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Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: June 18 Update

Sweden has reported zero deaths for the past seven consecutive days. This seems unlikely, but I can't find any explanation for it.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through June 18. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

20 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: June 18 Update

  1. rick_jones

    Come now Kevin, surely you can recall “our Swedish friend” explaining to the rest of us the exceptionality of Sweden? …

      1. KawSunflower

        He did post at least once, I think.

        But we have others who can be counted as replacements.

        And here it seemed to me that only Loxley & I were really put off by that guy.

          1. iamr4man

            There was another Swedish poster, who’s name I can’t recall, who was pretty interesting. I’m sorry he’s gone.

  2. Joe M.

    The Swedish Health Authority's database had an attempted break in at the end of May, at which point they shut it down for a few days to investigate. This is actually seen in your data where the death rate went down close to zero at the beginning of June and then shot back up when the backlog was reported. On June 11th the database was shut down again for what the authority called security reasons without being any more specific. It has been down ever since, hence no death reports.

      1. Joe M.

        The database is back up and SHM (Swedish health authority) reported 34 deaths from the last 11 days, corresponding to 0.3 deaths per million per day. Based on past performance this is probably not the entire backlog, so I would guess that the true rate is closer to 0.4 -- 0.5/million/day.

    1. Rattus Norvegicus

      And here I thought that they had decided to take the Florida way out and just not report anything.

  3. golack

    from CovidActNow Metro areas:
    hot spots w/ >10 new cases/day/100K and infection rate >1.1
    location, new cases/day/100K, infection rate, vaccination (first dose, total pop.)
    St. Joseph (MO-KS), 17.0, 1.33, 22.3% (data spike?)
    Joplin (MO), 26.3, 1.28, ??
    Springfield (MO), 24.1, 1.20, 34.1%
    Cheyenne (WY), 30.7, 1.16, 36.8%
    Little Rock (AR), 11.2, 1.14, 42.9%
    Walla Walla (WA), 24.0, 1.12, 48.8%
    runners up:
    Brownsville (TX), 9.4, 1.19, 58.8%
    Provo (UT), 9.5, 1.12, 40.2%

    Reporting is spotty now, so a little harder to pick out data dumps. Still seeing some ripple effect from Memorial Day, but the numbers now have settled down and are mostly above pre-Memorial Day values in these places.

    And yes, even in areas with overall high levels of vaccinations, pockets of unvaccinated people can drive the numbers. Also, vaccinations won't really affect numbers until a few weeks out.

    1. golack

      note: the above was for yesterday's update. Today's has finally be posted and numbers have bounced around a bit, as tend to happen with smaller populations with spotty reporting, but patterns more or less the same.

      1. golack

        CovidActNow counts Doniphan county, KS as part of the "Metro" area.

        fyi: The NYC metro area extends across NJ and into Pike county, PA.

  4. Jasper_in_Boston

    UK has had one or two death-free days, and its population is six times that of Sweden. I simply haven't followed the latter's progress very closely, but, is it that implausible they might have put together a string?

  5. Silver

    I’m still here, lurking in the background, very much a Swede. Haven’t been commenting much lately though, mainly since there hasn’t been as much confusion around Sweden as there were earlier. And the question in this particular post has already been properly answered.

    Not sure whether I am in the annoying or the interesting league as a commenter, but I still find this blog including commenting field interesting. I have certainly learnt a lot about American views and internal affairs!

      1. rick_jones

        (For one… never thought I’d miss the five minute edit window of Mother Jones’ attack dog Coral..,)

        1. Silver

          I know what you mean... realized too late I should have spelled "learned" rather than "learnt" since this is an American site... oh well. I probably make lots of similar mistakes that I don't even notice. OTOH the commenters here appear to be forgiving regarding such matters, luckily.

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