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Sweden avoiding lockdown

frillyleaf

Does Sweden have the right approach to this and how is their healthcare system being able to manage Covid19 cases?

What are the differences between Sweden and Ireland and why can’t we continue similar to how Sweden is managing Covid19?

I’m not suggesting either is right or wrong. I would just like to know how Sweden can continue as normal and other countries can’t. Thanks ðŸ˜Š

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Bit cynical

Seweryn wrote: »

Sure, we can bring any argument or philosophy to this, i.e. immigration in recent years, vitamin D, more sunshine than we have here in Ireland, etc...

It comes down to the fact that Sweden did not have the tens of thousands or deaths predicted by mathematical modelling and upon which other countries such as Ireland based their polices. Sweden saw through the lies and fearmongering and we hate them for it.

AlmightyCushion

Seweryn wrote: »

And here is the comparison using the above figures:

Sure, we can bring any argument or philosophy to this, i.e. immigration in recent years, vitamin D, more sunshine than we have here in Ireland, etc...

The deaths for 2020 are inaccurate. If you look at the figures in the excel file on this page, they match for the years 2015 to 2019 exactly. However for 2020, the deaths are 97,164. More than 2,000 than the figures you and glasso are using.

It also looks like these figures are not fully correct either and there will be more added. If you look at the last 3 days of 2020, the deaths are lower than the corresponding 3 days of 2019. After November 10th, deaths in 2020 are a good bit higher than the corresponding day in 2019. This changes for the last 3 days of the year where the deaths are lower than the corresponding day in 2019. This may be correct but it also could be that not all deaths in 2020 are showing here.

According to the link I provide the file was updated on 11/01/2020 and the file also states that figures for 2020 and 2021 are preliminary and will be revised. So, it does look like the deaths for 2020 are not fully accounted for yet.

Also, your population figures for 2020 seem slightly off. See here. You use the figures at the end of the previous year. For 2019 you use the population figures for the end of 2018 instead of the end of 2019. This will make 2020 look worse relative to other years as in 2020 there was very little population growth compared to the previous years. Based on your figures for population growth, the population grew over 110,000 between 2019 and 2020. However, it looks like it only grew about 55,000. Figures aren't updated for December yet so cannot give a proper figure for this but growth was flat for the previous few months.

In your figures 2018 and 2020 have similar deaths per million. If you use the correct figures for population and deaths, you get a much different figure.

2018 - 92,185 / 10.230185 = 9011
2020 - 97,164 / 10.380245 = 9360

That is a difference of 350 deaths per million (an increase of about 4% on 2018's death per million). Your figures show a difference of only 80 deaths per million which is less than 1% higher than 2018.

charlie14

A country that has reported over 10,000 deaths in 10 months due to a novel virus, that had average annual death for the last 10 year of 90,655 and 90,960 for the last 5, would have expected to have 96,600 normal year deaths this year. (95,022 + Dec 31st. x 1.4%).

Yeah that makes sense :rolleyes:

Danno

charlie14 wrote: »

A country that has reported over 10,000 deaths in 10 months due to a novel virus, that had average annual death for the last 10 year of 90,655 and 90,960 for the last 5, would have expected to have 96,600 normal year deaths this year. (95,022 + Dec 31st. x 1.4%).

Yeah that makes sense :rolleyes:

You're grasping at straws and throwing rolleyes to data that does not paint a picture that you had wanted.

Rolleyes away, grasping at straws (three days of in-concluded data) is not going to swing the data the way you hoped for to put meat on the bones of your argument.

charlie14

Danno wrote: »

You're grasping at straws and throwing rolleyes to data that does not paint a picture that you had wanted.

Rolleyes away, grasping at straws (three days of in-concluded data) is not going to swing the data the way you hoped for to put meat on the bones of your argument.

The data speaks for itself.

10 year average 90,655. 5 year average 90,966. This year until 30th December 2020, 95,022.

If the Almighty Cushion is correct, the difference for 2020 is even greater,97,164. That may appear a large increase from 30th December but is possibly the figure up to and including January 3rd. with 2021 being from the first Monday which is the 4th. Four additional days.

Did you by chance notice that the poster was using deaths per million bases on the past 5 years and when the figures for December 30th were not going to give a -% he then used the 10 year figure to achieve that ?
Now that is what I would call putting meat on a bone

Danno

charlie14 wrote: »

The data speaks for itself.

10 year average 90,655. 5 year average 90,966. This year until 30th December 2020, 95,022.

If the Almighty Cushion is correct, the difference for 2020 is even greater,97,164. That may appear a large increase from 30th December but is possibly the figure up to and including January 3rd. with 2021 being from the first Monday which is the 4th. Four additional days.

Did you by chance notice that the poster was using deaths per million bases on the past 5 years and when the figures for December 30th were not going to give a -% he then used the 10 year figure to achieve that ?
Now that is what I would call putting meat on a bone

And the elephant in the room is your overlooking of natural population increase coupled with inward migration. The population in 2010 is not what it was in 2020. Try again.

AlmightyCushion

Danno wrote: »

And the elephant in the room is your overlooking of natural population increase coupled with inward migration. The population in 2010 is not what it was in 2020. Try again.

You're overlooking that the death rate was decreasing even as the population was increasing. 2020 massively bucks that downward trend. For the previous 10 years deaths were between 89,000 and 92,000. For 2020, they will be over 97,000. Surely you can see their level of deaths for 2020 are much higher than they likely would have been without covid.

AlmightyCushion

For the record, I am actually surprised by what happened in Sweden over the past 9 or 10 months. When we first seen what their strategy was and how they were not recommending or putting in the same restrictions as here and elsewhere in Europe, I (and I imagine plenty of others) thought that they would be another Italy. Cases would skyrocket, their health service would come under severe pressure, shít would really hit the fan and it would be a disaster. I thought it wouldn't be long before things got really bad there and they would end up doing the same lockdowns and restrictions as every where else any way.

This was not the case though. Sure they had maintained a much higher daily case and death rate than other places that locked down (at least up until a few months ago, shít got crazy everywhere in Europe over the past few months) but they never got overwhelmed and never ran into the same problems Italy did. So there strategy did work in the sense that it didn't cause them to get overwhelmed. However, if they had locked down like Ireland and other countries did, I think it is safe to say they would have had less cases and less deaths as a result. I also think their strategy would not have worked here. We seen what happened when we opened up. While a lot of people took sensible, reasonable precautions, plenty did not. Maybe it's just a different attitude they have there. Who knows.

Either way, I don't think any one can reasonably argue that the death rate there for 2020 was normal and not larger than it would be if Covid had never had happened.

charlie14

Danno wrote: »

And the elephant in the room is your overlooking of natural population increase coupled with inward migration. The population in 2010 is not what it was in 2020. Try again.

The real elephant in the room for me is how that poster changed his original figure in his 2010 -2020 chart from those in his 2015 - 2020 chart which increased the deaths per million for each of those 5 years. Post 7861 and 8074

If I was a cynic I would almost believe he was attempting to fit the figures to suit a narrative.

FintanMcluskey

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Either way, I don't think any one can reasonably argue that the death rate there for 2020 was normal and not larger than it would be if Covid had never had happened.

Sorry, have you missed the official death rate or did Sweden witness death rates not seen since the Somme

AlmightyCushion

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Sorry, have you missed the official death rate or did Sweden witness death rates not seen since the Somme

I don't know what you are saying here. Technically no one has seen the official death rate as I said in a previous post it is only preliminary. So far it is at over 97,000 which is around 5,000 higher than the worst year in the past 10 years at least and the general trend with their death rate was decreasing. If there was no Covid they would probably have at least 5,000 deaths less in 2020 probably more. I can't see how any one can genuinely argue otherwise. Even the population increase doesn't cover it as their population was increasing for the past 10 years and yet the deaths were still trending downwards.

Seweryn

charlie14 wrote: »

The real elephant in the room for me is how that poster changed his original figure in his 2010 -2020 chart from those in his 2015 - 2020 chart which increased the deaths per million for each of those 5 years. Post 7861 and 8074

If I was a cynic I would almost believe he was attempting to fit the figures to suit a narrative.

No, I wasn't. I did't "change" the chart to suit. All the previous data I had downloaded was for years 2015 to 2020 only.

I have now used the recent 2010 - 2020 statistics, because the other poster made the numbers available here on the topic. I have also taken the population numbers from a different source than in my previous charts (again, I didn't have them for all the years from my old source) and believe they may have been recorded at a different time of the year, but importantly for the comparison, the numbers are from one source. And at the end of the day the numbers calculated (deaths per million) are just for the comparison between the years, and that is exactly what I wanted to show. Compare the average annual death numbers in population of Sweden for the previous 5 or 10 years with 2020 using the available data.

Ginger n Lemon

growleaves wrote: »

What a complete sham.

These tremendously destructive lockdowns are unjustifiable.

This thread was originally two threads back in March, prior to merging them in April.

The OP of one these threads was by a statistician modelling mass death in Sweden based on assumptions similar to the Imperial College London paper.

When it became clear that wasn't going to happen that OP was blended out of existence through said thread-merging and a bunch of new posters (charlie14 etc.) showed up with "muh Nordic neighbours" talking points that they cribbed from The Guardian newspaper.

The ongoing defense of these lockdowns is one of the weirdest things in human history. Have people forgotten that separating families, psychologically crushing social isolation and socio-economic destruction of SMEs (regardless of the macro-economic outlook) are bad things?

Was that OP, was it Neil Ferguson?

Last sentence is just a shame. People have become a covid religion worshippers. Lets pray for less cases. Lets pray for less deaths. Maybe we will be allowed to go have a meal in a restaurant? Lockdowns work! Thats why we have 3rd lockdown already etc. Pathetic

Seweryn

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

Was that OP, was it Neil Ferguson?

Is that the same fella that was predicting precisely 510,000 deaths in the UK? Not 500k or 400k, but 510k.

Useless and massively overpaid public nuisance, sorry, servant and his modelling.

"The model stressed its own urgency as well. Sweden would have to adopt a lockdown policy similar to the rest of Europe immediately if it wished to avert catastrophe. As the authors explained, under “conservative” estimates using their model “the current Swedish public-health strategy will result in a peak intensive-care load in May that exceeds pre-pandemic capacity by over 40-fold, with a median mortality of 96,000 (95% CI 52,000 to 183,000)” being realized by the end of June."

Well, at least they were close to the number of 96k. Except it is the total death number from all year rather than the peak resulted from Cov., secondly, the number doesn't make year 2020 particularly catastrophic considering no restrictions for most of the year.

bb1234567

growleaves wrote: »

https://twitter.com/itstime2rise/status/1348368523052019712?s=20

Is this definitely aginst lockdown? Because I have seen this a lot online the last few months where large protests in Europan cities that were started for completely different set of reasons and posted online and portrayed as being against lockdown. The police brutality protests in France being a notable example where many people outside France very wrongly interpreated them as being against lockdown. I'd also be surprised if Denmark of all places was one of the only places in Europe to see large anti lockdown protests

bb1234567

https://www.thelocal.dk/20210110/nine-arrested-in-denmark-after-anti-lockdown-violence
Seems it was anti-lockdown protest although according to the article it was quite a small gathering of 200-250 in Copenhagen, looks like more in the video. Dublin has had much larger anti lockdown protests if those numbers are correct

growleaves

bb1234567 wrote: »

Is this definitely aginst lockdown? Because I have seen this a lot online the last few months where large protests in Europan cities that were started for completely different set of reasons and posted online and portrayed as being against lockdown. The police brutality protests in France being a notable example where many people outside France very wrongly interpreated them as being against lockdown. I'd also be surprised if Denmark of all places was one of the only places in Europe to see large anti lockdown protests

There are regular anti-lockdown demonstrations across Germany. There were defiance of lockdown orders by businesses in Italy and Poland recently. French hoteliers had a march earlier in the winter.

I only highlighted the Danish protest due to its proximity and relevance to Sweden.

Perhaps I will create a thread which keeps track of all protests. They don't always receive prominence in international media but protestors themselves put videos online.

bb1234567

growleaves wrote: »

There are regular anti-lockdown demonstrations across Germany. There were defiance of lockdown orders by businesses in Italy and Poland recently. French hoteliers had a march earlier in the winter.

I only highlighted the Danish protest due to its proximity and relevance to Sweden.

Perhaps I will create a thread which keeps track of all protests. They don't always receive prominence in international media but protestors themselves put videos online.

https://www.thelocal.at/20210116/coronavirus-thousands-of-anti-lockdown-protesters-rally-in-vienna
There was quite a large one in Vienna today, 10,000 in a country of 9 million which is quite significant. It's the most sizeable protest organised specifically in reaction to lockdown which I've heard of since the pandemic began.

mcsean2163

This was interesting

https://www.ft.com/content/0dec0291-2f72-4ce9-bd9f-ae2356bd869e

I thought about this thread again. Maybe Sweden wasn't the worst idea as it seems if a sustainable approach isn't taken there's a pressure cooker affect on people. I think everyone is pissed off now with it, we followed the guidelines but it appears many people didn't over Christmas and the 54,000 returnees really didn't seem to help. We're lucky there's a vaccine but if there wasn't, I think there'd be real opposition for the under 45 brigade as 21 under 45 died last year. A fraction of road deaths in a normal year and nobody is demanding that people stop driving.

growleaves

Ginger n Lemon wrote: »

Was that OP, was it Neil Ferguson?

Last sentence is just a shame. People have become a covid religion worshippers. Lets pray for less cases. Lets pray for less deaths. Maybe we will be allowed to go have a meal in a restaurant? Lockdowns work! Thats why we have 3rd lockdown already etc. Pathetic

The OP was by a poster called DeVore who is the original founder-designer of Boards.ie and a professional computer modeller.

I think the post was an explication of Imperial's model applied to Sweden but I'm only going by memory and it seems to have been totally disappeared now.

Bit cynical

growleaves wrote: »

The OP was by a poster called DeVore who is the original founder-designer of Boards.ie and a professional computer modeller.

I think the post was an explication of Imperial's model applied to Sweden but I'm only going by memory and it seems to have been totally disappeared now.

I think I know the thread you are talking about titled something along the lines of "But what about Sweden?" I was going to post in it recently but could not find it.

tobefrank321

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

You're overlooking that the death rate was decreasing even as the population was increasing. 2020 massively bucks that downward trend. For the previous 10 years deaths were between 89,000 and 92,000. For 2020, they will be over 97,000. Surely you can see their level of deaths for 2020 are much higher than they likely would have been without covid.

Basically there was a lot of elderly people who should have died in previous years who unfortunately died this year. The Swedes excellent job at keeping older people alive backfired this year with a disease that attacks the very elderly.

They probably should have let more elderly die in previous years like some other countries with a far lower proportion of elderly and people would be hailing how great they did with covid!

Were it not for a massive influx of young migrants in recent years, Sweden would have an even higher proportion of elderly than 20%.

Seweryn

tobefrank321 wrote: »

Basically there was a lot of elderly people who should have died in previous years who unfortunately died this year. The Swedes excellent job at keeping older people alive backfired this year with a disease that attacks the very elderly.

True. Just look at 2019 - their lowest death year for the last 43 years. A good few daths have been "extended" from that year to 2020...

AlmightyCushion

Seweryn wrote: »

True. Just look at 2019 - their lowest death year for the last 43 years. A good few daths have been "extended" from that year to 2020...

Their deaths in 2019 were only slightly lower than their deaths in 2014 and they didn't have a massive number of deaths before or after 2014.

AlmightyCushion

By the way the figures for deaths for 2020 have been updated. It is now at 97,941.

Also, deaths for the first week of January this year vs last year are about 8% ahead (1883 vs 2031). That will probably increase as they may not have been notified of all deaths in that time period for this year so more may be added like they are still being added to 2020's deaths.

tobefrank321

Excess deaths are going to be a feature for most of Europe this year and also for 2020. The size of excess deaths for each country is going to reflect covid deaths per million so Belgium is likely to be the worst, followed by Slovenia, Italy, UK and so on.

I don't think people are surprised by the number of excess deaths in Sweden so much as how relatively few there are. We were promised at least 100,000 excess deaths by some people if Sweden continued on its path. We were told it was going to "end badly" for the Swedes, but it ended mid table for them.

SheepsClothing

tobefrank321 wrote: »

Excess deaths are going to be a feature for most of Europe this year and also for 2020. The size of excess deaths for each country is going to reflect covid deaths per million so Belgium is likely to be the worst, followed by Slovenia, Italy, UK and so on.

I don't think people are surprised by the number of excess deaths in Sweden so much as how relatively few there are. We were promised at least 100,000 excess deaths by some people if Sweden continued on its path. We were told it was going to "end badly" for the Swedes, but it ended mid table for them.

So as long as they don't have the highest excess death rate in Europe (who have on the whole, performed much worse than East Asia), their strategy was a "success"? Got to celebrate the small things in these times I suppose.

Bit cynical

SheepsClothing wrote: »

So as long as they don't have the highest excess death rate in Europe (who have on the whole, performed much worse than East Asia), their strategy was a "success"? Got to celebrate the small things in these times I suppose.

Sweden's critics however are guilty of something similar: so long as Sweden is not the very best in Europe (e.g. Malta, Finland) they are a complete and utter failure. Both are a distortion.

Most of the evidence so far is pointing to Sweden being roughly mid range within the EU, but with lower collateral damage from lockdowns and restrictions than the EU generally. On that basis, Sweden can be considered success compared to its EU colleagues.

charlie14

tobefrank321 wrote: »

Basically there was a lot of elderly people who should have died in previous years who unfortunately died this year. The Swedes excellent job at keeping older people alive backfired this year with a disease that attacks the very elderly.

They probably should have let more elderly die in previous years like some other countries with a far lower proportion of elderly and people would be hailing how great they did with covid!

Were it not for a massive influx of young migrants in recent years, Sweden would have an even higher proportion of elderly than 20%.

At 20% Sweden has the same proportion of those aged 65 and over as Denmark, 2% less than Finland with 22%, and 3% more than Norway who have 17%.
Allowing for population the percentage of those 65 and over in the other three Nordic countries is the same as Sweden. Allowing for population Sweden`s Covid deaths are 5 times greater.

charlie14

Seweryn wrote: »

True. Just look at 2019 - their lowest death year for the last 43 years. A good few daths have been "extended" from that year to 2020...

Just look at their deaths for the first 11 weeks of 2020. They were lower by 1,536 than the 2015-2019 average.

That suggests for a normal year they would have been on track to be close to their total deaths being similar to 2019. Not 9,276 greater and still counting.