Sweden avoiding lockdown

Laois_Man

Glenomra wrote: »

We have been repeatedly advised for decades by commentators on RTE and the Irish times etc to follow what the Scandinavian countries do as regards social policy etc. Not a dickey bird out of them now as Sweden leads the way in dealing sensibly with this virus.

Widdensushi wrote: »

so they are doing fantastic compared to the us who are in lockdown

Who are boards.ie posters to say what's sensible when 2,000 Swedish scientists have signed a petition pleading with their government to enforce a far stricter lock down!

Neither their lack of testing, nor their death rate of 91 per 1 million is anything to be envious of! A country with twice our population and still less tests and a higher death rate than us - even before you account for the fact that they dont seem to be counting everyone!

Danno

sydthebeat wrote: »

for you:

On Saturday it processed nearly 8,000 tests, using German laboratories. The UK, which has a population more than ten times the size of Ireland’s, processed 18,000.

How nice to pick Saturday's 8,000 tests - the only day we ever managed a decent amount since the crisis unfolded. We were doing fifteen hundred a day up to that. We closed some of our fifty testing centres cause there wasn't enough people or tests.

Alf Veedersane

STB. wrote: »

800 ICU beds ? There are 500.

A week or so ago the HSE said they had a surge plan that could see critical care capacity go to 800 beds if necessary.

Danno

Danno wrote: »

How nice to pick Saturday's 8,000 tests - the only day we ever managed a decent amount since the crisis unfolded. We were doing fifteen hundred a day up to that. We closed some of our fifty testing centres cause there wasn't enough people or tests.

There was a shortage of reagents mainly. Not people or tests. If you don't have the equipment you can't test regardless how many people you have.

STB.

Deleted User wrote: »

We don't really know for sure, but it looks like we are.

We do. Our numbers are going up. They haven't come down.


We haven't reached our first peak, never mind the madness of a second peak which will happen if they drop restrictions too quickly. Something I do not even want to think about.

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

A week or so ago the HSE said they had a surge plan that could see critical care capacity go to 800 beds if necessary.

A plan.

812. Dependant on ventilators and staff trained to use them. A ventilator is not a microwave oven with plug play. In any event they have neither right now.

They have 500 ICU beds nationwide.

Dr Liam Woods, the Health Service Executive’s national director of acute hospital operations, confirmed that regular ICU units at three of Dublin’s biggest hospitals, Beaumont, Connolly and the Mater, were full but that they had “surge” capacity to use other beds created for critical care.

There were 132 empty ICU beds overall in the hospital system, he said, and a capacity to transfer patients to other hospital ICUs around and outside Dublin.

There were an “underlying” 312 ICU beds but “surge plans nationally” to bring that up to 812, though this was contingent on the training of nurses and on the availability of ventilators and oxygen.

Dr Emily O’Conor, president of the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine, said hospital ICU units in Dublin were “becoming stretched” and that staffing ICU-type beds in overflow areas created by hospitals to prepare for the pandemic was “going to become a problem”

SOURCE: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/coronavirus-doctors-fear-covid-19-yet-to-peak-in-the-state-as-icus-near-full-capacity-1.4224457

Widdensushi

STB. wrote: »

Absolute deaths are the only numbers that count and the universal way of presenting them. You cannot look at numbers on a cold per million basis. This is not a stock check, its the lives of people lost.

919 people are dead in Sweden, that's more than all the other Nordic countries combined.

they have a similar population to the other nordic countries combined

biko

Other European countries with 10 million inhabitants each are Greece and Portugal.
Sweden 976 dead
Greece 99 dead
Portugal 535 dead, neighbour to Spain with an enormous 15000 dead

Gary kk

Kind looks like they have pretty much stopped testing with only 81 new cases in the last twenty four hours.

topdecko

Widdensushi wrote: »

they have a similar population to the other nordic countries combined

the rest of Nordic countries have around 16 million people vs Sweden 10 million.

wakka12

Easter break seemingly meant less testing in Sweden, deaths in Sweden are back to 114 today, similar to the number of deaths reported days immediately before the easter weekend.

Deaths in Sweden now at over 1000

wakka12

Gary kk wrote: »

Kind looks like they have pretty much stopped testing with only 81 new cases in the last twenty four hours.

That was just one update, cases for the last 24 hours are now at 500

Danno

Danno wrote: »

How nice to pick Saturday's 8,000 tests - the only day we ever managed a decent amount since the crisis unfolded. We were doing fifteen hundred a day up to that. We closed some of our fifty testing centres cause there wasn't enough people or tests.

As of yesterday .....There have now been 365 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.......... a total of 10,647 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

Mortality rate of 3.4%.

Approx 75,000 tested .......... 14% test positive.

Testing can be improved, no doubt. But we as a nation are doing very well.

biko

If we consider Diamond Princess a perfect Petri dish (712 infected and 12 dead) that gives us 1.69% deadliness

3.4% was cited by the WHO for a while.

Sweden is currently at 9.28% death rate
11536 cases
1071 dead


To compare
Italy death rate 12.84
Spain 10.56
UK 13.03
Ireland 3.42
USA 4.05

biko

biko wrote: »

If we consider Diamond Princess a perfect Petri dish (712 infected and 12 dead) that gives us 1.69% deadliness

3.4% was cited by the WHO for a while.

Sweden is currently at 9.28% death rate

If anything that's an overestimate as people who go on cruises tend to be older or with underlying conditions.

STB.

STB. wrote: »

Absolute deaths are the only numbers that count and the universal way of presenting them. You cannot look at numbers on a cold per million basis. This is not a stock check, its the lives of people lost.

919 people are dead in Sweden, that's more than all the other Nordic countries combined.

I don't want to sound callous but the way some people are talking about this situation you would think nobody ever died before.

We will all die. There is no magic formula that stops people dying.

The logic of "if it saves one life" or "we must save lives at all costs" is never used in normal circumstances by responsible governments. In fact the only place it IS used is in private healthcare, particularly in the US, where vast amounts of money are spent keeping people alive for months or if lucky a year or two at the end of their lives.

On the broader point of Sweden, Ireland, the UK and indeed the rest of the world: it will all come out in the wash.

At the moment many countries are struggling with reporting and it is hard to 'trust' any numbers (although ours are likely to be more accurate simply because the scale is less).

We won't know what impact this had and what the accurate numbers are until mortality rates can be compared (this is how deaths to flu are attributed). It is a fantasy to pretend otherwise.

Based on data from the UK it looks like the 'excess' mortality is about 5-6K per week at the moment. You'd need to see figures for the whole year for every country before you'd make any judgements.

The current obsession over numbers is both massively premature (we are not out of it yet) and also putting too much store against inaccurate data.

BTW, rather than hoping the Swedes fail (which is the poorly concealed desire of many on this thread) we should be desperately hoping they succeed.

It is far, far better to have over-reacted, been 'wrong', and learn that we can safely loosen restrictions than discovering we are going to be in this for a year at least and there is no way out. The Swedish approach may help teach us a lot about what does and does not contribute to the spread of the virus.

Widdensushi

topdecko wrote: »

the rest of Nordic countries have around 16 million people vs Sweden 10 million.

my bad,I didn't regard Denmark as nordic but a quick Google educated me

Widdensushi

biko wrote: »

Other European countries with 10 million inhabitants each are Greece and Portugal.
Sweden 976 dead
Greece 99 dead
Portugal 535 dead, neighbour to Spain with an enormous 15000 dead

I just think that the death rate will have to be judged over a longer period as the swedish approach seems to be to build up immunity faster which of course will lead to more casualties early on.

biko

Deleted User wrote: »

It is far, far better to have over-reacted, been 'wrong', and learn that we can safely loosen restrictions than discovering we are going to be in this for a year at least and there is no way out.

While we "overreacted" they have hardly reacted at all.
There is still no lockdown, and people are free to go about their business as usual (provide they mingle is smaller groups than 50.

Sweden had all the info from China and Italy but chose to do nothing, and are still going in a different direction. And they have been getting updates every day fro other countries.
That's a huge gamble with citizen's lives - I really hope it pays off, but tbh it looks like they will sacrifice old and infirm to maintain their way of life.

The sensible thing when a huge threat like this Corona is approaching is to be as cautious as possible in the beginning, and then loosen restriction - not what Sweden is doing which is starting loose and then tightening restrictions when your citizens start dying.

Kermit.de.frog

114 new deaths in Sweden reported today. 1,033 total.

(20 new deaths yesterday)

Joe_ Public

As i understand it, what a country like ireland hopes to do is slow the transmission rate, delay the spread to buy as much time as possible to allow for ongoing technology developments in terms of testing and/or potential treatments or vaccines.

It is not being portrayed as a cure all solution. If and when restrictions do have to be relaxed then we just might be in a better position, having learned from our own and others situations, to implement it in a way that further lessens the risks. Well, that's the theory anyway.

I wish sweden all the very best. Truly hope it all works out eventually. From the limited knowledge i have, I'm just more comfortable with the approach we're taking. Thats all really.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

IHME are making it up as they go along.

These were the people predicting 66,000 deaths in the UK. hastily amended to 23,000, ie divided by 3 in the space of a week.

They are predicting fewer deaths in Italy than have already taken place, assuming that there is a degree of under-reporting in every major European country.

They don't have a huge amount of credibility on this topic, I am amazed people are still quoting their predictions as if they mean something.

Its called amending the model as more data becomes available. This exercise by IHME is a purely data driven exercise, and does make a lot of assumptions. Each country and regional circumstance is different so the model will prove very inaccurate at times. But with each day more data will drive the model to a more accurate result over time. UK wasn't hastily amended, the new data just had a lower peak and still has a worst case of more than 50k. And given what we know about the UK's reporting of deaths, maybe the original model was accurate

loyatemu

Deleted User wrote: »

The logic of "if it saves one life" or "we must save lives at all costs" is never used in normal circumstances by responsible governments.

I haven't heard anyone in authority saying those things now either. Whatever we do, people will die; but we have to take some measures or the health service will be overwhelmed and many more will die unnecessarily.

sydthebeat

the way sweden are reporting their cases makes it very hard to see any trend.

they announced 114 deaths last tuesday........after a 15, 28, 76 weekend

today they also announced 114 deaths.... after a 17, 12, 20 weekend

are the tuesday figures simply a backlog from the weekend that they have not processed?

looking at their graphs the only pattern is that they have mid-week peaks and mid-weekend troughs.... however the mid-week peaks have been higher for each of the last 3 weeks.....

I think its only when these midweek figures level out or drop can we say that they will have passed their peak

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

Again they quote absolute deaths as opposed to deaths per 1M of population. On this metric, they are still in trouble, at 91, whereas Ireland are not far behind at 74.

I wonder do they count deaths in the dishonest way they do in the UK, excluding care homes, which account for over half the deaths here, and doing minimal testing which means that many who die from corona weren't tested so therefore aren't included in the stats?

Deaths per million is meaningless until the virus is gone. For Ireland, a country of 5 million, the virus will spread through the population at a proportionately higher rate than a larger country - i.e it only has to hit just under 50,000 people here to impact 1% of the population, but it has to infect 3 million Americans to do the same. But the incubation and R0 are the same in both countries, therefore it will reach 1% much quicker here without any constraints. Other factors such as population density also come in to it. The true measures we should be looking at are rates of change of the key indicators of hospitalisations, ICU numbers and deaths

wakka12

Deleted User wrote: »

If anything that's an overestimate as people who go on cruises tend to be older or with underlying conditions.

Why would a person with underlying conditions be more likely to go on a cruise? If anything, it would be the opposite. A person in poor health would be much less likely to go on a long trans continental trip than a healthy person

biko

biko wrote: »

While we "overreacted" they have hardly reacted at all.
There is still no lockdown, and people are free to go about their business as usual (provide they mingle is smaller groups than 50.

Sweden had all the info from China and Italy but chose to do nothing, and are still going in a different direction. And they have been getting updates every day fro other countries.
That's a huge gamble with citizen's lives - I really hope it pays off, but tbh it looks like they will sacrifice old and infirm to maintain their way of life.

The sensible thing when a huge threat like this Corona is approaching is to be as cautious as possible in the beginning, and then loosen restriction - not what Sweden is doing which is starting loose and then tightening restrictions when your citizens start dying.

Just to be clear I am not saying we have over-reacted. We don't know yet, and I agree there is nothing wrong with being cautious. It's the best course of action if you can make it stick, and if things change medically or the virus is seasonal then it will 100% have been the right thing to do.

Also Sweden has not done nothing, it has done less. My point is that if there is no massive spike in Sweden we may learn that sensible and not overly draconian measures can be enough to control the spread and flatten the curve enough.

My personal opinion is that we can't get rid of the virus so we should forget about that, it's about management and delay. We need to know what is required to deliver meaningful delay and we don't really know yet. I think in most European countries it was too far gone before the full lockdown so it is useful to see what happens in a halfway house like Sweden.

Crocked

wakka12 wrote: »

Why would a person with underlying conditions be more likely to go on a cruise? If anything, it would be the opposite. A person in poor health would be much less likely to go on a long trans continental trip than a healthy person

Having an underlying condition doesn't mean you are in poor health. Asthma, high blood pressure, high cholesterol etc are underlying conditions. None of them mean you are in poor health

loyatemu

wakka12 wrote: »

Why would a person with underlying conditions be more likely to go on a cruise? If anything, it would be the opposite. A person in poor health would be much less likely to go on a long trans continental trip than a healthy person

cruise passengers skew older; older people are more likely to have diabetes, heart conditions, etc.

Going off-topic, good article here basically saying that if this kills off the mega-cruise industry, good riddance.

cgcsb

Sweden is basically in lockdown all the time. There's no point looking at from an Irish perspective. We have a party culture here, socialising is everything. In Dublin on a Saturday night walk from Rathmines northwards for about 4km and you'll hardly get through the crowds. There is nothing like that in Sweden. After 8 everything is closed anyway and the few night clubs are hard to find, mostly empty and clandestine in set up. Young Swedish people are to be found at home with a bottle of anti depressants and ultra grey scale tv drama.