I'd be happy to believe that Sweden has found a better way to deal with things, but at the moment they have 5x the number of deaths per population of California (2150/10.1 million vs. 1500/40.0 million). That's not great.
I also think there's unacknowledged element of luck in a lot of these outcomes. A few infected individuals a month or so back in the wrong time/place makes a huge difference in the progression of the disease. Likewise when testing is relatively sparse, it's easy to get a mistaken view on where things stand.
Their gamble is that it will come out in the wash - in the first period they will have scary, unpleasant numbers. But as the disease progresses through every community will have the same scary, unpleasant numbers - but in Sweden the economy will be able to reopen fully and finally in a month or two after everyone is recovered. But for the rest of us, it'll take an extra six months or a year; the same amount of people will die[] it's just a matter of how fast or slow.
[] in the non trivial sense, since obviously we'll all die; but presumably we won't all die from this pandemic.
There might be something to that element of (bad) luck: a large number of people in the Stockholm region seemingly timed their ski trips to Italy at just the wrong time: plenty of infectious people but before social distancing / quarantine measures.
Seems like Sweden is on track to hit herd immunity long before everyone else, with minimal economic damage. Their daily new case count has been mostly plateaued for weeks, like many other places in full lockdown.
Average time between infection and death from COVID-19 is 23 days, and 18 days average from first symptoms to deaths (1) A country can be a week or two into the overload level before it shows up in the ICUs
I guess everything is relative, but I'm not sure I would say the economic damage is minimal. Maybe in comparison with other countries, but I'm not sure how clear that is. Especially if other countries can go South Korean style and get back to full speed faster, Sweden could very well be left behind in terms of the economy as well.
Number of deaths so far is very high compared to the neighbouring countries, and there is still a long way to go before herd immunity.
In general, it seems to me quite insane that Sweden already in the beginning of March basically had decided to infect millions of people with a virus we only had a month of experience with or something like that.
> Seems like Sweden is on track to hit herd immunity long before everyone else
There's zero evidence of that. At this time, officially less than .5% of the population has been infected, so you'd have to postulate something like 99% of cases being asymptomatic.
> Their daily new case count has been mostly plateaued for weeks
Case count depends a lot on amount of testing (In which Sweden lags behind even the US) and testing criteria. Their death count does not look great.
1. We realize that the shutdown had a small effect, because a) the virus is already widespread due to easy transmission and b) the mortality rate is much lower than previously thought. Thus, we don't need to continue the shutdown.
2. The virus turns out to be as bad as feared, and things get much worse in Sweden (and elsewhere). The shutdown needs to continue indefinitely.
I'm leaning toward #1, but I think it's still too early to rule out #2. If we are living in the first scenario, I wonder how long it will take for the general public to realize that's the case.
I do think that a combination of political jockeying and mass hysteria have placed us into the position we're in now. If that's true, then the worst thing about this virus will certainly be the economic impact which has a number of far reaching effects.
> I don’t want to see any full open-air restaurants
What??? Isn't that precisely _the best_ option intuitively? I'd much rather be outdoors with a high rate of air flow than inside. No idea if this has been studied but it seems obvious.
There's nothing "undercounted" about the confirmed cases number. To be confirmed, one must be tested and to be tested one must seek medical attention. People are encouraged not to seek medical attention unless it is necessary. There is even a nationwide advice nurse number that people are instructed to call in order to screen them before they do so.
They aren't claiming that the number of confirmed cases is that number of people who have or have had the virus, which is something they've pointed out in several of the press conferences, it's just the number of confirmed cases.
The difference you're seeing is the difference in conditions under which people get tested.
"as the weather got warmer, people in the capital were beginning to ignore social-distancing rules"
So much for the argument that Sweden's approach was working because Swedes are so much better than the rest of world at voluntary compliance. Overall, it looks like Sweden is moving toward doing the same as every other country, but quietly so they don't have to admit it's a change of course.
I think the argument was that Sweden doesn't have a legal avenue towards general lockdown - only quarantines of specific facilities - and since they assumed everyone was going to get it anyway, voluntary compliance would be good enough, so they didn't regard it as a particular priority to change their law or even constitution. There wasn't any Sweden exceptionalism in the official characterisations I've heard - maybe in the mouths of some redditors.
There were a lot of early clickbaity conclusions that frankly seemed like someone just logiced it out in their head got a lot of attention... but IMO didn't really have much data to support them in any way.
Lots of "Why in this country is?" "This place is doing well because."
And then a few weeks later the data shows that's simply not the case and you realize the concussions in those articles had little to zero data supporting it.
Personally I look forward to hearing about good data years from now about this pandemic.
On a per capita basis, some days this week where sweden had 172 and 180 deaths in a day would be the equivalent of the US having 5600 and 6100 deaths a day.
Their approach is absolutely not working.
Alternative one can see it as they first tried the carrot, and now when there is sign that some people did not get the message they are using the stick.
It should be noted that this is just the capital, which currently has something like 10x infection compared to most other areas of Sweden, and almost 20x the number of dead. To give some number, Stockholm has in the latest report 7k infected and 1200 dead. Malmö (or rather the region around it), which is Sweden third largest city, has 600 infected and 60 dead. Population wise, Stockholm has about 2x compared to Malmö.
People are not sure why stockholm has the number it has compared to other regions.
Yeah I don't know where that sentiment came from. Imho people here in Sweden just hadn't felt the heat from the fire yet.
That's the main reason why most of them are out and about, enjoying the spring weather after a long and dark winter.
Once this virus starts affecting people you know, that's when folks will start to react.
Me personally I haven't heard of a single case until last week when I heard that one of my co-workers had it, along with his wife. They had it, and overcame it. But they live in another city and we had already started working from home at that point. So I never saw him other than on Teams.
>[...] but quietly so they don't have to admit it's a change of course.
Where exactly does this come from? Sweden has no need to save face. We've been transparent and had open discussion from the beginning with the spoken assumption that we may, in fact, not be doing the right thing and that we may have to alter course as the situation changes.
The ones who need to save face are the ones which are committing to full lockdown right now. They're the ones who are making a big sacrifice and need to motivate it with the fact that "it's a necessity", seeing Sweden succeed otherwise would be a big blow to their egos and their personal sacrifices.
I will also say that voluntary compliance is still occurring here, which is notable both in what private companies are doing in adapting to the situation, and how the average person has changed their behaviour. This doesn't mean 100% compliance for everyone, which is unfortunate.
we would only know which approach worked best after the end of pandemic. An integral (e.g. total number of deaths) of the curve matters as much if not more as its shape.
A recent estimate puts R at around 0.92-0.98 in Sweden, which means that it’s right around the treshold of sustained epidemic vs staying under control. If people start to become more lax around social distancing restrictions, it could shift the balance back up over the treshold.
It is that things are bad and avoiding a lock down didn't work - unfortunately any tactical decision you make takes about three weeks to really show evidence of efficacy.
I don't know what your new sources are. The rates of death and infection vary a lot between regions in Sweden so any significant herd immunity is probably regional.
[+] [-] greendave|6 years ago|reply
I also think there's unacknowledged element of luck in a lot of these outcomes. A few infected individuals a month or so back in the wrong time/place makes a huge difference in the progression of the disease. Likewise when testing is relatively sparse, it's easy to get a mistaken view on where things stand.
[+] [-] oxymoron|6 years ago|reply
A recent study by the Public Health Agency of Sweden came to a similar conclusion.
[+] [-] gindely|6 years ago|reply
[] in the non trivial sense, since obviously we'll all die; but presumably we won't all die from this pandemic.
[+] [-] snowAbstraction|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cataflam|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gbasin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|6 years ago|reply
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
Average time between infection and death from COVID-19 is 23 days, and 18 days average from first symptoms to deaths (1) A country can be a week or two into the overload level before it shows up in the ICUs
https://twitter.com/michaeljswalker/status/12454153391497052...
[+] [-] oxymoron|6 years ago|reply
Here's another paper from a orofessor of mathematics at Stockholm University who has appeared in the media as a subject matter expert: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066050v...
Meanwhile, there's a hint of a decline in the number of patients in Intensive Care in Stockholm, as seen here, although it's a still a bit early to tell: https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/
Meanwhile, there is reason to believe that Sweden is better than other countries at attributing the cause of death correctly: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...
[+] [-] greedo|6 years ago|reply
https://studylib.net/coronavirus#country-se
their case count is steadily climbing, as is their CFR.
[+] [-] taylodl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomohawk|6 years ago|reply
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill...
The rolling 7 day average shows they're still on a bit of an up-tick.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...
However, if you normalize for start time they're not really doing any worse than a lot of other countries.
[+] [-] znfi|6 years ago|reply
Number of deaths so far is very high compared to the neighbouring countries, and there is still a long way to go before herd immunity.
In general, it seems to me quite insane that Sweden already in the beginning of March basically had decided to infect millions of people with a virus we only had a month of experience with or something like that.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] microtherion|6 years ago|reply
There's zero evidence of that. At this time, officially less than .5% of the population has been infected, so you'd have to postulate something like 99% of cases being asymptomatic.
> Their daily new case count has been mostly plateaued for weeks
Case count depends a lot on amount of testing (In which Sweden lags behind even the US) and testing criteria. Their death count does not look great.
[+] [-] rsynnott|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjgreen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brenden2|6 years ago|reply
1. We realize that the shutdown had a small effect, because a) the virus is already widespread due to easy transmission and b) the mortality rate is much lower than previously thought. Thus, we don't need to continue the shutdown.
2. The virus turns out to be as bad as feared, and things get much worse in Sweden (and elsewhere). The shutdown needs to continue indefinitely.
I'm leaning toward #1, but I think it's still too early to rule out #2. If we are living in the first scenario, I wonder how long it will take for the general public to realize that's the case.
I do think that a combination of political jockeying and mass hysteria have placed us into the position we're in now. If that's true, then the worst thing about this virus will certainly be the economic impact which has a number of far reaching effects.
[+] [-] exabrial|6 years ago|reply
What??? Isn't that precisely _the best_ option intuitively? I'd much rather be outdoors with a high rate of air flow than inside. No idea if this has been studied but it seems obvious.
[+] [-] schwap|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outside1234|6 years ago|reply
This is also supported by their low testing per capita number.
Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
[+] [-] guerrilla|6 years ago|reply
They aren't claiming that the number of confirmed cases is that number of people who have or have had the virus, which is something they've pointed out in several of the press conferences, it's just the number of confirmed cases.
The difference you're seeing is the difference in conditions under which people get tested.
[+] [-] notacoward|6 years ago|reply
So much for the argument that Sweden's approach was working because Swedes are so much better than the rest of world at voluntary compliance. Overall, it looks like Sweden is moving toward doing the same as every other country, but quietly so they don't have to admit it's a change of course.
[+] [-] gindely|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
Lots of "Why in this country is?" "This place is doing well because."
And then a few weeks later the data shows that's simply not the case and you realize the concussions in those articles had little to zero data supporting it.
Personally I look forward to hearing about good data years from now about this pandemic.
[+] [-] soperj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belorn|6 years ago|reply
It should be noted that this is just the capital, which currently has something like 10x infection compared to most other areas of Sweden, and almost 20x the number of dead. To give some number, Stockholm has in the latest report 7k infected and 1200 dead. Malmö (or rather the region around it), which is Sweden third largest city, has 600 infected and 60 dead. Population wise, Stockholm has about 2x compared to Malmö.
People are not sure why stockholm has the number it has compared to other regions.
[+] [-] INTPenis|6 years ago|reply
That's the main reason why most of them are out and about, enjoying the spring weather after a long and dark winter.
Once this virus starts affecting people you know, that's when folks will start to react.
Me personally I haven't heard of a single case until last week when I heard that one of my co-workers had it, along with his wife. They had it, and overcame it. But they live in another city and we had already started working from home at that point. So I never saw him other than on Teams.
[+] [-] jsjolen|6 years ago|reply
Where exactly does this come from? Sweden has no need to save face. We've been transparent and had open discussion from the beginning with the spoken assumption that we may, in fact, not be doing the right thing and that we may have to alter course as the situation changes.
The ones who need to save face are the ones which are committing to full lockdown right now. They're the ones who are making a big sacrifice and need to motivate it with the fact that "it's a necessity", seeing Sweden succeed otherwise would be a big blow to their egos and their personal sacrifices.
I will also say that voluntary compliance is still occurring here, which is notable both in what private companies are doing in adapting to the situation, and how the average person has changed their behaviour. This doesn't mean 100% compliance for everyone, which is unfortunate.
[+] [-] ashtonkem|6 years ago|reply
This of course is unsurprising. Even random street violence drops during winter, as cold temperatures drives everyone inside and away from each other.
[+] [-] davidgay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatguyagain|6 years ago|reply
I haven't heard a single swedish person utter this nonsense IRL. Sounds like a clickbait headline from Vice or something similar.
[+] [-] option|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vanilla-almond|6 years ago|reply
Why Sweden rejected a coronavirus lockdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzzVxw5FyYs
[+] [-] hachibu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paul7986|6 years ago|reply
Which is it?
[+] [-] oxymoron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] munk-a|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowAbstraction|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glackisfeces|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]