Sweden avoiding lockdown

Att vara en hest

deaths/totalcases is not really a valid method of calculating the death rate, especially not in Sweden considering the very low number of tests done. I have two friends with symptoms for Corona, both wanted to get tested but they were told it's not needed.. One is still sick and the other has recovered by now (it's been 3~ weeks). Without knowing how many of these 'mild' (treat at home) cases there are, it's impossible to calculate the death rate from the "known cases".

As grim as it is, we're still talking 1200 dead in a country of 11 million people, and most of the dead have had underlying conditions or are older... Sure, so far the death rate does seem to be higher than other countries - but at least the majority of people are able to continue living life somewhat normally (with a few light restrictions) which is at least enough to spare some of the smaller businesses from going out of business. You'd have to ask yourself, is it worth wrecking the economy and imposing heavy restrictions on your citizens just to save a few hundreds?

Poverty and recession are not exactly great for the general health.

jimmycrackcorm

tom1ie wrote: »

did Iceland not release a report identifying 40 different strains of c19?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8146565/Scientists-Iceland-claim-FORTY-mutations-coronavirus.html

it is a daily mail link above but I'm sure I read it somewhere else aswell.

It's not different strains but source tracking from subtle mutations.

Murple

iamwhoiam wrote: »

Was it ever proven or researched that children are a huge virus carrying group ?
Not disputing it but just wondering if they actually are a source of the spread ?
Then the spread in care homes for example was not children at all .

Children often don’t display symptoms.
Children are generally in very close contact with other people- being held, hugged, cared for, holding hands, playing together, etc.
Children’s hygiene would be harder to manage- hand washing, not touching face etc. - ever seen a small child on a bus licking bars, finger up nose then pressing buttons, coughing open mouthed towards other people, ...
Children are not as competent at keeping social distancing...or any distance for that matter.
Children handle everything.
Spend any time with groups of children and you see how things spread in a way that they don’t among groups of adults.

biko

Att vara en hest wrote: »

You'd have to ask yourself, is it worth wrecking the economy and imposing heavy restrictions on your citizens just to save a few hundreds?

This seems to be the general Swedish approach, let the old and infirm die so the young and strong can go on.

It has its merits, although I am totally opposed to this thinking.
Sweden is failing to protect it's most vulnerable citizens that actually built the economy they are now trying to protect.

Tbh, I'm not surprised of this attitude though, when even former Minister for Social Security Annika Strandhäll said "old people are a problem for our health sector".

biko

Note that when I say "Sweden" I mean the current government.
There are plenty of professors of medicine that don't agree with the Swedish government approach. And professors in other Nordic countries.

growleaves

There are plenty of professors of medicine that don't agree with the Swedish government approach. And professors in other Nordic countries.

Likewise there are plenty of professors of medicine and disease specialists that don't agree with the approach taken by countries other than Sweden.

While it might be possible to assert that climate scientists all subscribe to one consensus, it definitely won't fly when it comes to epidemologists and medical professors and some of these are the very definition of mainstream, i.e. the disease specialist labs at Oxford University.

growleaves

See Sweden in the middle:

Att vara en hest

growleaves wrote: »

See Sweden in the middle:

"lagom.. as all things should be" :pac:

sydthebeat

can anyone shed some light on why the number of tests in sweden hasnt changed for nearly a week now?

have they completely stopped testing and assumed that "herd immunity" will take place naturally, so it doenst matter where clusters form?

have they just not released the figures of testing done?

Id find it unbelievable if they have simply stopped testing

thebaz

sydthebeat wrote: »

it would be helpful if they actually came out and told the swedish people what numbers they actually expect during this crisis, and when they expect life to return to normal.

according to this Guardian report , they believe they are now near the peak of outbreak :-

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronavirus-death-toll-reaches-1000

maninasia

thebaz wrote: »

according to this Guardian report , they believe they are now near the peak of outbreak :-

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronavirus-death-toll-reaches-1000

They are hoping since they don't know how many have actually been infected.

thebaz

maninasia wrote: »

They are hoping since they don't know how many have actually been infected.

I'm sure they are, but the reality is we will not know the answer to that until at least the end of month. If ther figures do start declining now, and they are proved right and thus reduce other problems - other serious deseases/mental health problems and economic disaster. Or

we get the expected huge deaths and infections predicted by most.

sydthebeat

sydthebeat wrote: »

can anyone shed some light on why the number of tests in sweden hasnt changed for nearly a week now?

have they completely stopped testing and assumed that "herd immunity" will take place naturally, so it doenst matter where clusters form?

have they just not released the figures of testing done?

Id find it unbelievable if they have simply stopped testing

They must be testing to some extent even if it is just doctors within hospitals managing clinical need, so I presume it's a reporting thing.

Blut2

biko wrote: »

This seems to be the general Swedish approach, let the old and infirm die so the young and strong can go on.

It has its merits, although I am totally opposed to this thinking.
Sweden is failing to protect it's most vulnerable citizens that actually built the economy they are now trying to protect.

Tbh, I'm not surprised of this attitude though, when even former Minister for Social Security Annika Strandhäll said "old people are a problem for our health sector".

The median age of death in every European country so far is around 80. And in Italy 98.8% of deaths have had an underlying health condition - cancer, diabetes etc.

The economic lockdown is going to result in healthcare budgets across Europe being reduced for a decade. Cancer patients in their 40s not getting care etc. The economic lockdown is also going to result in thousands of recession related suicides, and lives otherwise destroyed. And the economic lockdown is also at the moment depriving people who need medical care of the help they need because regular operations are suspended.

On top of all this the best case scenario for a vaccine is 18 months away - so every country is going to have to reach herd immunity sooner or later anyway. So a lockdown may only be keeping extremely elderly, unwell, people alive for a few extra months at best - while destroying the economy for the rest of the population in the process.

I'm not saying the lockdown wasn't the right thing to do - it did certainly buy us time to expand our healthcare facilities. But at some point the costs do need to be assessed rationally. Sweden isn't being heartless, its probably just taking a more logical approach to things.

Their ICU capacity still hasn't been surpassed, which is probably the most important figure worth looking at - that means nobody there is dying from not being able to get the care they needed. Which would point to their social distancing having been more than enough, to date.

iamwhoiam

Are Sweden counting deaths in care homes ?

The_Kew_Tour

sydthebeat wrote: »

Any source for those figures KT?

it would be an interesting if disturbing outcome from the swedish experiment if their economy took a serious hit due to personal actions, even though the governmental policy of risk versus reward was weighed towards the economy

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0414/1130498-sweden-approach-coronavirus/

Link to video half way down which pretty much says what I say and it’s from Irish person living there

Att vara en hest

iamwhoiam wrote: »

Are Sweden counting deaths in care homes ?

Yes - as mentioned a few posts back Sweden runs the social security number of anyone who tested positive recently against the death register. This will catch everyone, no matter where they died.

growleaves

growleaves wrote: »

See Sweden in the middle:

Sweden should only really be compared to Norway/Denmark/Finland, given the geographical distance between those and the epicentres of covid-19 in Europe + the different trends in travel between the likes of France <-> Italy vs Sweden <-> Italy.

Sweden's death count is also very restrictive, many countries are counting anyone who was displaying covid-19 symptoms and died of a respiratory ailment as being a covid-19 death, without conducting postmortem testing. Sweden doesn't appear to be doing post-mortem testing, and is objectively doing very little testing. Given that in other countries, up to 33% of deaths are in carehomes without presenting at hospital - arguing that Sweden's numbers are more representative is ludicrous.

It's what happens when you approach an argument with a pre-existing bias of 'wanting an approach to be right'.

sydthebeat

The_Kew_Tour wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0414/1130498-sweden-approach-coronavirus/

Link to video half way down which pretty much says what I say and it’s from Irish person living there

i watched that earlier today.... thanks.

their economy is going to take some kind of hit due to this... it will be interesting if they can get back to 100% in a significant time period ahead of everyone else

growleaves

Deleted User wrote: »

Sweden should only really be compared to Norway/Denmark/Finland, given the geographical distance between those and the epicentres of covid-19 in Europe + the different trends in travel between the likes of France <-> Italy vs Sweden <-> Italy.

Sweden's death count is also very restrictive, many countries are counting anyone who was displaying covid-19 symptoms and died of a respiratory ailment as being a covid-19 death, without conducting postmortem testing. Sweden doesn't appear to be doing post-mortem testing, and is objectively doing very little testing. Given that in other countries, up to 33% of deaths are in carehomes without presenting at hospital - arguing that Sweden's numbers are more representative is ludicrous.

It's what happens when you approach an argument with a pre-existing bias of 'wanting an approach to be right'.

I've lost count of how many times I was told that Ireland would be 'like Italy' without a lockdown and even now I'm still being told that as a justification, despite for instance that the air pollution around Clare and Mayo is hardly comparable to that of Northern Italy.

So if we are separating out different environmental factors for Nordic countries vis-a-vis others then we should be doing that for all countries.

growleaves

growleaves wrote: »

I've lost count of how many times I was told that Ireland would be 'like Italy'
without a lockdown and even now I'm still being told that as a justification, despite for instance that the air pollution around Clare and Mayo is hardly comparable to that of Northern Italy.

So if we are separating out different environmental factors for Nordic countries vis-a-vis others then we should be doing that for all countries.

Epidemics don't spread based on air pollution. It's a bit scary that you think they do. Are you out there burning 5g masts right now?


There is no evidence that air pollution is linked with increased spread of covid-19, only mortality. The flu virus needs to spread to become an epidemic and then pandemic. Mortality rates are irrelevant to stopping a pandemic beyond that viruses with high mortality rates and short incubation periods tend to burn themselves out.



Researchers absolutely do look at factors such as %age urban population & %age underlying conditions (both of which capture air pollution), but that's something that will happen in the years to come and irrelevant to stopping a pandemic spreading.

growleaves

Epidemics don't spread based on air pollution.

I didn't say they do. Air pollution is a risk factor for victims of respiratory diseases hence it affects how many people will end up in ICU, and it differs between countries.

It's a bit scary that you think they do. Are you out there burning 5g masts right now?

Pointless abuse.

biko

Deleted User wrote: »

Sweden should only really be compared to Norway/Denmark/Finland, given the geographical distance between those and the epicentres of covid-19 in Europe

Geographical distance means less than you think these days.
It's not like people get to these countries by car.

Thankfully Sweden stopped flights from Iran early March. Iran was then developing to a full-blown outbreak.
Iran reported 1,501 cases, including 66 deaths in total when flights were still open.
Some with the infection had flown directly to Sweden and been found there to have the contagion.

2u2me

biko wrote: »

Geographical distance means less than you think these days.
It's not like people get to these countries by car.

biko

Errr ok, not sure what you're trying to say.

greenfield21

Fair play to Sweden, true trailblazers. They will be looked back on as hero's in the years to come.

IAMAMORON

iamwhoiam wrote: »

Was it ever proven or researched that children are a huge virus carrying group ?
Not disputing it but just wondering if they actually are a source of the spread ?
Then the spread in care homes for example was not children at all .

Not even the children visiting their grandparents?

The reason it has spread so successfully through nursing homes is the lack of hygiene being practised by patients, this is both voluntary and involuntary, but as a rule the older you get the less vigilant you become hygienically. Throw in the necessity for asymptomatic workers and family visits and you have a problem.

Young adults and children are battering the virus away very quickly. Their immune systems are powerful enough to deal with it, they are all getting it, but not indicating symptoms. The cloaking of the virus behind such hosts has been one of its' most contagious efficiencies, people are simply not aware it is in the room.

iamwhoiam

IAMAMORON wrote: »

Not even the children visiting their grandparents?

The reason it has spread so successfully through nursing homes is the lack of hygiene being practised by patients, this is both voluntary and involuntary, but as a rule the older you get the less vigilant you become hygienically. Throw in the necessity for asymptomatic workers and family visits and you have a problem.

Young adults and children are battering the virus away very quickly. Their immune systems are powerful enough to deal with it, they are all getting it, but not indicating symptoms. The cloaking of the virus behind such hosts has been one of its' most contagious efficiencies, people are simply not aware it is in the room.

The clusters in care homes only came to light about 2 weeks ago . Children haven’t been allowed in care home since about the beginning of March . I am not convinced children did in fact infect the care home clients .

IAMAMORON

iamwhoiam wrote: »

The clusters in care homes only came to light about 2 weeks ago . Children haven’t been allowed in care home since about the beginning of March . I am not convinced children did in fact infect the care home clients .

I am in many cases. If they didn't give it directly they gave it to their mummies and Daddies who were either working there or were visiting their mummies and Daddies.

Don't forget our first official case of Covid 19 was a teenager in a school.

biko

For the Swedish elderly in home settings I'm sure they got infected by staff.
The staff just don't have any PPE so will easily carry the contagion from one person to another.

But in general it was fine to move around if you didn't feel sick so visiting elderly was not an issue.
Also, of course that staff at nursing homes can carry the contagion around, especially if they feel fine.
But they can still transmit the disease.

iamwhoiam

iamwhoiam wrote: »

The clusters in care homes only came to light about 2 weeks ago . Children haven’t been allowed in care home since about the beginning of March . I am not convinced children did in fact infect the care home clients .

It's staff.
staff in care homes are, in general, on really rubbish contracts, part time hours, zero hour contracts etc.
so they have to take on extra work, sometimes in other care homes, sometimes other places altogether.
also, agency staff are sent from one care home to another, every day, so without anyone wearing PPE, the virus is easily spread.

Greentopia

mariaalice wrote: »

Why are they keeping emergency legislation in reserve then? its kinda wanting it both ways to me it says we are trying this for the moment but if it dose not work we have something else. It is not saying we know for certain this is the correct approach.

Because it's a novel virus and no scientist will say they know for certain the course it will take in their respective countries in the future. They can only say what's happening now and what most likely to happen in the coming days and weeks going on their data and modelling.

They're just being prepared in case they do need to widen bring in further restrictions.
It's a sensible, long term, measured approach.

Greentopia

bubblypop wrote: »

It's staff.
staff in care homes are, in general, on really rubbish contracts, part time hours, zero hour contracts etc.
so they have to take on extra work, sometimes in other care homes, sometimes other places altogether.
also, agency staff are sent from one care home to another, every day, so without anyone wearing PPE, the virus is easily spread.

Yes privatisation of some of the care of the elderly there has not worked well. I think after this there will be a re-examining of those policies by the Soc. Dems.

iamwhoiam

IAMAMORON wrote: »

I am in many cases. If they didn't give it directly they gave it to their mummies and Daddies who were either working there or were visiting their mummies and Daddies.

Don't forget our first official case of Covid 19 was a teenager in a school.

You have no way of knowing that actually . We don’t know if the staff got it from each other or from their children

Blut2

bubblypop wrote: »

It's staff.
staff in care homes are, in general, on really rubbish contracts, part time hours, zero hour contracts etc.
so they have to take on extra work, sometimes in other care homes, sometimes other places altogether.
also, agency staff are sent from one care home to another, every day, so without anyone wearing PPE, the virus is easily spread.

The average salary for a care worker in the UK is £17,000 a year. And its similar in a lot of countries. Its pretty horrifying - both because they do a very hard job that I wouldn't want to do, and because of the responsibility of it - they literally have vulnerable people's lives in their hands all day.

Ideally post-corona Western societies might reconsider the benefits of actually paying care workers a living wage... but we'll see, I wouldn't hold out too much hope.

Bushmaster64

Clearly obvious now that Sweden have ballsed it up. By far the worst of the Scandinavian countries. More deaths than any other country compared to the number of cases.

I mean maybe we didn't expect left wing Sweden to sacrifice their older population with such disregard, but it's always been a bit of an odd country. They might just have said "feck it" take the hit on deaths, the health system can cope with the cases and at the end of it all their economy may be the best in Europe.

The hard left have sometimes shown disdain toward older people, maybe that's at play here.

dubrov

Bushmaster64 wrote: »

Clearly obvious now that Sweden have ballsed it up. By far the worst of the Scandinavian countries. More deaths than any other country compared to the number of cases.

Way too early to be making calls like that

Bushmaster64

dubrov wrote: »

Way too early to be making calls like that

They have 3 -5 times as many deaths for their rate of infection than any of the closest countries to their known cases.

I'm not sure how this can level out in Sweden's favour now.

Bit cynical

Bushmaster64 wrote: »

They have 3 -5 times as many deaths for their rate of infection than any of the closest countries to their known cases.

I'm not sure how this can level out in Sweden's favour now.

However I don't think the actual rate of infection is known for any country. Sweden is doing fairly low amounts of testing for the population size and this may account for the apparent high figure.

niallo27

Bushmaster64 wrote: »

They have 3 -5 times as many deaths for their rate of infection than any of the closest countries to their known cases.

I'm not sure how this can level out in Sweden's favour now.

Using rate of infection is wrong, it's all about deaths and icu numbers. For example by using postive cases, sweden has the same number per population as norway or denmark. Limited lockdown but same chance of testing postive.

eddie73

Bushmaster64 wrote: »

Clearly obvious now that Sweden have ballsed it up. By far the worst of the Scandinavian countries. More deaths than any other country compared to the number of cases.

I mean maybe we didn't expect left wing Sweden to sacrifice their older population with such disregard, but it's always been a bit of an odd country. They might just have said "feck it" take the hit on deaths, the health system can cope with the cases and at the end of it all their economy may be the best in Europe.

The hard left have sometimes shown disdain toward older people, maybe that's at play here.

Lets not lose the run of ourselves yet.

While I agree that their restrictions are slack and could be better, you have to divide their death rate by 2 to get the island of Ireland average. we are doing somewhat better, but not by a hell of a lot.

Today they took a hammering. 170 deaths is a lot.
Lets see at the end of the month how they look. Its a big gamble. Should they be doing this? who knows.

To say that the hard left has disregard for the elderly is a strange statement.

dubrov

We won't really know until the end of the year. Sweden might get 170 a day for a month while we get 30 a day for 6 months as the growth was slower

Bushmaster64

eddie73 wrote: »

Lets not lose the run of ourselves yet.

While I agree that their restrictions are slack and could be better, you have to divide their death rate by 2 to get the island of Ireland average. we are doing somewhat better, but not by a hell of a lot.

Today they took a hammering. 170 deaths is a lot.
Lets see at the end of the month how they look. Its a big gamble. Should they be doing this? who knows.

To say that the hard left has disregard for the elderly is a strange statement.

How much bigger is Sweden than Ireland? Ireland has much more of a dense population than Sweden and still doing better than them.

Lots of left wing Sweden lovers are going to be very disappointed at the end of all this to see how the poster child for 'caring' socialism put the economy ahead of the people.

Att vara en hest

There were not 170 deaths in Sweden over the last 24 hours, these are numbers catching up from weekend.. There were 12 deaths reported on Sunday, do you think that's the real number? It's a known thing that Sweden laggs behind on death numbers! Actually the highest number of deaths in a single day peaked on Apr 8 with around 90 people dead in 24 hours, ever since then the numbers of death per 24 hours has decreased.

As mentioned on the press conference today they are 'cautiously optimistic' that the curve for infections has plateaued in Stockholm which bodes well for the rest of the country.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
^^^This is FOHM's own stats (folkhälsomyndigheten - department of public health), go to "Avlidna/dag" for deaths/day.

It's also not completely reasonable to compare Sweden directly to a country like Norway or Finland, Swedes do travel more abroad and especially people in areas like Stockholm. Sweden also had their "sport break" (similar to spring break) the same week as things went bad in Italian ski resorts, a lot of people came back infected from these areas.

There's also a large amount of immigrants in Sweden, in addition to the people returning from Italy there were also infected people coming from Iran.

Considering the different circumstances as well as the fact that the way deaths are counted is different, I'd say that Sweden is spot on with their tactic - especially considering it has very little impact on the everyday life of its citizens.

We've been under harsher restrictions here in Ireland for quite long and we're still seeing a large number of cases, in addition to that we also have the economy at a standstill.

In the end of the day, we won't know until later on who's right or who's wrong.. But to me, it looks like Sweden are doing something right.

biko

The Swedish really can't lose with their current tactic.

If they fall below the European average death rate they will be lauded.
If they fall on average, or maybe a tad high, they will be lauded because they didn't lock down.
If they end up much higher they will just claim "we tried to save our economy".

If they continue to not test, and not report all the cases, they will probably come out of this looking pretty good.
The old folks would probably have died of other causes and the celebs that died will be martyrs somehow.

The government have managed to shield itself, fronting with the FHM who can easily be thrown under the bus should things go pear-shaped.

The best site is c19.se which aggregates the numbers continuously, not just once a day.

niallo27

biko wrote: »

The Swedish really can't lose with their current tactic.

If they fall below the European average death rate they will be lauded.
If they fall on average, or maybe a tad high, they will be lauded because they didn't lock down.
If they end up much higher they will just claim "we tried to save our economy".

If they continue to not test, and not report all the cases, they will probably come out of this looking pretty good.
The old folks would probably have died of other causes and the celebs that died will be martyrs somehow.

The government have managed to shield itself, fronting with the FHM who can easily be thrown under the bus should things go pear-shaped.

The best site is c19.se which aggregates the numbers continuously, not just once a day.

Well they lose if they have tens of thousands of deaths like most models are predicting but for some reason has not materialized as of yet.

Wanderer78

niallo27 wrote:

Well they lose if they have tens of thousands of deaths like most models are predicting but for some reason has not materialized as of yet.

Will they care I'd they lose? Sounds like many swedes are just self restricting anyway

sydthebeat

I see Swedens test numbers jumped by 20,000 over night

cgcsb

Bushmaster64 wrote: »

Clearly obvious now that Sweden have ballsed it up. By far the worst of the Scandinavian countries. More deaths than any other country compared to the number of cases.

I mean maybe we didn't expect left wing Sweden to sacrifice their older population with such disregard, but it's always been a bit of an odd country. They might just have said "feck it" take the hit on deaths, the health system can cope with the cases and at the end of it all their economy may be the best in Europe.

The hard left have sometimes shown disdain toward older people, maybe that's at play here.

I suppose it frees up more social housing units so they can bring in more young Iraqi chaps. :pac:

cgcsb

niallo27 wrote: »

Using rate of infection is wrong, it's all about deaths and icu numbers. For example by using postive cases, sweden has the same number per population as norway or denmark. Limited lockdown but same chance of testing postive.

Danish people actually socialise with each other on a regular basis though. Swedish people are natural house hatchers.