It's been quite a while since we looked in on Sweden's COVID performance to see how they did compared to other countries. Here are the numbers:
Sweden is a little better than average, though still behind the other Nordic countries. In any case, this doesn't demonstrate that Sweden's loose approach to countermeasures was ideal, but it does suggest that it didn't do much harm.
Is anybody learning any lessons from this? Or just chalking it up to the famously levelheaded Swedish people, who voluntarily adopted solid, levelheaded behavior during the pandemic? Their vaccination rate is pretty average, so that's probably not it.
More generally, is there any agreement on how we should respond to a future pandemic similar to COVID? Masks or no masks? School or no school? Constant handwashing or no? Social distancing? Business shutdowns? Quarantines? Cleaning surfaces obsessively? Which things made a big enough difference that we'd do them again?
Making 650 C02 parts per million the standard for all non-single family buildings. Installation of Far UV lighting in all hallways and conference rooms. This can be done with building codes.
Purchase of multiple air purifiers with hepa filters to be used during cold/flu season for offices, government buildings, schools.
Above 11/100 cases schools go voluntarily remote. Above 18/100 cases schools go mandatory remote.
All staff and teachers n95. All students over 12 n95. Students 7-12 surgical. Activities moved out doors whenever possible.
Capacity limits. Above 25/100 cases shut down of 10 days except schools. When safe vaccine appears mandate it.
Kill anyone who resists.
I can follow all the other stuff, but I haven't heard that elevated CO2 levels do anything to covid.
CO2 is usually a proxy for airflow and ventilation in a room.
Newb is asking for CO2 levels about 60% higher than atmospheric. I interpreted 650 ppm as a floor; if it's a ceiling that puts a different spin on things, but it's still awfully high. Ventilation would have to be nearly nonexistent to get the CO2 that high.
My cousin could truly receive money in their spare time on their laptop. their best friend had been doing this 4 only about 12 months and by now cleared the debt. in their mini mansion and bought a great Car.
That is what we do.. https://earningblue.blogspot.com/
Now, do Japan.
You’re right. Doing fairly well among countries whose response was sub-optimal proves nothing. Japan has had around 30,000 deaths in a population of 130,000,000. They were slow to vaccinate but carefully and compulsively followed masking and social distancing guidelines.
If deaths is your only concern, maybe this is more about Sweden's universal healthcare system than mitigation.
If it's about mitigation against infections, the positivity rate at the height of Omicron tells a different story -- https://bityl.co/FkOp
To wit: 3300 per million Swedes were medically reported as having long-COVID symptoms -- https://bityl.co/FkP3
Thanks for pointing this out. Also, it isn't as though Sweden's economy did better than their neighbors. Rather be in one of the other Scandinavian countries for all this.
But part of the whole point is not if their infection rate was better or worse, it’s whether their infection rate was substantially worse, while simultaneously mitigating a lot of the social, economic hardships.
So, if the sole criteria is infections and death, then yes, other Scandinavian countries, but with more wholistic criteria then… maybe?
I don’t personally know.
while simultaneously mitigating a lot of the social, economic hardships.
Assumes life for Swedes was appreciably better than for Noreigians or Danes. Maybe it was. But how do we measure it? And also, for how long? Maybe Swedes had considerably more freedom of movement, for, say, three months. But by June of 2020 there wasn't much difference?
These cost/benefit calculations are complex.
I completely agree with everything you’ve said. I don’t know either.
But this would be my instinct: I’d say that to a degree that a lot of the “blue” areas of US were much more locked down than Sweden for a lot longer than 3 months. And given all the contention over it, I have to think that it was better regardless of how measurable that is. Having to constantly judge how others were complying or how others were judging my compliance for 2 years has certainly been exhausting.
The important thing is to respond *quickly* with appropriate public health measures. With COVID-19, waiting a month was about 8 viral replication cycles, enough time for the disease outbreak to get 100X - 1000X worse.
A big screw up early in an epidemic is disastrous. Trump ordered the US border closed, but gave hundreds of thousands of travelers time to pour back into US airports, and then did no planning, so they packed together in lines for many hours and both brought COVID-19 back from abroad and spread it thoroughly in the airports, then dispersed to communities. It was kinda like the 'going to shit' montage in movies, where after a few people get infected, a map is shown that blooms red from a thousand foci.
A bucket is only as good as the holes. China's lockdowns and testing stopped the spread of COVID-19, but the failure to acquire/develop effective vaccines and vaccinate their population has left them, 2 years after vaccines are available, still poorly protected.
Kevin's chart does not show the countries which have had really low death rates - their rates are well below 1000/million. You can't understand what has gone on without looking at Asia and Australia-New Zealand.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=kor&areas=nzl&areas=jpn&areas=aus&areas=twn&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnm&areasRegional=uspr&areasRegional=usaz&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usnd&cumulative=1&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2021-06-01&values=deaths
It was always possible that governments could get away with doing little to nothing. We knew so little about the virus. The important thing is to be sincere in deciding what to do, not to be a Trump.
Humans have been dealing with epidemics and pandemics pretty much from the time enough of us started crowding together in large groups. Even before we learned about germs, bacteria, viruses, retro-viruses, parasites, etc., they were around. Even hundreds of years ago (in Europe) the standard practices of isolation, masking, barrier garments were coming in to use. Anybody seen those drawings/paintings of bird masked Italians of old? The whole panoply of disease prevention was represented there - the mask beaks were usually stuffed with cloth dusted with herbs and other nostrums thought to be beneficial. They wore head to toe barrier garments, gloves, and high boots. (As it turns out the barrier garments, gloves, and boots were probably the key to slowing the spread of bubonic plague - making it harder for fleas to get to you.)
Now, being able to AFFORD that kind of gear was probably a problem, but there was some recognition that protective measures were good. And the first reaction to ANY sign of a fast spreading disease even before the cause is fully known is still pretty much the same. Avoid crowds, wear a mask (and make sure it fits), keep surfaces clean, etc.
We didn't need the CDC to tell us that - my mother was a public health and then Navy nurse in late 30s and into the early 50s. My wife and I immediately put in the basic protective spectrum as soon as COVID-19 started to spread. If TFG hadn't systematically degraded the CDC and other pandemic preparedness organizations starting very shortly after he took office, we'd probably be in a lot better condition.
TFG and his band of idiots disbanded the NSC pandemic preparedness organization In June of 2017, cut the CDC overseas warning office budget by 80%, had no idea or interest in using the Defense Production Act to rapidly expand PPE production, pushed quack remedies, etc. They also told states they were on their own - then stole PPE supplies from them. In MA the state made an arrangement with the Patriots football team to send their jet plane on a secret mission to make sure the feds didn't get their hands on the supplies they had ordered and paid for...
Good thing I new how to make hand sanitizer from Everclear and aloe juice, had some N95 masks from my carpentry work, and a box of latex gloves - that kept us going till the actual spread vector was identified. And critics of the CDC directives on PPE? Sod off - all PPE disappeared from stores in a couple of days once people realized this was real and serious. Our local hospitals were cutting up trash bags, making masks of anything they could find, wearing masks way past usefulness 'cause even a degraded mask helps slow transmission. The local hardware stores in our area sent all their PPE to the local hospitals.
And the first reaction to ANY sign of a fast spreading disease even before the cause is fully known is still pretty much the same. Avoid crowds, wear a mask (and make sure it fits), keep surfaces clean, etc. We didn't need the CDC to tell us that - my mother was a public health and then Navy nurse in late 30s and into the early 50s.
But we did need the CDC or some other, similar authority to tell us these things. You personally may not have needed this, but not everybody's mother was a public health nurse. Critical information and instructions in the teeth of a pandemic are (among other things) exactly what public health authorities are for.
Isn't the question why Norway, with very similar genetic and cultural characteristics to Sweden, has had over a two-fold lower rate of mortality than Sweden? Seems like the dead Swedes and their families might actually think Norway did much better than Sweden.
If I recall correctly, did not Sweden start out basically ignoring the virus, but, within months, changed their behavior in a positive manner?
They didn't "basically ignore" the virus. They focused on bending the infections curve, with an eye toward protecting the capacity of the healthcare system with minimum restrictions on personal freedom. While such a goal is laudible, it seems clear enough that a more draconian approach saves more lives. Which strategy should be followed in part flows from how we value human life, and how we value freedom. It's a judgment call. I'd argue Sweden needlessly let too many people die, and China (at present) is needlessly restricting freedom.
My thoughts exactly. Sweden's inherent strengths kept deaths below many other countries that don't have those strengths, but it obviously could have done better with more countermeasures, as evidenced by the fact that its closest peer countries DID do better.
"is there any agreement on how we should respond to a future pandemic similar to COVID?"
No.
For a close-to-scientific discussion, see these (open access);
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05398-2
https://www.nature.com/collections/jaacfgeief
Look at one metric and draw a firm conclusion? Is this really Kevin Drum?
It seems to me that fairly restrictive measures are appropriate until you know how contagious and how lethal the new pathogen appears to be. Once you have good data on that, adjust as seems prudent. It is possible that Sweden lost some extra people at the beginning by deciding its response too early in the outbreak. It is also possible that, had the virus been much more contagious and lethal than it turned out to be, the failure to control community transition, if only temporarily, at the outset could have been truly catastrophic.
If you think back to March 2020 in places like NYC, I find it hard to argue that maximum restrictions were not justified based on the then-conditions in the community. What else are you supposed to do when people are dying in droves and the healthcare system is collapsing, and you still have no effective preventives or treatments?
What is Hungary doing that is so much worse?
Nothing. No mitigation, minimal vaccine uptake.
The only comparison that matters is how did they do vis-a-vis their peers (Denmark, Finland and especially Norway). Mmm, looks like they did twice as bad. Obviously an analysis of this type requires more data points so one cannot draw any large conclusions but if your peer countries are doing twice as better as you then you are not doing to well.
Why has California done so much better than Florida? Do you think the policies of the governors of those states had anything to do with it? Over time Florida has surpassed New York in Covid deaths. Do you think the policies enacted in New York after the initial wave as opposed to the lack of action taken by Florida had anything to do with it?
Why is Floria held up as a success story in Covid response when the facts show disastrous results?
"levelheaded Swedish people, who voluntarily adopted solid, levelheaded behavior during the pandemic?"
Yeah, the good old US of A, a levelheaded country, who would voluntarily adopt levelheaded behavior? This is the same country who privately owns 400 million guns and can't understand why all that firepower results in 45,000 deaths per year and continued mass shooting events (like last night).
It looks like latitude and climate make a big difference.
[sigh] When herding cats, the breed of cat will dictate your technique.
It's difficult to compare countries in detail - like Sweden compared to other Scandinavian countries or Scandinavia vs. other parts of Europe - but there is one obvious conclusion. The countries that adopted stringent measures or were able to isolate until most people were vaccinated had much lower death rates, even if their total infection rates eventually caught up to other countries. This can be seen in the cumulative death vs infection totals.
Of course this means that vaccines should be developed and distributed as fast as possible, which is nothing new. The ideal response is clearly to shut down until everybody is vaccinated, assuming that the vaccine is at least as effective as the mRNA vaccines have been, and that there is fast distribution. This could be done in a few months. But so far there seems to be little real effort to implement fast distribution worldwide, or even in the US. We will probably have to start over when the next pandemic happens.
The cost of getting organized in advance is far less than that of a long shutdown, but without a big immediate profit for somebody this is hard to do in countries like the US and (say) the UK.
The comparison in the first paragraph is based on countries whose totals are presumably reliable. There are many countries whose low totals are unreliable.
Given how differently different countries count deaths from Covid, it'd probably be better to do these country comparisons using all-cause mortality. Which countries had more elevated levels of mortality overall during Covid?
This post is why I have always loved Kevin Drum, even back to his CalPundit days. He is an honest broker who genuinely tries to think beyond ideology and to understand politics and public policy. Most people are dodging the Sweden question these days, but it is obviously an important perspective as one thinks about future pandemic management.
Sweden is twice the size of Norway and Denmark, and we've seen better results in smaller countries/states vs their larger neighbors, so Sweden was probably going to be slightly worse than other Scandinavian countries, even if they had the same policies.
People obsess over Sweden's lack of strict lockdowns, but their major source of deaths was nursing homes. Their nursing home practices are more in line with many US states, which also suffered huge losses, even though we had lockdowns. Low paid workers juggling multiple jobs, along with transferring people directly between hospitals and nursing homes is a huge risk factor.
I am very saddened by the lack of research into the specific factors that save lives in nursing homes, as well as the lack of research into transmission in daycares and schools. We could have been researching it throughout the pandemic, but chose not to.
But we did all sorts of silly things. School districts across the country refused to allow in-person math class, but did allow all sorts of team sports. This was even after we saw superspreader events in some sports (why anyone allowed hockey to continue is beyond my comprehension). Meanwhile, those of us in schools every day saw almost no in-classroom transmission. Kids were getting sick at family get-togethers, on vacations, and playing team sports. But they'd sit next to a sick kid all day at school and never catch it.
Unless you were rigorously testing the teachers, kids and parents, you would have no idea if it was being spread at school or at home.
If I remember correctly it has been shown that schools, specifically non masking schools had significant viral spread...and we know that kids are less likely to symptomatic yet still able to transmit the virus.
It also behooves you to read more about how the virus has evolved. Had most of the world not locked down during the first wave, there would be millions more deaths.
Treating the case as if there was a single "Swedish" approach rather than an evolution is not particularly analytically coherent.
Sweden's approach was unique in the first, what, nine months? Subsequently modified. Writing about it as there was A Swedish Approach (what got into media in first months) over this entire time period is fairly useless.
(as a general matter the comparative of Danemark, Norway, Finland to them during their truly unique period answers the comparative question as well as it can be answered)
Other doings Swedish: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/sweden-arrests-2-people-suspected-spying-93777969