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Comment by slaw | Hacker News Reader

Sweden and Belarus

There is no data for Belarus but here is a link comparing Sweden with countries that have either comparable casualty rates (Spain, Italy, UK, USA) or comparable or even less economic contraction (Denmark, Lithuania, South Korea, Taiwan).

Sweden is the small blue circle to the right side of the large USA circle.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/q2-gdp-growth-vs-confirme...

Isn't Sweden one of the worst countries in terms of protecting health? Last I checked they were around around #7 in the world for highest death rate

They have had single digit death rates for months.

Your statement may have been accurate 3 months ago but have you looked lately?

They're done with Covid just like Tegnell predicted meanwhile a good amount of the world that locked down is still fighting it.

Are you referring to the case fatality rate? It's indeed single-digit for Sweden, albeit twice as high as other nordic countries or Germany:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

Nice Cherry Picking.

France, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Belgium, UK, Netherlands, all have worse CFR's than Sweden.

Also, all of Europe in aggregate is pretty close to Sweden.

It's fascinating to see how people are so devoted to demonizing Sweden.

Also, CFR is a weird measure to use.

1 infection and 1 death is a 100% CFR even if the rest of the population is fine!!!!

ref: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

> France, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Belgium, UK, Netherlands, all have worse CFR's than Sweden.

I mean if we're gonna talk about cherry-picking, did you notice that more than half of the countries you picked were the earliest hot-spots of the outbreak in Europe?

In any case, although the comment you are referring to mentions CFR, the article itself does not use CFR, it uses "Confirmed deaths per million people" as its metric. Still hard to see Sweden as a particularly standout good case in that data.

That's almost every country in Europe. Not sure your claim that they're all hot spots stands up.

But I can see you're super invested in your narrative and we're not going to have a meeting of the minds on this one.

Best luck to you anyway.

Sweden political narrative a few months ago was: "we are doing much better than other European countries by doing different." Then they had to shut down secondary schools and universities, ban assemblies over 50 people, extend paid sick-leave without consulting a doctor to 21 days and no first-day penalty, forbid visits in care homes, and other measures, and yet have a worst death per capita ratio than many countries, including their closest neighbors (and France where the lockdown was too late but effective nonetheless at flattening the death per capita ratio).

Sweden ratio is close to Italy’s death per capita, which is not considered a success in Europe.

The US death per capita ratio is still growing quite fast and will cross Sweden and Italy in a few days, later UK. Hopefully it will not reach Belgium levels…

So Sweden is certainly not a good example. Not the worst (Belgium is so sad…) either. They managed, probably did some things right, as they have now a flattened death curve, but they had a few weeks to prepare and ended up with a similar ratio than Italy.

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

> 1 infection and 1 death is a 100% CFR even if the rest of the population is fine!

The number of infections per million inhabitants in Sweden is also not better than the numbers from countries from the selection. [0]

Maybe just pick a different of the nordic countries as new role model and argue for that in the future?

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS...

Nordic categorization is a cherry picked categorization to fit a demonizing of Sweden narrative.

Sweden is on par with the rest of Europe with all manner of their Corona stats.

Why would the current death rate be a better metric than overall deaths?

Because Sweden is done with the virus. Their countries death count is still rising. Sweden front-loaded their deaths everyone else is going to catch up.

> everyone else is going to catch up.

Or get a vaccine.

When will China and Taiwan catch up? You're talking about potentially millions of deaths

The only way out is through. It's all just delaying otherwise.

I don't understand. Those countries were able to make it out without going "through" the massive death rates of countries like Sweden and the US. Do you think they are just delaying the inevitable? Will the whole world end up with a death rate as high as SWE?

There were no massive deaths in Sweden. Did you even look at wiki page?

I believe that Sweden currently has the 8th highest death rate in the whole world. Their 5,000 deaths look small because it's a small country. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

While I agree that it seems our strategy has gotten its results the past months, I don't really agree that this would point to it being a successful strategy overall. We will need to update our strategy for future pandemics. The most important part of Sweden's deaths (which imo i see way too few talk about) is that more ~98% of them are in ages >50.

I would say our strategy of trusting the population to by their own following safety precautions (not large gatherings, work from home of possible...) to keep the infection rate somewhat stable while infections increase, was ok. The thing we really need to change 'til next time is protecting our old and vulnerable better. Though that needs larger changes in the elder care as a whole so that will be a hard thing to achieve.

Well numerous Swedish epidemiologists would disagree with your assessment.

Did you read the article? Or are you just regurgitating to Fox News talking points?

Sweden - on both health and economic measures - has fared nearly as worse as the United States (read: not great).

I have no idea what Fox News says, I used Wikipedia. Sweden did very good. Take a look at 'All-cause daily deaths 2015–2020'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden

Please read the article; it covers this. And as for your link--Sweden doesn't fare that well in contrast to some of its neighbors, and isn't really a standout case.

Sweden is doong better than almost all places now .

It has single digit death rates.

It's basically done with Covid.

Which neighbors are you referring too?

Let's say Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway. If ONLY THERE WAS AN ARTICLE SOMEWHERE THAT COVERED THIS.

> Notice too that countries with similar falls in GDP have witnessed very different death rates. For instance, compare the US and Sweden with Denmark and Poland. All four countries saw economic contractions of around 8 to 9 percent, but the death rates are markedly different: the US and Sweden have recorded 5 to 10 times more deaths per million.

I'm not trying to "demonize" Sweden, but the poster above is trying to imply that Sweden is some kind of exceptionally good case. By the metrics I can see, it's not that either.

Off topic: that was one of the most ambitious Wikipedia pages I've ever read.

How do people find time for these stuff?

WHO Special Envoy Heaps Praise on Sweden’s Covid Strategy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-31/who-speci...

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