Sweden avoiding lockdown

Chiparus

kaymin wrote: »

Which country do you think might suffer greater mental health issues. One with 7% unemployment or one with 28 - 50% unemployment?

Sweden has always had higher suicide rate- so it is not that simple.

Breezin

PhoenixParker wrote: »

20 days ago they were at 70 deaths per day and 7 days ago they were at 70 deaths per day with numbers above and below the line in equal measure. In the last 7 days there has been a more consistent downward trend but I'd want another solid weeks data before I call that a decline vs a flattening.

Also consider that Thursday 21st May was a public holiday on Sweden and they typically have troughs associated with weekends. An extra holiday affecting reporting will skew a 7 day average.

Overall, by any objective standard, that curve is headed south, and most likely will continue to do so.

biko

Chiparus wrote: »

Sweden has always had higher suicide rate- so it is not that simple.

Sweden's suicide rate is below OECD average.

Harry Palmr

Are they counting the people they are not counting though eh?

Chiparus

biko wrote: »

Sweden's suicide rate is below OECD average.

But above the global rate.

charlie14

sheepysheep wrote: »

The economic argument hasn't fallen apart though. You just keep insisting that it has.

66% of the Irish workforce is now on some kind of Government handout.

Ireland's unemployment about to go through the roof when pup payments end and a 30 billion deficit racked up.

Sweden's GDP will take a hit, possibly the same as most European countries.

However, GDP isn't all about multinationals like Volvo or cruise liners. Ireland's small business, sole traders etc have been decimated.

Sweden by contrast is still open so all these small local business still have a fighting chance. These small business people may be struggling but they're still turning over. SME's are the lifeblood of every economy.

You just can't see the people behind the GDP statistics. Ruined business equals ruined lives in a lot of cases.

That East Anglia report said it all. Hand washing, social distancing and avoiding large scale gatherings are the principle drivers. Exactly what the Swedes did. Irish expert on prime time this week more or less said the same. The main benefit accrued before lock-down commenced.

Here, in Ireland, we are now knee deep in a world of token gestureism.

Can't even jump from 2m to 1m as per WHO without much wailing and knashing of teeth.

Contracting GDP has a trickle down effect for all business no matter how large or small. Sweden`s Central Bank figure best case scenario is 6.9% which would leave Sweden in the same boat as everyone else.
Worst case scenario is 9.7% dependent on how long their restrictions stay in place.

Some of their SME may be ticking over, but on a recent survey on spending comparing Sweden to Denmark in lockdown, the spend in Sweden was only 4% greater.

So yes I can see the people behind the GDP statistics, but some people seem to be unable to see the statistics behind 30 Billion to save lives.
On Eurostat figures we spent 41 Billion to save the banks, not including the 15 Billion from the National Pension Reserve Fund and a GDP contraction of 25%.
At least this time, unlike the banking crisis it is not just our problem. It`s an EU problem where they seem to be getting their act together with not just interest free loans, but grants as well to cover cost of fighting this pandemic.
Actually not sure how or if Sweden can avail of those by being outside the Euro Zone ?

I would agree with that East Anglia report on hand washing, social distancing and avoiding large crowds. All of which were recommended before the lockdown. Problem in Ireland that prior to the lock-down at least two of them were being ignored. Weekend before the lock-down we had pubs, clubs, beaches and public amenity areas jammed with people
.No evidence there to suggest that benefits accrued from a least two of those three before lock-down.

On the 2 meters versus the 1 meter distance, if someone is coughing or sneezing I would prefer to be 2 meters removed for obvious reasons.

charlie14

Breezin wrote: »

Overall, by any objective standard, that curve is headed south, and most likely will continue to do so.

It is, but with their consistently high numbers of new daily confirmed cases it is still to early to judge if it keeps going south in the coming weeks. Hopefully for the Swedes it does.

kaymin

Chiparus wrote: »

Sweden has always had higher suicide rate- so it is not that simple.

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But the correlation between high unemployment levels and suicide is well established.

Mic 1972

PhoenixParker wrote: »

20 days ago they were at 70 deaths per day and 7 days ago they were at 70 deaths per day with numbers above and below the line in equal measure. In the last 7 days there has been a more consistent downward trend but I'd want another solid weeks data before I call that a decline vs a flattening.

Also consider that Thursday 21st May was a public holiday on Sweden and they typically have troughs associated with weekends. An extra holiday affecting reporting will skew a 7 day average.

Correct
Sweden stats are stable, not going down, not going up
As you would expect with limited measures to contain the spread

biko

Chiparus wrote: »

But above the global rate.

Source?

joeysoap

67 today,
54 more than Portugal with approx same population


Unforgivable policy to take against your own vulnerable citizens.

Bit cynical

PhoenixParker wrote: »

20 days ago they were at 70 deaths per day and 7 days ago they were at 70 deaths per day with numbers above and below the line in equal measure. In the last 7 days there has been a more consistent downward trend but I'd want another solid weeks data before I call that a decline vs a flattening.

Also consider that Thursday 21st May was a public holiday on Sweden and they typically have troughs associated with weekends. An extra holiday affecting reporting will skew a 7 day average.

These are good points and it is worth being cautious.

Bit cynical

Mic 1972 wrote: »

Correct
Sweden stats are stable, not going down, not going up
As you would expect with limited measures to contain the spread

Well not quite. The expected pattern was that the stats would continue to go up and quickly overwhelm hospitals if Sweden continued on its current path, forcing stricter measures to be imposed. Flattening and signs of a downturn were not expected.

Harry Palmr

This is how it's going to be for a while in Sweden, their curve is going to be quite fat for a relatively long time before it falls away to a trickle. There'll be no "OMG" type day when 100 plus die but just a steady stream of 30-40-50 which will add up rapidly.

Kermit.de.frog

Agree their curve is going to be long and flat at a high base.

They are up to 396 deaths per million now.

The problem they have is they have no exit on the horizon whereas countries that suppressed the illness are in a much better place to keep it grounded and deaths falling away quickly.

They have an economic crisis on top of that.

So yeah, not great.

biko

joeysoap wrote: »

Unforgivable policy to take against your own vulnerable citizens.

It's so strange when people are so callous.
Only months ago no-one in their right mind would have been ok with old people dying, now they suddenly are.
Maybe they always were, we just didn't know.

Mic 1972

Bit cynical wrote: »

Well not quite. The expected pattern was that the stats would continue to go up and quickly overwhelm hospitals if Sweden continued on its current path, forcing stricter measures to be imposed. Flattening and signs of a downturn were not expected.

That's still a possibility, but it looks like Sweden may instead remain stable at a higher death and infected rate than the rest of Europe

charlie14

biko wrote: »

It's so strange when people are so callous.
Only months ago no-one in their right mind would have been ok with old people dying, now they suddenly are.
Maybe they always were, we just didn't know.

They certainly are not ok with it in southern Europe. They really value their older generations. Other areas seem to be more callous.

From trawling through Covid-19 posts on boards.ie it seems some in Ireland aren`t innocent either in that regard.
There seems to be an attitude from some that the elderly are just economic units that are no longer contributing and if a certain maintenance value is exceed, they should be just tossed aside.

Whether that is a universal value or not it is difficult to tell.

But if push came to shove, I suspect their own loved ones would be considered economically priceless.

cnocbui

biko wrote: »

It's so strange when people are so callous.
Only months ago no-one in their right mind would have been ok with old people dying, now they suddenly are.
Maybe they always were, we just didn't know.

Maybe government is a balancing act requiring compromises and difficult decisions, while back seat driving is a doddle.

sheepysheep

charlie14 wrote: »

They certainly are not ok with it in southern Europe. They really value their older generations. Other areas seem to be more callous.

From trawling through Covid-19 posts on boards.ie it seems some in Ireland aren`t innocent either in that regard.
There seems to be an attitude from some that the elderly are just economic units that are no longer contributing and if a certain maintenance value is exceed, they should be just tossed aside.

Whether that is a universal value or not it is difficult to tell.

But if push came to shove, I suspect their own loved ones would be considered economically priceless.

This is just a fairly transparent strawman argument. Has anyone argued that the old should be tossed aside?

However, on the the subject of valuing old age who makes the determination that every second of life is equally valuable. This is why Euthanasia is an ever more popular choice for end of life treatment. Not everyone desires to spend 18 months bed ridden with dementia in a nursing home.

All you presenting is basically a racist argument that the Swedes are callous, eugenicist, and genocidal with respect to older people. There is no evidence for this. You're just making up a narrative to suit an agenda.

Please supply any scientific research which shows that southern Europeans care more about their grandparents than Northern Europeans.

It's also worth asking why you consider the life of an old person dying in a nursing home of Covid-19 to be more valuable than the life of a young mother dying of Brest cancer because her screening never took place.

There is now a considerable body of opinion that Lockdown deaths will exceed Covid deaths. It's remarkable how little interest people of your persuasion have in the increased prevalence of suicides, abused children, battered wives, cancer deaths etc.

bb1234567

sheepysheep wrote: »

This is just a fairly transparent strawman argument. Has anyone argued that the old should be tossed aside?

However, on the the subject of valuing old age who makes the determination that every second of life is equally valuable. This is why Euthanasia is an ever more popular choice for end of life treatment. Not everyone desires to spend 18 months bed ridden with dementia in a nursing home.

All you presenting is basically a racist argument that the Swedes are callous, eugenicist, and genocidal with respect to older people. There is no evidence for this. You're just making up a narrative to suit an agenda.

Please supply any scientific research which shows that southern Europeans care more about their grandparents than Northern Europeans.

It's also worth asking why you consider the life of an old person dying in a nursing home of Covid-19 to be more valuable than the life of a young mother dying of Brest cancer because her screening never took place.

There is now a considerable body of opinion that Lockdown deaths will exceed Covid deaths. It's remarkable how little interest people of your persuasion have in the increased prevalence of suicides, abused children, battered wives, cancer deaths etc.

Link, please.. Relating to a western context. It doesn't sound credible at all. I have hard that 18,000-20,000 more people may die of cancer because of late screenings in the UK but this is the only valid point I have ever heard about lockdown causing more deaths than saving, and this is still tens of thousands less than those already killed by covid, and peraps more than a hundred thousand less if there had been no lockdown.

Screening cancer patients in covid ridden hospitals may have also well lead to thousands of extra deaths among this vulnerable group anyhow.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/28/covid-19-crisis-may-lead-20000-cancer-deaths/

It is remarkable how people of your persuasion make up things such as suicide going up and pretend to be concerned about a newly exaggerated issue that does not even exist. Most evidence shows suicide rates are going down in most places, in for example Japan and New Zealand recent figures prove this.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/05/coronavirus-suicide-rate-was-lower-during-lockdown-than-before-it-provisional-figures-show.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/japan-suicides-fall-sharply-as-covid-19-lockdown-causes-shift-in-stress-factors

People are outside more, spending more time with families, less stressed, sleeping more. It's not all as doom and gloom as you make out.
Btw, the majority of cancer deaths are over 75, before you continue to pain a false image of the average patient being a young pretty girl with a clatter of babies to try and some how take away from the fact so many people have died of COVID.
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/mortality/age#heading-Zero

So much made up **** in your post, and youre the one calling another poster out. Unbelievable

sheepysheep

bb1234567 wrote: »

Link, please.. Relating to a western context. It doesn't sound credible at all. I have hard that 18,000-20,000 more people may die of cancer because of late screenings in the UK but this is the only valid point I have ever heard about lockdown causing more deaths than saving, and this is still tens of thousands less than those already killed by covid, and peraps more than a hundred thousand less if there had been no lockdown.

Screening cancer patients in covid ridden hospitals may have also well lead to thousands of extra deaths among this vulnerable group anyhow.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/28/covid-19-crisis-may-lead-20000-cancer-deaths/

I said 'body of opinion' not 'body of evidence'. I haven't seen any research report.

However, the fact that you yourself have already encountered the discussion shows that it out there. I've heard it discussed on RTE, a link was provided to 3 UK scientist's discussing this subject way back. Leo has been encouraging people to go get themselves checked almost since the start of lockdown.

How do you strike a balance between old men dying of covid and young women dying of cancer? It's not a simple argument.

bb1234567

sheepysheep wrote: »

I said 'body of opinion' not 'body of evidence'. I haven't seen any research report.

However, the fact that you yourself have already encountered the discussion shows that it out there. I've heard it discussed on RTE, a link was provided to 3 UK scientist's discussing this subject way back. Leo has been encouraging people to go get themselves checked almost since the start of lockdown.

How do you strike a balance between old men dying of covid and young women dying of cancer? It's not a simple argument.

I have indeed encountered this incredibly unsubstantiated but very confidently stated opinion numerous times on this boards. The fact I have heard it so many times on here does not lend it an iota more credence. The body of evidence shows that lockdown has saved many lives, not the opposite. Whether it simply moves those deaths down the line, who knows , and whether it was worth the economic impact, is another discussion.

Like COVID, the vast vast majority of people who die from cancer are also very old and usually men. Most people who die are really old in general in Ireland

cnocbui

Work is being done to add it all up and produce a figure for “avoidable deaths” that could, in the long-term, be caused by lockdown. I’m told the early attempts have produced a figure of 150,000, far greater than those expected to die of Covid.

This is, of course, a model – just like the model for Covid deaths produced by Imperial College. But estimates of lockdown victims are being shared among those in government who worry about the social damage now underway: the domestic violence, the depression, even suicides accompanying the mass bankruptcies. But these are deaths that may, or may not, show up in national figures in a year’s time. It’s hard to weigh them up against a virus whose victims are being counted every day.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/09/boris-worried-lockdown-has-gone-far-can-end/

PhoenixParker

cnocbui wrote: »

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/04/09/boris-worried-lockdown-has-gone-far-can-end/

You can get a model to say pretty much anything and Covid related models pretty much have said everything possible and impossible.

bb1234567

Seriously struggling to see how 'domestic violence, the depression, even suicides' could lead to 150,000 deaths

The increase suicide rates because of lockdown also appears to a false theory based on current precedent in Japan and New Zealand which observed a large decrease in suciide rates because of the lockdown.

I'm just playing the devil's advocate really, I don't think the lockdown was necessarily the best choice, and it definitely should have ended or have been eased long ago, but it's very tiresome seeing so many people post unsubstantiated information such as the lockdown having killed more people than COVID. There is absolutely no evidence of it whatsoever, it is the epitome of scare mongering, something those very posters going on about are usually the first ones to call out others for doing.

the incredible pudding

joeysoap wrote: »

67 today,
54 more than Portugal with approx same population


Unforgivable policy to take against your own vulnerable citizens.

Can I ask where you got that figure from?
From what I was aware of there isn't daily reporting during the weekend in Sweden so I'm not sure where you got that number from. There is some delay in deaths from previous time being retrospectively added as tests come in from outside hospitals determining the cause of death but the weekend numbers are normally given on the subsequent Monday / therafter from what I was I aware, I could be wrong though.
Edit - Eventually found a report - https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/67-fler-doda-i-covid-19-senaste-dygnet/
the expat site (thelocal) hasn't even mentioned a Saturday report so was surprised to see a figure.

bb1234567

the incredible pudding wrote: »

Can I ask where you got that figure from?
From what I was aware of there isn't daily reporting during the weekend in Sweden so I'm not sure where you got that number from. There is some delay in deaths from previous time being retrospectively added as tests come in from outside hospitals determining the cause of death but the weekend numbers are normally given on the subsequent Monday / therafter from what I was I aware, I could be wrong though.

Sweden does report deaths on Saturday, as there is a lag of a day. So the figures reported today are from Friday. Sweden reports almost no deaths on Sunday and MOnday for this reason

cnocbui

In the absence of a vaccine, Sars-2 deaths will most likely happen anyway, in that the number of deaths will ultimately be the same. Lockdown isn't a cure, it's a delaying mechanism at best. Almost everywhere that has come out of lockdown has seen a resurgence.

Funny you should mention NZ, I read the other day of a butcher there who committed suicide, with the cause said to be the bankruptcy of his business due to the lockdown. The Great Depression negatively affected many people for their entire lives.

In the Uk, pediatricians were making urgent appeals to the public because their statistics suggested many children were likely in need of urgent medical attention and not receiving it.

Loafing Oaf

cnocbui wrote: »

Funny you should mention NZ, I read the other day of a butcher there who committed suicide, with the cause said to be the bankruptcy of his business due to the lockdown.

Okay that's it, case closed, the cure is worse than the disease.