinion, but one that is not relevant to
| talking about newspapers.
|
| > whereas the COVID lockdowns (lasting roughly 8 months) were
| enacted by a conservative leader.
|
| UK lockdowns were consistently too late, because the
| Conservative government did not want too admit the necessity.
| That's why the lockdowns had to be so long and repeated.
| Pressure like this article exits because the UK Government is
| know to be susceptible to it. Because they don't have their
| own serious plans for COVID, or actually for anything else
| either.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't understand your argument. You seem to be saying that
| since there aren't any viable non-conservatives the
| Conservatives are not conservatives and that this newspaper
| isn't conservative.
| beaunative wrote:
| People, wake up, Sweden is so loosely populated that the safe-
| distance is (almost) the regular distance. You risk of doing the
| same thing in Bay Area would result in more cases and deaths
| exponentially.
| dghughes wrote:
| I know a lot of right-wing types like to point to Sweden as an
| example. But I'd argue whether what they did was right or wrong
| the Swedish population was better prepared. Compared to the USA
| the Swedish socialized medical system would mean that most of
| their citizens probably started off healthier.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| I see a lot of articles about how government reactions were good
| or bad for COVID. I have seen nothing regarding how a country's
| environment and population density affect COVID, I guess it is
| hard to push an agenda with that narrative. It seems the
| country's that "responded" the best all have low population
| density and/or are physically isolated from other countries. I
| see people praising leadership from places like New Zealand and
| South Korea, but maybe it is just easy to keep people out of
| these places.
| lrgzdmn wrote:
| > I have seen nothing regarding how a country's environment and
| population density affect COVID
|
| This article does address that.
| alliao wrote:
| South Korea/Taiwan don't have low population density. Best
| response comes from states with educated citizens with good
| basic hygiene and understanding of exponential so are able to
| accept early intervention. NZ have the benefit of citizens
| actually trust the government; bit of a wet dream for many
| politicians around the world.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| It seems improbable that all the best responses were all
| effectively isolated island nations. I think they may have
| another advantage.
| qayxc wrote:
| > I see people praising leadership from places like New Zealand
| and South Korea, but maybe it is just easy to keep people out
| of these places.
|
| There's two components to this. The first is indeed that both
| countries are relatively isolated islands. Yes, South Korea is
| _technically_ a peninsula, but the part that connects it to the
| mainland is separated by the best guarded border in the world,
| so...
|
| But the second component is how the situation was (and still
| is) handled: instead of waiting for exponential growth of the
| rate of new infections, both countries went into full emergency
| mode immediately. South Korea in particular applied lessons
| learned during the SARS crisis about a decade earlier and
| invested heavily in automated testing equipment, etc.
|
| In Europe, one of the critical failures was the inability to
| quickly and cost-effectively ramp up testing due to the lack of
| automated lab equipment.
|
| Other critical aspects of disease control included
| traceability, which worked exceptionally well in South Korea
| due to the excellent cell coverage and prevalence of smartphone
| app usage (plus permissive and practical data protection laws)
| and willing participation and support of the population.
|
| New Zealand is quick to order measures even if a single case is
| being reported. This prevents exponential spreading and keeps
| measures such as lock-downs short and reduces the overall
| negative impact.
|
| So it's really not just the location, but a number of measures
| that most other countries simply failed to take.
|
| The geography helps a lot, though, no question.
| dmitriid wrote:
| - Significantly higher mortality than immediate neighbors
|
| - Economy suffered the same as neighbors, and the government was
| quick to help big companies like Volvo (which immediately paid
| dividends to shareholders), but small businesses couldn't get
| their voices heard (even not-so-small businesses like airports)
|
| Alternative history re-writers already hail this as the greatest
| achievement ever.
| [deleted]
| kybernetikos wrote:
| It's so weird to see people still claiming this.
|
| Sweden has relatively few neighbors, but compare it with any of
| them, and it looks bad https://imgur.com/a/BlaU2SX
|
| Yes, Sweden did well compared to the EU average, but a country
| with very low population density, surrounded by very few
| neighbors that all got the virus under control very quickly has a
| lot of things going for it compared to the European average.
|
| The difference between them and their neighbors isn't small.
|
| Counterfactuals are always hard, and there might be valid non-
| lockdown related excuses for why Sweden did so _poorly_ , but
| it's really strange to be reading articles about how well Sweden
| has done.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Sweden is a different country than Norway or Finland, even
| though they are neighbors. Also, being low population density
| is irrelevant (you could have a huge country with everybody
| crammed in a city, actually Stockholm is much denser than Oslo
| for instance). Also, even within a single country, fatality
| rates vary greatly.
|
| I don't think anybody knows how Sweden would have done with a
| different response to the Covid. In any case, on an objective
| scale, I think they've done quite well and they had a less
| miserable experience than the rest of us.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > I don't think anybody knows how Sweden would have done with
| a different response to the Covid. In any case, on an
| objective scale, I think they've done quite well and they had
| a less miserable experience than the rest of us.
|
| So first you claim we don't know. Then you claim they've
| "done quite well". Which is it? What was the purpose of the
| first sentence?
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I'm claiming we don't know what would have happened under
| different policies (lockdown vs no lockdown) - and those
| who pretend otherwise don't have scientific evidence to
| back up their claims. Regardless, I'm claiming they've done
| quite well under all possible objective metrics compared to
| other European countries.
| dijit wrote:
| > Sweden is a different country than Norway or Finland
|
| Pedantic "every country is a different country" aside; Norway
| and Finland are absolutely fine comparatives.
|
| The population density (in the populated areas), culture and
| genetic make-up of these countries is so similar that they
| may as well be considered the same country socioeconomically.
|
| Hell, they used to even _be_ the same country (the union of
| Kalmar).
|
| I've lived in Finland and currently live in Sweden. As a
| British person I see more similarities than differences.
| (Language of Finland vs the Scandinavian languages not
| withstanding)
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Your perception of a country doesn't make a scientific
| evidence on why Norway of Finland could be taken as
| reference point to assess Sweden strategy regarding Covid.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The Telegraph_ leans strongly conservative just as the
| Guardian leans strongly left. This seems like a very slanted
| article; it buries the mortality impact of CVOID until near the
| end. I seriously doubt that Norway would prefer to swap its
| ~10x lower death rate for Sweden 's GDP numbers. Further:
|
| _In a paper published last week in science journal Nature, Dr
| Bhatt, together with the UK 's former government advisor Neil
| Ferguson and other researchers, estimated that if the UK had
| adopted Sweden's policies, its death rate would have been
| between two and four times higher.
|
| "What Sweden did was a pandemic response that involved large
| numbers of interventions, a considerable amount of reliance on
| population behaviour and population adherence, and a reliance
| on the intricacies of what makes Swedish culture Swedish
| culture," Dr Bhatt said.
|
| "If the UK had adopted what Sweden did, I have no doubt in my
| mind that it would have had an absolute disaster."_
|
| -\\(deg_o)/-
|
| Notably, the Telegraph is not calling for people int he UK to
| be more like Swedes.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Weren't a lot of Sweden's deaths very early and from nursing
| homes specifically because they were taking literally no
| preventative measures, though?
|
| They learned from this, and recommended different things for
| older people and nursing homes, specifically, was my
| understanding.
|
| If you factor out all those deaths in the beginning - the
| difference in deaths is not 10x.
|
| And 10x doesn't really matter. If 1 person died in Norway and
| 10 people died in Sweden, I don't think we'd be debating
| much. Even in Sweden, they did not have as many deaths as
| most other countries, and a lot of them were very early on.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Why are people still arguing about a countries population
| density in late 2021? It is a completely irrelevant metric,
| lets include the Canadian arctic when calculating the density
| of Toronto and the effects of Covid, makes a whole lot of
| sense! A measure which actually has some relevance on country
| scale is population weighted density.
|
| _" Population weighted density refers to a metric which
| measures the density at which the average citizen lives. It is
| calculated by taking weighted average of the density of all
| parcels of land that make up a city, with each parcel weighted
| by its population"_ [0]
|
| By that measure we get Sweden is at 2693, Denmark at 2399 and
| Finland at 1741. [1] Concluding that Denmark did amazingly well
| given the cards they were dealt and Sweden is at the average of
| Europe due to very a urbanised population compared to the size
| of the country.
|
| [0]: https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/jrc-luisa-udp-pwd-
| ref2...
|
| [1]: https://jeodpp.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ftp/jrc-
| opendata/LUISA/Secon...
| yyyk wrote:
| >Why are people still arguing about a countries population
| density in late 2021?
|
| Because the _effective_ Swedish population density is very
| low? The effective density is affected by household size, and
| about 40% of Swedes live alone without children[0]. Sweden
| had the biggest Corona infection vector neutered and still
| did horribly.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/526013/sweden-number-
| of-...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I suggest the measure density is a single value based on
| housing units and not the right measure to care about in
| itself. Instead look at public and private hygiene, isolation
| practices and incident response profiles, per hundred
| thousand or so.. not hectares per hundred thousand.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Sure, there're a lot of factors that can affect how disease
| spreads, like demographics, genetics, climate, health system,
| sociability, temperature, cafe culture, saunas, wfh
| incidence, international travel, travel links, tourism...
|
| I'm quite happy to accept that 'population density' is
| inadequate - I mention it only in passing in my comment, the
| point I'm making is that Sweden is not a country you would
| expect to perform at the european average, and given that,
| the most natural thing to do is to compare a country with its
| neighbors. Neighboring countries usually share many factors,
| and on top of that, they have a direct transmission effect
| too.
|
| Sweden did _much_ worse than its neighbors. The explanation
| for that is either in the ways that Sweden is different from
| its neighbors, or in the difference in public policy.
|
| I certainly don't know which to blame, but I don't want to
| hear any more lionization of the Swedish approach that
| doesn't solidly get to grips with that question.
| tpmx wrote:
| Swede here:
|
| It's complex. I'm extremely unhappy with the way the Swedish
| gov handled this.
|
| I see two main failures:
|
| 1. Not reacting quickly enough. Denmark and Norway reacted
| quickly and strongly back in early March 2020. At this critical
| point, Sweden's "CDC" dropped the ball in a monumental manner,
| and the government didn't pick it up.
|
| 2. Not protecting municipal elderly homes in a competent way,
| early on. This is where most deaths happened. Norway in
| particular handled this so much better.
|
| And _of course_ we should compare ourselves to e.g. Denmark
| /Norway/Finland.
|
| I think the root cause of all this is that Sweden has not been
| involved in a war in a very long time, unlike our neighbors.
| We're pretty good when things are stable, but apparently awful
| when things are dynamic/shit is going down.
|
| Of course I have very specific opinions on what actually went
| wrong and why, but that would be too detailed to be useful here
| and also way too partisan.
| eckesicle wrote:
| In this case the neighbouring countries arent great
| comparators. Population density has been mentioned elsewhere in
| the thread. Large swaths of the country is empty with the
| populace being very urbanised. Stockholm has a population
| density on par with London, and Oslo is about half of that.
|
| Also households look very different in Sweden compared to it's
| neighbours. The average household size is among the lowest in
| the world with a very high variability (in particular in poorer
| areas where large family groups live together and were also
| disproportionally hit by COVID). That probably had an outsize
| effect as to why Sweden managed as well as they did. Social
| distancing and personal space is also pretty much the norm in
| Sweden even during non-pandemic times.
|
| The Swedish CDC also says they believe they've fared worse than
| Norway and Denmark because the last few flu seasons were very
| mild in the country. Looking at the excess mortality numbers
| for the last few years that does indeed seem to at least
| explain some of the difference (although the claim has been
| disputed by their Norwegian counterpart).
|
| It's also notable that Sweden tends to do a little worse than
| their neighbours through every flu season when it comes to
| excess death. Maybe COVID also just exacerbated that effect
| somewhat?
|
| I think that the factors influencing COVID spread are so
| complex that it is impossible to disentangle how effective any
| political measures were in all but the most general terms.
|
| In the end I think it mostly came down to luck, where those
| countries that managed to avoid clusters and super spreader
| events or more infectious strands early on fared better.
| user-the-name wrote:
| > In this case the neighbouring countries arent great
| comparators
|
| As someone living in a neighbouring country, this is
| bullshit. They are perfect comparators. Basically exactly the
| same.
|
| Sweden didn't lock down. Everyone else did. Ten times more
| people died in Sweden. End of story.
| yyyk wrote:
| >The Swedish CDC also says they believe they've fared worse
| than Norway and Denmark because the last few flu seasons were
| very mild in the country.
|
| It's called the 'dry tinder' hypothesis, and it isn't born
| out when researchers look at the data, e.g.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34213362/
| eckesicle wrote:
| Thanks!
| Closi wrote:
| Eh, It all depends how you look at the statistics. Consider the
| below:
|
| * Sweden had c14k deaths. Average age of death was in the
| eighty's - let's say Covid shortened life expectancy by 10
| years on average (seems a conservative figure). Total life lost
| is c140k life-years.
|
| * If Sweden locked down like other countries for a year, this
| would have been 10m people * 1 year = 10 million years of
| lockdown. Let's say that people had a life that was 10% worse
| during that time because of the restrictions of lockdown,
| that's 1 million quality-adjusted life years lost.
|
| If you are trying to optimise for "total quality-adjusted life
| years" as a society across the full population rather than just
| 'save lives' - Sweden's approach looks absolutely valid and
| correct.
|
| If your measure of success is 'minimise the absolute number of
| lives lost to Covid, no matter what the cost' then it looks
| poor.
| gpsx wrote:
| Your comment about counterfactuals reminds of a saying, or what
| I would call a more accurate version of a common saying -
| "Hindsight is 50/50". (Note, that doesn't make hindsight
| necessarily wrong, just difficult to have confidence in.)
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| "Hindsight is 20/20" because perfect eyesight is 20/20:
| https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/what-
| does-20-...
| gpsx wrote:
| Yes, that is the point. The original saying is Hindsight is
| 20/20, implying it is very accurate. This version of the
| statement contradicts that, implying you can't really say
| what would have happened if things were different.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The original saying is Hindsight is 20/20, implying it
| is very accurate.
|
| That is how the saying is used, but oddly enough it's
| pretty much the opposite of what 20/20 vision means.
| sib wrote:
| But 50/50 would be effectively the same meaning as 20/20.
|
| (20/20 means "person being tested sees as well at 20 feet
| as standard vision at 20 feet.")
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > But 50/50 would be effectively the same meaning as
| 20/20.
|
| This isn't obvious; consider that having 3,000/3,000
| vision ("I can't read text all that well when it's half a
| mile away") says pretty much nothing about how clearly
| you can see things that are 20 feet away.
|
| Nearsightedness and farsightedness are both characterized
| by "normal vision" at certain distances which becomes
| markedly worse at certain other distances.
| Hamuko wrote:
| 20/20 is actually just normal vision, not perfect eyesight.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yes, this just means you (first number) can see at 20
| feet what the normal person (second number) can see at 20
| feet. I don't know why 20 feet became the standard for
| comparison.
| irrational wrote:
| What is perfect vision? I thought 20/20 meant you don't
| need glasses or any other aids to see. Would perfect
| vision being able to see everything in the
| electromagnetic spectrum? How big would one eyes need to
| be?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > What is perfect vision?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#Powers,_abilities,
| _an...
|
| > I thought 20/20 meant you don't need glasses or any
| other aids to see.
|
| No, of course not. Try looking at Saturn at night. Then
| try looking through a telescope. Odds are you'll see it
| better with the aid.
| schoen wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity#Expression
|
| > Some birds of prey, such as hawks, are believed to have
| an acuity of around 20/2; in this respect, their vision
| is much better than human eyesight.
|
| The scale of how good vision can be keeps going and going
| indefinitely (presumably until you get into physical
| limitations to resolution related to wavelengths). While
| 20/20 is considered normal and not in need of correction,
| it doesn't mean it's the best vision observed among human
| beings, or the best that's physically possible (for human
| beings or other animals).
| austhrow743 wrote:
| The 1450 per million figure the article cites as the cost of
| covid to Sweden actually makes them look worse than your own
| data.
|
| It's not an article about the cost of covid though, its about
| the benefits of not fighting it as hard as other countries.
| It's very light on that, not much of an attempt to quantify,
| but still probs to it for even acknowledging that those
| benefits exist and count for something.
|
| The best write up I've seen so far on the topic is this [0]
| which concludes:
|
| > So every 52 months of stricter lockdown in counterfactual
| Sweden would have saved one month of healthy life. You will
| have to decide whether you think this is worth it, but it seems
| pretty harsh to me.
|
| > Might this be because these numbers are off, and the lockdown
| would have saved more lives than the model allows? I don't
| think that could change things very much. Remember, our
| confidence interval included the scenario where strict lockdown
| has 100% efficacy and prevents every single COVID case. Even if
| this is true, that just means it's 21 months of stricter
| lockdown to save one month of healthy life. Again, seems pretty
| harsh.
|
| [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-
| effectiveness...
| m4rtink wrote:
| When you want to see how bad it can get, see the Czech Republic
| in the top ten. We are land locked, quite high density and with
| a lot of neighbors with a lot of regular cross border traffic.
| There were lockdowns though arguably too late, chaotic and
| often ignored.
|
| End result ? 30000+ dead.
|
| Well, at least it looks like the ammount of people who got
| infected was quite massive as with only 50% vaccination rate
| right now things are not going back to hell so far, with hardly
| any precautions still in place.
| jchook wrote:
| Notice the article doesn't mention countries where proper
| lockdown worked very well and took only around 100 days.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| And what, pray tell is a "proper lockdown"?
|
| I hardly think NZ and AU are places to copy.
| another_story wrote:
| Taiwan had only a few weeks of full lockdown last year, and
| then a few months of softer lockdown during the second
| outbreak this year. During the recent outbreak it was WFH
| and takeout from restaurants with certain businesses
| closed. About 100 days later most things are open again.
|
| They resisted a full lockdown and doubled down on contact
| tracing. Went from 500+ cases a day to just a few now.
| benjilb wrote:
| Why not NZ?
|
| We're in our 2nd 'level 4' lockdown in 18 months. The
| economy is doing fine and for most of that 18 months we
| were living completely normally. We have record low case
| numbers and deaths.
| hkt wrote:
| NZ and AU are faring pretty differently. AU is wracked with
| crisis and NZ has been business as usual for ages. The key
| difference as I understand it is that NZ sacrificed easy
| international travel for domestic wellbeing and AU didn't.
| senectus1 wrote:
| the states that do actual hard and fast lockdowns do well.
| See WA, QLD, NT, SA.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| It's not like there are no adverse consequences to lockdowns
| :
|
| Tragedy: 1 MILLION more Brits have become alcoholics since
| Covid lockdowns began
|
| https://notthebee.com/article/nearly-1-million-more-brits-
| ad...
| duskwuff wrote:
| Do you have any direct source for that statistic? The
| article that you've linked to is the Babylon Bee -- a site
| best known for their satire and fake articles -- lifting
| some infographics from an (uncited) article in the Daily
| Mail. Neither of these sources inspires confidence.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Sorry I saw this circulate a few days ago and linked the
| first thing I found on DDG.
|
| I have no reason to think it's fake news.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| > I have no reason to think it's fake news.
|
| Very sound logic (/s)! With this sort of reasoning people
| invaded the Capitol on January 6th, because they were
| certain their country was about to be taken over by a
| Chinese-backed coup. Guess what, they also think what
| they heard was legitimate, and they think their reasoning
| work(ed) perfectly fine.
| afuchs wrote:
| > ... https://notthebee.com/article/nearly-1-million-more-
| brits-ad...
|
| This is very clearly a link to a satirical comedy site (in
| the same category as The Onion).
| [deleted]
| elygre wrote:
| Ref this
|
| > Sorry I saw this circulate a few days ago and linked the
| first thing I found on DDG. > I have no reason to think
| it's fake news.
|
| I think the expectation is that you should have a reason to
| think that it's _not_ fake news before spreading it.
| danjac wrote:
| The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British
| commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested
| interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in
| their portfolios. On an average day you'll notice multiple
| anti-remote working articles parroted by Cabinet ministers. Why
| should they care how businesses conduct their business,
| especially if it's more convenient and can lead to a happier
| and more efficient workforce? Follow the money.
|
| It used to be - many years ago - a stodgy and conservative yet
| reputable newspaper (they fired Boris Johnson for lying, now he
| moonlights as a columnist). As with other newspapers (e.g. WSJ)
| it went off the deep end a long time ago.
| avmich wrote:
| > The Telegraph is essentially the mouthpiece of the British
| commercial property landlord classes, who have a vested
| interest in getting people back into the offices and shops in
| their portfolios.
|
| I'm curious, how does it work in reality? A boardroom
| meetings where landlord's representative decide what to
| publish in the next issue to get people into commercial
| property? A weekly reviews of editors where they have their
| KPI tied to how well they lure people into buildings? Phone
| calls from commercial union leaders to publishing houses
| asking for specific results? Do we have some good articles
| which would describe mechanics of that or is it all
| successful clandestine operations?
| AndyPa32 wrote:
| More like a boardroom full of landlords, I guess.
| johnny53169 wrote:
| If you're part of a small group of people, it's easy to
| call your buddy when something bother you or a point of
| view you don't like gets published
| guerrilla wrote:
| Micromanging is not necessary. They just set the tone and
| don't hire people who would write anything opposed to their
| policy [1] which they rarely need to explicitly convey,
| although they do at times of course. People write things
| that they really like get rewarded.
|
| "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass
| Media" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky explains how
| this work with a very large number of examples.
|
| 1. https://youtu.be/9RPKH6BVcoM
|
| 2. https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-
| Econo...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Internet commenters love to think their enemy's minions
| are stupid.
|
| In reality they're just as smart as you are and don't
| need to be specifically told what the people in charge do
| and don't want published and/or what tone they should
| take.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Marriage and friendship networks. Particularly those formed
| in the public school ("public" means paid in UK) system. I
| doubt it's official meetings, but rather discussions
| outside work.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Yep, it's the dinner after the committee meeting, the bar
| after that. The weekend adventures, etc. That's where the
| politics are discovered. And then coordinated.
| overeater wrote:
| How are public schools paid in the UK? Does that mean
| private schools are the free schools? Or do they call
| free public schools something else?
| hkt wrote:
| The ones everyone else goes to are generally referred to
| as "state" schools.
| rahoulb wrote:
| It's a historical thing.
|
| In the olden days the only way to get an education was
| through privately tutoring.
|
| So establishments where everyone was educated together
| were "public" - even though you paid to attend.
|
| Nowadays "public meaning paid" implies one of these
| original public schools (Harrow, Eton and the like).
|
| I went to a paid school, founded in 1513, but it wouldn't
| be called "public" because it's not one of those original
| schools and therefore not high enough in the class
| system. It would be called "private".
|
| "Public as in free to attend" schools are known as state
| schools.
| spindle wrote:
| Just on a detail, I discovered recently that there have
| been various official definitions of "public school" and
| lists of public schools, and FWIW your school probably
| counts as one according to those. But I agree with your
| main points and your explanation.
| lamontcg wrote:
| You know in an interview loop where you consider "culture
| fit?" That's it. That's the conspiracy.
|
| For a journalism job at the Telegraph you're going to need
| to have a resume where you've written the right kinds of
| articles with the right kind of tone. Have a bunch of
| articles that you've written sympathetic to Corbyn and
| those around him and you ain't getting the job.
|
| They won't even need to police you that hard once you've
| gotten the job, because you've spent 20+ years being
| brought up a certain way and you're probably not going to
| massively deviate from your past all of a sudden,
| particularly not if you're clearly getting paid well based
| on your current trajectory. Once you get vetted in the
| interview process they know what they're getting based on
| the way you present yourself, the way you talk, your
| background, where you grew up, the schools you went to,
| etc. And when you've been there long enough you'll vet
| other candidates the same way.
|
| And its largely the same kind of interpersonal mechanics
| that govern the formation of cliques in high school,
| enforced by interviews and performance reviews, with large
| incentives where if you conform you climb the ladder and
| gain more wealth and power. Nobody needs to write it all
| down just like there's no written rules that he art nerds
| tend to hang out with the art nerds (and I'm sure there's
| examples of people who you think you can point to who broke
| the molds there, but they're notable precisely because they
| broke the molds).
| hkt wrote:
| Where I live in Yorkshire we call it Tory Pravda. It seems to
| just be propelled ever onwards by contrarianism.
| corney91 wrote:
| It was The Times that fired Boris Johnson for lying, The
| Telegraph hired him after that.
|
| They have gone off the deep end though. Some good coverage of
| The Telegraph's fall in standards is Peter Oborne's
| resignation letter:
| https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-i-
| have-...
| hkt wrote:
| It continues to astonish me how far the telegraph (and
| conservatism generally) has left people like Oborne behind.
| Really quite something to behold, and pretty deeply
| alarming.
| whiddershins wrote:
| While many people might point out that Sweden did in fact have
| more deaths, the verdict on that is still out.
|
| They are getting far fewer cases and deaths than many other areas
| now, and have been for many weeks.
|
| Couple that with the not-lost social interactions and economy
| etc, and the fact that this was always (more or less) every
| country's pandemic plan before we changed our mind for covid, and
| it becomes a troubling indicator that our entire response may
| have been irrational.
| wwweston wrote:
| We're done with the death comparisons over distancing measures
| -- we've been past the point where that was in the running for
| most effective intervention for months now. If Sweden fared
| poorly during the time it was true, that's the conclusion.
| We're in the phase where the comparisons are basically about
| social/logistic/resource issues for vaccine uptake.
|
| Also, the idea that the playbook has always been low-distance
| intervention for pathogens of similar impact is wrong.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > While many people might point out that Sweden did in fact
| have more deaths, the verdict on that is still out
|
| Other people would point out that Sweden experienced economic
| effects and other indicia of behavioral changes roughly
| equivalent to places that notionally, at least, had lockdowns.
| [deleted]
| spookthesunset wrote:
| A lot of people think what we did was part of some plan but
| nope. If you go back and read various pandemic plans you'll see
| we did basically the exact opposite of what they recommended.
| sergiosgc wrote:
| When Sweden decided for no lock-downs, we knew very little
| about the virus. It was effectively a jump into the unknown.
|
| Even if the decision proves beneficial, it was an error, in the
| knowledge context of March 2020.
| weego wrote:
| Assuming that in any give situation, the only correct
| decision in the absence of any knowledge is the most
| conservative one. Which this would disprove and thus the
| argument is provably false.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| Except that being wrong about how bad a virus is can be
| catastrophic, especially when nearly every nation was
| woefully underprepared. You can easily do math to
| demonstrate how small changes in the variables of a virus
| can lead to more dire outcomes.
|
| What if China had taken the most conservative policy in
| response to the appearance of covid-19? Maybe we would have
| been spared the turmoil and disruption of this pandemic.
| You're way too confident declaring this as "provably
| false".
|
| Hopefully our knowledge is greater and our preparedness
| will be better such that we don't have to always take such
| an aggressive policy position when faced with a novel
| virus.
| Ntrails wrote:
| The job of Governing is not solely to minimise loss of
| life, or to utterly avoid tail risks irrespective of
| cost. (imo)
|
| Focussing so myopically on the above has had unmeasurable
| consequences on a huge variety of fronts. My prime fury
| is reserved for closing schools. Extraordinary damage
| done, gulfs in opportunity and experience widened. Nobody
| cares much. Death stats are, after all, the only thing
| that matters to the media at large
| TheCowboy wrote:
| This isn't what my comment is arguing. This is about the
| outbreak phase when we don't know much. I appreciate some
| of the points you're making but it's also not a binary
| choice.
|
| As we acquire more information, policy should evolve with
| it. Limits on individual freedoms are blunt policy tools
| that should be used only when necessary, because they
| aren't zero cost.
|
| I don't think we should have forever lockdowns at all.
| I'm in the camp of "get vaccinated and move on with your
| life" and that we should be more upfront about how
| covid-19 isn't going to be eradicated anytime soon.
| mavhc wrote:
| You're pro having 30 people breathing in a small room
| with bad airflow for multiple hours when there's a
| pandemic?
|
| If you don't know how it's transmitted, then try various
| things and see if they help. We tried lockdown, and it
| worked. So we kept doing it, if it didn't change the
| situation we would have tried other things instead.
| jansan wrote:
| _We tried lockdown, and it worked. So we kept doing it_
|
| No, we tried lockdowns, they did not work well, then
| extended them, then again. In my country some school
| children did not go to school for a whole year because
| people with anxiety disorder thought opening schools
| would kill children, parents and grand parents.
| Ntrails wrote:
| Yup. I think that fucking up the education of children,
| especially those from low socio-economic status
| backgrounds, is worse than the deaths not doing it
| causes.
|
| It is not that lockdown is bad or wrong. It is that I do
| not agree with all the things which were hit. I
| acknowledge there is a price to keeping education open
| but I believe it would have been worthwhile.
|
| Perhaps you missed my point? Governing is about more than
| keeping the most people alive.
| ctvo wrote:
| > Perhaps you missed my point? Governing is about more
| than keeping the most people alive.
|
| Actually I believe that's table stakes for good
| governance. Trading known deaths for possible impact to
| development of children isn't even in the realm of equal,
| which is why most places didn't do it.
| bmeski wrote:
| But we'll trade thousands of lives to secure some nice
| minerals in Afghanistan. Cmon.
| jansan wrote:
| Here is an interview with Prof Johan Giesecke from April
| 2020. In hindsight one can call his statements prophetic.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY
|
| They had a clear plan, unlike other governments like Germany,
| who still do not have a plan how to get out of this mess.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Even if the decision proves beneficial, it was an error
|
| That's subjective: It depends on how much risk you're willing
| to take on. People here were pretty supportive of the policy,
| so presumably willing to take on more risk than you. Like
| you, I wasn't but that's just how it goes.
| sergiosgc wrote:
| Except if the risk is unknown you _don 't know_ how much
| risk are you taking, and hence if it is above our below
| your threshold.
|
| When faced with a cataclysmic, albeit low probability,
| event, the only course of action is the cautious one.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't know what model you're using in order to be able
| to say that and I don't have any way to quantify it
| either but clearly some people are willing to jump off
| cliffs without knowing whether there's spikes or a
| mattress below and it's obvious that they're willing to
| take more risk than people who aren't, so your
| quantification point is moot.
|
| > When faced with a cataclysmic, albeit low probability,
| event, the only course of action is the cautious one.
|
| This is nothing but extreme risk aversion. Some people,
| most, do not share it with you.
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| Not sending kids to school, eliminating social
| interactions, shutting down businesses, this was the
| drastic unknown experiment not the other way around. The
| effects are becoming more apparent now and I'm sure there
| will be a lot written about the subject in the future.
| Gloating doesn't seem appropriate at this point but sure
| after a year of the world screaming how bad we handled it
| maybe a Swedish moderate amount of national pride is
| warranted.
| nickloewen wrote:
| The article provides evidence to support the claim made in the
| headline, but there are important caveats included at the end:
|
| > The death rate was between three and four times that of
| Denmark, and nearly 10 times those of Finland and Norway -
| suggesting Swedes died that didn't need to.
|
| > And Dr Bhatt does not think another, non-Nordic country such as
| Britain could have copied Sweden's policies and got the same
| results.
|
| > With about 23 people per square kilometre, Sweden has about a
| tenth of the population density of the UK, while about half of
| Swedish households comprise just one person - a major factor in
| local transmission.
| nradov wrote:
| Population density is meaningless for countries as a whole.
| Most of Sweden is wilderness where hardly anyone lives. Swedes
| mostly live in cities, just like Brits.
| redisman wrote:
| Swedes mostly live in low population density cities
| apurtbapurt wrote:
| Population density in the inhabited parts of Sweden is
| similar to the Netherlands, only slightly less than
| Denmark. Norway and Finland are much lower.
|
| It is no Hong Kong for sure, but not quite as sparse as it
| is often made out to be.
| dance-me wrote:
| If you're going to quote that, you should add the directly
| relevant information from the other side:
|
| * "But that death rate is lower than the average for the
| European Union as a whole (1,684), and well below those of
| France, Spain, Italy and the UK"
|
| * Dr Bhatt concedes "it worked for Sweden"
|
| * Dr Bhatt is "one of the team at Imperial College who pushed
| the UK's lockdown strategy"
|
| That last detail is important. Of course he has to say it
| couldn't have worked in the UK. If he said anything else, that
| would become the story. What's remarkable is that someone in
| his position is conceding as much as he has.
| alecst wrote:
| Edit: I am wrong. The population density of the Stockholm
| urban area is 4200 (2019), not 400 as I originally said. That
| number is for the county, not the municipal area. Leaving the
| rest of the comment so others can learn. Clearly the
| population density of Stockholm, which holds about 10% of the
| Swedish population, is not the relevant factor.
|
| > Of course he has to say it couldn't have worked in the UK.
|
| I'm guessing he didn't say it because he didn't think it was
| true.
|
| In Stockholm there are ~400 people per square km.
|
| In Milan there are 2000, in Madrid there are 5400, in London
| there are 5700, and in Paris there are 20,000. This detail
| alone -- ignoring other cultural and demographic differences
| between northern and southern Europe -- could be enough on
| its own to soften the blow.
| wk_end wrote:
| That's the population density of Stockholm county. The
| population density of the city of Stockholm is 5200 per
| square km.
| alecst wrote:
| You are right. I am wrong.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_urban_area
|
| I find ~4200 on Wikipedia but your point stands.
| wk_end wrote:
| FWIW, the main Wikipedia page on Stockholm lists a
| "Density" of ~5200, an "Urban Density" of ~4200 and a
| "Metro Density" of ~400. I admittedly don't know which is
| the most useful one here. Population density metrics are
| tricky.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm
|
| And not to be too scold-y, but 400 people per sq km is
| the population density of small middle-American towns. I
| know Stockholm isn't the biggest city by any means, but
| it's still a national capital and a cosmopolitan old-
| world city; a moment of reflection tells you it's gotta
| be denser than, like, Little Falls, Minnesota.
| alecst wrote:
| Definitely a learning moment for me. Means that the
| question of Sweden may not be so simple.
|
| That said, most of the populations doesn't live in
| Stockholm, so that probably was a bad place to start to
| begin with.
| jeltz wrote:
| As someone who lives in Stockholm and who has visited Milan
| multiple times I would say both cities have a pretty
| similar population density and any difference you might see
| will be due to how the city borders are selected. Neither
| city is particularly dense or particularly sparse.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >But that death rate is lower than the average for the
| European Union as a whole (1,684), and well below those of
| France, Spain, Italy and the UK
|
| I mean one reason why you might want to compare Sweden to
| other Nordic countries is because you might assume that
| Nordic countries are more similar to each other than they are
| to Italy etc.
| tephra wrote:
| While that is very true. One thing to note is that we are
| also very different countries. One of my main gripes during
| the last almost 2 years now is the implication that Norway,
| Sweden, Denmark and Finland are basically the same. Which
| is far from true.
| varjag wrote:
| Hope that offsets the excess 10k dead.
| lazyjones wrote:
| What "excess 10k dead"? Sweden basically only reported excess
| mortality in early 2020 and since then it has a mortality
| deficit.
| varjag wrote:
| Sweden has ~14k official COVID deaths. Neighbouring Norway,
| at half the population and a moderate lockdown/PPE policy,
| has ~800 COVID deaths. The culture, climate, population
| density and demographics are very close.
|
| All these extra Swedes died for sheer ineptitude of their
| government. There's hardly any difference in economic impact
| either.
| ptr wrote:
| The socioeconomic group that had the most deaths were
| people of foreign background aged 65 or more. Maybe Sweden
| just has a proportionally larger group of those?
| lazyjones wrote:
| Covid deaths aren't the same as "excess deaths". It's just
| one of many causes of deaths over a year. Excess deaths is
| the difference between expected (typically an average of
| the past 5 years) and actual number of deaths in a year.
| IOW, due to the circumstances, excess deaths can be 0
| despite Covid deaths being > 0.
| ctvo wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious: Couldn't a quick Google give you this
| data? Where did you get your position from?
|
| Lots of folks have post fact information these days, based on
| FB articles and other sources, but how did you end up with
| yours as a long time user here?
| MatteoFrigo wrote:
| One good source of excess mortality data for a large part
| of Europe (plus Israel for some reason) is at
| https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/, which also groups
| data by age in addition to country.
|
| It may come as a surprise that, in the area covered by this
| source, excess mortality for children age 0-14 was actually
| negative in 2020.
| lazyjones wrote:
| I am not sure what parts of my post you have issues with.
|
| https://www.scb.se/en/About-us/news-and-press-
| releases/exces...
| gus_massa wrote:
| Original article: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-
| news/2021/08/22/sweden-exp...
| dang wrote:
| Yes. We've changed the URL to that from
| https://archive.is/cL6qp#selection-509.1-509.116. Thanks!
|
| Submitters: please post the original source so people know the
| site the article is coming from, and for the sake of the
| archives here.
|
| If there's a paywall workaround, it's fine to post it in the
| thread.
| tomohawk wrote:
| The excess mortality for the past few years in Sweden:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
|
| Better than most, not as good as some. Certainly not the
| catastrophe predicted by some.
| ambicapter wrote:
| I think they benefit from their relatively low pop density.
| shadilay wrote:
| Nearly 90% of Sweden lives in high population density urban
| environments.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/455935/urbanization-
| in-s...
| cygx wrote:
| With hindsight, there's certainly a discussion to be had about
| the Covid response of any European country that experienced
| significant excess mortality in April 2020, because it didn't
| have to be that way.
|
| There may be extenuating circumstances in some instances, but
| in case of Sweden, I'm not sure what they would be. As far as I
| can see, policy makers rolled the dice and lost (assuming
| preservation of life is the metric of choice) - though that
| failure becomes less significant as time goes on and the
| fraction representing initial excess mortality starts
| shrinking...
| kybernetikos wrote:
| It really depends who you're comparing with. If you're
| comparing with high population countries with lots of neighbors
| / travel links, then they did great.
|
| If you're comparing with literally any of their neighbors, then
| they did really really badly. Their excess mortality was around
| 1000 per million (i.e. around 10,000 more people dead than
| expected), while Denmark, Finland and Norway were much much
| less.
| [deleted]
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