Did Sweden end up taking the best approach?

304,559 Views | 1675 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by Enzomatic
corndog04
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GAC06 said:

Can anyone explain why Sweden's cases continue a steady climb, but their deaths peaked two weeks ago and have dropped sharply?


It's based on how they do their reporting apparently.
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-sweden-death-reporting
GAC06
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Makes sense, thanks
PJYoung
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GAC06 said:

Can anyone explain why Sweden's cases continue a steady climb, but their deaths peaked two weeks ago and have dropped sharply?

Increased testing?

EDIT: oh
Gordo14
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Sandman98 said:

In consecutive posts you said the winter is responsible for both increased cases and decreased cases. Fascinating.


I know you're incapable of critical thought, but it's really simple. Cold enough to drive people indoors = cases go up. Cold enough to keep people at home alone = cases go down. Good point though. I bet two weeks from now cases will go down everywhere that got hit by this blizzard. Let's see how many times Texags can be wrong about herd immunity. Honestly, the track record on here has been abysmal.
Keegan99
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Glad to see you admitting that policies which confine people to homes are harmful.

By the way, where is the spike in the US from Thanksgiving that all of the experts predicted?
Gordo14
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ORAggieFan said:

How's that government intervention in FL vs CA working?



Population density and climate are easy explinations for why this is happening. Again, if you want to prove your point you have to normalize for that or you have to model California without the government mandates. Until you do either, you're literally arguing that somehow less human interaction = more transmission.

Florida may very well look bad in January or February. Given where they are geographically that's about when you'd expect to see it. For the same reason that Dallas is worse than Houston right now.
PJYoung
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Keegan99 said:

By the way, where is the spike in the US from Thanksgiving that all of the experts predicted?

I am sure you are seeing the same charts that I am seeing so I'm not sure what you're referring to.








Maybe hospital bed capacity? I thought that was trending the wrong way but maybe I'm wrong?
goodAg80
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Keegan99 said:

Glad to see you admitting that policies which confine people to homes are harmful.

By the way, where is the spike in the US from Thanksgiving that all of the experts predicted?
PJ posted first. Jinx.

Not sure what you are looking at but cases are at an all time high. That doesn't mean it correlates to a Thanksgiving surge, but there is no contradictory evidence.

ORAggieFan
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Gordo14 said:

ORAggieFan said:

How's that government intervention in FL vs CA working?



Population density and climate are easy explinations for why this is happening. Again, if you want to prove your point you have to normalize for that or you have to model California without the government mandates. Until you do either, you're literally arguing that somehow less human interaction = more transmission.

Florida may very well look bad in January or February. Given where they are geographically that's about when you'd expect to see it. For the same reason that Dallas is worse than Houston right now.
Sorry, I didn't hear Fauci mention any of that when he talked about the irresponsibility of FL.

All I'm saying and have been saying is government mandates to very little to control the virus and do far more harm than good when looking at long term implications. Luckily, here in CA, the courts are beginning to control our tyrannical governor. Just yesterday I was able to drink beers inside a bar and it was glorious.
Gordo14
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Keegan99 said:

Glad to see you admitting that policies which confine people to homes are harmful.

By the way, where is the spike in the US from Thanksgiving that all of the experts predicted?


I don't blame what happened in March because we needed a reset button while we built out supply chains, understood the threat, Etc. I have never wanted a "lockdown" since then. However, arguing government restrictions can't change the trajectory of cases is asinine. Can government action decrease human interaction. Absolutely. I would like, however, for people to take common sense action to limit the virus. Order food to go, curbside pickup from HEB, etc. Thoughtful things like that would make a huge difference.

Well we're still comfortably above 200,000 cases per day and we've been there since Thanksgiving... So no idea what you're looking for. It's not like we'll ever see 2MM cases per day or anything.
Keegan99
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If you want to see seasonality.

All of the policies from governments thinking they can control a virus? Useless.




goodAg80
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Quote:

All of the policies from governments thinking they can control a virus? Useless.

What?

Are you saying the vaccine is wasted effort? I am not following.
Keegan99
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No. All of the NPIs - masks, business closures, etc. - at best nibble at the margins at high external costs relative to their impact.
GAC06
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Gordo14 said:

Sandman98 said:

In consecutive posts you said the winter is responsible for both increased cases and decreased cases. Fascinating.


I know you're incapable of critical thought, but it's really simple. Cold enough to drive people indoors = cases go up. Cold enough to keep people at home alone = cases go down. Good point though. I bet two weeks from now cases will go down everywhere that got hit by this blizzard. Let's see how many times Texags can be wrong about herd immunity. Honestly, the track record on here has been abysmal.


Simple is definitely how I'd describe your post.

Man it's cold, I think I'll stay inside. But it's not quite cold enough to be alone so I'll have some friends over. Good Lord.
BiochemAg97
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goodAg80 said:

Quote:

All of the policies from governments thinking they can control a virus? Useless.

What?

Are you saying the vaccine is wasted effort? I am not following.


Policy =/= vaccine.
texagbeliever
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Gordo14 said:

Sandman98 said:

In consecutive posts you said the winter is responsible for both increased cases and decreased cases. Fascinating.


I know you're incapable of critical thought, but it's really simple. Cold enough to drive people indoors = cases go up. Cold enough to keep people at home alone = cases go down. Good point though. I bet two weeks from now cases will go down everywhere that got hit by this blizzard. Let's see how many times Texags can be wrong about herd immunity. Honestly, the track record on here has been abysmal.
This is a textbook example of someone having a conclusion in their mind and coming up with a story that makes that conclusion right. That story often sounds great in the person's head but sounds funny to anyone else. The added cherry of "i know you're incapable of critical thought" insult just makes the whole post rather poetic. Now that doesn't make your conclusion wrong, it just makes your argument very weak.

This is like saying really hot weather is a sign of global warming. Then really cold weather is also, you guessed it a sign of global warming. So to hurricanes. If everything is a sign then nothing is a sign. The same can be made for the counter arguments made against global warming. In the end those arguments are made by people so unfamiliar with the issue at hand they should stop wasting their time posting their thoughts on the topic. They represent the left peak on the Dunning-Kruger Chart.
Cepe
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https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/ethics/dont-be-too-quick-to-judge-swedens-covid19-policy


Quote:

But this does not prevent people from making simplistic judgments.

Sweden's response to the COVID-19 virus is a perfect example of this habit. The response has not been decided by politicians, it has not involved major adjustments, and all key decisions have been left to the state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who has relied on appealing to his compatriots to behave responsibly.



Quote:

To begin with, Sweden shut down high schools and universities, but not grade schools and kindergartens; it restricted very large gatherings, allowed restaurants, shops, and services to remain open, while leaving to the individual the responsibility of limiting smaller gatherings. The early consequence of these decisions seemed severe: Excess mortality began to rise steeply in late March, and in April it reached levels far higher than in any of the country's immediate Nordic neighbors. But by midsummer, cumulative mortalities divided by the size of the population were considerably lower in Sweden than in several populous European nations. By the middle of November, cumulative death rates were twice as high in Belgium, 45 percent higher in Spain, 25 percent higher in the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy (the country with extensive restrictive lockdowns) and 12 percent higher in France. On the other hand, the mortality rate in Finland and Norway was only about 10 percent that of Sweden, and Denmark's rate was about 80 percent lower.
Quote:

EuroMOMO, which monitors mortality, shows Swedish deaths rising substantially above normal from the 13th to the 21st week of 2020, returning within normal range by the 27th week, and steadily declining afterward to below the normally expected rate by the 40th week of 2020. By the 45th week, Swedish mortality remained well below the expected level and even below the Norwegian rate.

Meanwhile France, Italy, Spain and Belgium had, once again, high excess mortalities, and only the Finnish mortality was well below the Swedish rate. The final verdict about Sweden's relative success or indefensible failure is still many months in coming.

Obviously, you can use these comparisons to portray Sweden as either a success (vis--vis Spain, the U.K., or the United States) or a failure (vis--vis Germany or Finland). But we will have to wait until the second wave of the pandemic has fully asserted itself to see how such comparisons will fare.




DukeMu
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Keegan99 said:

If you want to see seasonality.

All of the policies from governments thinking they can control a virus? Useless.






That has to do with how the virus spread from initial loci, and lax precautionary measures some states. Many of the sparks are around gatherics. School, holidays, "inside weather."
Keegan99
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Holidays and gatherings?

Every great plains and midwest state peaked before Thanksgiving.

Also, those states are now in rapid decline. Do they no longer have "inside weather"?
PJYoung
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Keegan99 said:

Holidays and gatherings?

Every great plains and midwest state peaked before Thanksgiving.











GAC06
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You know that deaths lag, right? And that what he said is accurate?
PJYoung
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GAC06 said:

You know that deaths lag, right? And that what he said is accurate?

We're 5 weeks out from Thanksgiving now. How many weeks do deaths lag?

I think the congressman that died last night in Louisiana (without any underlying conditions) first had symptoms December 12th unless I'm mistaken.
GAC06
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Deaths lag cases both because of the time it takes to succumb and delays in reporting. You can see as clearly as anyone that cases peaked about when he said in those states and have declined.
Keegan99
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Great. Now do screenshots of detected infections (aka "cases") for those same states.

Here's a freebie. Note the peak of November 19th.



PJYoung
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Keegan99 said:

Great. Now do screenshots of detected infections (aka "cases") for those same states.

Here's a freebie. Note the peak of November 19th.





Understood.

The death peak is from the case peak prior to Thanksgiving which tracks with this hospitalization peak. I would guess the spike from Thanksgiving showed up around December 5th which was that 2nd little peak on the way down.



PJYoung
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So the peaks have almost nothing to do with weather, or social gatherings or government policy.

Does it have more to do that this is a highly infectious virus for less than 20% of the people who contract it and 80+% who catch it don't really spread it? So you end up having these hotspots that jump from population to population based on the random draw of super spreaders?
GAC06
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That also has to do with the few cases reported on Thanksgiving, so largely a false valley and peak. The same goes for Christmas
cone
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it's pretty much the weather imo

as soon as cold dry air came over the continent cases went off like a rocket

I went from surgical mask to N95 largely because of this intuition
nortex97
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Meanwhile, Sweden/Belarus;



Ireland (despite being in full lockdown essentially):



Sweden did take the best approach. In the UK, their lockdowns have claimed 560K lives.



Sweden, on 31 December 2020, has for the first time recommended wearing a mask on public transportation. Note; not a mandate. This is how our governors should have handled it too. Outlook for '21; not bad!

Quote:

Mamma mia!
Last but not least, the Melodifestivalen a national obsession since Abba won over Europe with Waterloo in 1974 will run for over a month, starting February 6th. With 28 participating artists and four separate competitions leading up to the grand finale on March 13th, Swedes should be well-equipped to handle a continued "soft lockdown" in case the Covid situation is still gloomy. We already know the late winter/early spring weather will be.

But by the end of spring, even young, healthy Swedes should have received the Covid-19 vaccine (according to the government's current, possibly too optimistic plan). This means the arrival of summer could be even more of a raucous event than it usually is. Anyone who's moved here during the dark months and then witnessed the mass release of pale, shorts-wearing, beer-swilling Swedes as soon as the first rays of sunshine peek through the clouds knows what I'm talking about. One Swedish news podcast recently predicted that the post-Covid summer of '21 will be a "human koslpp". God help us.
ORAggieFan
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cone said:

it's pretty much the weather imo


Tell that to California.
RGV AG
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I don't think the weather is a lynch pin impact. I believe, from personal experience, that airflow and sharing air or recirculated air in confined spaces is more of a factor in the spread.

nortex97
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RGV AG said:

I don't think the weather is a lynch pin impact. I believe, from personal experience, that airflow and sharing air or recirculated air in confined spaces is more of a factor in the spread.
Which is generally driven by the weather...cold weather drives folks indoors, and causes heaters to be run more (creating more shared dry air).

Interestingly though, no studies have shown that face masks protect from viral transmission/cases. It's almost like lockdowns, in the winter, with face masks...is bad for health.
ORAggieFan
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And what does CA do? Shuts down outdoor dining, driving social gatherings to homes. Genius!
cone
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California isn't on the same continent?
ORAggieFan
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cone said:

California isn't on the same continent?

Can I not compare different areas? I think most would agree CA has some great weather and it's currently by far the worst off state over the last month. I think regions and seasons contribute more than weather.
 
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