Posted on 05/04/2020 11:55:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Sweden ranks seventh on the list of countries with most COVID-19 fatalities per capita. (I exclude microstates with populations under 100,000.) The six countries with more fatalities per capita are all in Western Europe. (I include the United Kingdom.) The fatality rate in the Netherlands is only slightly higher than in Sweden, but since April 1 it’s grown faster in the latter. Sweden appears to be on track to move up from seventh to sixth place before long.
The United States should learn from Sweden’s response to the pandemic, John Fund and Joel Hay argue in their most recent article at NRO. They think that the lesson we should take away is that Sweden’s response has been a success and is a model that other countries should follow: Go light on social-distancing restrictions, reopen schools, bars, restaurants, and gyms yesterday, and aim for herd immunity.
Arguments for lifting any given lockdown can be made. At this point in the pandemic, however, Sweden’s experience no longer clearly supports them. Granted, the landscape may look different a year from now. We’re still trying to see through the fog. Fund and Hay tout Sweden’s relatively low number of COVID-19 cases per capita, but that figure alone isn’t meaningful unless we know how many Swedes have been tested. In any case, if Swedish policymakers are aiming for herd immunity, they should want the infection rate to be higher, not lower. Twelve percent of Swedes who have tested positive have died. That figure is high — in the United States, for example, the percentage is 7 — and so perhaps Sweden is overcounting deaths related to COVID-19. But perhaps not. We don’t know.
In Sweden as elsewhere, COVID-19 is most fatal to the elderly. Pointing out that Swedes (average lifespan, 83 years) live longer on average than Americans do (79) and that more than half of Sweden’s COVID-19 fatalities have been in nursing homes, Fund and Hay imply that in Sweden the population that has died from the virus is on average a little older than in the United States. They may be right about that, although they don’t produce the statistics that would enable us to make the comparison. “On an age-adjusted basis,” they write, “Sweden has done significantly better than the U.S” when we measure “deaths per million.”
Has it? By how much? To quantify it, we would have to weight deaths by age, but what would be the formula? Would there be a single bright line, such as age 80? The death of someone older than that would count as three-fifths the death of someone younger? Whatever formula we came up with would, I hope, provoke strong moral objections, including some from me. If we’re going to imply that you should interpret fatality figures on an “age-adjusted basis,” we need to spell out what we mean, and we need to be specific.
Liars, liars, liars
Just telling them who they really are.
The majority of the Swedish men had already done that, which is why Swedish women welcome Muslim men. 8>P
OMG we are all gonna die
Well some of us will
Oh not so many
OMG look at the number of infections
Oh they didn’t even know they had it
There was way more infections than we thought
Oh heck this thing is widespread
OMG no one shoud die of Corona
we need testing
no we need a cure
wait wait wait for a vaccine
Deaths
230 per million - Sweden
177 per million - United States
(1280 per million in NY State)
So comparing shutting down the entire economy vs Sweden’s remaining open, you have a less than 25% difference in the number of deaths per million (unless you’re comparing it to New York state, where you have about 20% of the deaths in Sweden compared to NY.)
If the argument is it didn’t work out right for Sweden, I think they have pretty definitively shown that not shutting down the economy was FAR more effective in terms of death toll vs NY, marginally the same as the United States as a whole.
I think the argument is clear - the reason why shutting down the entire economy has never been part of any contingency plan (ever) is because it’s not effective. It made no difference.
Glad my county saw the light and reopened today.
Have to wait to see. The countries that are “flattening the curve” are postponing their deaths. The Swedes are getting them all up front.
See third chart down, pick deaths per million as option
http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
It all depends on how you like old Swedes.
One thing that has spiked their death rate is something I read last week (if true), which is that they are actually not treating the very elderly who are in homes, bedridden, on feeding tubes, etc. but are just providing them with morphine until they die. Euthanasia, in other words, which I think is legal there.
We treat even older people, and some of them do recover, but probably very few. Even so, if you don’t treat any of them, obviously the death rate will go up.
“Trump had the right instincts to start off with, when he said all lockdowns should end by Easter so the economy can open up.
That was before Fauci and Birx stormed into the Oval Office with the fake “2.2 million are going to die” figures and demanded he change his mind.”
YES! They also lied to him about Sweden—remember at the presser a month ago, when he said, “Sweden, not so good. Stories coming out. Just wait and see soon. “ Along those lines? They lied to him, and got him to publically buy in.
AND they lied about HCQ!!!!! It can be given as a preventative!!! Problem solved! Put old people, 1st responders, anyone at risk on it... Game over. Go back to work, everyone!!! His instincts were right!!!
Those two career bureaucrats weaseled their way up next to him, and whispered lies in his ear. He should have trusted his instincts. Brought in outside experts, like he usually does. So many better Epidemiologists out there, who think Boris and Natasha are full of Shiite. Would have jumped at the chance to tell him the truth.
Heck, Dr. Daniel Wallace sent a 10 page letter to the FDA declaring HCQ perfectly safe, and he has the data from 40 YEARS use. Letter disappeared. Haven’t seen it posted anywhere, and I’ve been looking for a month.
Gawd I’m so mad.
Too late, doesn’t matter now. Look forward not back.
It’s not a fair comparison until a year from now, when everyone has seen an extended wave. Sweden’s strategy was to take the hit right away since they believed their health care system would not be overloaded.
I’d say Sweden wins. For comparison Sweden and Michigan both have a population of 10 million.
Sweden voluntary social distancing, Michigan draconian measures.
Michigan: 43,754 cases, 4,049 deaths, 4,394 cases per M, 407 deaths per M
Sweden: 22,721 cases, 2,769 deaths, 2,250 cases per M, 274 deaths per M
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Not just you. When I even see Fauci or Birx my blood pressure goes up. Stopped watching the coronavirus task force pressers long ago.
President Trump has made a huge mistake keeping those two snakes in the White House.
Look, I love Trump. Always liked the guy long before he run for president.
But his greatest weakness is, he is just too loyal to people who secretly work actively to destroy him and takes too darn long to fire them. There is a very long list of that since he took office.
Very good post.
I compared Sweden to NYS yesterday, but Michigan is actually a much better comparison.
Has Sweden’s gambit overwhelmed their healthcare delivery system? If Sweden manages to achieve “herd immunity” without their hospitals collapsing under the strain then they win their bet.
The entire reason for “flattening the curve” was to preserve hospital beds, ventilators and healthcare service providers for COVID-19. It seems that the United States is doing that, but the cost is stretching out the infection risk over a much longer period which in-turn temps many governors to maintain the economic lock-down for at least that long (however long that is isn’t clear).
“Sweden ranks seventh on the list of countries with most COVID-19 fatalities per capita.”
the infection mortality rate is the only meaningful metric, particularly in Sweden’s case, where 79%-80% of the population may have developed antibodies without even knowing they were infected, and thus the infection mortality rate might be quit low ... we already know from sentinal testing in the U.S. that the infection mortality rate is probably .1%-.3%, which is the same as influenza ...
Like others here have said, if Sweden’s hospitals are not overwhelmed, and they’re not, then their policy is a success. Any other measure is goal-post moving.
Besides: A shorter somewhat steeper curve with intact economy vs a longer flatter curve with a destroyed economy and all the human misery that entails. Easy choice. And the USA chose wrong. Hopefully we phase out of lock-down madness soon and start our economic recovery.
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