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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

You cannot know that until after the pandemic is over.

The Swedes are betting that nobody in the world will be spared from COVID and therefore the delta in deaths is temporary. They are front-loading it while attempting to keep the economic impacts as low as possible. They anticipate the rest of the world will be contending with shutdowns, re-openings, shutdowns, re-openings, and when all is said and done, the death rate per capita will be the same the world over.

So far, they the Swedes have bet one way, much of the rest of the world has bet the other way. Time will tell, but it is much too soon to make that judgment today.

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They haven't seen any benefit to their economy compared to other nordic countries at all.

Partly because they are export dependant and nobody's buying & partly because enough swedes are staying home (not going to pubs etc.) for the economy to tank but not enough to avoid 10 times as many deaths as their neighbours.

So, yes, time will tell. But for now they are getting the worst of both:

Many dead and no economic benefit.

Sweden hasnt any had any hospitals overwhelmed. they're just front loading the deaths that every single other country is going to have but is just delaying.

Do you think Corona is going anywhere?

A vaccine in the next couple years is not unthinkable I'd say.

If you have a look at the current infection rate in a lot of European (and others) countries, even reaching 50% of the population infected would take decades.

So yes, I believe that delaying is not the only possibility.

Keeping the virus contained for years is unthinkable. If we don't get a vaccine by next year, we won't need it anymore.

With the current measures in Europe? Definitely doable.

It's currently mandatory masks in public, keeping distances and washing hands, and no big crowds.

Life feels pretty normal over here.

It's great that life feels normal for you, not everyone is that lucky. People have already started to disobey and it isn't even winter.

Are those measures really unbearable for you? I feel like we are talking about different situations, and I'd like to understand your point of view.

I'm talking from the perspective of a European country with <100 cases/day.

We're doing that in America and cases are skyrocketing.

A lot of places are starting to reinstitute lockdowns.

Again we cannot know this until after.

> The Swedes are betting that nobody in the world will be spared from COVID

It's also a bet that medical treatments won't improve and a vaccine won't be developed.

Developed in time, yes. So far, at least using the US as a benchmark, it's not.

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to use the US as a benchmark for any thing Covid.

Point well taken.

or that many people who survive (including younger ones) will be disabled and unable to work

How do you get many younger ones disabled, when younger ones are barely getting ill? It is a desease that affects the older ones much more.

Two young people I know here in Stockholm have had complications: my team lead (who is in his mid-thirties) had an embolism in his lung after covid. He now has to inject blood-thinning medication twice a day. We’ll see how this works out for him.

I've posted elsewhere but my wife (40yo and in great health) has been suffering from a range of issues since her infection over 100 days ago. She cant climb stairs without getting out of breath. Her covid symptoms for the first two weeks was relatively mild. She is in a Slack group with over 7000 others. Predominantly women over 40 or men 2o to 50. All with serious long term issues after getting covid. It is a small number, but not small enough to wave away.

Yep but to be fair that isn’t a younger age group. Broadly speaking under-20s are pretty much unaffected. 20-40 aren’t particularly affected either if in good health and without comorbidities. 40+ can be quite seriously affected and over 65s it’s a double digit risk of death. It’s super non-linear.

It seems speculatively like this is due to age-linked expression of ACE2.

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