Sweden and coronavirus

[NoXion]

We are the descendants of the ones who hid in the caves while Ogg of the High Valleys was eaten by the tiger.

Not really. As shown by the discussion that took place after the post you quote, the precautionary "principle" is in fact no such damn thing. Principles are supposed to be well-defined, not super-flexible platitudes that can be twisted to fit pretty much any position.

 

[MrCurry]

I'm probably being dumb but what is the constant reference to 'hooks'? What are/is 'hooks'?

Seems like a slang term for bars

Krogar are pubs or bars, as frogwoman says.

 

[MrCurry]

New interview published today with Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist and face of the public health authority, who appears most days fronting the daily press conferences and who is seen as the architect of Sweden’s distinctive approach.

The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavirus strategy

Anders Tegnell talks to Nature about the nation’s ‘trust-based’ approach to tackling the pandemic.

www.nature.com

I’ll let you judge for yourself. I think he’s naive and dangerous. And saying it’s too late now to shut schools doesn’t say much about why it didn’t happen before it was too late!

Ps... is it just me who only sees this when looking at his photo?

 

[frogwoman]

New interview published today with Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist and face of the public health authority, who appears most days fronting the daily press conferences and who is seen as the architect of Sweden’s distinctive approach.

The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavirus strategy

Anders Tegnell talks to Nature about the nation’s ‘trust-based’ approach to tackling the pandemic.

www.nature.com

I’ll let you judge for yourself. I think he’s naive and dangerous. And saying it’s too late now to shut schools doesn’t say much about why it didn’t happen before it was too late!

Ps... is it just me who only sees this when looking at his photo?
View attachment 208053

Do you live in Sweden? What's it like there at the moment ? Saw a thing saying he estimates 33% have been infected which sounds way too high to me

 

[MrCurry]

Do you live in Sweden? What's it like there at the moment ? Saw a thing saying he estimates 33% have been infected which sounds way too high to me

Yes I do. I can’t really speak for how things are overall, just the small part of the world I see (life in a small village, outside a small town). To me it seems like the Swedes are carrying on as normal, more or less. That’s not exactly true I suppose - my wife’s mother’s apartment overlooks a convenience store and she says there are way more people shopping at unusual times, just after it opened or just before closing time, in an effort to avoid the busier times of day. I was at the doctor’s surgery today and people were clearly far more separated in the waiting room, wary of being too close to others. So at an individual level of course people are being careful, but overall as discussed in this thread, there are no noticeable restrictions on daily life.

Nothing mandated by the state apart from some fairly minimal measures like gatherings restricted to no more than 49 people, no relatives allowed to visit care homes or hospitals, etc.. But when I look out the window I see people out and about. My Swedish neighbour bounded over to chat at the border between our properties and told me he’s not worried because he’s in his 40s, and only the elderly need to be concerned, etc...

Even with this lack of concern, lack of government intervention, there are factors which work in our favour here. As editor noted earlier in the thread, the population density is so much lower here, everything when you’re out in public involves less close contact with others than in the overcrowded UK. Parking up and walking around the supermarket is a reasonably solitary experience even in normal times, more so now when people are conscious of remaining separated. Solitary is overstating it of course, but I’ve often been around our local Lidl with only two or three other people in the store at the same time. Swedes are naturally a bit shy and anti social (generalising of course), but not for nothing did the below meme do the rounds back in Feb. There’s no hugging and kissing when encountering friends as in France, Spain or Italy. I think that kind of behaviour can probably get you deported for being too un-Swedish!

Even so, I find the Swedish underestimation of the threat to be as scary as fuck and I’m basically trying to stay indoors and wait for them all to acquire their herd immunity so the virus dies down a bit. I expect we will see a massive spike in hospital admissions in a couple of weeks as the Easter surge arrives, since they all seemed to ignore the advice and go off to meet up with their extended families at Easter (my neighbours did at least).

 

[frogwoman]

Sweden Health Agency Withdraws Controversial Coronavirus Report

 

[MrCurry]

Sweden Health Agency Withdraws Controversial Coronavirus Report

Apparently they used out of date infection numbers in their modelling software and the computer spat out the result that there should be 1000 undetected cases for every confirmed case, so they went with that without thinking it through!

 

[MrCurry]

The strange tale of a town councillor (named “Urban” ) who travelled to Stockholm with the intention of catching covid19 because he was of the view that it is unstoppable and wouldn’t affect him seriously.

Urban Persson, 63 travelled to Stockholm a month ago in the company of a hospital doctor from his local town. Their aim? To catch covid19 early. Disappointed to find that they were not allowed to meet with infected people, he resorted to licking the handrails on the subway escalators.

The doctor, who on her return to the hospital she works at in central sweden continued to meet and treat patients, had wanted to catch the disease while there was still ICU capacity, as she was sure she would get it in the end. Anti-hero of the story, politician Urban Persson, said he was not concerned about catching it as he was not in a risk group and was sure it would be nothing serious. He’s 63 and has diabetes and hypertension .....!

Neither of the hapless pair were successful in their aim of becoming infected.

Have I mentioned the Swedes seem a bit crazy at times?! Source stories below, but what I’ve written is my summary and not a direct translation of the newspaper stories.

From the following stories (in Swedish, from Sweden’s biggest circulation national newspaper)

Politiker reste till Stockholm för att få corona

Lokalpolitikern Urban Persson ville smittas med corona och reste till Stockholm. – Det är en hysteri det här. Man kan inte göra något åt spridningen, säger han

www.aftonbladet.se

Läkare åkte till Stockholm för att smittas – utreds av sjukhuset

Läkaren åkte enligt uppgifter till Stockholm för att få corona. Tillsammans med en lokalpolitiker ska hon ”tagit i saker och slickat på händerna” för att smitt

www.aftonbladet.se

 

[two sheds]

From the following stories (in Swedish, from Sweden’s biggest circulation national newspaper)

Politiker reste till Stockholm för att få corona

Lokalpolitikern Urban Persson ville smittas med corona och reste till Stockholm. – Det är en hysteri det här. Man kan inte göra något åt spridningen, säger han

www.aftonbladet.se

Läkare åkte till Stockholm för att smittas – utreds av sjukhuset

Läkaren åkte enligt uppgifter till Stockholm för att få corona. Tillsammans med en lokalpolitiker ska hon ”tagit i saker och slickat på händerna” för att smitt

www.aftonbladet.se

What the holy fuck?????
















any chance of a translation?

 

[MrCurry]

any chance of a translation?

Apparently some web browsers will do that for you. Probably better than me too.

 

[elbows]

Apparently they used out of date infection numbers in their modelling software and the computer spat out the result that there should be 1000 undetected cases for every confirmed case, so they went with that without thinking it through!

I wish I could remember what rule of thumb like that was quite freely chucked around in the UK for a time. Anyone recall or can find it?

Anyway I'm going to have to give them some kind of award for that particular cockup. Not what people who are nervous about the approach Sweden took really want to hear, not exactly reassuring.

 

[frogwoman]

Spoke to a swedish mate just now who is very worried by the situation and finding it a bit hard to cope with.

 

[Supine]

I wish I could remember what rule of thumb like that was quite freely chucked around in the UK for a time. Anyone recall

1 : 1000 was chucked around in the UK. Not sure its origin but I didn't like it at the time because there seemed to be no scientific rationale for it.

 

[MrCurry]

I wish I could remember what rule of thumb like that was quite freely chucked around in the UK for a time. Anyone recall or can find it?

1 : 1000 was chucked around in the UK. Not sure its origin but I didn't like it at the time because there seemed to be no scientific rationale for it.

It was 1000 infections for every death which had occurred, and the origin was Prof Neil Ferguson speaking on R4 today programme. It was qualified as being valid only while in the exponential growth phase of the epidemic, so would no longer apply in UK (or Sweden) I think.

The rationale was that the deaths which occur result from infections which started 3 weeks ago and in that time the number of infections will have grown ten fold. So if there’s 1% mortality, there would have been 100 infections three weeks ago per death, and now ten times that, so 1000.

Sweden’s public health agency got a bit confused and came up with a similar ratio for real infections vs confirmed cases.

The Swedish state broadcaster 4 has an English language service which covered the story here:

Sweden's Public Health Agency reviews modelling study after data input error - Radio Sweden

The Public Health Agency today addressed errors in a modelling study that suggests that for each confirmed Covid-19 case in Stockholm, there are 1,000 ...

sverigesradio.se

The radio clip is embedded at the top of the page and that whole website is a good resource for anyone who wants to follow news from Sweden in English.

 

[elbows]

Wallensten also corrected figures published in a report by the Public Health Agency on Tuesday, which was almost immediately retracted after a journalist noted incorrect figures in the presentation.

He said that the report had now been corrected, and that the main conclusion remained the same apart from minor changes: it now names April 8th, rather than April 15th, as the date when most people were contagious, and that 26 percent of Stockholmers are expected to have contracted the virus by May 1st.

The main error in the report, that there were around 1,000 times as many people infected by the coronavirus as the number of confirmed cases (1,000 times the number of confirmed cases in Sweden would amount to more than the country's entire population), had happened when a wrong variable was added in when creating the model. The correct figure is an estimation of 75 cases per each confirmed case in Stockholm.

From the April 23rd section of https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/timeline-how-the-coronavirus-has-developed-in-sweden

26% eh. Thats a lot higher than, the admittedly rather limited to date, serology studies and estimates from various other places. The UK isnt ready to give a proper number but when Vallance and Whitty have been prepared to talk something of the numbers and what they think we'll see, below 10% seems to be the UK estimate (and much lower still in some regionseg the South West).

 

[elbows]

Coronavirus: Has Sweden got its science right?

The strategy devised by scientists was to keep large parts of society open but not everyone is convinced.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

You know when you go to another country and they have different rules and they do things differently. That’s exactly what this is.
And it highlights the stupidity of other rules. Visiting Sweden twice a week. Practicing the same social distancing I have my entire life, yet the army and the police (unmasked) greet me on my return to check my passport. Pro tip: virii don’t have passports - they lack opposable thumbs and cant hold the passport open at the appropriate page.
maybe the lockdown is more an indicator for the question “why can’t we have nice things? “

 

[kropotkin]

Errr-- no, it won't be a success. How could it be?

Well that went well

 

[frogwoman]

Sweden cracks down on bars as crowds flout corona rules - France 24

Sweden cracks down on bars as crowds flout corona rules

www.google.com

Are they changing tack slightly?

 

[elbows]

Well the press had noticed that various bars were not complying with the rules, and that none had been sanctioned, so they probably felt the need to send a message.

Also they did pass the special legislation earlier in April that will allow them to go further without political delays, if they decide to change course a bit.

 

[2hats]

Not well at all. Ferguson discusses this in the first few minutes of the lengthy interview that I've put here. Essentially Stockholm is in as bad a shape as New York city.

Scaling for population, the latest situation compared to the other Nordics:

 

[kropotkin]

Entirely predictable, and another example of political mismanagement causing needless mass death. They also need to held accountable.

 

[frogwoman]

I really wanted things to work out for them. Sweden is a lovely place too.

 

[MrCurry]

Sweden cracks down on bars as crowds flout corona rules - France 24

Sweden cracks down on bars as crowds flout corona rules

www.google.com

Are they changing tack slightly?

Not changing tack, just enforcing the rules as they stand. Closing five restaurants amongst all of Stockholm is a tiny, ineffective measure anyway.

 

[elbows]

Entirely predictable, and another example of political mismanagement causing needless mass death. They also need to held accountable.

Its been quite distressing watching from afar as their exceptionalism led to an epidemic of arrogance.

 

[frogwoman]

Sweden records highest weekly mortality since the turn of the century

https://www.thelocal.se/20200427/sw...eekly-mortality-since-the-turn-of-the-century

 

[elbows]

Thanks for that info. I suppose its the expected picture really, given total mortality in other countries seen lately.

Meanwhile, from the free daily updates page from that site:

In the last 24 hours alone, ten further intensive care beds have been added to Sweden's total number, bringing the number of total beds to 1,085. The total number of coronavirus patients being cared for in intensive care units was 544, and Johanna Sandwall, crisis manager at the National Board of Health and Welfare, said that across the whole country, there was 30 percent spare capacity in intensive care.

But the situation varies significantly from region to region, and she said that in different parts of the country the spare capacity varied from 0 to 60 percent.

Asked which region had zero spare capacity, Sandwall said: "We are not making that data public, we are just saying that it varies. If you make this kind of information public, you can make the work harder [for healthcare workers]."

https://www.thelocal.se/20200310/timeline-how-the-coronavirus-has-developed-in-sweden

 

[editor]

Sweden are claiming their approach has worked but the figures really don't stack up:

The death rate in Sweden has now risen significantly higher than many other countries in Europe, reaching more than 22 per 100,000 people, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University, controlled for population.
By contrast, Denmark has recorded just over seven deaths per 100,000 people, and both Norway and Finland less than four.
Sweden has registered 18,926 coronavirus cases and 2,274 deaths among its population of 10.3 million people.
Denmark has had 9,049 cases and 427 deaths in a population of 5.8 million, Norway 7,599 cases and 206 deaths among its 5.4 million people, and Finland 4,695 cases and 193 deaths in its population of 5.5 million.

Sweden says its coronavirus approach has worked. The numbers suggest a different story

Sweden has been an outlier during the coronavirus outbreak. The country has not joined many of its European neighbors in imposing strict limits on citizens' lives, and images of people heading to work in busy streets and chatting at cafes and bars have raised eyebrows.

edition.cnn.com

 

[The39thStep]

Sweden are claiming their approach has worked but the figures really don't stack up:


View attachment 209612

Sweden says its coronavirus approach has worked. The numbers suggest a different story

Sweden has been an outlier during the coronavirus outbreak. The country has not joined many of its European neighbors in imposing strict limits on citizens' lives, and images of people heading to work in busy streets and chatting at cafes and bars have raised eyebrows.

edition.cnn.com

Operation was a success but sadly the patient died

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A lot of those comparative figures are pretty meaningless, though. For instance, 'population density' across the whole country is irrelevant. Nearly half of all Sweden's cases are in Stockholm.