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Sweden and coronavirus

yield said:
Thanks, just read that now.

(Not paywalled) Anders Tegnell and the Swedish Covid experiment | Free to read
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A few things come out from that. It's not that Sweden did nothing. Nor that they took the virus lightly. Far from it, the number of people commuting plummetted and they imposed new rules on restaurants, etc. But they took a rather pessimistic view right at the start that the virus was going to be with us for years and that what was needed was a new way of doing things that would last the duration of that time. That's what they've done and have been able to stick to so far. (Compare and contrast with the lockdown countries - hard to believe it really looking back but the UK lockdown was initially for just three weeks, with a hope to be able to start lifting it after that! You could argue that that attitude took the virus rather too lightly.)

One thing that seems to be common to all the Nordic countries is their view of education as something that is an absolute right to children. While Sweden never closed schools for the under-16s, Finland and Denmark were among the first countries to send schools back after lockdown. In Finland, they were very clear that they were doing this because not to do so would be to betray their children.

Ironic, as Tegnell points out in his gentle way, that someone who's spent much his working life dedicated to improving health in poor parts of the world should have his ideas leapt on by the far right. But his message isn't quite what some people think it is.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
hard to believe it really looking back but the UK lockdown was initially for just three weeks
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No it wasnt for just three weeks.

Johnson promised to review it every 3 weeks but none of the government scientific advisors etc stuff suggested that the lockdown would only last 3 weeks. They just wanted to give people regular review dates to pin their hopes on and to avoid accusations that they were just going to leave us in lockdown for months regardless of the emerging data.

And they didnt say much that could possibly have lead to many people thinking it would only last 3 weeks. Their initial attempts to lay out a timetable of the pandemic were deeply flawed as they misjudged how quickly the first wave would really get going, but it still included plenty of clues about things that would need to last more like 12 weeks than 3.

They also tried to use the concept of lockdown fatigue as an excuse for not shutting things down more quickly, so the press conferences in the few weeks buildup to lockdown were not short of talk about how once you impose measures they will need to be in place for quite some time, ie not 3 weeks, even before they realised quite what sort of lockdown was going to be necessary.
 
elbows said:
No it wasnt for just three weeks.

Johnson promised to review it every 3 weeks but none of the government scientific advisors etc stuff suggested that the lockdown would only last 3 weeks. They just wanted to give people regular review dates to pin their hopes on and to avoid accusations that they were just going to leave us in lockdown for months regardless of the emerging data.

And they didnt say much that could possibly have lead to many people thinking it would only last 3 weeks. Their initial attempts to lay out a timetable of the pandemic were deeply flawed as they misjudged how quickly the first wave would really get going, but it still included plenty of clues about things that would need to last more like 12 weeks than 3.

They also tried to use the concept of lockdown fatigue as an excuse for not shutting things down more quickly, so the press conferences in the few weeks buildup to lockdown were not short of talk about how once you impose measures they will need to be in place for quite some time, ie not 3 weeks, even before they realised quite what sort of lockdown was going to be necessary.
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I think you're rather misremembering here. Of course it became clear very quickly that it was going to last for a lot longer than three weeks, but there were still noises about things like finishing the football season, etc, for quite a while after lockdown started.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I think you're rather misremembering here. Of course it became clear very quickly that it was going to last for a lot longer than three weeks, but there were still noises about things like finishing the football season, etc, for quite a while after lockdown started.
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There have been lots of silly noises during this pandemic, it doesnt mean those were the messages that actually resonated. I will demonstrate my point when I have a chance to locate suitable evidence beyond what I'm going to mention now.

The only plans that involve timescales more like 3 or 4 weeks are ones that they favoured when they hoped to follow a different path. For example I think they hoped to combine some school closures with school holidays, by extending the existing holiday at one or both ends. But there were only mild glimpses of this approach seen in public because by the time they were preparing for that approach with more regular press conferences etc their original plan soon had to be thrown in the bin.

And when they were forced to throw plan A in the bin after their original plan was destroyed by press & public opinion, what most other countries were doing, and incoming data and modelling and the realisation that they got the wave timing assumptions all wrong, one of the most visible pieces of supporting evidence available to the public was the Imperial College report. And without quoting everything in it that demonstrates my point, it says stuff like:


When examining mitigation strategies, we assume policies are in force for 3 months, other than social distancing of those over the age of 70 which is assumed to remain in place for one month longer. Suppression strategies are assumed to be in place for 5 months or longer.
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They chose those parameters for good reason. Because 3 months is a sensible starting point that you can then adapt a little, and 3 weeks isnt. They knew it, SAGE knew it, the government knew it, especially by that stage (March 16th ish)
 
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It probably wouldnt be a good idea for me to go back and watch March 9th and 12th press conferences yet again, since I've already done that several times long after the moment.

But I do have some note about a few things Vallance said in a March 12th press conference:

On closing schools, he says for this to be effective, closures would have to last from 13 to 16 weeks.

Then a separate point:

And you don’t want to introduce measures that only apply for a week or two, he says. To be effective, these measure will have to last longer.

With the caveat that when he was saying those things, they were still on plan A where they wanted to avoid a lot of these things happening at all for as long as possible.

And I may watch the press conferences from the subsequent week again soon, as there are a few things I want to check and I dont have notes.
 
Plus the public health messages on shielding, which was part of their original attempt to avoid something resembling a full lockdown, came with a 'you will need to shield for 12 weeks' bit of detail.
 
SAGE consensus regarding interventions, on March 16th included the following:

It was agreed that the addition of both general social distancing and school closures to case isolation, household isolation and social distancing of vulnerable groups would be likely to control the epidemic when kept in place for a long period. SPI-M-O agreed that this strategy should be followed as soon as practical, at least in the first instance.
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It was agreed that a policy of alternating between periods of more and less strict social distancing measures could plausibly be effective at keeping the number of critical care cases within capacity. These would need to be in place for at least most of a year. Under such as policy, at least half of the year would be spent under the stricter social distancing measures.
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Also contains a reason why 3 week reviews were seized upon and why some people might remember that sort of timescale being part of the discussion. Its the amount of lag to expect when looking at data to see if measures are working. So you'd have to wait that sort of time to see the first hints of the policy working, and you would not then stop the measures as soon as the first hints of them working become apparent.

The triggers for measures to be enacted and lifted could be set at a level of UK nations and regions. The duration of control periods would be less important than the extent to which contacts are reduced. There would be a 2-3 week delay between measures being put into place and their impact being felt in ICU.
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Secondary schools and universities did go online only in Sweden, at least initially. I think fash thinking that Sweden and Tegnell being some sort of herd immunity bastions would get a rude awakening tbh. Still not a good example of how to manage a pandemic tho imo
 
This is the three week thing that Johnson said on March 23rd. It is not an indication that the government thought they would only need to lockdown for 3 weeks, its just one of those thing that are said in such circumstances and its purpose should be bloody obvious, especially when combined with what others were saying at the time.

www.gov.uk

Prime Minister's statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 23 March 2020

Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the nation on coronavirus.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk

And I can assure you that we will keep these restrictions under constant review. We will look again in three weeks, and relax them if the evidence shows we are able to.
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Part of the reason he felt the need to say that was probably because the more honest answer came out of his mouth on March 19th, and they subsequently felt the need to sugar coat it and break the populations sense of being trapped in lockdown into smaller chunks:

www.gov.uk

Prime Minister's statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 19 March 2020

PM Boris Johnson’s opening statement from the press conference on coronavirus.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk

And I am conscious as the days have gone by that people will want to know how long we are expecting them to keep it up

And I wanted to try to say something today about how I see the timescale of this campaign and where we’re going and what we need to do

I do think, looking at it all, that we can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks
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2-3 weeks was indeed about right for seeing first positive signs in the data by the way. Massive changes in behaviour kicked in from 17th-23rd March and hospital & death data changed trajectory in early April. Most of the hospital data I only got to see later on, so I dont know quite how well it showed the first signs of change at the time, and there are certainly signs in the data of how it was limited by various parts of the system being under strain including testing and admissions criteria. But from what I can see hospital data managed to show positive signs a few days earlier than the number of hospital deaths indicators showed that something was changing (ie lockdown was having an impact, and not a subtle one either).

I'm done with this demonstration now.
 
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Well anyway, the Swedes have rushed out a non-scheduled update, saying the advice against non-essential travel to the UK is now lifted. The next travel advisory update was to have been 23rd Sept as they are normally done every two weeks.

The timing, just a few days after the UK listed Sweden as a safe travel corridor country, makes it obvious that it‘s reciprocality, rather than public health concern which drives these decisions. Should this really be how things are done in during a pandemic? Should decisions be political rather than based on the data? I’m not sure that’s the best way personally.
 
www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se

Bekräftade fall av covid-19 i Sverige

Senaste uppdateringarna om utbrottet av coronavirussjukdom (covid-19). Sidan uppdateras dagligen med antal fall kl. 14:00 eller när statistiken är sammanställd.
www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se

Usual caveats but the Swedish government has some fairly detailed looking coronavirus statistics on this page, I haven't really looked through them and wouldn't really know how to interpret them if I did. elbows
 

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Thanks for keeping track of this frogwoman, I'm all out of energy to wade into this now but will keep watching and I'm sure a time will come where I have too much to say about it.
 
Sweden only release data on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and the data is usually incomplete until the middle of the week. They recorded over 1200 cases over the weekend which is the highest number since June.

I hope we don't have too much to say about it tbh. Not because I don't think it is interesting but because the whole pandemic is a fucking tragedy tbh and I really hope they are able to get it under control. I really liked Sweden too when I went there and was hoping to visit again next year.
 
www.svt.se

Sjukvårdsdirektören om coronaläget: ”Vi ser oroande tecken på ökande smitta”

Den nedåtgående trenden att allt färre stockholmare smittas av covid-19 är bruten. Om kurvan fortsätter uppåt riskerar vi att få en allvarlig situation i Stockholm menar Björn Eriksson, sjukvårdsdirektör. – Det vi kan se är oroande tecken på att smittspridningen ökar. Det är låga nivåer men det...
www.svt.se www.svt.se

The Google translation of this article is interesting, Stockholm director of health saying that the number of people thinking it is over makes him despair.
 
Either way there will be lots to say about it because Swedens alternative approach means so many have pinned their own personal strange pandemic response flags to Swedens mast.

I wont re-judge Sweden and start going on about it too much again until they either get through a whole pandemic winter without doing more things that other countries had to do, or until they are forced to do some of those things, whichever comes sooner.
 
www.spectator.co.uk

The truth about Sweden's voluntary lockdown

Sweden didn’t ‘refuse’ to lockdown. Nor does it have a herd immunity strategy, although it was recognised that some level of immunity in the population could be a side effect of its approach. The false premise of that rumour is that Sweden stayed open in order to allow the virus to spread, thus...
www.spectator.co.uk www.spectator.co.uk

Good article here, I know it's the spectator but it's worth a read.
 
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