Don't take this for more than it's worth, but here's the latest data on COVID death rates in Sweden and its neighbors:
Sweden's cumulative death toll from COVID is still three times higher than Denmark's, but Denmark is skyrocketing up the league charts right now, and both Norway and Finland have seen significant increases as well.
There are still countries that have done consistently well throughout the entire pandemic—Canada is notable in this regard—but there are fewer and fewer all the time. For the most part, it seems as if every country eventually falls to the virus, regardless of what countermeasures they've put in place.
“it seems as if every country eventually falls to the virus, regardless of what countermeasures they've put in place”
Hong Kong has had tremendous success.
Probably the most densely populated city in the world. With 7 million souls.
They have suffered about 12,000 cases and 200 deaths. Roughly.
Compare to Indiana with 6.7 million people.
Over one million infections and 17,000 dead.
Seems to me that one of those places got it right and one of them got it wrong.
Hum.. shouldn't we not believe these HK numbers? A typical Kevin outlier red flag.
It’s increasingly a typical Kevin response but it’s also true that there’s a Chinatown in almost every corner of the world. For the moment, there’s good uncensored lines of communication between Hong Kong and family members or friends in the Chinese diaspora. Just as people outside of China has early warning of Covid-19 (in large part because the harsh lockdown etc was at odds with the government’s reassurances) I have no doubt that if HK government were fudging, people worldwide would know about it.
Well, most of my Chinese friends don't believe anything that comes out of the PRC. What do your Chinese friends say about that?
I don’t think anyone believes anything the Chinese government says. And that’s increasingly true of the Hong Kong government, too.
Nevertheless, HK is still an open enough society that we’d probably know if the government were fudging the COVID-19 data. Just as there’s a general sense that Florida is probably lying even though we can’t pin it down exactly, I think the same is true for HK.
They destroyed the village in order to save it.
I don't think Indiana can be like Hong Kong in the important ways.
Conservatives took over the Danish government and upgraded the anti-covid response to this,
https://twitter.com/LarssssBe/status/1475813702884544513
I am assuming.
"There are still countries that have done consistently well throughout the entire pandemic—Canada is notable in this regard—but there are fewer and fewer all the time."
Japan. For some reason, Kevin always omits the countries in east Asia.
I was going to say the same thing. If the US had Japan’s or South Korea’s rate of death we wouldn’t even be talking about Covid.
And just what is Sweden’s “experiment”? Does it differ in some way to Florida’s?
Cherry picking to defend what was then a bad take and is still a bad take. Put up the cumulative death charts for Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Don't just say things.
I wouldn’t call my Sweden a success but one needs to cherry-pick facts to call us a failure since we managed better than most European countries especially if one check the more accurate statistics of “excessive deaths “ instead of the official statistics since no countries reported in the same way
We got caught in others domestic arguments, especially in USA .
Right wingers advocated a “Swedish model “ that didn’t exist and mainstream media condemned the same nonexistent model.
Reading comments in US mainstream media is a little amusing but also scary. Even the most advanced brains wants to teem up with the crowd , wants approval, wants “likes” and the most ridiculous lies are spreading …fast.
… it was kind of weird.
International media was over and over reporting the same three facts:
Sweden was aiming for herd immunity… and that’s fake news
Sweden did hardly have any restrictions whatsoever…. and that’s also fake news
Statistics on deaths are disastrous compared to other Nordic countries… ..true but irrelevant since the the situation is completely different if one compare urbanization, crowded living conditions and demography and most important, our schools had winter holidays when the virus reached Europe . Roughly 1m of us was all around Europe many visiting after ski bars in the Alps the worst centers for infection in Europe.
We had twice as many infected as the Danes, 5x as many as the Norwegians and 15x as many as the Finns at the onset of the pandemic Our situation was more like the one they had in Belgium
We are in the bottom 25% in the developed world if one is checking excessive deaths
Next year’s statistics will prove to be even more “positive” for us since we have succeeded well with vaccines
Amazing how difficult it is to read a table when born in the US. Or is it perhaps the difficulty in absorbing facts that don't fit your narrative?
It’s getting late over here and I am going to bed soon, if you need further information you will have to wait for at least 12 hours
Up until this fall Sweden looked a lot like Minnesota. Similar death rates per 100,000, similar concentration of death among people in nursing homes.
MN is a blue state that had lockdowns and now has a pretty high vaccination rate, but it sure seems like we're going to end up worse than Sweden in the end. MN now has a death rate of 1800 per million and Sweden is only 1477.
In the end, I don't think the lockdowns or the school closures are the important factors, although that is what everyone obsessed over. Up until vaccines were available the big factor in terms of death was how you protected nursing homes (and I think there were similar, dangerous practices in both Sweden and MN). After vaccines it is all about vaccine uptake, and MN has plenty of Trump country.
Eh, trump country jargon is old and tiresome. Deaths are likely going to get revised up on a global scale. India definitely has more than 500000 desths. It's probably 3-4 million.
He didn't do that because the charts do not support his argument very much.
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=countries-normalized&highlight=United%20States&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=Canada%2CSweden%2CFinland%2CDenmark%2CNorway#countries-normalized
I think that what Kevin’s overlooking (besides East Asia) is that no country is an island, except obviously for those which occupy actual islands. In the final analysis, it’s nearly impossible to permanently do better at fighting the virus than one’s neighbors. And that’s particularly true if the virus has powerful allies within one’s own country. Essentially, the least interested in suppressing Covid-19 will eventually wear down the defenses of the places that want to be safe.
That seems to be a constant across the board.
German death rate is collapsing. It will be lower than Sweden's in another month.
Spades,
That is really not true, at least not yet. The German case rate is dropping fairly fast now, although collapse might be an overstatement. The death rate is only starting to go down a bit. But that is a lagging number and should be going down fast too soon , following the case rate.
But to me, the German trends, as well as some usa states like northern rockie men area, look to be following an expected normal delta pre omicron wave pattern. The delta wave hit Germany bad before France. Germany going down now while France up big.
What is happening?
One possibility is that , on some places like Germany or Montana, they are still in delta wave and just happens that omicron has, by random chance or conditions, not yet really gotten established there.
Or, maybe , recent immunity from a delta infection or a recent vaccination or booster, works fairly well to prevent omicron spread, allowing omicron herd immunity, but only for a quite short period like one or two months. After a few months, either natural or vaccine immunity will have worn down enough to allow a somewhat immunity evading variant like omicron to spread.
Look at places in the USA. Where are places in which cases are now low and dropping? The ones that have just had a recent delta wave ending so natural immunity from delta is still " fresh" and maybe effective enough against omicron . Like Germany. And Florida, whose delta wave hit first and ended first , and dropped to #50 in covid cases, is now back to the top in case #s and that has to be omicron.
If either is true , Germany, and areas like north rockies, will get their omicron wave too , just wait a month or so for it to start .
One thing I suspect is that " micro infections " play a big factor even if below the threshold of an infection. So a recent wave boosted immunity not just in those reaching " infected " level, but also in those whose immunity prevented an infection. The act of stopping an infection itself stimulates immunity.
So, in fla say, even if only 20% of state got " infected " during wave ending in September, maybe 60% more had immunity boosted by micro infection. Which explains why herd immunity seems to be so effective after a recent wave even if a smaller percentage shows as effective . But that wears off as soon as micro infections stop.
The antibodies from delta will negate this. Omicron is a turd. Vastly overrated strain.
While sweden did not specifically aim for herd immunity, and will not admit that was part of the plan, I think they did accept it as an inevitable result in the end with such a contagious virus. And the strategy was how to best manage the inevitable result - what policies will actually make the final result best.
And this seems to have been based on an implicit assumption that a vaccine would not be developed in time before the large majority are infected anyway , or that social measures that would be needed to keep the virus at bay until a vaccine was developed in 3 years would be too costly in other ways ( including extra non covid deaths) . Remember, back in spring and early summer 2020, when Trump was pushing the idea of a vaccine ready by end of 2020, many scientific " experts" were mocking that as unrealistic.
And the correct strategy also depends on guessing what might happen with future variants. If a dominant future variant is one that is far more deadly than original , but an original infection still provides natural immunity against it, letting the original virus infect everyone first is optimal, as that is a sort of vaccination. if the future dominant variant kills 10% of infected, you want to rush out and get infected first with original if it only has a. 5% chance of death. Old cowpox or weakened smallpox vaccinations did kill some and conceivable original covid could have been that .
Now , we did not get such a variant. And vaccinations were developed fairly quick . And we did end up with omicron which instead is less deadly, which then makes delaying any infection helpful. Note delta plays little role here as it's virulence seems comparable with original even if more contagious.
If the vaccines had still not been ready by today, and the dominant variant was more deadly than original, Sweden would end up much better than its neighbors as all their restrictions ( which you just cannot keep up forever) as all Denmark and Norway would have accomplished is delaying the inevitable infections to a more deadly virus.
But actual reality is that vaccines were developed quickly so the more restrictive nations managed to delay many infections until after vaccination which greatly reduces ifr. And now also delaying infections until omicron which is less deadly . So , even if Norway and Denmark end up with around the same number of infections by mid 2022 as Sweden, they should have less covid deaths , as more of their infections will be after vaccination and with less deadly omicron.
But hindsight is 20/20. Sweden made one choice based on future assumptions and not wrong just because their assumptions turned out incorrect.
And, even if Sweden does end up with more cumulative covid deaths, that does NOT mean that they did worse. Judging policy only on that metric is so flawed. There is more to life than just staying alive- quality matters too. And Sweden, while they did have some restrictions as sturestahle says, they kept them more as ones that were more liveable and did not degrade life quality as much.
Best measurement although clearly subjective is quality years lost , where the reduced quality of life counts too. How many people who did not die of covid over last 20 months would trade one month of those 20 months ( i.e. that months never happened) in exchange for living life normally? I bet most. So all the restrictions degrading life quality might be reducing life value by 5% . So year of restrictions is equivalent to losing 16.5 million years of life for a nation re the 330 million who did not die . If each covid death cost 10 years of life ( and even assuming that those older years are equal quality) , a year of restrictions need to prevent 1.65 million deaths to be worth it.
Now feel free to disagree with the assumptions above and wear the line falls. My point is not the exact comparison, just that there is a tradeoff re amount and quality of life and simply reducing number of deaths is not always the best policy.
And I feel Sweden was one of the rare nations who actually considered this and chose to only have restrictions whose death prevention would be worth it taking into account how they would affect life quality.
And another big factor I have mentioned re here in usa. Choosing more limited reasonable restrictions allows the general public to live with them for extended periods . Attempting to impose harsher restrictions that the public is simply not going to be able to live with long term will not work and they will break down , and maybe at the worst time . Here in the USA many places, the public got worn out by continued restrictions over more than a year, including many periods when they were just not that useful. And now, when tight restrictions might be more crucial for a short period of time , people are not complying..
Agreed. Sweden never fell for the meme that it would be a hard lift to conquer Covid, but a short one. They saw it as a long haul from the start, even as a disease destined to become endemic, and the tradeoffs they were willing to make reflect that. That being said, Sweden is a consensual country with a pretty compliant population. It wouldn't have worked in France, I think.
That 'meme' was largely correct. Covid death rates were really high the first few months, 20 - 25% of hospitalized patients died in the first few months. By the end of 2020, the rate fell to 10-15%. By late summer 2021, the rate was down to 5%.
Getting past those first few months allowed for basic treatments to be discovered. Getting past the first year allowed for vaccines and additional treatments.
Nobody knew how outcomes would improve a few months down the line and hindsight is always perfect...but Sweden clearly got it wrong.
Yes, Sweden got it wrong in the sense that its assumptions regarding how long it would take to develop vaccines turned out to be too pessimistic. But on the other hand, how many did actually believe that vaccines would be available within a year? Like most others, Sweden didn't, but unlike most others, Sweden took this assumption into account when deciding on how to act. If you judge decisions on how reasonable they were at the time they were taken, I must say that in this respect Sweden's was better than most. It just turned out that an unprecedented, completely unlikely fast vaccine development happened.
It is true what rational thought says, that our National Health Agency took all aspects of life and health into account, including e.g. the future lives of our children. This aspect will take a very long time to evaluate, of course, but I do believe it will turn out to have made an important difference to the future health and life quality of these children.
All this talk of "the Swedish experiment" and the "Swedish failure" is so extremely simplistic. It was never an experiment, it was according to consensus among epidemiologists around the world at the time, and given the actual situation we were in at the time. And it was done with a long term, holistic view.
Another fact, that I have repeatedly tried to convey here, is that the initial seeding of infection in Sweden was very different from our neighboring countries, making things like closing borders etc useless. During one particular week about 10% of our population was abroad, most in the Alps, and this was just before the scope of the problem was realized. Our neighbors also traveled, but not to the same extent and, most notably, not that same week because of differently scheduled school holidays.
Now, I don't agree with every decision that has been made regarding covid in Sweden, far from it, but I am happy not to be the one in charge of making decisions affecting people's lives and livelihoods, having to make clever prognoses regarding the development of a new virus in a world completely different from when the previous major pandemic hit. What I do understand is that much of what our neighboring countries did initially would not have made a lot of difference in Sweden at the time.
And, again, I'd better say this again as well: We sure did fail our elders. Major fail. Had our government acted on what had been known issues with our elder care system long before the pandemic, we would have been in a much better place. But they didn't.
An interesting fact regarding the current situation: Sweden is actually last among the Nordic countries right now when it comes to vaccinations. Makes me worried.
Yes, silver
And my main point is not whether sweden made a better decision based on facts we only know now , looking back in retrospect. That thinking is wrong headed and is why politicians often make the wrong decision to avoid later criticism . Such as not reacting soon enough to a viral threat that is a possible big threat but is far more likely to turn out to be very little ( as most do). See ny in March when the governor and mayor are still telling people to go to restaurants and not taking any action that could be costly. If they shut down businesses now and covid likely fizzles out, they look stupid based on this flawed judgement . So politicians tend to make policy based only on what is the most likely single scenario and not consider the average value of all possibilities. Also see Afghanistan where we did things that made sense based on the most likely chance of Kabul not falling so quick and we did not hedge our bets.
But also I do not here want to even judge whether sweden made the right decision based on facts known at the time . That may be arguable yes or no.
But at least sweden seemed to decide based on what silver calls a holistic approach . Their process did try to take into account everything. What was best for society as a whole, weighing covid deaths, quality of life, impact of restrictions on children ( whose impacts might even cause deaths for decades), etc.
Whether you agree on whether sweden got the facts correct, either at the time or in retrospect, and whether you agree on how they value weighted different things , at least HOW sweden made that decision- the holistic approach- is the obviously right way. It is the mature adult approach .
And too many other nations just focused solely on preventing " covid deaths " with those measured on a somewhat arbitrary standard . And nothing else mattered. And that is just idiotic.
Silver mentioned excess deaths . Sweden looks much better relatively on that measure vs. " covid deaths ". Why is that ? Maybe partially because nations with poorer thoght out damaging restrictions caused more non covid deaths due to the restrictions. And that does not even consider that the quality of life for the vast majority who did not die was better .
From prior comments , I expect silver and I do differ on many fact assessments such as how effective masks are and weighing of values. But I think we do agree on the decision making process.
And notice today some huge blowup with some re the administration decision to lower the quarantine period from 10 to 5 days and that being because of economic impact.
Here the administration is making an adult " holistic " decision for once , and recognizing that economic impacts do matter too and cannot just decide based solely on public health .
The 10 day period did so too. There is no magic day when your chance of infectuousness goes from 100% to 0%. Letting people back out after 10 days posed some small infection risk too. If considering ONLY covid and that issue , you would quarantine 6 months .
And when this virus is less deadly but cade numbers are so high that quarantine cost in economic terms goes higher, of course you adjust the period and the threshold where covid risk is outweighed by quarantine costs.
But today criticism that they dared think of anything but covid.
Also, silver, you sort of broke a democratic taboo. You acknowledged that the expectation back in spring and summer was that vaccines would not be ready for a few years at best . That is largely memory holed here as then it was trump saying vaccines will be ready soon and the establishment mocking him for that . Cannot ever concede trump turned out to be right about anything!
And interesting thing is expectation that vaccine could be ready by eoy was certainly " knowable " if not known at the time, say by Sweden. The mnra vaccines were developed in January! And just needed to be tested in trials. And the scientists involved were pretty confident based on how they work.
But that fact just was not widely known. I certainly heard nothing about that till near eoy . Usa should have made that info widely available to nations like Sweden so they could incorporate it into their choices. But we did not and usa deserves blame there.
I think part of it was thought that , if the public knew vaccine would be widely available soon, they would take covid less seriously and not agree to restrictions. And that is just backwards.
Some has actually died from Covid and some has did with Covid but out of other reasons and some has died from Covid but not being diagnosed and reported as Covid deaths
One cannot compare “official” statistics on Covid deaths from different countries since no countries are reporting in the same way
Excess deaths are statistics on how many more has died compared to a normal year and statistics on excess deaths also comes with some problems but is a better way to compare different countries (but it’s impossible to find accurate statistics on some nations, USA seems to be one )
Anyway… here are statistics for Europe
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Excess_mortality_-_statistics#Excess_mortality_in_the_European_Union_between_January_2020_and_October_2021
Sweden has changed its approach and adopted similar COVID crackdowns as neighboring countries, the "experiment" is really no longer in play except to some extent whether they may be more exposed prior to vaccination (they are widely vaccinated and boosted), but with Omicron even that seems less important (although may not be when it comes to actual death rates).