The Swedish "Very high excess" is a bit surprising.
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Extremely high excess: UK, France, Spain, Italy
Very high excess: Sweden
High excess: Switzerland
Moderate excess: Portugal
Low excess: Denmark
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Extremely high excess: UK, France, Spain, Italy
Very high excess: Sweden
High excess: Switzerland
Moderate excess: Portugal
Low excess: Denmark
There also appears to be a pretty huge immigrant/racial skew in ICU and death cases for unclear reasons, conjectured to be vitamin D related. This is likely also skewing Sweden vs their neighbours, given Sweden's enormous migrant intake.
What the article said is that a bunch of countries have fewer covid-19 deaths than excess deaths for a certain time period, while Sweden has more covid-19 deaths than excess deaths for the same time period.
The conclusion of that article is that most countries are probably severely undercounting covid-19 deaths, while Sweden probably isn't.
(This isn't necessarily true, another plausible explanation is that a lot more people than normal are dying of heart problems because they're too afraid to seek medical care since hospitals are pretty busy with all the covid-19 patients.)
When I first read the NYT article, Belgium wasn't included, they added it later. The interesting thing is other countries say the non COVID excess deaths are people 'afraid' to go to the hospital or something like that, and the numbers are right/lockdown is right. But now with Belgium, that did pretty much the same measures as other countries, doesn't show the same results, so I'm even more sure the 'they died because they were afraid to go to the hospital' is bullshit
And I agree with you, I can trivially think of death causes that could go up because of covid-19 + lockdown (heart attacks, suicide, medical neglect), down (influenza, traffic accidents, workplace accidents), and be unchanged (cancer, strokes).
So claims of non-covid-19 excess mortality have to be carefully examined. If the official covid-19 death count diverges sharply from the excess mortality of a country, the most rational explanation has to be that that country is underreporting covid-19 deaths.
Do these graphs change your mind?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
This is attendances at emergency rooms in the UK.
Admissions to ER have halved. It breaks it down by reason for admittence to quite a granular level. Especially worrying: cardiac admissions halved at the lowest point. Fortunately it seems the messaging about how hospitals aren't overwhelmed and never were is getting through and they've started going up again. They're still far below normal for this time of year.
Unless you think people routinely go to ER with cardiac problems unnecessarily, it's hard to see how this won't translate into excess deaths that aren't COVID related. The UK sees about half of all excess death certificates right now not mention COVID, which makes sense.
Other crazy things about those graphs: pneumonia and other breathing related problems have also all collapsed. Not only are hospitals not overwhelmed but you can't even really see an uptick in admissions for COVID related problems, unless there's some odd data collection error like those cases not showing up in any of the graphs at all.
But interesting Belgium and Sweden didn't have this discrepancy in number of deaths (COVID vs non COVID). So either our numbers are wrong and more people are dying of COVID than what they tell us, or the lockdown + stoping pretty much every non urgent procedures + telling people to stay at home actually caused more excess deaths than covid itself. But whatever is right, we need to pick one and not keep letting politicians not even admit they may not know/be wrong and keep changing the goal posts when confronted with new information.
In Sweden people were not told to avoid hospitals, as far as I know, so that doesn't show much. Certainly some people did out of fear if they weren't too sick, but hopefully they'll avoid the UK situation.
For Belgium I don't know what they did, I haven't looked, but if all excess death is really being reported as COVID related then I suspect over-counting of COVID cases rather than undercounting; something that is already clearly happening in many places e.g. New York and Germany.
https://www.dn.se/nyheter/kraftigt-okat-antal-avlidna-i-pand...
There's strong pressure within Sweden to present the herd-immunity strategy as successful, especially considering the huge difference in deaths-per-million compared to our neighboring Nordic countries. There's always existed a very strong competitive streak in Sweden's relationship with its immediate neighbors, and the spotlight of international attention has escalated that - even at the cost of human lives.
It's difficult to find any article that I can cite for the disparity, as pretty much no-one wants to report it.
Where did you get your 500 number from?
You said 500 deaths for that time period, but your own source says 898. Your numbers are wrong.
> I don't think we're going to agree about statistics.
898 vs 500 is not a matter of opinion or agreeing.
The deaths during that period for covid-19 were around 500 and the excess deaths around 900+
This is the first time in this entire comment chain that you mentioned that, just pointing that out.
But yeah, you're right. 901 excess deaths for Stockholms län during those three weeks according to SCB, with 518 covid-19 deaths according to c19.se
So Sweden is probably still underreporting. Expanding the area to the entire country makes the discrepancy smaller, but at the same time Stockholm has been hardest hit, so that's still consistent with underreporting. Interesting!
But I'm curious why you are claiming something that is so completely wrong. Where did you get the idea from? Are you living in Sweden and strongly disagreeing with the official response, or are you living somewhere else, but "read it on the internet" ?
I suspect that there is a strong wish for Sweden to fail among people in countries with severe lockdowns, because that would validate their decisions to lock down in the first place. Sweden must be "punished" for not following the herd, because if it isn't, it means that the herd was wrong, it means that suffering through a lockdown was for nothing. It means your local politicians over-reacted, and destroyed parts of the economy needlessly.
And then you get these hit pieces that says everyone in Sweden is out and about, hugging and licking each other, and everyone died of the zombie apocalypse Last Thursday.
My best guess is that the truth is a lot more complicated than that, and that there absolutely isn't any kind of simple linear relationship between the severity of lockdown measures and excess deaths. There are so many variables, so much random noise, and so much cultural difference between countries. If every country is doing 20-30-40-50 different measures at once, how can we even start to figure out which ones do something, and which ones don't? Is washing your hands more important than wearing a mask while you're outside? Is closing workplaces more efficient than closing schools? There's appearing evidence that kids actually are very bad transmitters of this particular virus - contrary to "common sense", which dictates that kids are filthy petri dishes that are always sick and always spreading disease.
We know so little right now. It's going to take years before we'll know which countries did the right thing and which countries did the wrong thing.
The policy will look extremely unfortunate if one of the vaccines that's already being trialled actually works...
Example article: https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/21/analysis-is-sweden-right...
If you're driving a bus full of people towards a cliff, is it ok to not hit the brakes just in case the bus might get back-ended by a truck driving behind?
I live in Stockholm - had to walk through town the other evening to get a piece of equipment I left at the office (chose the evening to meet the least number of people was my plan). The bars and restaurants were PACKED and people were everywhere in the parks and open spaces.
"Universities are closed, high schools are closed, elementary schools are half-empty, people that can work from home do so, a lot of employees have been furloughed, restaurants have switched to mostly take-out, bars are closed, large events are cancelled, grocery stores reserve hours in the morning for senior citizens, elder care homes don't accept visitors, travel is way down, and people generally self-isolate and self-quarantine. Field hospitals have been constructed, recently retired healthcare workers have been asked to come back to work, vodka producers have shifted to making hand sanitizer, and other companies have shifted to making PPEs, etc."
You can also check out for example Google's mobility reports: https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-17_SE_Mobil...
is either incorrect or the policy was changed very recently ?
This is not a country divided. And we should also be clear that this is not a country that has done nothing. It has banned large gatherings, closed high schools and universities and told elderly people to self-isolate.
But restaurants, bars, primary schools and most businesses are still open.
Which directly contradicts your statement. (Your statement says that bars are closed while this article claims they are open.)
But the article is slightly weaselly in its wording. Yes, bars and restaurants are open, but it's take-out or table service only, and you typically leave every other table empty so that people are sitting 2m away from everyone else. The actual bar part of bars and restaurants are closed.
Note how the picture in that article is taken at a low angle so you can't clearly see the spacing between the people at the tables. A photo from the side would show a completely different picture.
Of course numbers are down - it's not everyone that's partying - but the voluntary restrictions are absolutely not being followed by the majority of younger (and somewhat older) people.
https://www.thelocal.se/20200420/coronavirus-will-sweden-eve...
I can assure you that's not true. All bars are open exactly as normal. Where are your friends located?
Google Mobility Report says "Retail and recreation" is down 27% in Stockholms län. Blunt statistics, but you can't pretend an almost 1/3 drop in business is anywhere near normal.
Some areas of the city look almost normal, yes, but other areas of the city are deserted wastelands. I'm sorry you are surrounded by idiots who are ignoring the official recommendations, but statistics show that your experience isn't universal.
The fact that in the county of Stockholm (ie: not central Stockholm) the supposed movement of people for 'retail and recreation' (as measured by Google) is down 27% is something completely different.
Personally I'm not surprised that people are out a bit less - I'm not meeting my friends in bars at the moment, for instance. But a rainy week could have an impact on bars and pubs at this time of year. A 27% fall (if true) is hardly surprising, given the circumstances right now.
In central Stockholm the bars, restaurants and even parks are full of people.
I've seen nothing saying they're making strong efforts aside from comments posted here and there, but I'd be interested in seeing sources.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-sweden-and-norway-handle...
[2] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/9/21213472/coronavirus-sweden-her...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielleigh/2020/04/10/sweden-...
"To start with, it’s a myth that Sweden is doing nothing about the virus. Most Swedes have changed their habits a lot. Schools for older kids are closed, as are universities. People are working from home, when they can, and the elderly are being urged to keep to themselves. Gatherings of over 50 people are prohibited, and ski resorts are closed. Restaurants and bars are allowing table service only, and grocery stores are installing glass dividers between customers and cashiers."
"Second, contrary to the claims of John Fund and Joel Hay and many others, Sweden isn’t trying to develop “herd immunity,” meaning a state of affairs in which so many people get the virus that the virus runs out of kindling. (At least, Swedish officials claim they aren’t doing this, and they would have a lot to lose by lying about it.) Instead, Sweden intends to take as loose an approach as possible that still keeps case growth down to nonexponential numbers."
"With these premises in mind, Sweden has pumped the brakes instead of slamming on them. You close school for older kids, but you keep grade school going, because evidence so far suggests that younger children are not a major cause of transmission for the novel coronavirus."
>Sweden has a mortality rate that’s only about twice as high as that of Denmark, which has a strict lockdown
Sweden's mortality rate per million: 198.5
Denmark: 68
"about twice"?
Not to mention: Norway: 36.5 per million
Finland: 31.2
Strictly speaking, we shouldn't even compare ourselves to Denmark, whose population is much more geographically concentrated. By far the closest demographic match is Norway - where the mortality rate is 1/6.
They also started with way lower numbers. So keeping open with limitations is way easier.
Also, its probably the right approach. You cant lock down for one or two years at least..
Having a gradient of social distancing and having it be enforced by government officials is the only sane way to avoid mass needless death which is what is happening in Sweden right about now
They're not top testers but definitely significant testers.
In part it helps that they're one of the least dense countries in the world at around 20 people per square kilometer, compared to say 400/500 for the Netherlands and South Korea. The difference is less pronounced in cities of course but still there (when will we ever get population density figures for the median person who is weighted towards living in proximity, rather than a country-wide average)
Sweden is n. 35 in "Tests / million people", that's not good enough IMO. 16% of the tests are positive!
How else do you want to control how the virus spreads? On what data do they base their decisions?