Sweden avoiding lockdown

My comment was in response to your post about ..

"...postponed or cancelled health screenings & elective procedures, are very likely to be leading causes of our unusually high excess death rates..."

Traditionally done by the health service. Though can be out sourced.

Lockdown measures were constantly being changed. Introduced and withdrawn. Trying to rewrite a narrative of being locked down in your house unable to exercise for 2+ years or to this day doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.

"...Prof Smyth recalled the early stages of the pandemic...." Clearly alludes that it was in stages, as in not constant.

Funny how the guys who were falling over themselves to argue excess deaths are now doing the same trying to argue there wasn't any. 😁

So the facts have moved from 'clearly the strictest lockdown in Europe' to 'fairly high' and 'near the top'.

So just to be clear, your reply when presented with statistics given by Oxford University and the Financial Times is "no, they're wrong, I know better"?

Right...

The chart, and statistics run from January 1st 2020 to the present day.

The excess deaths are against expected average for that stated country. Its not possible to have fewer excess deaths every year for decades, you're not understanding the concept.

Your selective graphing has been queried on the thread by other posters.

Several posters have queried how the 'strictness' was established, as it does not reflect the reality of the lockdowns in 2020 across Europe. That is not a 'statistic', that is an assumption made by the authors which feeds into the statistics and reflects how granular a view of the data they took to build their statistics. Entirely valid points have been raised by multiple posters on how strict in reality Ireland's lockdown was versus France and Belgium.

What is the 'expected average' of excess deaths? It is just based on a previous baseline e.g. 2015-2019, or was the 'expected average' adjusted to take into account demographic changes since the baseline?

So it is possible to have fewer excess deaths every year using non age adjusted figures, it may simply reflect a shrinking population. It is possible to have higher excess deaths every year, it may simply reflect a growing and or aging population.

Age adjusting is an important step for valid comparisons especially the more years that have elapsed since the baseline. Because otherwise, there may be no real increase in excess deaths, or such demographic changes may be a significant factor in more people dying. It may just reflect an increase in the size of the population of highest mortality risk in the country - compared with the previous baseline for that country. The graph you have cited does not appear to be age adjusted - it just reflects a previous years baseline.

This has been pointed out to you multiple times on the thread already. This age adjusting is a basic concept in actuarial analysis of excess deaths.

Eh no, you said Ireland clearly had the strictest lockdown in Europe, even looking at your skewed view of Europe (no Greece, no Italy, no Spain, no UK, etc. all countries that stricter lockdowns than us at times) in that diagram it is a real struggle to say Ireland was anywhere near the strictest. Try creating the graph with Ireland, Greece, France, Belgium, UK, Italy, Austria and your numbers fall apart.

Or better yet, look at the global tool on that site with the time slider, it shoes that the first week or two in January 2021, is the only time in the three year period when Ireland had a stricter lockdown than the rest of Europe. So I suppose you can say Ireland clearly had the strictest lockdown in Europe*.

*for about two weeks in Jan 2021

I think we need to be careful when we say this or that country had a stricter lockdown than Ireland. Are we looking at peak periods or are we averaging over the entire Covid period. When we do this average, we see that Ireland comes fairly high in the rankings.

I was pointing out the nonsense statement of another poster who said 'Ireland clearly had the strictest lockdown'. That is not the case, we neither had the 'highest strictness' nor the' longest strictness'.

When people make absolute statements like that, to backup some other point they are making, it undermines their whole argument.

That is indeed true, but you have to go with whatever data and measures are available. By the metric under discussion, Ireland is was one of the more stringent countries in the EU when the area under the curve is measured.

In addition, I think the practice is that if a measure was introduced in one region, it was counted as affecting the whole country for the purposes of the index.

While this intruduces inaccuracies, these inaccuracies will tend to push up the score for countries with regional polices such as the example you gave, Germany.

Ireland did not have much in the way of regional policies (there were some) so should be lower in the ranking for that reason but we are not. This furthers the case that Ireland had strict policies by EU standards.

Yeah you still don't understand so I will spell it out as best I can and link you to the source.....at some points in time over the last three years, lockdown measures varied depending on if you were vaccinated or not. The red line in the chart I shared measures the weighted average of 'strictness' for both vaccinated and non vaccinated people in each country. The same chart has a total of three plots for each country: strictness for non-vaccinated, strictness for vaccinated and a weighted average of the two. I have no clue why you are talking about removing vaccination programmes?

Since government policies may differ by vaccination status, a stringency index is calculated for three categories: those who are vaccinated; those who are non-vaccinated; and a national average which is weighted based on the share of people that are vaccinated.

a bit like this study

That's not a study, it's an opinion piece by an economics journalist.

There was a convergence however I think it's probably more true to say that as time went on and restrictions were gradually relaxed other countries changed and became more like Sweden rather than Sweden changing to be more like other countries. Sweden, after all, never had much in the way of restrictions.

I think, however, the movement was greater on the part of other countries in terms of lockdowns, restrictions and the like.

You have it backwards. It's Sweden that changed. Even changed their legislation to facilitate restrictions. There's no probably about it.

You mean eventually the pandemic was over. All countries lifted their restrictions.

Sweden no different in that regard. They didn't invent the ending of a pandemic, or a return to normality.

Irish normality is a health service in crisis.

And that " study " makes no mention of deaths or elderly left to die...but why would you mention that when discussing the effects of Covid ?!

No, the discussion was about how much each country moved. The assertion (I think you supported this too) was that Sweden moved to become like other countries when in fact, due to a much less restrictive policy, the movement from no restrictions to light restrictions and back to no restrictions was much less than than, say, Ireland where we went from no restrictions to quite heavy restrictions and eventually back again.

People seem to be attempting to establish a narrative that Sweden essentially gave up on having no restrictions and imposed the same level as everyone else, thus proving (according to the narrative) that that Sweden was wrong. The big shifts and impositions on the public, however, were mainly in countries other than Sweden.

Sweden were also one of the countries at the forefront of the vaccine rollout similar to Denmark (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-21055-0), which doesn't tally with their herd immunity strategy working (lest people forget, that was the reason for the reduced restrictions they had in 2020, rather than any libertarian play).

Also interesting to watch the anti vax and anti restriction groups clash here, as anti vax can't blame excess deaths on vaccine and anti restrictions can't explain away the 2020 numbers and later numbers aren't accounted for by a small % of missed diagnoses due to lack of screening (which doesn't happen yearly for most programs). It's almost as if there are a lot of complex factors at play.

Again, as has been pointed out to you multiple times on the thread, you are making statements of fact about excess deaths and drawing conclusions that you have not established.

You are quoting excess death figures that are not age adjusted. Then drawing inferences from that.

You have made an assumption about excess deaths that you have not established.

Your continue to repeat time trying to establish it as a narrative - it is without foundation.

No. You misunderstand how excess deaths are calculated. A countrys age profile is built into the baseline.

The age adjustment is of the excess death figures themselves to take into account demographic changes since last baseline. The further from the baseline of 2019 or 2015-2019 the less reliable any comparisons are.

When the UK did this their supposed excess death increase in 2022 was negligible.

If you are using non age adjusted figures excess deaths for 2022 for Sweden, Ireland, UK etc that is 'built on sand' when it comes to drawing any lessons.

Then apply the appropriate adjustment to Sweden and show how the the published figures are misleading in their case. In your view, should the adjusted figures be much higher for Sweden and what basis do you have for holding this view?

Yes and now you need to show that you can provide the adjusted figures for Sweden in order to show they were wrong.

I know you might think this is unfair but you've got to understand that the excess deaths figures, at least on the face of it, prove you glaringly wrong if you're one of the people who thought Sweden would have huge amounts of deaths over the extended period. There's all sorts of adjustments that could be made but if you feel that adjusting for age will make Sweden's death toll from combined Covid plus lockdowns and restrictions seem greater, then provide that analysis. Merely stating that it might be this or that won't cut it, I'm afraid.

Had the figures been different and indicated that Sweden, over the extended period, had overall high excess deaths, then the onus would be on me to prove that the figures were (in this counterfactual situation) misleading. But that is not the case.

Their health service and their preparedness . Its been said and shown repeatedly here but for some reason you don't appear to register it.