If Sweden succeeds, lockdowns will all have been for nothing
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
https://mobile.twitter.com/NiklasJonsson91/status/1252976186...
"Alarming data has shown Sweden’s approach to containing coronavirus has led to a far greater number of fatalities than their Nordic neighbours."
Is this article I read a week ago not true anymore?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill...
It's great that Norway and Finland are doing well, but Sweden isn't doing that bad.
Here's an interesting article talking about why it is difficult to compare numbers.
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/why-the-worlds-hig...
Yeah, no. Sweden doesn't look particularly successful.
Every country will have to reopen like Sweden, most plan to do so within weeks, note how no country has eradicated the disease - what do you think will happen when they reopen? Exactly what is happening in Sweden. The goal of the flattening is to avoid overloading the hospitals not to "win". There is no winning.
The only difference will be that they still have their economy in good shape.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill....
It's the reddest thing I see on the map, implying that lockdowns were absolutely essential?
Your quote is about fatality numbers. Public policy to reduce transmission of covid19 is meant to keep the infection curve flat enough to avoid overwhelming hospitals. Unless Sweeden's hospitals are overwhelmed, the articles are orthogonal.
2) Even if this works out for Sweden, they took a massive gamble with their citizens lives going for herd immunity with so many unknown.
An extreme example but its like that guy that sold everything bet it on red/black at Vegas. He doubled his wealth in a day but it still doesn't make him a model of financial management.
I'm not an epidemiologist so I cannot say (yet) who is wrong and who is right. But I can for sure say that they are doing their best and they are not gambling with citizens lives.
We have an idea of better statistics but there is much unknown, especially in the early days of these decisions. Gambling at an analytical level is playing the odds as much as these guys are playing odds from a position of expertise from their field. Maybe we dont call it game ling because it's "analysis" but the difference is language but the fundamentals are the same. They are both taking bets based on incomplete information and what they feel is the best option.
If the knew more and weren't modeling off big assumed variables I'd agree with you. But when you make decisions off big unknown variables I say it's gambling regardless of your education or level of expertise.
Look at Spain, locked down hard on March 14th, yet the number of cases on April 4th were the same as on April 24th (!) (and among of the largest observed over 6K). No one would have ever predicted that back in March 14th, that after more than a month of keeping the population like prisoners the number of cases would be still so high with no chance of going to zero any time soon. Eventually, within weeks now, they have to relax the rules, and with that they will be right where Sweden is.
When it is all said and done who did better, which society is better off overall. My bet is on Sweden, but the answer will not be determined tomorrow, next week or even next month. Perhaps by this time next year.
Where is the counter for the children that die because not getting immunized because of the lockdown? (Turns out there are already tens of millions of them not getting vaccines, measles immunization is down 50%) Where is the fatality counter for depression, for weakened immune systems that lockdown causes, etc. Where is the counter for all the diseases not treated because of the lockdown? Where is the counter for famine and poverty?
Do you see the problem? There is only one counter up there ticking up every day, all common sense sacrificed to make the tick go slower.
If we had a counter for all the deaths caused by the lockdown there would be no lockdown at all.
Does the lockdown help in lowering measles transmission rates?
They don't die. They are protected because the vast majority is vaccinated.
It's something called herd immunity. You seem like you should have heard of it.
> for weakened immune systems that lockdown causes
That's not a thing.
> If we had a counter for all the deaths
You're in luck: almost all the statisticians are trying to switch to all-cause mortality. That should be the definite answer to all your questions.
and why vaccinate since herd immunity already affects everyone (never mind 10 if not 100 million vaccines have not been administered)
there is no such thing as a weakened immune system after being locked up in a house for weeks if not months.
and that is your scientific reasoning ...
Log scales are your friend here. The virus was pretty clearly growing exponentially in early March. The implications of that level of growth - unchecked - are terrifying.
What they and other people that use a bit more foresight say is that there is no need to panic and overreact - and that you can get the same results with measures that do not make your population jobless.
The strict lockdown was and is a massive overreaction that gave in to alarmism.
I'd wait and see because something tells me we don't have enough data for definitive statements.
It has 4x as many deaths as Germany adjusted for population, and 4x as many deaths as Austria (not adjusted for population, because they are similar).
And so on... Take the worst European countries: Spain and Italy. These two have about twice as many deaths as Sweden relative to population. But then again, their numbers are declining, while Sweden's is still growing.
North Carolina: 10M population, 8K cases, 300 deaths [1].
[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
[0] https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-april-25-2020/do...
Sweden population density: 64 people / square mile.
Massachusetts population density: 890 (14x) people / square mile.
---
Stockholm population density: 5,200 people / square mile.
Boston population density: 13,800 (2.5x) people / square mile.
(all sources just wikipedia entries)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22919074
Swedes are pretty generous conducting this experiment on their population for the edification of the survivors.
[1]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill...
What lives beyond what?
> The morals and ethics of this, confounded with our knowledge and technology is profoundly complex.
"complex" is just latin for "put together". What relevance does the complexity of life have for its value?
> People are failing to grasp nuance here.
I am comfortable with the lack of nuance inherent in trying to avoid death.
What do you think about the idea of dropping the speed limit on all roads to 10 miles per hour in order to save many lives every year?
Isn't the opposite of flattening the curve, to absorb the hit all at once. You would expect a much higher death rate for a shorter amount of time.
Only if surviving covid-19 provided immunization against a other infection
Of course, the degree to which people take social distancing seriously impacts the R of contagion, but as the number of cases increase, so do the percentage of people that take it more seriously.
I think it's very hard to say who is right and who is wrong here. Even if a lock down saves lives, it affects so many negatively. Especially kids who lose weeks of months of schooling who they will have a hard time getting back.
I really don’t get the thing with compulsory schooling - it’s not if they will never get educational instruction in their lives
People don't like being under house arrest? What a surprise!
>Can we really compare conscientious Swedes with bold Brits or brash Americans
Of course we can. Quit giving them credit as more moral and complaint when not as much has been asked of them.
I'm sure there have been mistakes made during this pandemic but it's too early to decide which have been good or bad.
The issue is that lockdowns can only last so long. The initial hope was that we can quickly find an effective treatment for this virus, but so far, that's looking unlikely. Hydroxycloriquine and Remdesivir were the best hopes and in controlled studies, they aren't showing effectiveness. While an effective treatment is still possible, it will likely require a new drug to be developed and tested, which is a far more time consuming process than using a drug that is already approved for other uses (since you already understand the side effects). Meanwhile, a vaccine is still a year or two away according to most experts, if we ever find one at all (some viruses are very hard to find vaccinations for).
So eventually, countries will need to lift their lockdowns. People in democracies are already getting restless. And once that happens, rates of infections will go up, and countries that have had very low death rates so far due to lockdowns will start to see their numbers climb. Meanwhile, Sweden will have already had a large share of their population who already had the virus and are (hopefully) immune to it, at least short term.
That said, Sweden's strategy might not work for every country even if it ends up working for them. They have a very strong healthcare system and a relatively healthy population. Other countries may not fare so well.
They were the best hopes in the sense that stockpiles existed, not that they were the best at fighting it. For example, Camostat and Favipiravir are other candidates but not approved in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_drug_repurposing_rese...
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p...