With the Most Deaths In 150 Years, Sweden Reveals New COVID-19 Test-and-Trace Strategy (theguardian.com) 249
AleRunner writes: In the first half of 2020, Sweden has recorded its highest death total in 150 years. "In total, 51,405 Swedes died in the six-month period, a higher number than in any year since 1869, when 55,431 people died, partly as a result of a famine," reports The Guardian. In what may be a reaction to this failure, which makes Sweden the worst coronavirus country in Scandinavia, Sweden has announced a change to their new contact-tracing policy. The Local explains: "If you test positive for the coronavirus you may now be given instructions to call people with whom you have been in contact and may have infected, instead of healthcare staff doing the job for you, or it not being done at all."
In early June, Sweden switched from its failed "herd immunity" strategy to a contact-tracing strategy and has since seen a strong fall in new infections, though with a recent slight increase. The new contact-tracing strategy will be critical for the return of the Swedish economy with Sweden currently facing travel restrictions from Scandinavian neighbors such as Finland, whilst other Scandinavian and Baltic countries are already open for trade and tourism. Swedes will be hoping that the adjustment of their new coronavirus strategy will be a signpost for other countries rather than the warning of their old strategy.
Not so long ago, in June, we discussed how Sweden's old strategy had made Sweden a Pariah state and in May we had discussed how Sweden's old strategy caused many deaths whilst failing to deliver immunity.
In early June, Sweden switched from its failed "herd immunity" strategy to a contact-tracing strategy and has since seen a strong fall in new infections, though with a recent slight increase. The new contact-tracing strategy will be critical for the return of the Swedish economy with Sweden currently facing travel restrictions from Scandinavian neighbors such as Finland, whilst other Scandinavian and Baltic countries are already open for trade and tourism. Swedes will be hoping that the adjustment of their new coronavirus strategy will be a signpost for other countries rather than the warning of their old strategy.
Not so long ago, in June, we discussed how Sweden's old strategy had made Sweden a Pariah state and in May we had discussed how Sweden's old strategy caused many deaths whilst failing to deliver immunity.
Bad Journalism (Score:2, Informative)
Sweden health officials have said, over and over, the goal was never herd immunity! The goal is to be sustainable in the long term. I'm tired of seeing crappy journalists write about Sweden trying to achieve herd immunity when that is incorrect.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sweden health officials have said, over and over, the goal was never herd immunity!
They lied [theguardian.com].
Re:Bad Journalism (Score:4, Informative)
Sweden health officials have said, over and over, the goal was never herd immunity!
They lied [theguardian.com].
No, they did not. The emails in question don't contain the conclusions or any decisions on policy. They discuss possible outcomes, risks and the value of different scenarios. It's possible to investigate possible scenarios without actively working towards them.
It's basically a large trolley problem. Is it worth letting 10 % of the old and sick (say, people with fewer than two years left to live) die, if that keeps the country out of a recession that would eventually lead to younger people falling into depression, becoming homeless, committing suicide, etc.?
This is not to say that Sweden has done everything exemplary, or even good. The economy is
It's also worth noting that Sweden counts every death of someone with covid-19 in the official number. This includes people who die of other causes. Estimates put around 15% as not caused by covid-19, and 70% as only partially caused by it.
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Re:Bad Journalism (Score:4, Informative)
I read the article you linked, and the original article [expressen.se] it cited, which showed the released emails in question.
In one email the Swedish chief epidemiologist asked his Finnish counterpart what keeping schools open would do towards achieving herd immunity, to which the Finn replied that their modeling work suggested a reduction in the elderly's infection rate by 10%, to which the Swede asked whether he thought it might be worth it.
In another email the Swedish chief epidemiologist asked a new consultant whether the infection's basic reproduction number (R) could be modeled against the population's immunity for an illustration.
The emails were published without fully including either what he was replying to or the subsequent replies, making it difficult to get the full context. But there is no smoking-gun evidence here. Just two mildly suspicious mail exchanges out of a large release of their emails. It reminds me of the Climategate email [wikipedia.org] conspiracy theory about the out-of-context quote to "hide the decline."
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A lockdown is only a short term delaying tactic, which comes at great cost to the economy. Once the lockdown is lifted, cases will begin to rise again until an effective vaccine becomes widely administered which so far hasn't happened.
Meanwhile having a lockdown has done severe economic damage, resulting in huge numbers of unemployed and many bankrupt or downsizing businesses. The governments in many countries are providing support, but have to do so with reduced tax income - this is not sustainable, govern
Total deaths? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure they didn't INTEND to make it look like 50K died from the Virus in Sweden, when the REAL number is just over 5K. Do read the Fine article...
Just so you don't miss this slight of hand... They included ALL deaths in the 50K number, not just the COVID deaths...I get the distinct impression the reporter is TRYING to drive opinion here by making the headline numbers as high as they could, and then putting the salient facts in the fine print....
Figures never lie, but liars figure..
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I'm sure they didn't INTEND to make it look like 50K died from the Virus in Sweden, when the REAL number is just over 5K. Do read the Fine article...
Just so you don't miss this slight of hand... They included ALL deaths in the 50K number, not just the COVID deaths...I get the distinct impression the reporter is TRYING to drive opinion here by making the headline numbers as high as they could, and then putting the salient facts in the fine print....
Figures never lie, but liars figure..
You may have been the only one that felt misled by the article consider the VERY FIRST FUCKING WORDS are
""In total, 51,405 Swedes died in the six-month period, a higher number than in any year since 1869, when 55,431 people died, partly as a result of a famine,"
Reading comprehension is a clever adversary indeed. ALWAYS trying to trick us into not understanding plain English
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Total death represents the true impact, and isn't skewed by testing numbers or other lies.
Re: Total deaths? (Score:5, Insightful)
... here in Europe most researchers have switched to using 'total excess deaths' to measure the impact of what we have all just gone through the last 6 months.
And IMHO that's fair. The COVID-19 pandemic kills people a lot of other ways than by infecting them with a virus that some people's bodies, even aided by medical technology, can't fight off.
Assuming other causes of death are about the same as previous years EXCEPT for the effects of the pandemic and social reactions to it, this stat should correctly include them all.
With the disease itself it completely avoids issues of:
- whether testing is deployed,
- whether the tests that are done are accurate and how they err
- how multiple tests of the same person are counted
- what to blame for deaths when a person has both CoV-2 and an unreated disease or condition (or was woozy and cracked up his car).
It also includes other pandemic fallout death-rate changes:
- from other medical conditions (and medical misadventures treating them), given that some people are deferring diagnostic tests or treatment for chroic conditions - to avoid hospitals and the perceived risk of exposure, because the medical personnel are busy with other things, or due to economic issues or insurance loss.
- from criminal action, civil unrest, international migration and reaction to it, when police, first responders, and military responses are reduced or changed.
- From job loss or sequesteration and the related issues of health, stress, loss of income, and increased prices for necessary supplies.
and so on.
Re: Total deaths? (Score:5, Interesting)
Missed one I intended to include; Reduction of deaths from OTHER diseases (such as influenzas), which also had reduced transmission due to the anti-contagin measures implemented for COVID-19.
Another interesting effect: For several years the US has had another pandemic, among commercial and hobbyist chickens, of a very contagious viral bird disease (Virulent Newcastle). Poultry shows had largely been halted and flocks of thousands of birds destroyed, trying to suppress it. But contract tracing and drastic eradication measures didn't suffice to eliminate it: It kept breaking out.
Blame was mostly laid on several instances of illegal importation of diseased cock-fighting birds, along with spread through illegal cock fight events - which resulted in transport of contending birds over wide areas and bringing them into close proximity and/or contact. (Also blamed was reluctance of police to suppress cock fighting, due to corruption or avoidance of accusations of racial bias.) Though the disease could be spread by wild birds, testing did not find any sign of it except in domestic birds.)
But the sequestering and social distancing measures directed at COVID-19, which has limited travel and crowded events - seems to have broken the transmission cycle in the US and stopped the bird disease in its tracks.
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Why differentiate? (Score:3)
Okay, then how do you differentiate between "deaths due to lockdown" and "deaths due to COVID-19"?
Why should I differentiate? The lockdown is due to COVID-19. (We wouldn't have it if the disease hadn't gotten loose globally and proved highly contagious and often fatal.) So the deaths due to it are also due to COVID-19. (It's just that the mechanism in those cases isn't the infection itself, so they're not due to INFECTION BY COVID-19.)
It's the epidemiological equivalent of "felony murder".
Why not death rate per 1000 people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sweden's population has risen every year for decades. Larger populations have higher numbers of deaths.The data shows a "new record number of deaths" in 2010, 2012, 2017 and 2018:
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Death rate per 1000 people would have been a far more meaningful statistic, but that might have required a little effort from the reporting newspaper.
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Death rate per 1000 people would have been a far more meaningful statistic, but that might have required a little effort from the reporting newspaper.
That also would have been harder to spin into propaganda that certain groups desperately want people to believe.
Re:Why not death rate per 1000 people? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why not death rate per 1000 people? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The data shows a "new record number of deaths" in 2010, 2012, 2017 and 2018
Divide all those years by 2 (since they are talking about a 6 month period) and the largest number of deaths is 46092. Surely you can see that 51405 is considerably higher than any of those years in the stats you provided?
Death rate per 1000 people would have been a far more meaningful statistic, but that might have required a little effort from the reporting newspaper.
And reading would have required a little more effort on your part. Here is third paragraph from the article, which is the one that provides the 51405 figure:
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I don't really see the point of your complaint, other than perhaps trying to distract from the poor performance of the Swedish government.
They used a statistic as their headline. It was their responsibility to get that statistic right. At a minimum, they could have shown both the deaths per 1000 and total number of deaths together.
Many other posters have provided interesting commentary on the actions of the Swedish government. It's rather silly to conclude that I have some sort of agenda because I made a post about statistics.
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Germany has accepted over a million of refugees, yet the German death rate is way below the Swedish one.
But I am sure you people will find an excuse.
Elderly (Score:3)
Sweden has one of the longest life expediencies of any country. They also have a very large elderly population. It is mainly their elderly who are succumbing, and due to the size of that population they are being hit disproportionately hard.
See: Elderly (Score:3)
>It is mainly their elderly who are succumbing
Why would that be the case, when COVID19 can be stopped by quarantine measures? That sounds silly.
That is also ignoring the problems with straining the healthcare systems, max number of beds, possibly deaths due respiratory failure outside of hospitals, and long term health complicate due lung damage.
Herd immunity seems like a good idea until you remember that 1% is fucking huge, and you only got a limited number of respirator, medications, beds and staff.
Re:Elderly (Score:4, Informative)
Other Scandinavian countries have just as many elderly people, but around 1/10 the death rate.
Re:Elderly (Score:4, Informative)
It has been striking elderly the most because of glaring deficiencies in Sweden's care system for elderly. To be blunt, they have been treated like s*it*.
First, the disease had spread like wildfire in crowded old people's homes.
Next, instead of mobilising the actual health care system to care for them, they have been cared for by understaffed caregivers with low pay and only rudimentary medical training. Doctors had routinely ordered palliative care for elderly infected on first news of infection without examination in person.
As an example, at a old people's home up the street from where I live, out of 96 elderly, all had been infected. Back in June, half of them had died.
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Yeah fuck the elderly right? They are expendable according to our herd immunity overlords.
Keep strong Sweden! (Score:2)
Your Zapp Brannigan strategy is bound to start working once you run out of old people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sweden didn't change strategy (Score:4, Informative)
Study points to lock-downs not working (Score:2)
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Stockholm and London do not have similar death rates and similar population density and we do not know if they have the same level people with antibodies
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London locked down when it had massive numbers of infections already, because it's a major travel destination.
Stockholm is a small peripheral city, it had only a handful of cases when it began social distancing.
Despite its good initial situation, Stockholm managed to "catch up" in deaths due to its herd immunity policy.
Lies, damn lies and misunderstandings (Score:4, Insightful)
Herd immunity has never been Sweden's official strategy. That is a misunderstanding that has been blown out of proportion.
It is one of several strategies that have been presented as an option for discussion by Sweden's public health authority but it has never been implemented.
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but it has never been implemented
No it's never been openly announced as implemented.
I heard the options were:
a) Herd Immunity
b) Population reduction
c) Old weak people culling
d) Make some phrase up so we don't need to call it one of the above which makes us look bad.
For some reason option d looks identical to the herd immunity option presented.
Get your geography right (Score:2)
Re:What a bunch of Balony (Score:5, Informative)
Four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden’s prized herd immunity is nowhere in sight
Eric J W Orlowski, David J A GoldsmithFirst Published August 11, 2020
This is especially clear in Sweden, where the authorities publicly predicted 40% seroconversion in Stockholm by May 2020; the actual IgG seroprevalence was around 15%.
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There are several studies showing that 50% of the population are immune to the disease, so you only need 16% to reach herd immunity.
Second request this thread: Cite your sources asshole.
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If you don't have a source, act like an adult and say so
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I am going to be laughing at you covid nancys in about a month when cases are falling to zero
Donald Trump is that you?
Re:What a bunch of Balony (Score:4, Informative)
Conveniently a study has just been released regarding Sweden's "herd immunity."
Four months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden’s prized herd immunity is nowhere in sight
Eric J W Orlowski, David J A GoldsmithFirst Published August 11, 2020
This is especially clear in Sweden, where the authorities publicly predicted 40% seroconversion in Stockholm by May 2020; the actual IgG seroprevalence was around 15%.
I assume you are talking about this article: https://www.svd.se/ny-beraknin... [www.svd.se]
A mathematician has a model that says herd immunity could be reached at 40%, and that Stockholm could reach that in early June
Why do people keep saying Sweden is targeting herd immunity? The strategy has always been "minimum interventions that does not overwhelm the hospitals". Herd immunity is not a direct goal, but a possible side effect.
The other way they have been talking about herd immunity is when they say we will live with this until we have herd immunity, but that means either a natural immunity OR immunity from vaccinations.
Re:What a bunch of Balony (Score:5, Insightful)
Herd immunity via infection with the pathogen is a murderous strategy. Delay the spread as much as possible until a vaccine or cure is developed and proven, that's the strategy that saves the most lives. Herd immunity should be created by the vaccine. Unless you're a serial killer who wants 1% of the population to die? Going about business as normal when there's a pathogen spreading in the hopes of creating herd immunity causes needless deaths .. isn't that fucking obvious?
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More than 1% of the population die naturally every year, and the numbers fluctuate over time. This year may be above average, but it will be offset by other years with lower death rates and balance out over time.
Shutting everything down until a vaccine becomes available has also resulted in deaths as well as severe economic damage. People are getting stressed and depressed, suffering malnutrition, avoiding medical centres for fear of covid when they need treatment for other things, going undiagnosed because
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> Daily life is dangerous and carries a risk of death, lockdown has reduced the number of traffic deaths - does that mean we should ban all forms of travel permanently?
Of course! Risk of any kind is completely unacceptable under the "new normal" regime. We should ban all alcohol products, tobacco products. We should force all fast-food restaurants to shut down. Everybody should be under house arrest, but with a daily government-mandated exercise routine.
In fact, I would vote Kim Jong-un in for president
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Researchers in pretty much every university in Sweden (many of them are my colleagues) have absolutely no idea where Anders Tegnell is getting his numbers from as they certainly don't see anything similar. It is widely believed that this is a strategy of Trump style politics that so long as you have the microphone and the camera
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Your conspiracy theory is even more Balony.
The old people mostly would have died within a few months or years anyway. Once you are 80, your chance of dying in that year is 10% even without Covid.
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And while people are no longer dying in droves, there still have many days of a few hundred new
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People take a very Darwinist view of life...til it's their turn. Then it's "save me at all costs".
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Re: Actual data? (Score:2)
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Your reality is objectively incorrect. U.S. coronavirus cases have been trending down since a peak in late July, but U.S. coronavirus deaths have been trending UP since the beginning of July.
Perhaps you're being fooled by the CDC's numbers, which have a three week lag in reporting, and thus always show incorrectly low numbers for the most recent two or three weeks?
Re: Actual data? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Actual data? (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline isn't misleading. Sweden had the most deaths that it has had in 150 years, and as a result, they are switching strategies for how they handle COVID-19. And the sentence right after said that it had recorded the highest number of deaths in total, followed by the next sentence saying that the total number of deaths was 51,000. It's not the headline/summary author's fault that you completely misread it.
Something very strange happened in their data near the end of June. I'm not sure what, but it seems entirely implausible for case counts to be on the upswing like that and then suddenly fall off a cliff like that. I'd be curious what changed. Were there any interesting policy or behavioral changes right about then?
Oh, right. School ended in mid-June.
You know what's going to happen when school starts back? Sweden is almost certainly not "done with coronavirus". Not by a long shot.
Re: Actual data? (Score:4, Informative)
I assume you are looking at confirmed cases, and are making assumptions based on numbers alone. Just like most foreign media. What most people fail to realise is that from mid March, testing was limited to care personnel and people that needed hospitalisation - because of limited testing capacity, and using the limited resources for testing where it makes most sense. By early June, testing ramped up and allowed for everyone to get tested, resulting in a spike in new confirmed cases (helped slightly by people starting to enjoy summer and letting their guard down). So any conclusions made based on "confirmed cases" before mid June are likely to be wrong. Conclusions made from later data are also likely to be wrong, but slightly less so.
A more reliable number would be people needing intensive care. After a peak in early April (with almost 50 new cases a day), the numbers have steadily decreased since then, levelling out to at about 2-3 new cases each day by end of June. This also shows in number of deaths, which is now at a level of about 0.2 per million per day - similar to other European countries and significantly lower than the US (with about 3.2 deaths per million per day).
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The headline isn't misleading. Sweden had the most deaths that it has had in 150 years,
Percentage-wise, no. In absolute numbers? Of course - they have 3 times the population that they had before.
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The headline isn't misleading. Sweden had the most deaths that it has had in 150 years, and as a result, they are switching strategies for how they handle COVID-19.
No. Any change in strategy would come from the number of Covid deaths per capita. Not the number of total deaths. These numbers are correlated but only one of them is a cause for change. The best number would of course be Excess Deaths, but still per capita.
And for that matter they have not really made any significant changes to the strategy.
Something very strange happened in their data near the end of June. I'm not sure what, but it seems entirely implausible for case counts to be on the upswing like that and then suddenly fall off a cliff like that. I'd be curious what changed. Were there any interesting policy or behavioral changes right about then?
Oh, right. School ended in mid-June.
You know what else happens at the end of June and beginning of July? The whole country goes on vacation. It may be tied to schools, but if it was mostly caused by sprea
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Maybe I should have stumbled upon the CNN version first. [cnn.com] Before opening my trap.
Re: Actual data? (Score:2)
We/Sweden aren't done with the virus.
And the last number for how many died that day from it was 12.
Personaly I had fever for 4.5 days back in April-May but I've checked for antibodies recently and it was negative.
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So suicide being up will make COVID more deadly (which is what the conspiracy theorists are saying, that seeing their wife for more that 2 hours a day makes
Re: Actual data? (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly this. Plus, for example suicide (which has gone up when there have been lockdowns) and car accidents (which have gone down) are separated out in most cases so you can be pretty sure that lockdown causes a temporary reduction in the death rate other than COVID-19. This means that the actual COVID-19 deaths are even worse than normally quoted. Of course it's possible that the delayed effects of lockdown are worse (for example, people that die of undiagnosed cancer) but we do know that it isn't happening yet.
I find it funny that almost all of the initial responses here are well known lies and misrepresentation
and on and on and on. I'm not sure who cares so much about lying about this, but they clearly and that makes pushing the truth wortwhile.
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There is absolutely no difference in Swedens economy versus their neighbours.
And regarding Corona: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
Click on Sweden. You have no clue, moron.
Misleading submission (Score:4, Interesting)
Who the hell wrote voted parent troll? There are so many obviously false statements in the submission.
Sweden didn't change it's strategy because it failed and herd immunity was never the goal. The strategy was to flatten the curve and it worked. The infection was stopped/reduced just like in most other countries. Check out the excess mortality rate for Sweden here:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs... [euromomo.eu]
This statement from the summary is just utter bullshit:
In early June, Sweden switched from its failed "herd immunity" strategy to a contact-tracing strategy and has since seen a strong fall in new infections, though with a recent slight increase.
The excess mortality peaked by mid April (week 16) which means the infection peak was a few weeks earlier. By June, Sweden was way past the peak and the infection rate was clearly on the way down. There is no "strong fall in infections" after a strategy change in June (week 23-28). The original strategy to flatten the curve worked. From what I can tell, the strategy hasn't changed much since then either. The recommendations seem to be pretty much the same [folkhalsomyndigheten.se] since last I looked with still no lockdown but a strong recommendation to stay at home even with the slightest symptoms (and generous rules for sick pay). In July there was perhaps [reuters.com] a recommendation of do-it-yourself contact tracing but I can't find an official source or official recommendation.
In euromomo, you can see a slight increase in excess death rate in the last few weeks but it is very hard to distinguish it from the random noise of previous years (yet). It is nothing like the US rebound https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
Also, in 1869, Sweden had a population of 4M, now it has a population of 10M. Comparing the *absolute* number of deaths per year between then and now is pretty stupid.
It seems like this has become a very politicized issue with people being totally unable to actually check the facts.
Re: Actual data? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Swedish GDP dropped by 8.6% in Q2. Compare that to 8.5 in Denmark (5 times fewer deaths from the coronavirus) and 4.9% in Finland (9.5 times fewer deaths).
When people are dying, so does the economy, you see. Unless they have been brainwashed to believe that the epidemic is a hoax, that is, but this is only a temporary solution.
Re: Actual data? (Score:2)
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Nope, it isn't. When a deadly virus isn't under control, people are afraid to participate in the economy.
But sure, give me another explanation.
Re: Actual data? (Score:2)
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US daily deaths have been essentially flat for a week and a half, and are following the curve of the new daily cases as they have all along, about two weeks behind.
And new daily cases, at the moment, aren't falling so much as plummeting.
Re:Actual data? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Trump's administration took direct control of the data, I have very little trust in US reporting. It's easy to lie about the number of cases (allegedly declining), and exactly what I'd expect from them. Lying about the number of deaths (increasing) might be a little more difficult. It's true that a certain lag can be expected, so this isn't proof things are getting worse in the USA. I'll be interested to see, though, if the deaths due to COVID-19 start decreasing in three or four weeks, while deaths due to other causes mysteriously start to increase.
Meanwhile, Canada has the right idea: keep that border closed! Rats carrying the plague could be controlled by keeping a cat or two about the house. Controlling disease-infested Americans would require something larger, and I don't know if I could afford the food bill for a tiger when tourist season ended.
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I like excess deaths as a metric. There's really good year-by-year numbers on record, and they're collected basically the same way in a lot of countries.
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Cases should be good leading measure for predicting deaths (lagging measure). July's rise in daily deaths is what we would expect to see after June's rise in daily cases. If the daily death rate curve does not trend down soon then there is something is seriously wrong or has changed.
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This is the chart of daily US deaths from NBC News [nbcnews.com]. Regardless of their biases, daily deaths should be straightforward - sum the deaths from all 50 states (and US territories?) and boom, chart the number.
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This is the chart of daily US deaths from NBC News [nbcnews.com]. Regardless of their biases, daily deaths should be straightforward - sum the deaths from all 50 states (and US territories?) and boom, chart the number.
That's not a chart of daily US deaths, it's a chart of deaths attributed to COVID-19.
When 2021 starts, I want to see the totals deaths (regardless of reason) between 2020 and 2019. That's really the number that matters.
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I really like this chart on the French wikipedia page
Décès181920.png [wikipedia.org] (From the parent story Pandémie de Covid-19 en France [wikipedia.org])
It really shows quite well the magnitude of the increase in deaths compared to 2018 and 2019 (one sees the death rate close to double normal during the peak and currently it is slightly below normal). It would be nice to see this for other countries.
It is a good graph. Here's another try at linking to it, as the accented characters got lost in the parent post: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Maybe it's because you're provided nothing that could, even with the most generous of definitions, be called "data".
Only malarkey.
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Sweden has no new cases or deaths.
What? [worldometers.info]
Re: Sweden is a success story (Score:2)
I'd recommend looking up the idea behind counting excess deaths.
The 50,000 figure is the true indicator of what has happened, you then don't need to worry about how the deaths were labelled Covid or not covid.
Sweden has not done well in this whole situation compared to the other Scandi countries.
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Absolute numbers are meaningless here unless you want to tell me the population of Sweden has been flat for 160 years
It's been essentially flat from before 1960 until 2014 - under 1% annual growth - put "sweden population growth rate" into Google and it pops up as an interactive chart. That does mean that the earlier years are less included, but then they had much more death from other causes so the 150yrs is still astounding.
Re: Sweden is a success story (Score:2)
The population of Sweden is about 2.8 times greater than it was in 1850. Was that so hard? Whining about growth rate is utterly irrelevant. As for the efficacy of their tactics, New Jersey's and New Yorks were worse.
Re:Sweden is a success story (Score:4, Insightful)
Covid-related deaths refers to those who tested positive for COVID before or after they died. This is the correct term to use because covid may not have been the primary cause of death. Some people who are suffering from serious illnesses such as advanced heart related deceases or cancer are basically hanging by a thread, and can easily die from say flu or common cold. Would it be honest to claim that covid killed them without mentioning the long and complex heath history of the patient. So COVID-related is a better term IMHO.
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So why were there thousands of excess deaths [euromomo.eu] right when COVID hit? In fact the number of excess deaths is higher than the number of deaths attributed to COVID. And it's not that those people were going to die soon anyway - death rates are the same as normal right now, not lower.
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Agreed.
They have to limit their statement to "Scandinavian countries" because comparing Sweden to the rest of the EU or the US makes Sweden look too good. They didn't kill their economy, nor did they mass lock-up their people, and overall their numbers aren't bad. Therefore the media HAS to put a bunch of qualifiers and only look at the data in certain twisted ways to make it look worse. Because they can't have the people knowing the truth this close to the election. The media needs the masses to be afraid.
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I also noted that 50K some number of deaths was ALL PEOPLE WHO DIED FOR ANY REASON in Sweden in the first half of this year.
The summary noted that too. What's your point? I mean if your point is that Sweden has had the most number of deaths even worse then when they got hit by the Spanish flu, then welcome to the conversation.
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My apologies, that first number is confirmed cases,not deaths.
Open mouth, insert foot. Disregard that... anyone else want to redo the math? Only 5802 [worldometers.info] were deaths.
I r dumass, derp derp.
Re: (Score:2)
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What's also not considered with those deaths is how many are "caused by covid" vs "the patient had covid but died from something else".
A lot of the death cases have been people who were elderly or already seriously ill with life threatening conditions. It's extremely likely that a significant number of these people died of old age or their existing serious conditions, and having covid was simply a coincidence.
There will be others who were simply tipped over the edge by the additional virus, but could just a
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Sweden's covid-related death rate per million of population is very much in the same ballpark with other big European countries and the US. However, look at the benefits of Sweden's strategy. Schools did not close, so children completed the school year as planned, they did not waste their or parents time by spending all time at home. No mandatory curfews or quarantines. Businesses stay open, which should have a softer negative impact on the economy, people's incomes, and unemployment.
So basically a slightly more economically friendly version of failure.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Re:Death rate should not be the only goal (Score:5, Informative)
And by "in the ballpark" you mean "five to ten times higher"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Sweden: 56.86 per 100K
Norway: 4.93 per 100K
Finland: 6.05 per 100K
Denmark: 10.71 per 100K
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See "big European countries and the US": UK, Italy, France, Spain.
Re:Death rate should not be the only goal (Score:4, Insightful)
So we're limiting this to countries widely viewed as having a failed COVID-19 response, eh?
Here's a big European country you conspicuously ignored:
Germany: 11.14
Sweden's population is around 10 million people. Norway's is 5.4 million. Denmark is 5.7 million. Finland is 5.5 million.
Meanwhile, the US is 300+ million. France is 65 million. England is 68 million. Spain is 46.7 million. Italy is 60.5 million.
So why would you compare small Sweden to these vastly larger countries rather than to those which are far more representative in both population and in proximity?
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France has an almost 20% lower death rate.
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You mean 3 countries which got hit early before any talk of policy of social distancing, combined with a company as brain dead as the US with how they responded to the virus?
I agree with you. Sweden is demonstrating they are on par with countries which didn't take measures early, only they did it because of abject stupidity not because the virus hit them early.
I take it you're from the USA so let me put it in terms more familiar to you:
When someone goes into a school and starts shooting you don't criticise
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I think that's what he meant.
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Sweden's covid-related death rate per million of population is very much in the same ballpark with other big European countries and the US.
No, it is not.
With the US perhaps. Sweden is at rank 5 or 6 with the worst death rate on the planet.
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"We, the Authorities, who are paid with your money, because we are lazy, don't want to spend money into the Health System, not contract any more people out of a jobless live, HEREBY DECLARE that you can pay the phone calls to tell people you got in touch that they might be infected and can die therefore from COVID-19"
Who pays per phone call? Outside of maybe prisoners or people with tracphones?
No it's not (Score:3)
Flattening the curve was to keep our hospitals from being overrun. COVID has a high rate of hospitalization and you're there for a long time (days, weeks, sometimes months) and you die without it. So if the hospitals get overrun we'd be seeing mass deaths.
Adding to that we've done a shitty job on the curve because we squandered all the hard work people did so a handful of
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A managed path to herd immunity was the plan for every country.
No, it was not. Only Sweden tried that - which is idiotic as herd immunity will take 10 years or more.
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Nope, that was just a short term plan to get the epidemic under control. The long term plan was to keep as many people from dying as possible until the vaccine is ready.