>“Now, we’re two years into this and Sweden doesn’t really stand out. We’re not the best, but we’re definitely not the worst. That’s what I hear now: how much good did all these draconian [measures] do for anybody?”
Whatever your stance on the merits of lockdowns, I think this is a question that very much needs asking and analysing objectively. Sadly I suspect that too many political careers are at stake across the board for the answer to this question to be answered objectively for a long time yet.
Netherlands has just imposed lockdown measures even though they're more than 80% vaccinated, I wonder at what point are we going to call this bluff, and I say this as a vaccinated person (including the booster shot).
I don't think it is interesting to hear "the architect" evaluate his own work. Tegnell has a lot of critics but they don't get the same day of light. I can't refer to an English source but Ivar Arpi's interview with Björn Olsen recently is a good balance to this self-gratulatory message from Tegnell.
One thing that’s become clear to me is that looking at any two places at one point in time, comparing that day’s stats, and using that to judge/justify the Covid policies of each on that day, is naive. We may even be in a “Moneyball” situation where we don’t know the most critical stat to measure.
I do think there is, maybe a purposeful almost?, disregard for environmental conditions. The epidemiologist in question, Dr. Tegnell (interesting that the article made a distinct effort not to use any of his credentials or titles), did say that if you try to compare things in context that the results are very inconsistent: "Covid doesn’t care about history or language, it cares about socio-economic status or migrant backgrounds or crowded housing. That’s where Sweden stands out in a Nordic context, but not so much in a EU context,”" Per capita comparisons are almost meaningless as factors such as population density, public transit, climate, socio-economics, and others have significant impact.
There are several of these articles trying to redeem Sweden's choices. Here are the results versus their similar neighbors in deaths per million people[1]:
Sweden 1478
Denmark 474
Finland 219
Norway 173
They're 3 to 8 times worse. They now do compare favorably to Portugal for example at 1796. When did Portugal have the huge spike in deaths that propelled it in front of Sweden? When it decided not to do lockdowns, even though the numbers were horrible, to "save Christmas". 13k people or 3/4 of the total COVID deaths in Portugal happened from that decision alone. That other places also made horrible decisions doesn't help justify Sweden's.
I would love it if we could get such clear-cut results from the numbers, and just be able to say “this strategy is good, if we do that everything will be fine” (not saying you're saying that), but I really don't think that's the case.
Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million.
The UK has shifted strategies around a bunch, but they have one of the highest vaccination rates, and have had multiple lockdowns, but are still at a very high 2119 deaths per million.
I'm not trying to say this or that approach is good or bad, and I'm happy we've had lockdowns here in Switzerland. I'm just saying that correlating the number of deaths with the implementation of lockdowns definitely does not fully explain what we've seen so far.
There are so many other factors, such as excess mortality, compliance with measures, psychological impacts on both mental and physical health, international travel, local variants, and a lot of factors we don't even know exist yet.
If we compare Sweden with Denmark it indeed looks bad with 3 times higher rate in Sweden. If we however compare region vs region, the numbers look different. Skåne, being the region next to Denmark with only a bridge separating the two, had similar deaths per million people as Denmark. If we look even closer, Malmö as the city on one side had lower rates than Copenhagen on the other side.
We need to answer three major question. 1: Malmö has the same lock down rules as the rest of Sweden, so why are the numbers so low compared to Copenhagen. 2: Why does Stockholm and the surrounding area have so high rate that it brings up the national average to be 3 times higher then Denmark? Finally 3: How does the lock downs relate to those two questions.
Finland made a smart move in the beginning of the pandemic. They locked down the capital with restricted movement in and out, keeping the initial spread low.
As I see it, Sweden made three mistakes. They should have locked down Stockholm. They should also have closed down the only subway Sweden has, located in Stockholm. They should have isolated the elder care workers who lived in Stockholm, many who used the subway system to reach the elder care homes going from elder care homes to elder care homes. Last they should have injected funds and medical supplies to the privatized elder care system, as many workers didn't even get enough time to wash their hands between patients.
You're citing known COVID deaths, I think, while the epidemiologist points out in the article that a better metric is excess mortality:
>Sweden had one of the lower excess mortality levels in Europe
Presumably, excess mortality includes the effects of overloaded hospitals, delayed medical care, lockdown-related depression, and undiagnosed COVID, which are hard to measure any other way, and which seem logically much higher under lockdown.
Germany's numbers are exploding right now. In the U.S. you could also compare New York and Vermont. New York was more like Sweden (not by choice, but through incompetence and extreme population density). Vermont had the officially recommended policies and was a poster child.
Now the Vermont numbers are exploding, while New York's are not.
There is something to be said for the theory that the highly connected nodes in the social graph (who are often very healthy) all need to be infected in a short period. Then the outbreaks stop (like they have always done with the flu).
I don't know. A lot of people are attempting to use Sweden as some sort of political blunt force instrument to drive home some point, seems to be used to argue both the horrors of lockdowns and the horrors of not locking down.
In terms of saving lives, it clearly wasn't the best strategy. In terms of securing a reasonable standard of living, keeping the economy going, keeping mental health effects limited, it was reasonably measured.
Bodies weren't piling up in the streets.
In my wider circle of acquaintances, I know of exactly two people who got sick during the pandemic. Maybe a few more did but didn't tell anyone, but it wasn't anywhere near the apocalyptic tales you see on the Internet, especially from people who haven't even been to the country.
Expected lifespan under covid was still higher in Sweden than Denmark or Finland. So to me it seems like other healthcare or national policies matters much more than the covid response, overall covid had a very minor effect on healthspan compared to laws regulating alcohol or tobacco or similar.
I don't really see why people talk so much about covid when you can get way more health benefits just by limiting the hours you can buy alcohol on or similar, compared to limiting the movement of an entire population.
And next year as people got vaccinated the one year covid caused drop of 0.5 years will disappear and Sweden will be even better, while the huge push for covid measures didn't have any lasting impact. Imagine how many lives could be saved if the same amount of political will and resources were spent on more important things...
Maybe better to compare to Singapore which had ~6 deaths per million earlier this year, has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world but since barely relaxing their restrictions now has ~120 deaths per million, raging number of cases (mostly vaccinated) and had the highest level of suicides last year since 2012?
You can’t look at deaths in a vacuum though. How many survivors in other countries were locked up in nursing homes with seeing their families? How many businesses closed permanently? How many suicides and drug deaths? How many students fell behind?
I’m honestly surprised people still exist who support lockdowns.
Yes, but comparing flat numbers in a statistically uncorrected way is like saying "Why aren't there any of the population from oap nursing homes in primary schools?".
Context is king, no more so than large scale and complex statistical analyses. Sadly almost nobody seems to appreciate this as long as they have a number to argue a point.
Nobody corrects for population demographics. Population density. The various interventions which will pollute the study even further as some have proven damaging. Not to mention the large scale all cause mortality spike associated with the vaccine drive observed as predicted in each further country from watching the Israeli data.
Ignoring all of the above in your statistical analysis is both cherry picking and employing the same logic used by people to exclaim 5G definitely causes cancer because of study-X where a rat died that one time.
Which again is cherry picking as you're not comparing them to the country over, or two steps away. Many of which had exactly the same death rate per 100,000 and did lock down. And the countries you're comparing them to are much smaller population wise.
And worse still, a lot of the cases in Sweden earlier doors were brought back by holidayers in Spain, a popular Swedish holiday location apparently, which is exactly what happened to the UK too.
Is it a popular Finnish holiday location? Norwegian? Do those countries even have flights to Spain?
Answers I dont know, do you?
There's two sides to every story. Instead you might ask why don't they have a higher death rate than the UK or France or Italy, all of whom locked down.
Yes but for whatever reason, death rates in Sweden before any measures were introduced by any Nordic country were already much higher than in the other Nordic countries. So it's not a fair comparison of measures versus measures. Any conclusion on that basis is invalid. Sweden's excess mortality in 2020 was one of the lowest in Europe.
An overall comparison with Scotland as a country which took drastic measures shows that it fared very badly with much greater excess death together with the many long-lasting knock-on effects of lockdown. Death rates as of Nov 2021 as % of the population are 0.216 (Scotland) versus 0.147 (Sweden).
Since you've continued to use HN for political/ideological flamewar and ignored our requests to stop, I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
Should an economy serve humanity or should humanity serve the economy? It's largely a moral choice, but how a population answers it determines their political response
The point of lockdowns v1 was panick and healthcare supply chain related. Once we knew who was dying from this (May-2021) we should have stopped given the millions who will suffer and people who will probably die from tanking the economies of the developed world. But hey, have to stick the agenda of report9 to the WHO which predicted 200Million+ dead in year1...
The bureaucrats that have been responsible for the questionable approach Sweden has followed are currently fighting like a cornered cat to avoid any and all accountability. So this 'message' fits the narrative well.
The prime minister has stepped down and left the reigns to someone else this week. The responsible for the health authorities has started his pension a week or two ago.
Both conveniently around the same time that the Swedish investigative COVID commission has released a scathing report on the handling of the epidemic.
The state epidemiologist, Dr. Tengele, sorry, Dr. Tegnell, is still there but currently in full-on "blame others"-mode, as long as the buck doesn't stop with him. It's the regions, or the elder care facilities, or the immigrants, or anyone as long as it isn't him.
It's makes for a immensely sad and sorry sight, but not unexpected in a country with no opposition voices, neither in politics nor media.
But that's nothing new under the sun as it was already known in 1971, and nothing has changed since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Totalitarians
Additionally, Sweden has changed it's guidance since last week so people that have been vaccinated twice should no longer get COVID tests, so please take any and all official numbers with a serious grain of salt and consider them as 'absolute minimum' values
Your entire argument falls over flat if you look at excess mortality. Aggregate statistics are hard to misunderstand. Sweden did worse at first, but is in general unremarkable.
The prime minster stepped down, but his second is taking over, and she's been more or less as involved as him during all this. Lots of other political aspects (and probably soon private ones) surely did factor in the timing.
Regarding the guy responsible for the health authorities. He looks quite old so it makes sense for him to retire, especially after a significant very special "project" is "done". Tegnell's wife (who's also been a public face during the pandemic) is taking over. Doesn't look too me like they're trying to start over.
No opposition: Really? There's been plenty in the news about the handling of the pandemic. TNT seems completely out of touch with reality. Could there be an alternative explanation why there's no uprising? Maybe people in Sweden in general isn't super dissatisfied (in general) with the outcome? I think it's clear even just from this thread that the view on how Sweden had handled the situation is mixed/unclear.
As for your last statement. There's a lot of difference in quality in the numbers from all countries more or less.
I'm a Swede with a relative who worked at "Folkhälsomyndigheten" during the pandemic who have also heard from other sources how these numbers/stats are collected in various countries.
PS. I'm not saying Swedens strategy was right or wrong. I'd say we need to wait and see what actual science has to say after we're all done with this. Instead of seeing random things as signs and thinking it's all a conspiracy.
[+] [-] throwaway525142|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rob_c|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BoxOfRain|4 years ago|reply
Whatever your stance on the merits of lockdowns, I think this is a question that very much needs asking and analysing objectively. Sadly I suspect that too many political careers are at stake across the board for the answer to this question to be answered objectively for a long time yet.
[+] [-] paganel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mongol|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwertyoowiyop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrexilius|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxhop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Oddskar|4 years ago|reply
I think this will be the high price that Sweden really will have to pay in the long run.
[+] [-] MomoXenosaga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pedrocr|4 years ago|reply
Sweden 1478
Denmark 474
Finland 219
Norway 173
They're 3 to 8 times worse. They now do compare favorably to Portugal for example at 1796. When did Portugal have the huge spike in deaths that propelled it in front of Sweden? When it decided not to do lockdowns, even though the numbers were horrible, to "save Christmas". 13k people or 3/4 of the total COVID deaths in Portugal happened from that decision alone. That other places also made horrible decisions doesn't help justify Sweden's.
[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
[+] [-] vladharbuz|4 years ago|reply
Here in Switzerland, we had plenty of lockdowns, followed the scientific wisdom and so on, and we're at 1375 deaths per million.
The UK has shifted strategies around a bunch, but they have one of the highest vaccination rates, and have had multiple lockdowns, but are still at a very high 2119 deaths per million.
I'm not trying to say this or that approach is good or bad, and I'm happy we've had lockdowns here in Switzerland. I'm just saying that correlating the number of deaths with the implementation of lockdowns definitely does not fully explain what we've seen so far.
There are so many other factors, such as excess mortality, compliance with measures, psychological impacts on both mental and physical health, international travel, local variants, and a lot of factors we don't even know exist yet.
[+] [-] belorn|4 years ago|reply
We need to answer three major question. 1: Malmö has the same lock down rules as the rest of Sweden, so why are the numbers so low compared to Copenhagen. 2: Why does Stockholm and the surrounding area have so high rate that it brings up the national average to be 3 times higher then Denmark? Finally 3: How does the lock downs relate to those two questions.
Finland made a smart move in the beginning of the pandemic. They locked down the capital with restricted movement in and out, keeping the initial spread low.
As I see it, Sweden made three mistakes. They should have locked down Stockholm. They should also have closed down the only subway Sweden has, located in Stockholm. They should have isolated the elder care workers who lived in Stockholm, many who used the subway system to reach the elder care homes going from elder care homes to elder care homes. Last they should have injected funds and medical supplies to the privatized elder care system, as many workers didn't even get enough time to wash their hands between patients.
[+] [-] sweettea|4 years ago|reply
>Sweden had one of the lower excess mortality levels in Europe
Presumably, excess mortality includes the effects of overloaded hospitals, delayed medical care, lockdown-related depression, and undiagnosed COVID, which are hard to measure any other way, and which seem logically much higher under lockdown.
[+] [-] bcalp|4 years ago|reply
Have a look here (tone is satirical) for a comparison of Sweden's and Germany's graphs:
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/11/12/wear-a-mask-and...
Germany's numbers are exploding right now. In the U.S. you could also compare New York and Vermont. New York was more like Sweden (not by choice, but through incompetence and extreme population density). Vermont had the officially recommended policies and was a poster child.
Now the Vermont numbers are exploding, while New York's are not.
There is something to be said for the theory that the highly connected nodes in the social graph (who are often very healthy) all need to be infected in a short period. Then the outbreaks stop (like they have always done with the flu).
[+] [-] marginalia_nu|4 years ago|reply
In terms of saving lives, it clearly wasn't the best strategy. In terms of securing a reasonable standard of living, keeping the economy going, keeping mental health effects limited, it was reasonably measured.
Bodies weren't piling up in the streets.
In my wider circle of acquaintances, I know of exactly two people who got sick during the pandemic. Maybe a few more did but didn't tell anyone, but it wasn't anywhere near the apocalyptic tales you see on the Internet, especially from people who haven't even been to the country.
[+] [-] Jensson|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
I don't really see why people talk so much about covid when you can get way more health benefits just by limiting the hours you can buy alcohol on or similar, compared to limiting the movement of an entire population.
And next year as people got vaccinated the one year covid caused drop of 0.5 years will disappear and Sweden will be even better, while the huge push for covid measures didn't have any lasting impact. Imagine how many lives could be saved if the same amount of political will and resources were spent on more important things...
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
Let’s revisit this in a decade when folks can add up deaths from Covid (and delayed care for other issues), mental health and economic impact.
THAT will be interesting to see.
[+] [-] rkk3|4 years ago|reply
New York 2920
Vermont 620
They are 5 times worse! New York's decision to have a more urban population is completely unjustifiable.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|4 years ago|reply
I’m honestly surprised people still exist who support lockdowns.
[+] [-] rob_c|4 years ago|reply
Context is king, no more so than large scale and complex statistical analyses. Sadly almost nobody seems to appreciate this as long as they have a number to argue a point.
Nobody corrects for population demographics. Population density. The various interventions which will pollute the study even further as some have proven damaging. Not to mention the large scale all cause mortality spike associated with the vaccine drive observed as predicted in each further country from watching the Israeli data.
Ignoring all of the above in your statistical analysis is both cherry picking and employing the same logic used by people to exclaim 5G definitely causes cancer because of study-X where a rat died that one time.
[+] [-] mattmanser|4 years ago|reply
And worse still, a lot of the cases in Sweden earlier doors were brought back by holidayers in Spain, a popular Swedish holiday location apparently, which is exactly what happened to the UK too.
Is it a popular Finnish holiday location? Norwegian? Do those countries even have flights to Spain?
Answers I dont know, do you?
There's two sides to every story. Instead you might ask why don't they have a higher death rate than the UK or France or Italy, all of whom locked down.
[+] [-] vixen99|4 years ago|reply
An overall comparison with Scotland as a country which took drastic measures shows that it fared very badly with much greater excess death together with the many long-lasting knock-on effects of lockdown. Death rates as of Nov 2021 as % of the population are 0.216 (Scotland) versus 0.147 (Sweden).
[+] [-] pfortuny|4 years ago|reply
Just another data point.
[+] [-] bni|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomohawk|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Proven|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] k1ll4llc0mm13z|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] MeinBlutIstBlau|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29217024.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] h0l0cube|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mrroboto0101|4 years ago|reply
Not sure if I understand this reasoning, the government has to protect its citizens, that is the number one task.
[+] [-] vaxmyass|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vaxmyass|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] alltakendamned|4 years ago|reply
The prime minister has stepped down and left the reigns to someone else this week. The responsible for the health authorities has started his pension a week or two ago. Both conveniently around the same time that the Swedish investigative COVID commission has released a scathing report on the handling of the epidemic.
The state epidemiologist, Dr. Tengele, sorry, Dr. Tegnell, is still there but currently in full-on "blame others"-mode, as long as the buck doesn't stop with him. It's the regions, or the elder care facilities, or the immigrants, or anyone as long as it isn't him.
It's makes for a immensely sad and sorry sight, but not unexpected in a country with no opposition voices, neither in politics nor media. But that's nothing new under the sun as it was already known in 1971, and nothing has changed since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Totalitarians
Additionally, Sweden has changed it's guidance since last week so people that have been vaccinated twice should no longer get COVID tests, so please take any and all official numbers with a serious grain of salt and consider them as 'absolute minimum' values
[+] [-] toxik|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjblomqvist|4 years ago|reply
Regarding the guy responsible for the health authorities. He looks quite old so it makes sense for him to retire, especially after a significant very special "project" is "done". Tegnell's wife (who's also been a public face during the pandemic) is taking over. Doesn't look too me like they're trying to start over.
No opposition: Really? There's been plenty in the news about the handling of the pandemic. TNT seems completely out of touch with reality. Could there be an alternative explanation why there's no uprising? Maybe people in Sweden in general isn't super dissatisfied (in general) with the outcome? I think it's clear even just from this thread that the view on how Sweden had handled the situation is mixed/unclear.
As for your last statement. There's a lot of difference in quality in the numbers from all countries more or less.
I'm a Swede with a relative who worked at "Folkhälsomyndigheten" during the pandemic who have also heard from other sources how these numbers/stats are collected in various countries.
PS. I'm not saying Swedens strategy was right or wrong. I'd say we need to wait and see what actual science has to say after we're all done with this. Instead of seeing random things as signs and thinking it's all a conspiracy.
[+] [-] chucky|4 years ago|reply
Do you honestly expect anyone to take you seriously when you compare someone to a Nazi war criminal?