Sweden avoiding lockdown

jmreire

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

Government doesnt want to pay out state pensions. It costs money, which we clearly will have very little of.

If you are working until 70 etc you A) pay more tax as u work, government doesnt pay you state pension.

1 side is winning greatly.

Ginger n Lemon...I'd say that what we are hearing now about tax hikes and extending the retirement age etc... is only the preliminary discussions.....low hanging fruit, as it were, but wait until they start to flesh out the bones,,,,and then you will see levels of taxation not seen in Ireland since the time of the "Rack Rent's ".....I'd say that everything that we are being taxed on presently, will see massive tax increases.

niallo27

wakka12 wrote: »

What are you looking at? The mean prediction for Sweden is 5.5k more deaths than Ireland

And the guy saying the error bars are 6 and 160, thats for one day, the 1st of August, the further day away on the model. You literally picked the absolute most extreme example possible to try and make it look bad. Of course it is uncertain, but they have a good track record so far. You will also find that every model ever created will have a median, high and low prediction that differ quite drastically from one another.

They have double our population so I doubled our deaths, I hope these models are correct, I really do, I just don't know how you can predict with any great accuracy how the lifting of restrictions will affect the number of deaths. For models to function correctly you need data and lots of it, its something we don't have yet. This is why any early models were so widely inaccurate.

charlie14

jmreire wrote: »

Ginger n Lemon...I'd say that what we are hearing now about tax hikes and extending the retirement age etc... is only the preliminary discussions.....low hanging fruit, as it were, but wait until they start to flesh out the bones,,,,and then you will see levels of taxation not seen in Ireland since the time of the "Rack Rent's ".....I'd say that everything that we are being taxed on presently, will see massive tax increases.

If it is any consolation we`ll be in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to balancing a budget.

jmreire

charlie14 wrote: »

If it is any consolation we`ll be in the same boat as everyone else when it comes to balancing a budget.

Yes Charlie, I agree. And that's the main difference between the banking crisis 10 years ago and now.....10 years ago, we were alone, and so no bailout was considered ...but now, every Country in the EU is affected, and so BINGO !!! Everyone bailed out. Miraculous ! :D:D

charlie14

jmreire wrote: »

Yes Charlie, I agree. And that's the main difference between the banking crisis 10 years ago and now.....10 years ago, we were alone, and so no bailout was considered ...but now, every Country in the EU is affected, and so BINGO !!! Everyone bailed out. Miraculous ! :D:D

Payback time in that regards alright. For once being in the eurozone is an advantage. How that works for Sweden with them not will be interesting.

Bit cynical

niallo27 wrote: »

Its not double, its 3k more. I work with machine learning, the data is too diverse right now to have any reliability. Its impossible to predict how the easing of restrictions will affect us.

It is an interesting approach nevertheless, using machine learning to tune parameters in classic epidemiological models, comparing results against actual figures as they emerge.

Though yes, it is too early to rely on these predictions with any degree of accuracy.

What Username Guidelines

Bit cynical wrote: »

It is an interesting approach nevertheless, using machine learning to tune parameters in classic epidemiological models, comparing results against actual figures as they emerge.

Though yes, it is too early to rely on these predictions with any degree of accuracy.

They do have comparisons with their model vs actual data vs the very poor IHME model here: https://covid19-projections.com/about/

It also says they update daily though so hard to know by how much of a factor it changes each day.

The IHME model had 400 deaths in Ireland by August initially, Irish times picked it up in early April.

Eugenia Iliopoulou

Sweden has started the lockdown now.

biko

Eugenia Iliopoulou wrote: »

Sweden has started the lockdown now.

Source?

Breezin

Here's a good summary of the Swedish situation.

On the vexed question of herd immunity:

3. Achieving ‘herd immunity’ is not Sweden’s goal
The country’s goal, Tegnell said, is to keep the level of spread down while society functions. He said that has been accomplished with the exception of the higher death toll among the elderly. The immunity that many have acquired from those infected with the coronavirus, however, will help keep the spread down to a reasonable level until there is a vaccine, which might be at least 12 to 18 months off, he said. When most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, this provides indirect protection or “herd immunity” to those who are not immune to the disease.

biko

So the plan was to isolate the old and infirm, and let young and strong catch the virus during their daily lives.
After some time the virus would have infected everybody it could and would have "burned itself out".
Then when there was no active infections left the old and infirm could be reintroduced back into society.

Good in theory, bad in practise.

vixdname

biko wrote: »

Source?

Of course theres not.....its something they heard off a fella who told him over the ditch last Sunday

is_that_so

Piece from the FT on the economic effect in Sweden - free access

https://www.ft.com/content/93105160-dcb4-4721-9e58-a7b262cd4b6e

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Eugenia Iliopoulou wrote: »

Sweden has started the lockdown now.

biko wrote: »

Source?

Let me guess: "It's not being made public for now", right?

Bit cynical

biko wrote: »

So the plan was to isolate the old and infirm, and let young and strong catch the virus during their daily lives.
After some time the virus would have infected everybody it could and would have "burned itself out".
Then when there was no active infections left the old and infirm could be reintroduced back into society.

Good in theory, bad in practise.

However even with much heavier levels of restriction, some countries have also failed to keep the virus out of nursing homes. I don't think this same failure in Sweden necessarily means that other aspects of their strategy have failed but rather something that needs to be looked into and rectified.

biko

26670 cases
3256 dead
12.2% of known cases have passed

Numbers from FHMs own tracking page
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

Breezin

Breezin

Breezin

is_that_so wrote: »

Piece from the FT on the economic effect in Sweden - free access

https://www.ft.com/content/93105160-dcb4-4721-9e58-a7b262cd4b6e

Overall, quite tentative. In essence, they are suffering economically because of the international shutdown, and to the extent that they have shut down domestically. Seems reasonable. Of course, comparative social and medical costs are excluded.

Governor Stefan Ingves told the Financial Times that much of the economy had shut down “in one way or the other” and that “if people are staying at home, it’s hard to stimulate”.

biko

As part of the non-mandatory lockdown

16 April 2020
Swedish transport authorities in March recorded the lowest monthly number of fatal road accidents since records began.

During the month of March six people died in road traffic accidents in Sweden
The average number of casualties in March in the period 2015-2019 was 15.

If we speculate wildly it means only half the traffic, which in turn means half the country is in lockdown (presumably the half that can work from home).

Big pinches of salt here of course.

DeVore

Primary Source.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Lets start with the basics. Sweden has a population twice Irelands but I'll try to give numbers in "per million pop" to equate them.

As of today, 12 May, it has roughly half our number of infections per mil pop. (2,641 vs 4,685).

But it has had more deaths per million pop than Ireland (322 vs 297)

How are these two facts possible at the same time? Because they are testing at a third of our rate. (14,704 per Million Pop vs 43,493 per Million Pop). Its likely they arent seeing infections and so are undercounting them.

They have also acknowledged that they have only been counting deaths where a test has been done. Given their low test rate, that automatically decreases the death count (since one is predicated on the other).

They have 18,443 active cases while we have 4,558. Even accounting for pop thats over twice ours.

They have 360 serious/critical cases compared to our 72. Thats over *five* times ours and indicates that their lack of testing is hiding a much bigger problem.

So they have over twice our active cases, five times our serious/critical cases, are testing only a third our rate, are only counting deaths where there has been a test and yet have more deaths than us.



Now, there are social reasons why Sweden may well be doing "ok". They have a very high proportion of the population living alone. They have a low pop density. Having worked with them in the past extensively, and travelled there, I know they are a people who tend not to have to be told to do something by law, they will have taken matters into their own hands and "done the clever thing".

But I dont get this obsession with people pointing to them as some proof they took the right course, the numbers simply dont support it and if anything, look pretty grim.

brick tamland

Surely we really cant compare the 2 approaches for long time. Our impact is lower now, but there is the possibility that Sweden will achieve the "herd immunity" quicker and as a result wont have as many deaths over the longer term. Comparisons should be made at the end of all this rather than now (if there ever is an end).

My own opinion is that Sweden may have go it wrong, but we just don't know.

Pawwed Rig

Is it possibly the case that they have allowed it to spread a bit more so are closer to herd immunity (if that exists with covid 19). They may have taken the hit up front whereas we may see similar numbers over a longer period. That said they have admitted that they have failed their elderly badly so who knows

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/coronavirus/sweden-admits-failure-to-protect-elderly-in-care-homes/ar-BB13RMao

Jim Bob Scratcher

Sure the majority of countries have failed the elderly, it's not just Sweden.

Harry Palmr

Sweden are the epidemiological Schrodinger's Cat of Covid 19. It's two things at the same time - better and worse depending which Sweden you are looking at and what ideological specs you're wearing.

My gut feeling is that Sweden will have a death tally that stacks high over a prolonged period, sure they kept society open but at what cost to the population? That will be the debate for analysts - does keeping the economy at a higher level of output and wealth generation offset the deaths in the medium to long term?

KyussB

Having a constitutional constraint, preventing declaring emergencies during peacetime, has partially dictated their response to this in avoiding lockdowns.

There's a good website here, with a useful rating of countries performance regarding the coronavirus (those 'beating covid-19', those 'nearly there', and those 'needing to take action') - with Sweden being in the worst performing section:
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries

KyussB

brick tamland wrote: »

Surely we really cant compare the 2 approaches for long time. Our impact is lower now, but there is the possibility that Sweden will achieve the "herd immunity" quicker and as a result wont have as many deaths over the longer term. Comparisons should be made at the end of all this rather than now (if there ever is an end).

My own opinion is that Sweden may have go it wrong, but we just don't know.

There's still no evidence herd immunity is even possible. It would be a reckless gamble, without very strong evidence of lasting immunity. That's not been their stated rationale, either.

BrianD3

DeVore wrote: »

They have a low pop density.

Sweden has just over double our population and they do have a low population density but a high level of urbanisation. Sweden has over 4 times our number of urban centres over 50k population and also 4 times our number over 100k population. And in case anyone thinks that you need a city of millions to have a big problem with Covid-19, the population of Bergamo, Italy is 122k.

If we had much more of our population concentrated in centres the size of Bergamo instead of living in one off houses and tiny villages, how would we be doing. Not well at all I suspect.

seamus

brick tamland wrote: »

Surely we really cant compare the 2 approaches for long time. Our impact is lower now, but there is the possibility that Sweden will achieve the "herd immunity" quicker and as a result wont have as many deaths over the longer term. Comparisons should be made at the end of all this rather than now (if there ever is an end).

My own opinion is that Sweden may have go it wrong, but we just don't know.

This isn't directed at you specifically, but it's interesting to see how the goalposts on Sweden have changed over the last two weeks or so.

Sweden initially came to everyone's attention because they weren't doing lockdown, and didn't seem to be faring much worse. When anyone claimed that Sweden was going the herd immunity strategy in all but name, this accusation was continually denied by officials and online defenders.

As the numbers have indeed gotten worse, especially compared to their neighbours, the narrative has started to shift. Suddenly Sweden is actually going for herd immunity now, that's why the numbers are looking poor.

The reality is most likely that there was disagreement in Sweden over the best approach to this. Their (fair) argument is that everyone else is conducting an experiment with lockdown, Sweden is instead doing its best to find a balance between all of the things that are known to work - medically, socially and economically.
But as this approach is looking worse and worse, the Swedes are left having to revise their reasoning to continue justifying it.

Having to lockdown now would be an enormous rollback and probably political suicide in Sweden. And probably not necessary either, but they're painted into a corner - they can lockdown and prevent more deaths, or they can continue moving forward and accept they've allowed a death toll that could have been avoided with a different approach.

So instead, "herd immunity" has started to become the retroactive justification, after weeks of denying that was the intention.

Padre_Pio

brick tamland wrote: »

Surely we really cant compare the 2 approaches for long time. Our impact is lower now, but there is the possibility that Sweden will achieve the "herd immunity" quicker and as a result wont have as many deaths over the longer term. Comparisons should be made at the end of all this rather than now (if there ever is an end).

My own opinion is that Sweden may have go it wrong, but we just don't know.

It shows how misleading these statistics can be.

A country can achieve zero cases simply by not testing. Look at the US for all of March.
You can reduce your deaths by not counting those outside specific criteria.

The true figures will only come out when all this is over.

RE "herd immunity", there's no evidence so far to suggest you can attain immunity. It could be that a vaccine is needed for life to go back to any semblance of normal.

Interesting to see the effects as countries reopen. It doesn't look hopeful after outbreaks in S Korea and Germany.

seamus wrote: »

Having to lockdown now would be an enormous rollback and probably political suicide in Sweden. And probably not necessary either, but they're painted into a corner - they can lockdown and prevent more deaths, or they can continue moving forward and accept they've allowed a death toll that could have been avoided with a different approach.

So instead, "herd immunity" has started to become the retroactive justification, after weeks of denying that was the intention.

That's a very good point. The UK started down the herd immunity path but quickly rolled back when cases spiked and people started to die. By admitting it was a mistake and changing tack, Boris et al. is going to pay.
Maybe the Swedes simply can't change tack, and have resolved to plough ahead, in an "end justifies the means" approach.