Unlike most of the rest of the world, Sweden did not mandate coronavirus lockdowns. Instead, most measures were voluntary, but it did cutoff access to nursing homes after a surge in deaths.
It has been an experiment worth monitoring. And for weeks, many in the US have been clamoring for the US to be “more like Sweden”.
But what do the results really show and what is Sweden saying now?
Surprise, Surprise
Please note the head of Sweden’s no-lockdown coronavirus plan said the country’s Heavy Death Toll ‘Came as a Surprise’
“We never really calculated with a high death toll initially, I must say,” said epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.
“We calculated on more people being sick, but the death toll really came as a surprise to us.”
The deniers will point out that about half of Sweden’s deaths came from nursing homes as if those deaths don’t matter.
Covid-19 Deaths Per Million Log Scale
Many will criticize the lead chart because it is in linear format. So there is the same chart in log format.
When it comes to per-capita counts, both charts show the same thing: The US is remarkably like Sweden.
This can be portrayed two ways.
- See, the lockdowns didn’t help.
- Based on population density, Sweden is a total disaster.
You should not compare a tiny Nordic country to the US but there it is anyway, for those clamoring to be more like Sweden.
Tests Per 1,000 People
When it comes to tests, unfortunately the US is far more like Sweden than denmark or Italy.
Covid May 8 Deaths how Rapidly are they Changing?
Here the US is far worse than Sweden, but Sweden’s alleged success may be poised to break down.
Case Fatality Rate
On a fatality rate basis, we better hope the US does not become more like Sweden.
Clearly Sweden is not the success story widely claimed.
Unfortunately, people will look at these charts, continue to make inane flu comparisons and continue to tout Sweden’s success.
The one area of attack left open is whether or not the US approach was economically justified.
Was it Worth It?
I will not address that question because I will not change anyone’s mind.
Importantly, it’s impossible to know what would have happened if the US had not undergone these lockdowns.
But we do know that deaths are way underreported and the US is only as good as it is because of the lockdowns.
Was it worth it? The debate is on.
Mish
COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere. It will stick around just like the flu. You either get immunity or you hide from it. In the long run, hiding will not work. We cannot just keep locking down every time a new wave hits. You cannot defeat an enemy by hiding from it. You defeat an enemy by confronting it. The left LOVES printing more money as a solution to everything but that destroys the value of the currency in question so it’s a dumb solution. The vulnerable population should self-quarantine if they wish but you have to keep the young, healthy population working in order to have someone supporting the government. It boggles my mind that this simple concept cannot be understood by the left.
“The left LOVES printing more money as a solution to everything but that…”
Ahh-HAHAHAHAHahahaha!
You should probably look back at which administrations were most responsible for dumping us further into debt. Not that it really matters — since you couldn’t even get 3 lines in before turning this into political garbage.
When Trump was campaigning as a Republican he spoke the truth that the stock market was in a gigantic bubble because of Fed support. As a Republican President he begged/practically ordered the Fed to keep pumping up the stock market on his behalf.
It looks like all administrations/Feds have been on the left to varying degrees
https : // www . marketwatch .com /story/how-much-each-us-president-has-contributed-to-the-national-debt-2018-10-29
By any reasonable historical measure any government, and political party, which supports central banking, is a leftist one.
Noone thinking government having the ability to arbitrarily print themselves to increased wealth, size, power and influence is a good idea, differ meaningfully politically from Lenin; in any other way than simply being too dumb to recognize the inevitables of what they are asking for.
The graphs are meaningless precisely because of the disclaimers accompanying each graph. Unreliable tests, limited number of tests, and the tendency to include any similar symptoms to COVID-19 as COVID-19 in the death counts…. Unless every country’s reporting is in synch, there is no objective comparison possible. It is widely assumed that the death counts are excessive — that they include “regular” respiratory issues, for instance, and seasonal flu counts — and the total infections are way higher than is currently reported, largely because of the high percentage of asymptomatic infectees. All of this supports the conspiracy theory that this whatever it is disease is about as lethal as the regular flu. Of course, we wont ever know because of the inadequate testings.
WE also know that the government will never own up to the fact that they gave financial incentives to the health industry to skew the death tolls and that their whole approach to this was politically motivated and a failure. In an election year, the left will just blame it all on Trump instead of admitting they were wrong.
No vaccine, that’s where the rubber meets the road. In the absence of a vaccine we must strive for herd immunity. Why ? Because we are destroying small businesses with the lockdown.
Case fatality rate is pretty pointless, this virus kills at a likely statistically relevant number across the board. What I think 12% simply means that 30x more people got it vs were counted.
NY and NJ likely have more elderly obese people in higher density areas. NJ has crappy hospitals and medical schools. But it is a good question. And it shouldn’t’ be a surprise that obesity raises the risk of infectious disease morbidity and mortality. Seems to be a great opportunity for our Surgeon General to urge Americans to lose weight, but like the disastrous Oxiris Barbot, head of the NYC Department of Health, he is an affirmative action beneficiary. And Barbot is a graduate of an aforementioned crappy NJ medical school.
TO THE EDITOR: A recent Journal of the American Medical Association viewpoint regarding fatalities in Italy associated with the new coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic failed to mention obesity as one of the preexisting diseases associated with death ((1)). It seems likely that the increased prevalence of obesity in older adults in Italy compared with China may account for the differences in mortality between the two countries. Furthermore, the rising prevalence of obesity in the United States and prior experience of the impact of obesity on mortality from H1N1 influenza should increase the sensitivity of clinicians caring for patients with obesity and COVID‐19 to the need for aggressive treatment of such patients.
The disproportionate impact of H1N1 influenza and now COVID‐19 in patients with obesity and severe obesity is not surprising given the impact of obesity on pulmonary function. Obesity is associated with decreased expiratory reserve volume, functional capacity, and respiratory system compliance. In patients with increased abdominal obesity, pulmonary function is further compromised in supine patients by decreased diaphragmatic excursion, making ventilation more difficult. Furthermore, increased inflammatory cytokines associated with obesity may contribute to the increased morbidity associated with obesity in COVID‐19 infections.
Although the effects of COVID‐19 on patients with obesity have not yet been well described, the H1N1 influenza experience should serve as a caution for the care of patients with obesity and particularly patients with severe obesity.
So I’m trying to get my head wrapped around these various claims. One approach that might help is to see if there is any “excess deaths”.
One of the problems is “excess compared to which year?”. The 2017-18 flu season was a big one and this is the most recent info I can find so it covers the 2017 part: (sorry in advance if the formatting isn’t right)
Causes of Death, 2017 Deaths
———————— ——–
Drug Overdose Deaths 3,921 (listed separately under “mortality”)
So about 120,000 for 2017. We are 4 months into 2020 and I would expect about 1/3rd (40,000). The site only shows 2014-17. All 4 years show about 120,000.
Do you know of any site with 2020 statistics year to date?
Thanks
I find it odd that some people commenting here think Sweden’s economy isn’t trashed. Their unemployment is staring to skyrocket And they already have GDP declines. Please Don’t give the speculative could have been worse argument. They have a double negative with massive death and poor economics. Maybe next year they reap some benefit from herd immunity but that’s totally speculative too. Listen to Mish. He is objective and speaks the truth.
U.S. is at 14% officially NOW and unofficially higher than that.
Sweden’s economy is not trashed like the U.S. is.
Sweden has the worst of both worlds. Economic shock = yes and high death toll = yes. How could anyone call that a success? They are social distancing and businesses are heavily impacted but they have managed to keep their hospitals from getting overwhelmed. At least sick people can get health care there though.
Something odd though. On both log and linear scales new deaths are falling.
Why?
Could be increased voluntary distancing, weather….or widespread immunity. The latter doesn’t seem likely, as most deaths are known to each other.
Mish,
What do you make of the claim by Off-Guardian that Ferguson’s model applied to Sweden would produce 10x more deaths than they are having?
There are extreme people on both ends and best to be ignored
Deaths actually go up in good economic times….
The negative relationship between the unemployment rate and the mortality rate has been documented in a series of influential papers by Christopher Ruhm (2000, 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2007). A typical estimate suggests that a one-percentage point increase in a state’s unemployment rate leads to a 0.54 percent reduction in that state’s mortality rate (Ruhm, 2000). When applied to U.S. mortality counts from 2006, this implies that a one percentage point increase in unemployment would lead to about 13,000 fewer annual deaths. Ruhm’s findings are widely cited in the health economics literature and have been echoed in work by Dehejia and Lleras-Muney (2004) who find that infant health outcomes and economic downturns are positively linked. The most common interpretation throughout this literature has been that good economic times have a negative impact on individuals’ health because of an increase in work hours, the opportunity cost of time, and resulting changes in individuals’ decisions about how to allocate their time.
You’re assuming some arbitrary “unemployment rate” correlates positively with “good economic times.” Even despite the fact that, to my knowledge, all of Ruhm’s data was from after Nixon blew any and all conceivable relevance of popularly reported measures as far as real economic data is concerned.
Chances are, morality would vary as “expected,” with median number of hours of work required to buy a house in a desirable area. Which is a much more realistic measure of “good economic times” than some cooked up arbitrary “anything rate” is.
“According to a 1982 academic study, a 1% increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths
[including 20,000 heart attacks, 920 suicides, 650 homicides], 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions.”
“For the first time in eight weeks, Hawaii has reported no new statewide cases of COVID-19, leaving the total case count since the beginning of the pandemic at 629.”
Trump was right njbr. At some point it does go away.
Zero Hedge: “Despite what the World Health Organization and Dr. Anthony Fauci tell you, a new study has concluded that if 80% of Americans were to wear a mask, COVID-19 infections would drop by more than 90%.”
Way to early to make any calls on who was right or wrong . . . One thing is for sure . . . we will all have a better idea a year from now . . .
Assuming the truth isn’t drowned in a sea of bullshit. I think we could know what is going on right now, if it weren’t for all the bullshit.
Whether it was worth it for Sweden depends on who’s asking the question. An aged person in a high risk category in good financial standing and with no fear of job loss, of course, would have mortality as the top issue on his mind. Someone who’s been affected economically and does not belong to a risk group sees things differently. He sees his life being sacrificed to keep the “academia” alive.
We’ll need to revisit this chart to see how things play out. My guess, a slight uptick which may be attributable to the slight down tick in2019.
35699*3=107097, which is well above the 89 to 92,000 for the other 10 years. But that’s a misleading calculation that matches the chart’s mislead. The chart that’s displayed in@BrainDamagedBiden comment shows 10 apples (2010..2019, full year) and one orange (Jan..April 2020). Amateur hour mistake.
The human source is not Statista, but someone whose name and language seem Swedish. So, in the future, don’t ignore things at Statista on this graph’s account.
That said, the “source link” is a spreadsheet at https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/statistik-efter-amne/befolkning/befolkningens-sammansattning/befolkningsstatistik/pong/tabell-och-diagram/preliminar-statistik-over-doda/ The sheet includes weekly data. Here’s a graph from the sheet:
So, what the@BrainDamagedBiden post’s graph is trying to show is the relationship between the area between the 2020 line and the other-year line compared with the overall area under the lines.
(The big drop at the end of the 2020 line probably reflects data-input lag. I ignore it.)
And, the graph in my previous comment is also misleading. What happens if the bump in the purple 2020 line is stealing area from the green 2015-2019 line off the graph further on in the year?
Internet and media discussions of Covid19 are an indictment of the world’s educational systems.
Too early into this to determine the best policy. If Sweden gets herd immunity and avoids a more devastating 2nd season, they’ll be praised. But, hind sight is 20/20. One things is clear. The lack of accurate information from China and the WHO played a big role in stoking the pandemic.
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Tyson
“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”Moltke
Trump—a plan of, of.., of what?
February 28…“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
May 8…“This is going to go away without a vaccine, it’s gonna go away, and we’re not going to see it again, hopefully, after a period of time,” Trump said, according to a Yahoo News report. “You may have some flare-ups, and I guess I would expect that.”
No new plan, no new reaction.
And that is why Trump is a criminally inadequate leader.
” No new plan, no new reaction.”
No need.
60K dead OK
70K dead OK
100K dead OK
250K dead OK
Permanently damaged survivors OK
Got it.
Stupid is a stupid does.
I hope you and yours get it and suffer.
Have a good day!😂
“According to a 1982 academic study, a 1% increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths
[including 20,000 heart attacks, 920 suicides, 650 homicides], 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions.
Consider that by 30 April, in the US alone, 30 million had filed for unemployment benefit since the lockdown began.
Between 23 and 30 April, some 3.8 million filed for unemployment benefit. Prior to the current crisis, the unemployment rate was 3.5%.
Some predict it could eventually reach 30%.”
njbr how many deaths from a crashed economy are acceptable to you?
Reading comprehension is important.
Locking down should have been a time to get ahead of the train–not to lie down on the track.
Point out anyone who said “lets lockdown a couple years”
Go ahead look in you imaginary world.
Your imagination is working overtime.
The economy is trashed now.
Those 1982 state mental hospitals are closed now. Most of those would-be patients are now called “homeless people”. That is what a former state mental hospital nurse told me. However the economic destruction is certain to bring about more homeless people.
You hope the OPs family and loved ones get “it” and suffer…Yea/OK – we should all listen to you- you definitely have all the right answers and best intentions to help people. I hope you find a better way to get out your anger than wishing evil on strangers.
Whats the point of arguing that we take measures to save lives if you also say you want someone to “get it and suffer” ?
It’s a TROLL- it won’t discuss – it just wants to have a hateful and hyper emotional 😭 argument like road rage.
It’s time to recognize the Trump movement for what it is: a suicide cult.
As it turns out, most people have brains:
So let me see if I get this right: you’re telling me people act in their own self interest and do t have to be bossed around by the political class? Nay it can be!
Thanks for shareing those articles.
Mish – Sweden’s high CFR comes from low testing rates. It’s been proven time and again during this pandemic that there is a very clear correlation between CFR and testing rates. When we look at antibody tests, the estimated IFR drops substantially.
In hindsight, the most effective response for US and others would have been as follows:
The testing obsession was absurd. Mobilizing medical professionals to stand around waiting to test people doesn’t make any sense with no treatment available. If you’re short of breath, you need oxygen. So go to the hospital. If you don’t, what’s the point of a test?
I think you are on point, however I’d add that the testing capability will be required to move us from “react” to “attack” – at the moment, as you point out, we are playing defense. To get on the offence we need Test-Trace-Treat.
Currently there is nothing stopping us from ramping up testing and tracing capabilities as other countries have done with some success (or almost complete success in the case of New Zealand).
We all want the “Treat” capabilities to improve of course (new drugs, an existing drug, new procedures, and of course, a vaccine), but that does not mean we should wait until we have the perfect cure before we act.
Also, the “Treat” might only be partially effective, so the need for Test-Trace will be around for a long time.
Because infecteds are contagious before they show symptoms, testing is the only way to know who should self quarantine for 2-3 weeks. By the time they they show symptoms, many/most may already be mostly past the peak contagious phase.
Exhaustive testing is also a necessary ingredient in any exhaustive contact and contagion tracing regime. And this is the only way that people can have a reasonable expectation that they are not exposing themselves to risk, by returning to something resembling normalcy. Until that time, no amount of “orders” to “open up” will result in practical return to normalcy.
You’ll never get back to a functioning economy, as long as everyone is concerned that any random person they get close to, may be toting around a hair triggered bomb belt. Or a bioweapon ready to be unleashed.
So if you want to “get the economy going”, you have to get contagion under control. And that requires sufficient testing to ensure any new cases which may pop up, are tested for, confirmed and accounted for; and that the network of contagion that this case is part of, is also discovered, tested, confirmed etc. before things get out of hand.
So many assumptions presented as fact with righteous indignation- reminds me of little children yelling down their parents during China’s “Cultural Revolution.” We really are all doomed.
The logistics and cost of testing +300mm people isn’t realistic. This isn’t just one test per person you’re advocating for, it’s everyone. Why? Because the overwhelming majority show no symptoms, ever. There could be super spreaders working at grocery stores infecting other asymptomatic people, and we have no way of knowing without testing everyone. And then continuing to test them. No country has even attempted testing on that scale. Our best example, SK, had an outbreak confined to one city for the most part. They were able to lockdown before us and keep it contained. We missed that chance due to a failure of leadership across ALL parties and levels of government.
You are very possibly right. We may simply have missed our chance. We’re America in the Fed era, after all. What’s another failure in an increasingly unlimited series of nothing but….
Problem is, we’ll never get anything resembling an economy back, until people faced with the decision of whether to go to work, or just outside for a walk, or not; feel relatively confident they won’t run into one of those “super spreaders” if they do so. Until then, anyone who can, will sit at home waiting for a vaccine. For a year or two or more.
So, if exhaustive testing is too much, the only viable alternative, is to reduce the scope of the problem. Which you can do, as proven, with a few months under Wuhan intensity lockdown. Keep people boarded up until new daily infections are reduced to darned near zero for three to five weeks. Just like the commies did.
THEN, you can start opening up. While testing, contact tracing and quarantining. As the problem won’t be as overwhelming as it is today.
One way or the other, though, you have to get contagion under control. Otherwise, anyone with any option to do so, will just stay at home and wait for a vaccine or cure. Or the opportunity to emigrate to China.
Air travel still not shutdown, in fact TSA scrrened double the people on friday for Covidiots to go visit mom and kill her.
Nursing homes locked down, well accept the workers who come in asymptomatic that kill the residents.
Encourage? Really, how about mandatory, unless you just want people to keep dying.
Again mandatory.
The point of the testing is well testing, followed by Contact Tracing, Quarantining. You want this to end, implement the CDC guidelines.
With asymptomatic carriers you must understand that you have to have massive testing, you do get that, right? Asymptomatic means they are not showing symptoms in case you are confused.
Excellent post !
FWIW IMF data places US GDP contraction as about same as Sweden
IMF ROFL
Is it fault or feature that the inaction, chaos and division engendered by Trump in the month-and a-half of lockdown means that the costs of the lockdown will not be repaid by a greater ability to handle what is still to come?
Trump is clearly a Chinese agent. He’s now negotiating an escape path with his overlords.
And yes this is sarcasm.
There’s no need for conspiracy theories when there’s incompetence. The United States hasn’t been really good at anything for a long time. Even our most “admired” companies are nothing more than sophisticated peeping tom operations, always constantly looking for every little dirty detail about everyone.
Marco Rubio: No, well, I think it’s not hard to do mechanically. I think it’s hard to do politically. There’s, it’s no secret that the trial bar is a
major contributor to the Democratic Party. In fact, I don’t know, this has been really grossly underreported, but there was efforts
a month before all this thing broke open. You know, the masks that 3M makes, you know, the masks that are now widely being
used to protect people, the N93 masks, whatever the number is, those masks, those are the same masks that they used for
industrial purposes. And so there was an effort in legislation to allow that to be mass produced and used for that purpose,
and it was blocked by Democrats on behalf of the trial bar, who wanted to be able to sue. And there was a liability there.
Now ultimately, they relented. My point is they could have started rolling that out a lot earlier, so it’s just an example of the hold
the trial bar has over the Democratic Party. So I think the impediment, really, is getting it passed, not so much implementing once it is.
Ron: The legislation to allow industrial masks (certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) to be allowed for medical use (whose masks are certified by the FDA) was passed on March 19th.
“They are available now,” Pence said on March 19th when asked when the extra masks would hit the market.
Marco Rubio might not be the best person to rely on here.
The lockdown was never supposed to last for the duration. No one had delusions that this was going to be the only, permanent answer.
You should be fully aware that the duration of this pandemic will last for years throughout the world. The world has changed in many ways, for a long time.
It is bitterly funny how so many miss that the purpose of the lock-down was to slow the spread in order to get ahead of the disease–make tests, stockpile supplies, prepare reaction teams, get some highly coordinated level of plans and learn more about the disease.
Has any of that happened under the leadership that we have?
NO.
Absolutely not.
We have an effing maroon at the top who cannot be bothered to promote any safe practices, will not promote actual science with respect to treatments or cures, puts out “it’s gonna disappear” as fact, hides his agencies plans for safe reopening, pushes premature ending of lockdown a day after his “commission”issues guidance, and has his son-in-law steal PPE from hospital sourcing, etc., et., etc.
A wasted month-and-a-half of economic disaster.
We are ending the lockdown without making any advantage from its costs on how to handle what is coming.
And that is why we are screwed with respect to the next phases of the pandemic.
“Excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers — I speak for the mayor also on this one —
we think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York,”
Mr. Cuomo said on March 2. “So, when you’re saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”
And so what to what Mr Cuomo said on such and such a date.
He at least reacted and adapted to the real conditions on the ground in the past few months.
We now know what can happen–we knew a month and-a-half ago.
And we are no further ahead.
And so what of what you say today?
Trump reacted and adapted as well.
The moroon just reiterated that “it will go away” the other day. And again he refused to wear a mask where anyone could see it.
It really doesn’t matter what I say, it is what people of influence say and do.
And like it or not, Trump is a person of influence.
I don’t see Cuomo or Newsom wearing a mask during televised comments. I don’t see the the mayor of Los Angeles wearing a mask during his daily 5:15 PM televised briefing.
I watch the local news every night. They don’t wear masks at the anchor desk. The reporters in the White House briefing room don’t wear masks.
Like it or not, they are people of influence.
Like it or not, Covid-19 will go away at some point.
You are wrong. Our stock market doesn’t think that there will be a resurgence. Basically everyone agrees that once we reach May 17th, “it will be like a miracle, it will disappear”.
“Clearly Sweden is not the success story widely claimed.”
Clearly, the totality of outcome has not occurred yet. Sweden did not trash its economy. What is the fallout going to be from trashing the U.S. economy? What will be the death toll from that?
They didn’t trash their economy, but the pandemic did anyway.
The outcome of Sweden’s approach definitely needs a year or more to be determined – way too early to see what happens as further waves hit around the world – it ain’t over ‘till the … uh ..lady sings
40% of covid deaths in Stockholm and around 18% of deaths in all of Sweden are from Somalis, 0.69% of the population. Why is that? If you take out the Somalis the Swedes are doing a whole lot better than all these graphs indicate.
RE: “40% of covid deaths in Stockholm and around 18% of deaths in all of Sweden are from Somalis, 0.69% of the population. Why is that?”
It makes a lot of sense to ask that question and to try to discover possible answers.
RE: “If you take out the Somalis the Swedes are doing a whole lot better than all these graphs indicate.”
That however makes as little sense as saying “If you take out the blacks/minorities/men/elderly/etc. the Americans are doing a whole lot better than all these graphs indicate.”
Just wanted to point out that alot of the mortality was limited to a very small group for some reason. But you’re right, the way I phrased it was poorly done.
OK, got it … yes, there seem to be many kinds of demographically-related mortality differences .. that also seem to differ by other factors like location It could be something relatively simple like Vitamin-D deficiency related to skin color, it could be higher incidence of tobacco use, obesity, living/working conditions. There are just so many possible factors involved … and we are far too early in the pandemic to think that isolating some correlated factor to the point that you can claim causality is an easy task.
Perhaps they are a major group in the workers that care for people in hospitals, nursing homes and meatpacking plants–just like the immigrant populations in the US that also hold those jobs.
Slightly off topic, world tourism projections on this thread remind that a large part of the economy is in trouble no matter what an individual country might do. I’m not sure how travel will be able to shake off all the different legislation going on in different countries.
” Was it worth it? ”
If you lost or are about to lose your business, you most likely would say no.
If your business is growing or will have gains because of it, you most likely would say yes.
As a freemarket advocate cheering for government intervention seems uterly hypocritical to me.
It also seems you cherry picked the data:
nationalreview.com/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-sweden-refused-lockdown-other-countries-following/
Mish is just the media these days. He picks what we wants to make his editorial, posing as objective when he really hasn’t been for some time.
Mish, you are only looking at this from a very short term perspective. Sweden may experience a higher initial CFR but they are also moving towards herd immunity much faster than other nations so the price they pay on the front end may very likely payoff with a lower CFR on the back end of this.
It’s almost certain that all other countries will experience another wave of COVID infections and deaths as we re-open the economy. A long term economic lock down was never really feasible.
Sweden will not likely experience a second wave as intense as other countries because of their decision to not close down the economy so over the long run, their CFR will average out much like other countries but without the same economic devastation. Of course, since the rest of the world chose to take a sledgehammer to their economies, Sweden will not likely escape the economic consequence of this.
Herd immunity might be an illusion. There are studies showing the low level of anti bodies in recovered people. The so called “herd immunity” is basically allowing people who are susceptible to Covid 19 to die regardless. Now that might be a “good” strategy if this is the LAST pandemic ever, but if every year a new strain emerges and a certain section of the community is allowed to succumb to it, herd immunity might simply mean that NOBODY survives.
Just a schmuck from tn… and not even close to the intellect of most people posting here. But in the last month the consensus of my old rich customers and poor workers is all the same …lock down the elderly… create a different set of rules for subway cities… but everyone else goes back to work and school.
Humans need to go to work …else bad stuff happens. We have all sorts of people who wont go back to work now because of 900 bucks per week from govt. (Whoever set that amount didnt want a v shape recovery).
Yes more people will die today… but the ramifications to freedom are worth it. We send 18 year olds to die in wars for oil, but we cant risk lives of 70 yr olds to save livelihoods and future generations. In october when both flu and covid blow up, whether a treatment or not… politicians, silicon valley, msm, and even chinese,russian hackers will create more hatred among americans before elections.
Just lucky to have my head buried in small tn town. Gonna get uglier for the big city people in next few yrs.
Maybe i am looking into the 2nd and 3rd order effects too much though…
I seriously hope you are safe in a small town in TN, but the numbers are moving in the wrong direction for too much complacency. The correlation between urbanization and growth peaked on April 12th at about 20%, since then it has dropped and in the last 7 days there now is basically zero correlation between urbanization and growth. Some states (Montana, Idaho) are doing well (Idaho after a scare in early April when its numbers shot up), but TN is growing about the average rate for the whole U.S. at the moment. Given that TN is 66% urbanized (vs. 81% for the U.S. as a whole), it isn’t time to plan a parade.
I returned all my n95 masks to Home Depot last week. Some day I might get infected, if not already. I doubt that I will become seriously ill. All rational actions and conclusions.
Sweden is unlikely to see any economic benefit to the policy, with an expected drop of 7-9% in GDP this year. Inline with the rest of Europe.
Those are great questions Parks6.
As pointed out, we have essentially the same result so far in the US and Sweden, though the US has wrecked its economy and is entering into a depression while Sweden has chosen to leave its economy open while the vulnerable are quarantined.
Further, of course Sweden will have more deaths upfront without lockdowns. The test will be where things are a year from now after the Swedes have developed herd immunity with an intact economy and the US gets hit by wave after wave of new infections each time part of the economy tries to open up.
Sweden’s economy does not exist in a vacuum.
Is there likely to be a vaccine any time soon? N0, see MERS and SARS
Is there legal authority to lockdown the populace? Not that I can see.
In what World does it make sense to quarantine the healthy vs the infected?
Why wouldn’t you strongly recommend elders & folks with co-morbidities take extreme caution as they are most at risk?
Given that no vaccine is in sight, what if lockdowns only serve to extend the duration of Covid-19 and effectively prevent herd immunity from even occurring?
What if lockdowns mean extending the duration while opening things up shortens the duration?
What if the overall death count is exactly the same but in one case this goes on for years & the other it is over much more quickly?
What motivation is there to extend the duration & who benefits by these actions?
Why are the people so willing to give up liberty without a fight?
Just a few questions I’d love to see answered.
You’ll get a different answer depending on who you ask..
In what World does it make sense to quarantine the healthy vs the infected?
No one can be sure if they’re healthy or not. Even tests are inconclusive as people have been found to be positive on their 3rd test.
Why wouldn’t you strongly recommend elders & folks with co-morbidities take extreme caution as they are most at risk?
I think they are, at least they are in my area.
Given that no vaccine is in sight, what if lockdowns only serve to extend the duration of Covid-19 and effectively prevent herd immunity from even occurring?
It’s not known if heard immunity will even take place. The virus is mutating so heard immunity for one strain doesn’t protect you from the next.
What if lockdowns mean extending the duration while opening things up shortens the duration?
A shorter duration might be much nastier for patients, families and health workers than a longer duration but we’ll never know.
What if the overall death count is exactly the same but in one case this goes on for years & the other it is over much more quickly?
Again we’ll never know. However a shorter intensive duration might have other adverse consequences: less health care resources for other illnesses etc, more health care worker fatalities, patients being turned away to die in extreme discomfort and distress. The politicians don’t want to face an angry public if thousands are dying without access to help.
What motivation is there to extend the duration & who benefits by these actions?
The motivation is to retain a semblance of control so health care workers can offer some treatment to all patients that present themselves for help. To retain some capacity to treat other illnesses etc. To buy some time to research a vaccine.
Why are the people so willing to give up liberty without a fight?
The lockdown is “the fight”. It is the means by which we’ve decided to fight it, rather than give up and let it spread and kill at random. Not accepting it is giving up.
I realise there’s many differing views but these are my thoughts.
Stop asking question and listen to your overlords. What are you? Some kind of trouble maker!
Not my questions, just my answers.
Is there legal authority to lockdown the populace? Yes, the US Constitution clearly provides the state with the power to quarantine the population to control the spread of disease. There is nothing ambiguous about this; let’s not like pretend like there is. If you want to learn more, look up the sections of law referred to in this article: https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html
Those are all reasonable questions. I personally don’t feel like I’ve given up any liberties. No gestapo is lording over me. For me the bigger issue is time. I’m giving up some time here so that more intelligent people than I can learn what this is and maybe how to handle it. At this point in my life I don’t need or want to be a front line warrior-guinea pig for Trump’s reelection needs.
The story of covid-19 doesn’t end when every nation’s curve is finally a bell shape. There will be a second wave and how Sweden’s response to that in comparison with other nations will give a more complete picture of whether Sweden did the right thing or not.
The seen and the unseen: The more successful containment is now, the more you are pushing the problem out into the future. Comparing mortality in different approaches makes no sense until the virus has gone through the whole population. The hare and the tortoise.
Then add on the life-years lost due to lock-downs. Success bought at the price of permanent lock-down is still suicide.
“The more successful containment is now, the more you are pushing the problem out into the future.”
You may also lessen the problem overall. That’s how that other exponential process, the reactor core, behaves. Not sucking it up and accepting a Chernobyl event today, doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have one tomorrow.
Chernobyl only applies to a process where there is a phase shift. For Covid that only applies to overwhelmed healthcare which is a real concern. However, ventilators in short supply do not help people and are being deprecated as a therapy option. Most of the other options do not really need hospitalization, one of the main transmission vectors. Even oxygen can be used at home. Virtually all successful treatment options revolve around early and even prophylatic application of anti-viral inhibitors, but the establishment seems close-minded against most remedies, many of which were applied by the Chinese in February already.
In the end, virtually everyone will be exposed. Only anti-viral therapy will mitigate the mortalities that ensue. Vaccination, an unlikely possibilitiy, will not arrive in relevant time scales.
Reactor core “phase shifts” aren’t entirely hard knee either. You have a band within which you can bring things back.
Reactor models really aren’t all that far from a model of a viral epidemic, AS LONG AS your viral model allows for some positive correlation between externally applied viral load, and eventual symptomatic severity and also expected eventual viral shedding. Which most of the ones popularly bandied about, don’t. Instead treating every newly infected as exactly the same (IOW as if there were no difference between a fuel rod being impacted by one neutron vs a whole bunch of them)
If, OTOH, your viral model does allow for such granularity, you’ll see that pandemics run away in two, commonly treated as independent, dimensions: Number of infecteds AND expected symptomatic severity. The underlying reason being, of course, that the two aren’t really independent. But are instead both functions of the more fundamental “Number of Virus particles in circulation.”
Apply such a model, and the sicker you get, the more viruses you, on average, shed, hence the more people you expect to infect. AND, the more people are infected, the more virus is being shed into the environment, hence the more virus the average newly infected inhales, hence the sicker he gets. Combine those, and you have a classic setup for a runaway in two dimensions.
I strongly suspect this is part of the reason mortality seems to increase markedly (“surprisingly” according to one the two Swedish “public facing” epidemiologists) in particularly hard hit areas like Italy and New York. Even where, like in Stockholm, hospitals aren’t yet fully overloaded hence rendering meaningfully less effective care: As more people are infected, every newly infected can simply be expected to have been exposed to more existing infecteds, hence to have, in sum, been infected with a higher “dose” of virus. Which, on average, will make him sicker.
If that’s a model with some validity, you can’t simply aim to “speed up” the march to “herd immunity”, without in the process upping mortality as well. Perhaps by a lot.
For months, scientists have been poring over data about cases and deaths to understand why it is that COVID-19 manifests itself in different ways around the globe, with certain factors such as the age of the population repeatedly popping up as among the most significant determinants.
Now, one of the largest studies conducted of COVID-19 infection in the US has found that obesity of patients was the single biggest factor, after age, in whether those with COVID-19 had to be admitted to a hospital.
“The chronic condition with the strongest association with critical illness was obesity, with a substantially higher odds ratio than any cardiovascular or pulmonary disease,” write lead author Christopher M. Petrilli of the NYU Grossman School and colleagues
Writing in The Lancet on March 31st, RNA virus researcher Gregory Poland summed-up the conditions aggravating the COVID-19 situation globally: “We have an increasingly older age demographic across virtually all countries, as well as unprecedented rates of obesity, smoking, diabetes, and heart and lung disease, and an ever-growing population of people who are immunocompromised—all comorbidities that lead to significantly higher risks of severe disease and death from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).”
And Drs. David S. Ludwig and Richard Malley of Boston Children’s Hospital wrote in The New York Times on March 30 that Americans’ risk from the virus is compounded by the fact that they are generally “too diseased.”
“The huge burden of obesity and other chronic conditions among Americans puts most of us at direct risk,” they wrote. “In fact, with obesity rates in the US much higher than affected countries like South Korea and China, our outcomes — economic- and health-wise — could be much worse.”
Good point. And you’re the first person in a long time who spelled poring correctly.
Average obesity would seem like a much more important factor than average national population density (think of Toronto, then think of Canada).
In addition to the obvious obesity factors (poor health, inflammation, shortness of breath), there may be specific enzyme factors that make the obese more susceptible to viral replication.
And the benefit of getting rid of the obese is that there will be more food for everyone else!
Are people more obese in NY and NJ than CA or WA or FL?
CFR comparison misses the point entirely. Swedes only test people in hospitals thus only those with already bad condition can ever become cases. If they did large scale testing on all-ages non-hospitalized patients the CFR would be much lover, in line with other countries.
That is what I would deduce also, but it is not certain . As we are talking the effect of lockdown or not, then it is necessary to know if the high CFR is not caused solely via nursing homes for example, or demographics, or race even. It is all much more complex than at first sight.
Mush, you say it’s impossible to know what would have happened without a lockdown. Then you say we are only as good as we are because of the lockdown. Non sequitur
Actually we know that death counts are over reported.
That’s not what a non-sequitur is. It IS impossible to know what would have happened without a lockdown, but it is NOT impossible to rule out some possibilities- for example, less disease transmission. Not a possibility. Try thinking things through before you post.
Maybe you should go back to Illinois Mish…the Nanny-State needs you.
Some graphs are on log scale and some on linear. So, is there some kind of rationale on what the basis is for selecting the scale (apart from making all charts appear like a bell curve)? For a majority of people who do not understand the difference in visual perception between a log and a linear scale (for example, while a linear scale makes the death curve look like a steep hockey stick, the log scale looks like it has peaked and is on the way down) and that one measures number increase while the other measures percentage increase, it can easily confuse people into believing that the pandemic is dying down while it is actually increasing in large numbers each day (approx half a million people infected globally every 6/7 days (3/26-0.5 million, 4/2-1 million, 4/9-1.5 million, 4/16-2 million, 4/22-2.5 million, 4/28-3 million, 5/4-3.5 million, 5/9-4 million). Uncanny data series; any conspiracy theories here?!
Useful to compare excess mortality in the UK under hard lockdown, with that of Sweden, lockdown lite. UK far above average and far worse than Sweden in the charts below for country Z- numbers
Interesting in the chart for France that they are now well below average. If this plays out in other countries as well, that suggests to me that those who died were mostly within a few weeks or even months of dying anyway
Bingo: “Those who died were mostly within a few weeks or even months of dying anyway”
It’s like saying Heat wave kill 30,000 people in France. But when you look at annual deaths, the heat wave leaves no mark, b/c many of those same people would otherwise have died of a flu or a cold or whatever com october or november. There are always those waiting for that one droplet extra to overflow.
As a swede living in Sweden i think the approach so far in Sweden is reasonable, the health system still have beds and respirators for those in need, and compared to our neighbours we still have something resembling an economy and a life.
The deaths at the nursing homes are a real disaster though. Yes, you cant visit them anymore, but lots of personel moving through anyway spreading the disease (talked with a friend yesterday who is a physiotherapist at a nursing home, he´s still working and yesterday they had a hairdresser coming from outside to cut their hair…).
Compared to Norway which has been in total lockdown for a while with only 1%? of the population infected, well, they can wait for the vaccine, end the lockdown and accept the losses, or wake up one day and be back in the stone age.
What I’d like to see is a real time web feed with photos and quick blurbs about people who die. All of them.
My town paper does that with many of the locals who kick from it. All different ages, youngest recently was 18. And of course lots of old people with full lives who deserved to die with family around them, instead of isolated.
Are there any meaningful statistics other than, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, deaths-compared-to-other-year-deaths? And hospitals overloaded with patients – which isn’t much use without knowing demographics and what the hospital situation was going in, among other things.
Oh! Yes. Statistics tell you to avoid Covid19 if you’re gonna die soon. That’s useful.
Sweden? Sheesh. Did they stay-at-home more or less than the US? How does “Sweden” compare with Swedish Americans? And so much more – see various comments above.
Excess mortality is also a problematical statistic. Most of those pointing to excess deaths compare it to smoothed averages, but in reality, deaths are pretty spiky and noisy, and there are often past spikes in the data worse than the Corona spikes being presented. It’s called cherry picking.
Yep.
Ultimately the answer will probably be – It doesn’t matter.
I predict we will get back to the left side of the growth curve before the end of the summer. The R0 is about to start climbing again.
Before the lockdown I estimated I had at least 1000 people I was in contract with weekly. I can count them now. That number is climbing now.
The second lockdown is going to be real.
We are probably all on board the Diamond Princess in real terms, just with timescale expanded a bit. Some will avoid infection, but without an unlikely breakthrough of some kind, many will not.
There won’t be a 2nd lockdown, especially in an election year. Incumbent politicians are going to pay a price and lose their jobs when Nov rolls around.
It really is a no-brainer at this point to re-open. The politicians need to save face over a catastrophic top-down intervention.
RE: “these depression levels of unemployment and bankruptcy will cause many deaths.”
That seems to be a common ASSUMPTION among many espousing your position. The facts not only don’t support that ASSUMPTION, they contradict it. I suggest you do some research on what the Great Depression did to mortality rates … i.e. very little … only the level of suicides increased slightly and was actually offset by greater decrease in deaths by auto accidents …and of course suicide is a CHOICE that the person does not have to make.
Thank you for massively symplifying suicide. It must be like putting on a shirt in the morning before ones go to work.
Where are the facts that prove the mentioned assumption wrong? They exist because you say so? That’s illogical.
Professor: Economic Impact of Lockdown Will Cause More Deaths than Coronavirus
“A bad economy will hurt and kill people in the future.”
7 May, 2020
Peter Nilsson, a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at Lund University, warns that the economic devastation caused by lockdowns will cause more deaths than the coronavirus itself.
Nilsson was commenting on Sweden’s approach to coronavirus, which unlike virtually every other western country in the world didn’t impose a lockdown to fight COVID-19.
The tactic appears to have worked, with Sweden’s ‘R’ rate of infection being roughly the same as the UK’s, a country which did impose a lockdown. The country also now has much more widespread herd immunity and didn’t sacrifice its economy, meaning deaths from poverty will be reduced.
From Summit “News”? from Paul Joseph Watson? sheeesh
https : // en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Paul_Joseph_Watson
It’s a right-wing OPINION site from a well-known conspiracy theorist pal of Alex Jones … and opinion is fine but not when you pretend it’s news … like CNN and Fox do too …
I never said that suicide was “simple” … I said it was a CHOICE
And I never said I had proven the ASSUMPTION wrong … but I have demonstrated that it is UNFOUNDED … and that the only truly comparable historical economic event not only says that it is UNFOUNDED but also provides evidence that it COULD be wrong.
Do your own research on the matter.
So are you arguing net net that the Great Depression was actually a very good thing?
He is saying you are arguing contagion vs economic depression and that the measures involved are not as straightforward as would seem, if they are comparable at all, even though those are the options presented by reality.
Should remind people how powerful reality is compared to all we think we know. We don’t always like or accept when it changes, because it changes everything we thought we knew, and that causes much anxiety. To adapt is to know what needs to be done, and to be willing to discard any excess.
That is why we discuss among ourselves, because people need to re-orientate their lives now, and with regard to each other also.
LOL! … Wow, and you originally said I was being illogical …
No, that’s just an inane straw-man question not in any way based on anything that I wrote.
I think you are probably smart enough to realize that any statement that “these depression levels of unemployment and bankruptcy will cause many deaths.” is simply an unfounded assertion that is not supported by the most comparable economic disaster in our past history.
I’m not saying that the assertion has been proven false by that past history or that it is guaranteed to be proven false by what happens going forward. Only that it is a purely politically motivated assertion that might prove true or might prove false depending on a myriad of factors that neither you nor I nor anyone else can predict.
The assertion that I stand by is that suicide is CHOICE … again, not a simple matter, a result of a myriad of factors in a person’s life and mental state … but still ultimately a CHOICE (unless they have lost their mental faculties so completely that it comes down to “insanity” or something similar)
All I see is the randomness we see everywhere with this disease. These are not huge differences. Compare within states in USA. Compare other countries and their responses. I get he is comparing Scandinavian countries, I bet you could find others to blow this up
And the point with the funeral homes is that maybe it would have been smart to focus on those at risk. Sweden+
Our stock market is higher. The Swedes lost.
It is pricing in a quick recovery. Now we learn the UK is to introduce a compulsory 14 day isolation for anyone entering the country from the end of May. Which of course means no one will be going on a foreign two week holiday for a while. Other countries are sure to follow.
Our Fed is bigger than their Fed, na-na-na-na-na-na!!
The only meaningful thing I see here is the log death rate chart. Testing was inconsistent and varied from each local area according to how many test kits they had, how many of the test kits were actually reliable, and who actually got the tests. Most tests were used for patients that were being admitted to hospital, and outside that realm not many people other than “important government officials”. Add the facts about hospital funding: $12,000 bonus to hospitals admitting covid patients and another $39,000 reward for each patient who used or got killed on a ventilator to polish up incentives for covid death certificate. Now, let’s take that data and make something representative? Really???
“I’ll stick with death rate and population density for $600, Alex”.
data? Here is data We have successfully delivered a secure analytics platform operating across almost 24 million patient records for the Covid-19 emergency, and used this to identify, quantify, and further explore a range of risk factors for death in hospital from COVID-19 in the largest cohort study conducted by any country to date I found page 11 interesting (pdf) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1.full.pdf
Somewhat different than I expected. Age is no surprise at all, but smoker data maybe an anomaly in that ex-smoker is slightly elevated but current smoker less? That might also be age related. The rheumatoid arthritis/lupus patients are actually higher? That’s not what South Korea found, which is why the use of hydrochloroquine in early treatment.
Regardless the number will soon show it.
The normal daily death rate might be slightly elevated but should stay static. Any excess death growth will be seen.
If it is as bad as I think it will be the number will tell the story. Excluding New York City and with social distancing/lock down daily case rate is still growing. Population Daily contacts is about to go way up with the reopening.
“Why are we retreating when our caseload is increasing?”: UAB infectious diseases expert https://www.alreporter.com/2020/05/08/why-are-we-retreating-when-our-caseload-is-increasing-uab-infectious-diseases-expert/
I watched the press conference. Kay said the economy is dying. There are two highly popular radio show host they have been banging on her to get the state open. She folded.
Cases have gone from 2.4% daily growth two weeks ago to 3.2% this week.
She also completely opened up churches. With this new guidance I expect cases to double. Things are about to get real.
Again there is NO inoculation for Covid19 The human animal spews saliva Thus anyone/everyone is at risk of contracting/re-contracting it