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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

Sweden is a different country than Norway or Finland, even though they are neighbors. Also, being low population density is irrelevant (you could have a huge country with everybody crammed in a city, actually Stockholm is much denser than Oslo for instance). Also, even within a single country, fatality rates vary greatly.

I don't think anybody knows how Sweden would have done with a different response to the Covid. In any case, on an objective scale, I think they've done quite well and they had a less miserable experience than the rest of us.

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> Sweden is a different country than Norway or Finland

Pedantic “every country is a different country” aside; Norway and Finland are absolutely fine comparatives.

The population density (in the populated areas), culture and genetic make-up of these countries is so similar that they may as well be considered the same country socioeconomically.

Hell, they used to even _be_ the same country (the union of Kalmar).

I’ve lived in Finland and currently live in Sweden. As a British person I see more similarities than differences. (Language of Finland vs the Scandinavian languages not withstanding)

Your perception of a country doesn't make a scientific evidence on why Norway of Finland could be taken as reference point to assess Sweden strategy regarding Covid.

You're the one asserting they're not comparable here, so please trot out some factors where Sweden is measurably different from its neighbors then.

The pandemics is extremely complex. Fatality rates have looked very different in seemingly similar countries, and even within different areas of a single country.

Saying Covid response is the only thing that could possibly explain the observed differences between Sweden and (let say) Norway is simply wrong.

I do suspect Sweden would have had less fatality had they implemented a lockdown. Would it then be comparable to Norway? I wouldn't bet may life on it. France has almost twice as many covid death as Germany even though they implemented a much stricter lockdown.

It seems some people hate Sweden for choosing their way to deal with the pandemics. Could have they done better otherwise? maybe, but overall, no cataclysm happened there, they did ok in terms of fatality compared to rest of Europe, and much better for the other metrics, as stated in the article.

"Lockdown" is also an almost meaningless term. People adjusted behavior almost everywhere--including Sweden. Furthermore, very few places actually implemented a hard lockdown that largely prevented people from leaving their homes. Certainly no where (?) in the US did. Restaurants closed for indoor dining isn't really a lockdown.

It's very hard to correlate policies to outcomes.

> Saying Covid response is the only thing that could possibly explain the observed differences between Sweden and (let say) Norway is simply wrong.

Nobody has claimed that it is, and in fact in this very thread you've seen it correctly noted that Sweden's approach to old age homes was responsible for a significant part of the fatalities -- although here too there's a lot of debate about whether it's the percentage of % in age homes (a bit higher in Sweden), the Swedish tendency to have larger homes, or the Swedish COVID policy decision to treat people at the homes instead of hospitalizing them.

But, again, if you have alternative hypotheses or factors that you think differ greatly between the countries, let's hear them. Because as a native of the region, I'd struggle to find many, at least when it comes to factors a virus would care about (as opposed to, say, preferring sweeter jam with meatballs).

Over the last four years the all cause mortality has been the same for Sweden and Norway [0]. So it would appear more people died in Norway before the pandemic, and more people in Sweden since, equalling out over the last four years.

Maybe this explains the difference during the pandemic - Sweden had more old people.

[0] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201116/Study-compares-de...

> I don't think anybody knows how Sweden would have done with a different response to the Covid. In any case, on an objective scale, I think they've done quite well and they had a less miserable experience than the rest of us.

So first you claim we don't know. Then you claim they've "done quite well". Which is it? What was the purpose of the first sentence?

I'm claiming we don't know what would have happened under different policies (lockdown vs no lockdown) - and those who pretend otherwise don't have scientific evidence to back up their claims. Regardless, I'm claiming they've done quite well under all possible objective metrics compared to other European countries.

You should compare Sweden to its closest neighbors, not to all of Europe or all of the World).

Countries geographically close to each other are more similar than countries far apart. Therefore you can more readily attribute the difference in death-rates to differences in policy.

And use Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation for the 10x difference in death-rates is most probably the correct one: lack of lockdown. It just makes (common) sense.

What is your explanation for the 10x difference in death-rates between Sweden and its closest neighbors? Do you have a simpler explanation than the lack of lockdown?

Well, first of all it's 10x compared to Norway and 3X compared to Denmark.

There are huge differences in demographics between the Scandinavian countries. Over 20% of the Swedish population have been born outside of the country, mostly in the Middle East or Africa. This group has been hit disproportionately by Covid. The risk of needing intensive care for Middle Eastern immigrants in Sweden is 6 times higher than for people with Swedish ancestry, and the risk of dying is 2.8 higher [0].

There are also pretty big differences in how elderly care is organized and run.

I'm not saying we did a good job in Sweden, but I definitely think that there are more factors than lockdown in play.

[0] https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/2dddee08a4...

Surely there are many contributing factors always. The question to ask is: "Would Sweden have done better had it implemented lockdown like its neighbors?

In hindsight, would they still make the same decision, if (and when) a new equally deadly pandemic rises again?

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