Sweden avoiding lockdown

We had a surge of cases here due to Irish people returning from Cheltenham. It can kick off clusters.

Had Ireland not locked down, and UK did, we would have been the origins of those Cheltenham like clusters.

Countries adopted restrictions on long distance movement. If you think of Scandinavia as a region, I think it is certainly plausible that those parts of Sweden which bordered countries which did lock down avoided some such clusters.

Sweden was also part of an international response which saw huge reductions and restrictions on international travel.

The UK tried to adopt a Swedish strategy. Your description of events leaves out the elephant in the room - why did they abandon it? They abandoned in because their hospitals started filling up and they needed to bring down the R factor before the cases got to the stage the NHS couldn't cope.

The Swedish strategy doesn't scale and imo took a free ride on its neighbours and also to a large extent relied upon the strength of its health service and geographic position. As goldengirl has documented, Sweden took actions in 2020 with regard to care which were derelictions of medical responsibility. Had Tengell's predictions of infection rate been correct, the toll of death and long covid would have dwarfed the actual excess in 2020. He was wrong in terms of the severity of the disease (underestimate) and infection rate to herd immunity (overestimate). The consequences of this mistake would have been far worse than the mistake in the precautionary stance adopted elsewhere of overestimating severity.

That is not to say that all actions Ireland (or any other country) took were necessarily optimal either, but I don't think Sweden has any direct lessons for Ireland or other countries.

There may be micro lessons to be learned all across the board wrt 'adaptable health service', or better ways health services could have mitigated risk and provided services during the pandemic -> but so far on the thread I haven't seen any specific examples from Sweden as to risk mitigation.

Explain the strawman.

Nope . If you are being so specific about who said what , Astrofool commented on the UK not having the low population density or healthcare system to keep on with the Swedish experiment , not the other way round as you say .

"UK didn't have the lower population density or healthcare system to keep on with the Sweden experiment" .

And to the thread generally ..

Sweden had low excess deaths prior to the pandemic deemed because of their very good healthcare , and subsequently lost a lot of those in older age groups in that first year of Covid 2020 .

Following introduction of stricter restrictions and better care for elderly patients in 2021 their excess deaths reduced and while not going back to their normal excess deaths since , have continued to be lower than other countries, it is believed due to the 'harvesting 'effect of 2020 .

Not exactly a feat to be replicated elsewhere and we did not do too well in this regard either in the first wave in 2020.

However we don't have the excellent healthcare system they have , so sustained pressure during and since the pandemic has meant any other stress or pressure has resulted in increased waiting times , morbidity, and deaths , as has happened with other healthcare systems around the world, eg NHS.

This has been documented in data and research , discussed and linked to earlier in this thread by myself and others , in case anyone accuses me of just expressing an opinion .

If the excess death figures are 'raw' and not adjusted for age and mortality changes since the baseline, then it is a very doubtful basis to form an opinion on. When UK adjusted mortality figures for 2022 for example, there were no actual excess deaths.

There is no basis to state that the cure was worse than the disease, when you have no foundation for what the impact in county X would be without restrictions.

As there it is presumption only that Swedish results would have followed in other countries, had Swedish approach been adopted on a wider basis. England tried to follow something like the Swedish approach, and had to abandon it.

I have said this multiple times but its been a while so I say it again cos the discussion around Sweden shows the same 'symptoms' that I observed all along.

When looking at the arguments made over the last days and weeks I think there is no denying that we are talking about small margins. We are debating whether this or the other stat is aligned or unaligned with some other parameters or whether Sweden can be compared to neighbouring countries only or not or whether Sweden had marginally better or worse outcome then this or the other country. We are debating around small differences.

Which is sort of clouding the debate. And while I'm not saying that the lockdown advocates do this deliberately it is certainly distracting from the big picture, which is only what we should be looking at.

The big picture is that Sweden took a drastically different approach. Some continue arguing that it wasnt all that different and that Sweden had restrictions too but the fact was and is that Swedens approach was different enough so that they needed to be attacked in the media for what they did, that their officials needed to be discredited and different enough we even continue to have our own Sweden thread. This one here.

And for all that it turns out that no disaster ensued, that Sweden was all along right in the middle of the road within the EU with regards to the impact COVID had on the country and now it turns out that a decent case can be made that they are best in class after all.

So whatever small margins still exist in that debate its safe to say that the drastically harsher restrictions on civil liberties and life in general that all the other countries introduced stand in no relation whatsoever to their assumed more favourable outcome. In fact it appears there was no more favourable outcome at all.

You can debate around the edges til the cow comes. The elephant in the rooms remains right there.

Which puts a very harsh light on everything that happened elsewhere. From the way the lockdown approach was chosen to the way it was bulled through as 'without alternative' for over two years to the impact it had on many lives and in fact on how we view our countries and our political systems and media and the way we do discourse from now on. It's been very very bad and now we try to brush it under the carpet.

I don't know, when Sweden itself performed a volte face, it doesn't seem like they were onto a winner.

Economically, they definitely weren't.

So you need to define what your success criteria are first.

If it happened again, very few countries would follow the Swedish model.

And do remember, the model they were chasing was mass infections for herd immunity not using vaccinations, which fell apart when coronavirus antibody counts started dropping off and reinfection occurred.

I suggest, as a new user to boards, it's worth reading the thread first as it's outlined in detail throughout.

Even GoldenGirl's post just before mine alludes to the differences.

But, as you're here, what do you think of Sweden's efforts to pursue herd immunity without vaccines? Was it successful?

Its just as likely that Sweden's health system being far superior to Irelands, has always outperformed it. Before during and after lockdown. Irish system has been in crisis for a quarter of century.

Another difference is Swedish culture largely follows rules and advise. Irish culture largely doesn't.

Actually it was you who claimed they didn't change their response, without any proof. The obligation is on you to show they didn't change anything but stuck to their original plan.

As I said they changed their law as one example, of their changing response. All that's needed is one example to void any argument they didn't change anything, but carried on as normal.

The cultural aspect will probably never be accurately quantified. Saying certain rules and regulations worked or did not work will rarely be provable.

You can run a marathon on a treadmill....

That hangover in our health service has been very consistently reflected in our excess deaths since early 2021 too.

For all our lockdowns throughout 2021 and into 2022, Sweden has had far fewer excess deaths in the last 2 years, and broadly similar before that. And their performance has at least equalled their neighbours like Norway, too.

Extreme policies require extreme justification - and with years of data its now very clear Ireland's strictest lockdowns in Europe didn't result in a better performance than Sweden. They were the wrong policy.

The excess deaths - do not appear to be age adjusted. So it is meaningless to make comparisons from them wrt policies, either to Ireland past or with other countries.

We did not have the 'strictest' lockdowns in Europe. In some countries, you needed signed paperwork to leave your home. France had curfews at times when we did not.

Assuming Swedish type results would have followed in Ireland or elsewhere from a Swedish type approach is an assumption made without foundation.

It was discredited in 2020 when England tried to follow something similar to Swedish approach and had to abandon it as hospitals started to fill up.

Irelands lockdown was never as strict as Frances strictest lockdown in 2020. If the study treats Irelands lockdown as being as strict as Frances when you needed paperwork to leave your house then it is not a reliable guide to "strictest'.

The stats arent age adjusted to take into account demographic changes over time within Ireland. Irelands relative profile to other countries is irrelevent. You dont seem to understand how excess deaths are calculated therefore you are misrepresenting the excess deaths stats.

Talk of 'extreme' is an entirely prejudicial premise.

England didnt change course due to political pressure. Another false statement. They changed course due to pressures on hospital capacity. The politicians tried to avoid locking down which was a costly mistake in lives.

There is therefore no evidential basis to state that Swedish results would follow elsewhere which is the implication in your post.

You're right, for a brief period there between May and June of 2020, and again between Jan and February of 2021, Ireland had the strictest lockdown of the 7 countries the tool let me select.

So over the course of three years it looks like we may have been the strictest for three months, maybe four. While counties like Austria, Greece, Italy had much longer periods of being the strictest. I have a feeling if I could add more than seven countries Ireland's figures would be diluted even more.

How does that clearly make Ireland the strictest lockdowns in Europe (that's your words not mine)?

In terms of the overall area under the curve, Ireland is fairly high in the EU table. While we were the very highest for a only short period of time, we tended to stay fairly consistently near the top throughout the pandemic.

We're now paying for it, sadly, in terms of high excess deaths.