Sweden and coronavirus

[Aladdin]

Right. And as the point was made yesterday, banning driving would eliminate road deaths; banning cigarettes will cane lung cancer etc, etc ...

At some point the 'cure' becomes less justifiable/more problematic than the problem.

Tell that to people who are vulnerable. And are not prepared to be put at risk of dying

 

[editor]

Damning piece here:

Sweden's testing rate is at 17.6 per 1,000 people, according to tracking by the website Statista. Norway, its close neighbor, has a rate of 37.9.

Sweden says its plan is meant to protect the most vulnerable: People over 70 are urged to stay at home, and visitors have been barred from nursing homes.

But about half of Sweden' deaths have taken place in nursing homes, and about 88% of its deaths are people over 70, a figure similar to some of Europe's hardest-hit countries like the UK and France.

Nursing-home workers have reported having to work without access to personal protective equipment.

But Sweden's death toll — at 3,698 on Tuesday — has soared above its Nordic neighbors that locked down early.

Per capita, its deaths are about four times those in Denmark and eight times those in Norway — countries with similar healthcare systems, political systems, and population densities.

Skeptical experts in Sweden say its decision to have no lockdown is a terrible mistake that no other nation should copy

Many Swedish people are happy with their country's unconventional strategy — but the nation has a vocal community of dissenters.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[cupid_stunt]

I could have sworn this was a thread about Sweden, and there's another one covering UK matters.

 

[Spymaster]

You've not read the links I gave earlier. Maybe you should?

Coronavirus live updates: News & Advice

The latest news and updates on the coronavirus outbreak from China and across the globe. Coronavirus tracker, spread of Wuhan Coronavirus in real time.

www.appurse.com

That doesn’t refute his point. Unless you test the entire population there’s now way to know how many people have been infected.

 

[Aladdin]

Not just the next months, potentially the next years. Or permanently until some kind of immunity is developed, in which case, wouldn't the Swedish approach seem prescient?

How so? It would just bump off the old and vulnerable . That's not prescient. That's a form of cleansing. Eliminating those who cannot fight the virus or those whose immune systems put up such a fight that their own immune systems kill them.

Sorry Spymaster...but as long as you keep looking at this from the viewpoint of economics you will fail to see the absolute humanitarian crisis that this type of thinking will lead to.

 

[8ball]

I could have sworn this was a thread about Sweden, and there's another one covering UK matters.

That's a fair point. Scattiness on my part.

 

[Aladdin]

That doesn’t refute his point. Unless you test the entire population there’s now way to know how many people have been infected.

It is pretty clear that Sweden has registered over 30000 cases and 3000 deaths. For a population of 10million thats not indicative of a successful management of covid19 in the community.

 

[Spymaster]

Tell that to people who are vulnerable. And are not prepared to be put at risk of dying

Well yes but the counterpoint is, are their hardships more important than those of the (potentially millions more) whose lives will be destroyed by the consequences of an indefinite, or maybe multiple, lockdowns? I’m not saying they’re not, just that it has to be considered.

 

[8ball]

Its always open to interpretation. For example people will argue about the amount of time it takes from infection to hospitalisation, since that makes quite the difference as to whether changing trends in various graphs can be attributed to lockdown and other forms of social distancing. The timing stuff is further complicated by the fact that according to various mobility data the government sometimes show at the press conferences, lots of people did not wait for the government to announce a lockdown before they started changing their behaviour in dramatic ways. The lockdown started on the 24th of March but behaviour stated changing massively a week earlier than that, on the 17th, the day after Johnson advised people to avoid pubs etc (but still some days before he ordered them to shut).

Here are some hospital admission numbers for England:

View attachment 213957
Of course it is not possible for me to absolutely prove that these number peaked on the 2nd April and then declined only because of lockdown & social distancing. But it happened within the timescales I would have expected, I am not likely to write this stuff off as a coincidence myself.

There were also signs that the authorities were deliberately increasing the bar for hospital admissions during the period of rapid increase in cases. There was a story, which I cannot find right now, about how in London they increased the score a patient needed to go into hospital, from 5 to 7, for the crucial period and then downgraded it back to 5 once the moment of maximum pressure had passed. Other aspects of the governments 'stay at home' communications also seem to have made a big difference to how many people sought treatment, so quite a lot of people ended up dying at home rather than going to hospital like they should have. And of course policy on admitting care home residents can also make a large difference to the numbers.

I'm reasonably sure that various establishment scientific and medical figures were shitting it big time between mid March and early April. They realised that their timing was a bit wrong (maybe a model got the explosive growth phase details wrong) and then had to wait several weeks to see whether things would hit the 'lockdown induced peak' before the system was overwhelmed. They just about got away with it, but thats no consolation to all those who died who would not have died if we had been 1 or 2 weeks earlier with the social distancing & lockdown measures.

Mind you, if lockdown had been done with better timing then we would have avoided the staggering number of deaths seen, and that would have given even more people reason to claim that 'see, it wasnt that bad, lockdown was an overreaction'.

Yeah, I meant the lockdown specifically as opposed to other measures coming in about the same time, which makes it really hard to tease apart. And it's not a simple distinction between what counts as "lockdown" and what counts as "social distancing", really. You also have the hygiene measures...

 

[Spymaster]

It is pretty clear that Sweden has registered over 30000 cases and 3000 deaths. For a population of 10million thats not indicative of a successful management of covid19 in the community.

Yes, but if the entire population has been infected the death rate is very low.

 

[elbows]

Yeah, I meant the lockdown specifically as opposed to other measures coming in about the same time, which makes it really hard to tease apart. And it's not a simple distinction between what counts as "lockdown" and what counts as "social distancing", really. You also have the hygiene measures...

Well I can see why Sweden is of interest when considering that stuff.

I think we will get more clues in these next phases, as some things are relaxed we will get more of an impression of quite how far measures need to go to keep R below 1.

 

[Spymaster]

How so? It would just bump off the old and vulnerable . That's not prescient. That's a form of cleansing. Eliminating those who cannot fight the virus or those whose immune systems put up such a fight that their own immune systems kill them.

Sorry Spymaster...but as long as you keep looking at this from the viewpoint of economics you will fail to see the absolute humanitarian crisis that this type of thinking will lead to.

But what you’re not considering is that, as tough as it may be at the moment, the economic aspect is a “humanitarian” crisis of the future.

 

[8ball]

Well I can see why Sweden is of interest when considering that stuff.

I think we will get more clues in these next phases, as some things are relaxed we will get more of an impression of quite how far measures need to go to keep R below 1.

Yeah. I'm not personally expecting a harsh uptick just from relaxing of lockdown (assuming that the relaxation doesn't cause too much "leakage" in terms of people becoming lax about hygiene, distancing etc.).

 

[frogwoman]

Yes, but if the entire population has been infected the death rate is very low.

There is absolutely no evidence this has happened.

 

[Spymaster]

There is absolutely no evidence this has happened.

Or that it hasn’t. Globally there are quite possibly tens of millions of people who have had the virus and recovered without it ever having been recorded. We can be certain that the number of infections is not “those recorded as dead plus those recorded as recovered”. Without knowing the number of infections it’s possible to state the accurate death rate.

 

[frogwoman]

Or that it hasn’t. Globally there are quite possibly tens of millions of people who have had the virus and recovered without it ever having been recorded. We can be certain that the number of infections is not “those recorded as dead plus those recorded as recovered”. Without knowing the number of infections it’s possible to state the accurate death rate.

What the hell are you on about. Sweden's health ministry itself has announced that 7% of people have had the virus overall with the number higher in cities, as expected.

 

[8ball]

What the hell are you on about. Sweden's health ministry itself has announced that 7% of people have had the virus overall with the number higher in cities, as expected.

Is this from extensive antibody testing?

 

[co-op]

You've not read the links I gave earlier. Maybe you should?

Coronavirus live updates: News & Advice

The latest news and updates on the coronavirus outbreak from China and across the globe. Coronavirus tracker, spread of Wuhan Coronavirus in real time.

www.appurse.com

That has deaths and cases but it doesn’t have overall death rates (ie the number of people infected/exposed asymptomatically) - it can’t because that data basically doesn’t exist although there are several large studies trying to get it going on right now. This is partly why I am puzzled by the damning of Sweden going on; we literally don’t have the information to do that - although I’m getting to be pretty sure that won’t stop anyone whose gone for a football fan style allegiance to the thesis that they’re wrong from doing victory dances if it’s shown that Sweden’s wrong.

 

[cupid_stunt]

This is all a bit pointless, no one has a crystal ball, no one knows if Sweden may well come out of this better, but there's no scientific evidence to suggest immunity will last more than a few months, or a year or so. Other, less harmful, human coronaviruses do not tend to provide long term immunity, and people can get infected time and time again, there's no reason to believe SARS-Cov-2 will be any different.

Sweden is just taking a massive gamble, with the odds on success being fairly low, based on the limited knowledge too date.

 

[frogwoman]

Just 7.3% of Stockholm had Covid-19 antibodies by end of April, study shows

Official findings add to concerns about Sweden’s laissez-faire strategy towards the pandemic

www.theguardian.com

 

[8ball]

Just 7.3% of Stockholm had Covid-19 antibodies by end of April, study shows

Official findings add to concerns about Sweden’s laissez-faire strategy towards the pandemic

www.theguardian.com

Ok, so not "overall" in Sweden, but specifically Stockholm, with an assortment of caveats about the test results and what they mean.
But likely pretty low.

 

[frogwoman]

Bloody hell nobody is 'damning' Sweden tho? We all want this to end asap.

 

[planetgeli]

I think the inference is that if the rate in Stockholm may be as low as 7%, and Stockholm is the busiest most densely populated part of the country, then the overall rate of infection in Sweden is going to be much lower than that. And just a tad off the 33% that was being mooted 'by early May' at the beginning. And therefore bloody miles away from any herd immunity.

 

[Aladdin]

The question of international cross-contamination is a really live part of this debate - countries that have snuffed covid out now have to in effect maintain a full quarantine border with countries that haven’t. It isn’t just Sweden that is going to have ongoing covid rates but loads of countries that already are in lockdown and many other countries that simply don’t have the resources to do anything like a meaningful lockdown. Or the US where absence of healthcare and a huge reserve of homeless, undocumented, etc etc will be a chronic source or reinfection. How do the ‘clean’ countries stay clean?

You know the way you protect your computer and devices?
I'd say you probably invest time effort and possibly even money in making sure they stay virus free.
What makes you think that certain people dont deserve the same care? It's not an elderly persons fault that they are vulnedable. It's not a cystic fybrosis patients fault they are vulnerable.

Well yes but the counterpoint is, are their hardships more important than those of the (potentially millions more) whose lives will be destroyed by the consequences of an indefinite, or maybe multiple, lockdowns? I’m not saying they’re not, just that it has to be considered.

Yes, but if the entire population has been infected the death rate is very low.

Their "hardships:"? Death is a pretty final hardship. I'd go without money rather than die. I'd say a lot of people would opt for staying alive over money if push came to shove. It's not as if people in Sweden will starve to death if lockdowns happen. They may have to stay indoors and work from home. Or go on benefits or their government might have to borrow to keep the economy afloat but I think most ordinary people would choose life over money.

But what you’re not considering is that, as tough as it may be at the moment, the economic aspect is a “humanitarian” crisis of the future.

So we let people die now to avoid something that's not actually a certainty?
No. You do not let vulnerable people die for the sake of coin.

 

[Aladdin]

I think the inference is that if the rate in Stockholm may be as low as 7%, and Stockholm is the busiest most densely populated part of the country, then the overall rate of infection in Sweden is going to be much lower than that. And just a tad off the 33% that was being mooted 'by early May' at the beginning. And therefore bloody miles away from any herd immunity.

Exactly. And if at 7% immunity rates they still have had 30000 cases and 3000 deaths then the herd immunity "project" is a failure and the idiots in government who stuck with it will face criticism and possibly litigation in the future.

 

[8ball]

I think the inference is that if the rate in Stockholm may be as low as 7%, and Stockholm is the busiest most densely populated part of the country, then the overall rate of infection in Sweden is going to be much lower than that. And just a tad off the 33% that was being mooted 'by early May' at the beginning. And therefore bloody miles away from any herd immunity.

No one knows whether that "herd immunity" guff is even a possibility. Even with a vaccine you need to do pretty well to keep some viruses at bay.

 

[co-op]

Bloody hell nobody is 'damning' Sweden tho? We all want this to end asap.

I've been told on this thread that it's 'dangerous and absurd' to trawl over the evidence on Sweden. Sweden bad.

 

[frogwoman]

Not really sure that's what was said but anyway.

 

[co-op]

I think the inference is that if the rate in Stockholm may be as low as 7%, and Stockholm is the busiest most densely populated part of the country, then the overall rate of infection in Sweden is going to be much lower than that. And just a tad off the 33% that was being mooted 'by early May' at the beginning. And therefore bloody miles away from any herd immunity.

Yes - although that 7% figure is for the end of April and the Swedish guys are saying they think it's more like 20% as of the date of the article. Although they were wrong before. But it also points out that it is possible that this means that you can have the disease and not show antibodies.

But it's also the fact that if the infection rate is really this low (ie well below what was predicted) then maybe a far more limited form of social distancing - ie what the Swedes have been doing - is more what is needed than the extreme forms followed elsewhere.

 

[Supine]

Btw - UK announced yesterday our latest serological testing indicates 17% of London and 5% if UK in general has been past infected. These numbers are very much subject to change as more comprehensive studies are done. Higher the better obviously.