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Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

Sweden has a pretty high number of COVID-19 deaths, so I'm not sure if I'd like to follow their model.

It is expected that 70% of the population will get coronavirus then we will have herd immunity. The lock down is about stopping the healthcare systems getting overwhelmed (that will cause unnecessary deaths). That's the way I understand things.

The same number of deaths will occur are likely to occur in the long term unless Sweden's ICU beds get full.

If anyone has an alternative interpretation I am open to hearing it.

The eventual arrival of a vaccine may allow the states who are flattening the curve to have lower total amount of casualties.

Or drugs to help the clinical management of the disease (which have a chance - not a certainty - to arrive earlier than a vaccine).

True, but it doesn't sound like it's going to happen any time soon. There was no vaccine for SARS.

SARS was contained relatively quickly however, while the countries doing the mitigation looking potentially into many months of flattening.

According to healthdata.org (IHME), Sweden has 79 ICU beds. If this is true, it seems that slowing the curve may not be worth it with so few ICU beds available.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden

Sweden has more than 79 ICU beds.

This article seems to imply that Sweden can surge to 480 ICU beds when conducting disaster drills.

https://sjtrem.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s13049-02...

I don't think the number of deaths in Sweden (around 1500) is that high. Sweden has 10 million people. Some sources report it as 10% (of all cases), but I would be very cautious with these numbers. We know since quite a while that the number of reported cases can only act as an upper barrier, which may be between 10 and 15 times too high.

In Germany you are only tested under some conditions. I know many people that had quite a few symptoms and have not been tested even though they wanted to get a test. Only the ones that got severe problems or had relatives with a positive test. The conclusion is that we only know the death count quite well, the rest is mostly guess work.

When this is done and everyone is vaccinated, Sweden will have at least 5x the number of deaths per capita of their neighbors in the west and southwest. And the people of Sweden will still have strong support for their authorities' decisive response to the epidemic. My prediction.

How would this be possible? Do you believe that less than 50% of the population will get it outside of sweden? The lockdown cannot continue for a long time. The lockdown is just pushing the time frame by a few weeks. In the end the same percentage of the population will get it everywhere. Locking down is a short term solution to stall the contagion while the health system gears up to deal with it.

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