Sweden avoiding lockdown

charlie14

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

We're in may now...

We haven`t got the figures for May, but that does not change the fact that Sweden`s highest monthly mortality rate for the last 27 years was for April.

yosemitesam1

charlie14 wrote: »

We haven`t got the figures for May, but that does not change the fact that Sweden`s highest monthly mortality rate for the last 27 years was for April.

Nobody's denying that a bad flu season in the last 30 years resulted in a 25% higher mortality rate per capita than April 2020 which was Sweden's coronavirus peak and also had a very high mortality rate.
We're talking about May now which is when the weekly mortality rate reduced back to a normal range despite no lockdown.

Greyian

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Nobody's denying that a bad flu season in the last 30 years resulted in a 25% higher mortality rate per capita than April 2020 which was Sweden's coronavirus peak and also had a very high mortality rate.
We're talking about May now which is when the weekly mortality rate reduced back to a normal range despite no lockdown.

Out of interest, where are you getting these figures from?
According to EuroMOMO, Sweden have had moderate to very high excess deaths over the last 5 weeks of recorded data (1 very high, 3 high, 1 moderate)

Chiparus

Sweden had 10X the death rate compared to Norway.

biko

34440 known cases
4125 officially dead
12% of known cases have passed

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

biko

Chiparus wrote: »

Sweden had 10X the death rate compared to Norway.

More like 20x

Norway
8374 known cases
235 officially dead
2.8% of known cases have passed

Breezin

biko wrote: »

More like 20x

Norway
8374 known cases
235 officially dead
2.8% of known cases have passed

As everyone knows, Norway is an outlier. Sweden are in the middling range of performance in Europe, as are we. If our costly strategy's outcome was within an ass's roar of theirs, they might be relevant.

An update:

The Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement provided to NPR that the country's government as well as its public health agency believe it's still "far too early to draw any clear conclusions or comparisons connected to the coronavirus pandemic," but "we are open with that the strategy has failed to protect the elderly living in care homes."
Nearly half of the country's more than 4,000 COVID-19 deaths have occurred in elderly care facilities.
A majority of Swedes, 63%, according to one recent poll, support the measures Tegnell's agency has recommended.

And a rare instance of humility from an expert in this field (can you imagine Holohan/Cummings and co. reciprocating?)

Earlier this month, Tegnell admitted that he is not sure Sweden's strategy was the right call. "I'm not convinced at all - we are constantly thinking about this," he told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Finally

A protest against the government's anti-lockdown strategy at Stockholm's Sergels Torg square attracted a few dozen people on Sunday.

WhiteMemento9

So after this disastrous policy and sacrificing lives the data shows they are at 7%. A long way from herd immunity.

NPR - Sweden will not reach herd immunity in May only at 7% now with one of the highest death rates

Breezin

WhiteMemento9 wrote: »

So after this disastrous policy and sacrificing lives the data shows they are at 7%. A long way from herd immunity.

NPR - Sweden will not reach herd immunity in May only at 7% now with one of the highest death rates

From the article in the post above:

Tegnell later described the study's figure as a "bit lower than we'd thought," adding that the findings represented a snapshot of the situation some weeks ago and he believed that by now "a little more than 20%" of Stockholm's population should have contracted the virus.

WhiteMemento9

Breezin wrote: »

From the article in the post above:

I was quoting the data. I believe in the data not what some believe to be true. As stated in the same article regards the line you just quoted.

It's the same figure he mentioned in the CNBC interview more than a month ago.

Either way a middle ground between the two figure is still grim reading.

wakka12

Breezin wrote: »

From the article in the post above:

Given how off literally all his predictions so far have been it's hard to take that with any more than a grain of salt

charlie14

Breezin wrote: »

As everyone knows, Norway is an outlier. Sweden are in the middling range of performance in Europe, as are we. If our costly strategy's outcome was within an ass's roar of theirs, they might be relevant.

Norway is an outlier


All the countries in proximity to Sweden Covid-19 deaths per million population.


Norway 43
Finland 57
Estonia 50
Latvia 12
Lithuania 23
Poland 27
Denmark 95
Germany 100
Sweden 412


Who is the outlier ?


Sweden`s deaths are 25% greater than ours per head of population and the margin growing daily.

lee_baby_simms

charlie14 wrote: »

Norway is an outlier


All the countries in proximity to Sweden Covid-19 deaths per million population.


Norway 43
Finland 57
Estonia 50
Latvia 12
Lithuania 23
Poland 27
Denmark 95
Germany 100
Sweden 412


Who is the outlier ?


Sweden`s deaths are 25% greater than ours per head of population and the margin growing daily.

Belgium 806
Netherlands 342

charlie14

Breezin wrote: »

From the article in the post above:

The predictions for Stockholm alone (and you posted some of them here yourself) for Beginning of May were anywhere between 25% and 40%.
The reality was 7.3%

charlie14

lee_baby_simms wrote: »

Belgium 806
Netherlands 342

Belgium were unlike Sweden counting any suspicious deaths as Covid-19. Sweden are only including those that tested positive before passing.



Netherlands deaths are still less than Sweden with the gap growing between the two.

Breezin

WhiteMemento9 wrote: »

I was quoting the data. I believe in the data not what some believe to be true..

No harm in that. Relevant to consider its age, is all.

charlie14

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Nobody's denying that a bad flu season in the last 30 years resulted in a 25% higher mortality rate per capita than April 2020 which was Sweden's coronavirus peak and also had a very high mortality rate.
We're talking about May now which is when the weekly mortality rate reduced back to a normal range despite no lockdown.

You stabbed a guess at Sweden doing better economically because of no lockdown that was incorrect. and now you are stabbing another guess at Sweden`s mortality rate for May.


What nobody has to stab a guess at is Sweden`s mortality figure for Covid-19 deaths for the 26 days of May so far. It is 1,338.
On average over 50 Deaths a day.
And that only includes those who were confirmed cases before they passed.

the incredible pudding

charlie14 wrote: »

Belgium were unlike Sweden counting any suspicious deaths as Covid-19. Sweden are only including those that tested positive before passing.

That's not true, the retrospective additions of reported deaths are based on investigations of deaths. This is accounting for around 15% of the reported deaths (the figure could certainly be higher that this of course but to state they're only reporting those that have tested positive is plainly false). The majority of these are occurring in nursing homes, whose failure to protect was a complete failure on the government.

charlie14

the incredible pudding wrote: »

That's not true, the retrospective additions of reported deaths are based on investigations of deaths. This is accounting for around 15% of the reported deaths (the figure could certainly be higher that this of course but to state they're only reporting those that have tested positive is plainly false). The majority of these are occurring in nursing homes, whose failure to protect was a complete failure on the government.

The point I was making is that the outlier in all of those countries is not Norway as the poster said, but Sweden.

That is unless you believe Sweden are reporting Covid-19 deaths under the same criterion Belgium were using.
Iirc, do Sweden not record Covid-19 cases unless they know for certain it was the cause.
Would that not suggest that those care home deaths that were added retrospectively tested positive prior to passing.

OneEightSeven

This doesn't have a source, but apparently 14% of Sweden's deaths up to early May are not lab-confirmed. Last sentence in the 4th paragraph in the introduction:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden#Testing_and_surveillance

This means their confirmed death toll of 348 per capita is still higher than ours and we've included suspected deaths as well.

Can't find any data on lab-comfirmed/non-lab-comfirmed deaths in Belgium.

seamus

Onesea wrote: »

Where is this big spike in deaths? Looks right on the mark for a normal year.

When you dig at the numbers yourself there aren't many spikes in death rate found.

I see various news sources are saying death rates are back to normal winter levels.

Another graph intended to be misleading by saying, "Look! The numbers are all roughly the same!"

If we take an average of 90,000 deaths/year, then 38,409 deaths to May 8th represents 42.7% of of the average deaths.

It's May....nearly halfway through the year, right? 42.7% sounds about right?

Nope. May 8th is 35% of the way through the year.

That means that the Swedish death rate for the first 3rd of the year is 21.9% above the average.

If you had actually dug at the numbers yourself you would have seen there's a huge spike.

Also amusing to see you write "death rates are back to normal winter levels". You may not have noticed that it's not Winter any more. Summer is a week away.

sydthebeat

all you need to know is that for almost a full month sweden were averaging at about 70 deaths per day since 17th April to 12th may... with little sign of this dropping in any significant number as their new cases continues to be steadily high.

the incredible pudding

charlie14 wrote: »

The point I was making is that the outlier in all of those countries is not Norway as the poster said, but Sweden.

That is unless you believe Sweden are reporting Covid-19 deaths under the same criterion Belgium were using.
Iirc, do Sweden not record Covid-19 cases unless they know for certain it was the cause.
Would that not suggest that those care home deaths that were added retrospectively tested positive prior to passing.

You said

Sweden are only including those that tested positive before passing.

and simply stated something that's not true - I don't see it so much as 'point making' as attempts at 'point scoring' and I'm not sure why as there's no winners here.
Most reports are patients that have already tested positive whilst some retrospective additions are due to investigations/reports by health professionals (according to the National Board of Health & Welfare) and don't require a test.

To answer your question - of course the reports aren't the same, how can one verify which countries are reporting figures in same way or are using the exact same criteria? what use / benefit is there to do this? It would be a stupidly large amount of work for people who are already overworked. You look at what's reported, how it's stated to be reported and take that with a grain of salt
(or multiply the reported figures by whatever number you see fit / based on someone who's done some research on the matter.
Regardless, you'll still see people on both sides use untrustworthy statistics as ironclad facts to back up their arguments for argument's sake.

I still don't think comparisons at this stage of the crisis aren't especially helpful given it's still very likely that we're in the early days of this pandemic and there's a hell of a lot more work to be done with it. In the very least you just don't know when two totally different strategies are being taken.
There was a 1.5 hour queue from Malmo (south of Sweden) to Copenhagen full of Danes who were returning from the long weekend across the border. They were in lockdown and visited a country that's just been 'advising' social distancing - how do you think this will progress in the future? I really hope that that the countries lifting restrictions will be fine and the cases here will just peter out a bit slowly and it be seen as an awful mistake but for now it's just far too early to be confident that that will be the case.

We look to the Asia and see successful countries' strategies. Vietnam for instance have done a fantastic job at enforcing an incredibly low death rate, however - they've had to shut down for ~4 months to achieve this. Initially when it hit China back in January then again in March to prevent a second wave after a positive case arrived from the UK and travelled a bit. They stopped the spread due to having the ability to trace people's contacts in ways that aren't legal in the EU. It took them two months to ensure the reproduction level was low enough to reopen and those in contact with the affected (up to 2 degrees of separation from what I recall had quarantined) Anyone inbound from abroad will have to quarantine for two weeks until further notice.

For what it's worth - I genuinely wish that the Swedish government had been stricter with guidelines, enforced said guidelines more strongly and being quicker to recommend them. I have huge issues with how they've gone about this. People here mostly seem to follow the rules okay but I've seen exceptions (mostly young and drunk though not exclusively) and it doesn't take a whole lot of exceptions to cause a lot of damage.
The cost of failing to enforce them for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and those in care / nursing homes has been stated here - it's accounting for ~half the deaths (and whilst the numbers are decreasing, this is still the case). There's no desire for point scoring here, I want the numbers to drop everywhere.

JimmyVik

The people supporting Swedens cull of the elderly are starting to sound like Donald Trump at this stage. Next they will be shouting "Fake News".

Breezin

JimmyVik wrote: »

The people supporting Swedens cull of the elderly are starting to sound like Donald Trump at this stage. Next they will be shouting "Fake News".

Oh, that's original!


Sweden is one of the least Trumpian societies on the planet. What's with that, do you suppose?

JimmyVik

Breezin wrote: »

Oh, that's original!
Sweden is one of the least Trumpian societies on the planet. What's with that, do you suppose?

Trump doesnt usually read what he was replying to either.

And just tries to mock it by saying things like "Oh, thats original" or "Fake news".


Then he usually tries to deflect by responding to something that wasnt even suggested.

Breezin

JimmyVik wrote: »

responding to something that wasnt even suggested.

Like an elderly cull?

JimmyVik

Breezin wrote: »

Like an elderly cull?

Again

fisgon

Sweden have actually done the world a favour here, though they haven't really done their populace much of a favour. They have shown us what happens when you only partially lock down.........

The Worldometer numbers are in every way proof that they have not even really tried to control the virus....
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Yesterday they had pretty much the same number of deaths as France, with a sixth of the population. More deaths than Germany, more deaths than Italy. Their testing numbers are tiny, compared even to Ireland, so you cannot take their number of cases seriously, but even they are rising or staying steady, while every other country in Europe is getting control of the virus and numbers are going down.

They don´t really have a curve, just a plateau. The people here saying "look at Sweden" to try to defend a no-lockdown policy have gone very silent recently.

And they are nowhere near herd immunity, and are going to suffer economically anyway.

This thing isn't over, but right now it is looking like they got it wrong.

Kermit.de.frog

Another 95 deaths today.