Probably no, they did not: https://ourworldindata.org/explorer...Population=true&Color+by+test+positivity=true
Unless qualified with further data and more detailed analysis, Sweeden did pretty well overall would appear
Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]
- Thread starter RDGoodla
- Start date
Unless qualified with further data and more detailed analysis, Sweeden did pretty well overall would appear
Compared to Denmark/Norway, yes.
Compared to UK/USA, no.
No.
Better than most of Europe, actually. Only a few countries did better, at least in death toll. Other factors like Long Covid aren't being measured.
Sweden was 15% under EU average.
Importantly, that report is a year out of date, March 2022. An ironic post in the LA Time where Sweden's death-toll was 60% of the US's at the time!
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Oh the US was a shit show, not only 50 governors preening for their 15 minutes but numerous mayors and county officials, going up against astroturf groups like Moms for Liberty, which use Nazi language.
Brazil had high death rates too and we know about Bolsanaro.
Also, from that list posted by Shifty, I don't buy Russia's numbers for a second. No India on that list either.
Look for patterns on that list, you'd think population density would correlate to high transmission and fatality rates. Also older populations. But Japan was very low.
So beyond physical factors, there was behavior, a lot of it shaped by the political leadership as well as specific policies or lack of policies to address the pandemic.
Think about the "leadership" of Bolsonaro, Trump, Modi, Boris Johnson, Putin. Compare and contrast to how countries like New Zealand and Taiwan responded.
Brazil had high death rates too and we know about Bolsanaro.
Also, from that list posted by Shifty, I don't buy Russia's numbers for a second. No India on that list either.
Look for patterns on that list, you'd think population density would correlate to high transmission and fatality rates. Also older populations. But Japan was very low.
So beyond physical factors, there was behavior, a lot of it shaped by the political leadership as well as specific policies or lack of policies to address the pandemic.
Think about the "leadership" of Bolsonaro, Trump, Modi, Boris Johnson, Putin. Compare and contrast to how countries like New Zealand and Taiwan responded.
That list was me selecting assorted European nations and isn't a league table or anything. India is actually minimal, 375 versus Sweden's 2320 and US's 3330. It's also an example of what unrestricted Covid did to a population and how well 'herd immunity' from the earliest sources was good/bad. I don't know how accurate their data is though. India's situation is confusing. I was expecting, like many others, massive casualties with the disease ripping through the congested slums, but that just didn't happen for whatever reasons. India and South Africa plateaued a year ago.
I don't think there are any simple patterns. Beyond the higher the national wealth, the more Covid hit.
Is that indicative of it largely being dependent on co-morbidities which wealthier nations have more of due to excessive lifestyles and better health-care? Or is that trend just from low income nations abandoning reporting that much earlier? Or did a lack of restrictions early on establish a baseline herd immunity on a weaker version of the virus which was subsequently reinforced from successive waves of variants, whereas the nations that resisted the disease most were more susceptible to the more dangerous strains that developed?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hope proper investigation find out. This is the first time we've had a chance to record a new disease impact on the entire population and there are plenty of lessons to be learned so long as science goes about it honestly and without politics interfering.
There is high variability in data quality from nation to nation.
Even within nations.
There are political reasons to question official covid fatality numbers. I don't buy India's numbers being that low. There was satellite imagery of large number of bodies being cremated. They were running out of wood at one point and you heard stories about people going from hospital to hospital and being refused admission for their sick relatives. Then the hoarding of oxygen tanks.
Researchers are going to go through excess deaths, extrapolated from historical trends before and some decade or so after the pandemic.
Even within nations.
There are political reasons to question official covid fatality numbers. I don't buy India's numbers being that low. There was satellite imagery of large number of bodies being cremated. They were running out of wood at one point and you heard stories about people going from hospital to hospital and being refused admission for their sick relatives. Then the hoarding of oxygen tanks.
Researchers are going to go through excess deaths, extrapolated from historical trends before and some decade or so after the pandemic.
Statistical analysis of the populace's experiences should be able to identify approximate death rates in any nation. A certain amount of sampling of 'do you know anyone who died' should gravitate towards a realistic approximation. The study could be developed around nations with effective monitoring as a baseline too to ensure validity.
Of course, even though relatively cheap, it's more expensive than anyone would care to invest in given no financial incentives to understand what really happened. You'd basically need some wealthy benefactors to pay just to find out, such as some Indian elite who want to know the real impact in their country, or some large academic conglomerate wanting to seize this rare opportunity for scientific insight before it's passed.
Of course, even though relatively cheap, it's more expensive than anyone would care to invest in given no financial incentives to understand what really happened. You'd basically need some wealthy benefactors to pay just to find out, such as some Indian elite who want to know the real impact in their country, or some large academic conglomerate wanting to seize this rare opportunity for scientific insight before it's passed.
Comparing a country in one part of Europe or the world to another elsewhere doesn't really tell us a huge amount. Sweden's response was poor and the correct comparison should be with Norway, Finland and Denmark whose demographics, economy and culture are very similar to that of Sweden. The differing policies in these countries show where successes or failures have occurred. I remember being interested reading this article back in 2020:
www.businessinsider.com
More than half of the households in Sweden comprise just one person and around a third of elderly people live on their own. Similar numbers in their Nordic neighbours whose mitigations led to much, much lower death rates among the vulnerable. Multi-generational households in many other countries in Europe are much higher in proportion and this will undoubtedly contribute to higher death rates. The likes of Tegnell have personally done very well out of the pandemic, claiming their approach was correct, but the numbers tell a different story and the Swedes failed in many ways in comparison to their closest peers. Yet still the narrative continues that their approach was exceptional and is parroted by the right-wing press in many countries such as the UK, even though the 'reach herd immunity quickly' policy (which didn't work, of course), is fundamentally the basis of the subsequent GBD grift which is still ongoing.
A potentially overlooked factor in Sweden's coronavirus strategy: more than half of households consist of just 1 person
Crowded homes matter to coronavirus transmission, since they give the virus more opportunities to spread.
www.businessinsider.com
More than half of the households in Sweden comprise just one person and around a third of elderly people live on their own. Similar numbers in their Nordic neighbours whose mitigations led to much, much lower death rates among the vulnerable. Multi-generational households in many other countries in Europe are much higher in proportion and this will undoubtedly contribute to higher death rates. The likes of Tegnell have personally done very well out of the pandemic, claiming their approach was correct, but the numbers tell a different story and the Swedes failed in many ways in comparison to their closest peers. Yet still the narrative continues that their approach was exceptional and is parroted by the right-wing press in many countries such as the UK, even though the 'reach herd immunity quickly' policy (which didn't work, of course), is fundamentally the basis of the subsequent GBD grift which is still ongoing.
Reaching heard immunity was not a goal in Sweden.
You then go on to compare one country to another to another around in the world!
The only way we're going to get understanding is to compare different results from different test-beds, compare and contrast. Compare Sweden to Norway to understand why it did worse, and then compare it to the UK to understand why it did better, and then compare it to Germany to understand why results were similar. Compare all the countries to all the countries, all the demographics and policies, all the different health responses, the different social values, as the only means to get any understanding from this spaghetti-soup of data!
I compared the Nordic countries whose populations, demographics, economies and cultures are similar. Their responses to the pandemic were different so this gives a clearer indication of how the different mitigations (or lack thereof) impacted how events progressed.
Given that we know many cases are 'imported' into families from children through the schools, we need analysis which takes multi-generational households into account, if we're going to avoid similar issues in any future pandemics. Comparing death rates in countries with completely different demographics doesn't tell us a great deal. Unfortunately, we're currently facing the "Lockdowns don't work/aren't necessary" stuff from grifters such as Tegnell and if we end up facing a more pathogenic variant or a new dangerous virus, the lessons won't have been learned.
That's the biggest concern here. We're not learning from things that went wrong or things that went right. Vested interests have ensured that too many important considerations have been politicised so we're "unlearning", if anything.
Given that we know many cases are 'imported' into families from children through the schools, we need analysis which takes multi-generational households into account, if we're going to avoid similar issues in any future pandemics. Comparing death rates in countries with completely different demographics doesn't tell us a great deal. Unfortunately, we're currently facing the "Lockdowns don't work/aren't necessary" stuff from grifters such as Tegnell and if we end up facing a more pathogenic variant or a new dangerous virus, the lessons won't have been learned.
That's the biggest concern here. We're not learning from things that went wrong or things that went right. Vested interests have ensured that too many important considerations have been politicised so we're "unlearning", if anything.
So those behind the policy keep claiming, yet their advice indicated otherwise. Here's a report from 1st December 2020, when the Swedish authorities changed tack to say that children living with somebody infected with Covid should no longer attend school/nurseries:
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News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication
www.ft.com
Up to that point, children were required to continue to attend. You'd need to be an idiot to think that such policy wasn't intended to spread the virus, especially as the high numbers of asymptomatic infections had been known about for many months by this point.
I know, but you the compared the Nordic countries to other European countries and concluded multi-generational households probably contributes to a higher death-toll...
But it does. It shows different demographics result in different outcomes. eg. Comparing Sweden to UK, why was its death toll lower? Likely because of different demographics and sparser living. That comparison provides insight!
Yes, but the only way to know what does and doesn't work is to compare countries honestly and without prejudice.
A wholistic analysis of thse sort should also not only consider covid related mortality and hospitalizations, but also all-cause mortality, as well as other health indicators, since the discussion regarding the apropriateness of covid policy was always a cost-benefit analysis. We cant honestly assess the benefits if we ignore the costs.
Unfortunately, Shifty, whenever I'm debating these things with you, I often feel you're coming across as somewhat glib.
Let me try and pin you down here. Given what we know about the Nordic countries as previously discussed (i.e. similar demographics, ethnicities, economies, cultures etc), what do you think explains the much higher death rates in Sweden during the pandemic? A few posts back, you followed up tuna's post (which denied the Swedes refused care to the elderly, despite wco81's post linking to a report which indicated these things had taken place), to point out that the Swedish death rate was better than the European 'average', but didn't say anything about why you thought this might be the case. Here's a link to wco81's post, incidentally: 4,913
I think you'd surely have to agree that the available evidence points to the fact that the higher deathrate in Sweden (in comparison to their Nordic neighbours) was due to their policy and it doesn't appear that many benefits were gained? Better for personal freedoms, I suppose, but the promised economic benefits don't seem to have appeared.
The reason that this is of interest is that the highly-promoted narrative that Sweden found a better way doesn't appear to be factual, other than within extremely limited bounds. The steadfast denial by the Swedish authorities is even leading to such bizarre situations as is reported in this thread:
A highly-experienced Professor of Virology is being prosecuted for carrying out unauthorised research, after giving away a few hundred unused antibody tests he had developed. The results fed back to him showed the number of people with antibodies was way below what the Swedish authorities were claiming would be the case, he spoke out and now he is facing prosecution. You'd think that, ethics review aside, the information that antibody levels were much lower than believed would have been useful information, but apparently not. And now we get prosecutions with no support from his employers.
We need to get to a point where we can consider which mitigations helped, whether they were required, whether the cost of them was worthwhile and so forth. I don't think there is an honest debate about this. Do you think this Swedish professor is being treated honestly and without prejudice?
Let me try and pin you down here. Given what we know about the Nordic countries as previously discussed (i.e. similar demographics, ethnicities, economies, cultures etc), what do you think explains the much higher death rates in Sweden during the pandemic? A few posts back, you followed up tuna's post (which denied the Swedes refused care to the elderly, despite wco81's post linking to a report which indicated these things had taken place), to point out that the Swedish death rate was better than the European 'average', but didn't say anything about why you thought this might be the case. Here's a link to wco81's post, incidentally: 4,913
I think you'd surely have to agree that the available evidence points to the fact that the higher deathrate in Sweden (in comparison to their Nordic neighbours) was due to their policy and it doesn't appear that many benefits were gained? Better for personal freedoms, I suppose, but the promised economic benefits don't seem to have appeared.
The reason that this is of interest is that the highly-promoted narrative that Sweden found a better way doesn't appear to be factual, other than within extremely limited bounds. The steadfast denial by the Swedish authorities is even leading to such bizarre situations as is reported in this thread:
A highly-experienced Professor of Virology is being prosecuted for carrying out unauthorised research, after giving away a few hundred unused antibody tests he had developed. The results fed back to him showed the number of people with antibodies was way below what the Swedish authorities were claiming would be the case, he spoke out and now he is facing prosecution. You'd think that, ethics review aside, the information that antibody levels were much lower than believed would have been useful information, but apparently not. And now we get prosecutions with no support from his employers.
We need to get to a point where we can consider which mitigations helped, whether they were required, whether the cost of them was worthwhile and so forth. I don't think there is an honest debate about this. Do you think this Swedish professor is being treated honestly and without prejudice?
Quite true.
But it's not just economic costs we need to consider, it's also an accurate depiction of what occurred as regards mortality and morbidity. The Swedish authorities appear (from what I can see) to be pushing a narrative that their decisions were the right way to go and reduced mortality and morbidity as much as was reasonably possible, but ignoring the counterfactuals which argue that this isn't the case. It's human nature to cover your arse when you've made an error or misjudgement, but that doesn't help find out what actually occurred.
Incidentally, Shifty, I thought it was well-understood that the actual numbers of deaths during the Indian Delta wave was many multiples higher than the official numbers? It was widely reported last year:
www.nbcnews.com
This is perfectly understandable, given the limitations of the resources available to the Indian state in comparison to their vast population, but it needs to be known that the official numbers aren't worth a hill of beans in that particular country.
Covid death toll in India likely far higher than official record, research says
New findings appear to confirm long-held suspicions among epidemiologists that Covid deaths in the country have been significantly undercounted.
www.nbcnews.com
This is perfectly understandable, given the limitations of the resources available to the Indian state in comparison to their vast population, but it needs to be known that the official numbers aren't worth a hill of beans in that particular country.
It turned out herd immunity wasn't reachable because of all the different strains reinfecting people.
People getting infected 2-3 or more times in 2-3 years was not uncommon.