Sweden didn't shut down. Hospitals are not overwhelmed. Cases have plateaued | Hacker News Reader

Sweden didn't shut down. Hospitals are not overwhelmed. Cases have plateaued

bbc.com

26 pointssmallgovt31 comments

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Sweden banned international flights from outside of Europe.

Sweden banned gathering of more than 50 people.

Sweden closed down the universities.

Sweden permanently closed down 5 restraunts this weekend for flouting social distancing rules.

And, most importantly, their cases are not plataueing, their deaths are not plataueing.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...

Looks like a plataue to me

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...

These both use the same data, but the rolling average shows the trend.

That chart is garbage for Sweden, it is in no way a 7 day average of the arcgis data I posted.

The official death total by day of death has a massive lag, if the out world in data chart was actually a 7 day average of it there would be a huge drop over the last week.

Sweden’s tolling average “peaked” two days ago. That’s not enough time to say anything definitive.

They only banned >50 people last month.

Cases have not really plateaued.

The large graph in the article is very misleading because it's a type of 'epi curve', the reporting is late on the data points making it always 'seem like' it's tilting down, even if it never actually is.

With an epicure - you don't know until some time after the flattening that it has happened.

Daily cases are here [1]

It's inconsistent largely due to the cyclical nature of testing and reporting, but it's softly trending upwards.

Note of course that it's not exploding, however.

It'll be at least a couple of weeks before we see if it's plateauing.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

One thing I think is important to point out is that Sweden has the highest percentage of people living alone of any country in the world, and it is much less common than, say, Italy to have older people living with younger people.

Similar to how NYC, the densest place in the US, has been hit so much harder than elsewhere, I think it does at least make a good argument that approaches should be regionally based.

'In contrast with other countries where political leaders have fronted the national response to the crisis, Dr Tegnell has led the majority of news conferences'

'chief state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell is broadly popular in Sweden. An experienced scientist with more than 30 years in medicine, he is known for his relaxed demeanour and preference for pullovers.

"He's a low-key person. I think people see him as a strong leader but not a very loud person, careful in what he's saying," reflects Emma Frans, a Swedish epidemiologist and science writer. "I think that's very comforting for many."

She argues that many national and international media have been "searching for conflict" within the scientific community, whereas she believes there is a consensus that Anders Tegnell's approach is "quite positive", or at least "not worse than other strategies"

This seems a much better non partisan approach than the endless two party C19 press conference and criticism political warfare the US & UK have to endure

not sure they are a shining example, they are just over twice the population of NZ, they have had over 2000 deaths, we have had 19. Yesterday we had 1 new case.

Today in NZ is the first day out of our strictest level of lockdown and a large number of businesses are going back to work as long as they follow strict distancing, and safe interactions. Also public facing businesses can't open, if you are a shop, you need delivery options or contactless pickup / payment options.

There are some relevant differences between Sweden and New Zealand.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/sweden-coronavirus-anti...

what do you think are the relevant differences?

Being part of the EU, Schengen where people can travel abroad much more frequently due to distances. Also, it's common in the end of February to go skiing during Sportlov week so traveling to the hotspots in Austria and Italy was a bit more frequent for Swedes than New Zealanders, I assume.

The title appears to break HN rules, as it doesn't match the title of the linked article. @dang?

And all it took was a few thousand unnecessary deaths. Vietnam and Taiwan temporarily shutdown, and the former had 0 deaths while the latter has had less than 10.

Hmm? Plenty of countries that did shutdown did experience "a few thousand unnecessary deaths". What's your point?

OP's and/or TFA's point, as well as many people's who talk about this, seems to be that Sweden is faring as well as its neighbors that did shutdown. That's a big deal.

And did Taiwan shutdown? IIRC they did not. They were able to get way ahead of everyone and stop the spread of covid-19. Since most other countries did not, it's not fair to compare Sweden to Taiwan.

Some people are bent on there being shutdowns no matter the cost, no matter the cost-benefit analysis, no matter if there is no real benefit.

> faring as well as its neighbors

It isn't though. Look at the number of deaths in Norway and Finland, and adjust based on population. Sweden is not doing very well. Perhaps, long term, the other countries catch up if they go through a cycle of opening up some and shutting down, but we don't know that now.

Norway's method to count deaths due to CoViD-19 is very different than Sweden's.

How do they differ?

Sweden’s population is 10 million. They have had 2194 deaths as per the WHO’s latest data: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

The US has a population 328 million, or roughly 33 times higher. On the face of it with rough calculations their per capita death rate if it was the Us would be around 70k deaths vs the 40k deaths we have so far.

So I think it’s a good point you bring up.

> 40k deaths we have so far.

You're off by at least 10,000.

Ok so 50,000, maybe 60,000 but I think the point about Sweden having a higher per capita death rate stands at this point. Sure, in a week these numbers may change but based on the current numbers I think it is not controversial.

Not to mention turkey intervening to provide medical care to a dual citizen refused care in sweden.

Congrats to Sweden for "only" having 2,000 dead. Tell that to the over 56,000 dead Americans despite lockdown.

Also, Sweden is under de facto lockdown even if they don't want to call it that.

That said, it is important to note that Sweden has one of the highest death rates in the world. Almost 40% higher than the US and at least 200-300% that of its neighbors.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per-mi...

If the US had the same death rate, the total deaths would be closer to 80,000

Population size is only an upper bound limit for disease spread, it doesn't tell anything else so using per capita inference to extrapolate is pretty flawed.

Interesting that the population of Sweden is comparable to the population of London, England. Two ends of the population density factors.

Yet comparing the number of deaths, they do seem most comparable.

Not sure what to make from it though.

How’s their economy?

Quite some people lost there jobs

-Signed a guy who lost his job today :(

What are you attempting to say/equivocate?

Probably something along the lines of their economy suffering quite a bit just the same.

Was it some kind of forbidden question?

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