Sweden had it right all along

40 million annual air passengers in Sweden.

Giles Corey wrote:

As of May 25, Sweden fatality rate is 6th in Europe.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Actually I was wrong, over a 7 day rolling average of deaths, Sweden now has the highest fatality rate / million pop IN THE WORLD.

Thanks for making me check my data.

Erm... wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

They have lots of public transportation in Oslo, Helsinki and Copenhagen.

Not on the same scale they don't. Stockholm has over 355 million rides a year, Copenhagen 78, Oslo 109, Helsink 67, and typically contained spaces are exponential in terms of how many can be infected.

Or airport passengers, 200 million vs 30 million etc. It's not on a comparable scale.

Sweden should be spiralling exponentially out of control according to all the doomsayers, but it plainly isn't.

Are these numbers only for the metro or total annual rides on public transport?

Because only looking at the metro gives you the wrong idea. Sure, Stockholm has the most impressive metro system of the nordic capitals. But the other capitals have busses, trams and trains that picks up the slack. There isn't something magical about the metro compared to other means of public transportation.

Also, Stockholm has about twice the population size of Oslo and Helsinki. Once you account for that the numbers look different.

Actually the numbers must be metro only as Copenhagen has the lowest of all the ones you listed, but is pretty similar to Stockholm in population.

Sweden has a long way way to go before they reach the death rates of countries like Belgium, Spain, Italy, France. All countries with drastic lockdowns.

Lives in Oslo wrote:

Erm... wrote:

Not on the same scale they don't. Stockholm has over 355 million rides a year, Copenhagen 78, Oslo 109, Helsink 67, and typically contained spaces are exponential in terms of how many can be infected.

Or airport passengers, 200 million vs 30 million etc. It's not on a comparable scale.

Sweden should be spiralling exponentially out of control according to all the doomsayers, but it plainly isn't.

Are these numbers only for the metro or total annual rides on public transport?

Because only looking at the metro gives you the wrong idea. Sure, Stockholm has the most impressive metro system of the nordic capitals. But the other capitals have busses, trams and trains that picks up the slack. There isn't something magical about the metro compared to other means of public transportation.

355 is the number for the Stockholm metro. And you are right, there are other systems not included in the numbers for both Norway and Sweden. I think that people are making too much of the correlation between the size of the transit system and the number of deaths. It's more complicated than that.

Also, consider the demographics of deaths. They are always the same regardless of whether a country has 100s of deaths or tens of thousands. The people dying are mostly elderly and not the ones using transit.

So the question I have is how have Asian countries managed to protect their elderly so well? Are fewer of them institutionalized in skilled nursing facilities, or is the quality of care in those facilities much better? Honestly, many nursing homes in the US are just abysmal places. What happens to older people in Norway when they cannot live on their own?

Harambe wrote:

Giles Corey wrote:

As of May 25, Sweden fatality rate is 6th in Europe.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Actually I was wrong, over a 7 day rolling average of deaths, Sweden now has the highest fatality rate / million pop IN THE WORLD.

Thanks for making me check my data.

https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&areas=swe&areas=esp&areas=ita&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnj&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=1&values=deaths

Well, if you have better data than John Hopkins

covid olympics wrote:

Sweden has a long way way to go before they reach the death rates of countries like Belgium, Spain, Italy, France. All countries with drastic lockdowns.

We will have to take a look back two years from now.

Sweden -- no lockdown but social distancing and limits on crowds all along -- or nations with 3 mos or more of lockdown, followed by opening up - and then likely closing back down, opening up, closing down etc.

Bet Sweden's deaths t that time will be in line with those other nations

Giles Corey wrote:

covid olympics wrote:

Sweden has a long way way to go before they reach the death rates of countries like Belgium, Spain, Italy, France. All countries with drastic lockdowns.

We will have to take a look back two years from now.

Sweden -- no lockdown but social distancing and limits on crowds all along -- or nations with 3 mos or more of lockdown, followed by opening up - and then likely closing back down, opening up, closing down etc.

Bet Sweden's deaths t that time will be in line with those other nations

Sweden's model could have worked in the United States with better results.

This would have required:

- a strong proactive central leader

- who acknowledged the problem

- who acted in January

- a unified population prepared to listen to expert opinions and a national strategy and act rationally observing the guidelines

The model that failed:

- Ignore the pandemic preparedness information prepared years earlier by previous administrations

- Ignore years of warnings that a pandemic will come

- Dismantle the organization formed for the sole purpose of looking for pandemics

- Become informed of the threat of a real pandemic in January, albeit still weeks later than it should have taken

- Have the leader of the most powerful nation call himself a cheerleader -- not playing the game or calling the shots, but watching on the sidelines

- Deny the problem, call it a hoax, turn it into politics

- Declare the problem under control and praise China for cooperation

- Ignore the early warnings and lessons of China, Spain, France and Italy, as the same pattern played out

- Enact a travel ban but don't enforce it

- Wait 6 weeks for the virus to incubate

- Abdicate central leadership and give responsibility to 50 governors

- Force the 50 governors to compete with each other, and the federal government

- Create a task force with unqualified members

- Blame the media, Democrats, China, Obama, and some of the 50 governors for exercising the abdicated responsibility

- Try to take back the control previously abdicated to the 50 governors

- Divide the nation by encouraging protests

Long term numbers will tell which model is best, but early action with loose restrictions is arguably as good if not better than a lengthy failure to act requiring much harsher restrictions to get the predictable resulting outbreak under control

energeticlotuseater wrote:LOL Italy and Spain both were hit worse than Sweden and had much more draconian lockdowns.

If we ignore city states (Andorra and San Marino) and consider only proper countries, here is a list of the top ten most-affected countries in the world, so far, in terms of fatalities per million:

Belgium - 798

Spain - 613

United Kingdom - 539

Italy - 539

France - 433

Sweden - 391

Netherlands -339

Ireland - 326

USA - 293

Switzerland - 222

Of those countries, Sweden, currently ranked in 6th place, is the only one with roughly constant rate of new daily cases. All others are in steep decline (> 25% drop in daily cases over the past two weeks) except for Ireland, which is in gradual decline (~ 14% drop over two weeks).

So, by the most important metric (deaths per capita), Sweden is almost at the top of the list (6th out of > 170 countries for which we have data from Johns Hopkins University), and is fighting its way higher on the list.

If that is your measure of success, well, then, I guess I don't know what we're arguing about.

Apologies, I reported data from a weekend version of my spreadsheet. The top ten rankings are the same, but with the following current total fatalities per million:

Belgium - 809

Spain - 580

UK - 549

Italy - 544

France - 437

Sweden - 411

Netherlands - 343

Ireland - 331

USA - 302

Switzerland - 223

Sweden is now in gradual decline in new cases (2-week change), at -12%. However, all other countries on the list except the US (-8% over the past two weeks) are in steep decline, with an overall average decline of 50% over 2 weeks. On the weekend, Sweden was 42 fatalities per million behind France, and four days later (date to 26 May instead of 22 May) it's only 26 back; look for Sweden to overtake France in the next week or two.

Sweden for #5, you can do it!

"In April, the country’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, cited estimates that Stockholm had probably achieved an immunity rate of 15% to 20%, and the Swedish Public Health Agency projected that one-third of Stockholmers would be infected by May 1.

But when tests were conducted, it turned out only 7.3% of Stockholm residents had contracted the disease and developed antibodies against it by late April. Sweden’s infection rate is between 4% and 7%, no higher than in the U.S. and far short of the 60% to 70% needed to bring the pandemic to a halt."

http://archive.ph/PxY4w

My state has a population 2/3 of Sweden. In the 25 days between our 18th and 19th covid deaths Sweden had 1600 deaths. My country has 2.5 x Sweden's population and has had a total of 102 deaths, 1/3 of those deaths were people who contracted the virus on cruise ships.

In the UK the situation nearly ran away because initially we tried to tough it out like Sweden. Armchair theorists can say anything they like and when the measures are relaxed and we have a second wave they will have rationalisations for that. Luckily armchair theorists don't get listened to.

I posted the link on another thread (the Vitamin D thread?) that Sweden has one of the highest levels of vitamin D in the world. That was a study of the entire EU... 440 plus million people. Who has the lowest levels? Italians, Spaniards, elderly, obese, and many immigrant nations. These are the populations with the highest severity rates.

The first significant article showing a correlation between vitamin D levels and Covid 19 appeared April 6. We are going on two months since this game-changing information and the media and our medical "professionals" continue to ignore the possibility that a simple supplement approach (D, C, zinc, etc) could save thousands of lives.

Fisky,

you really risk confusing correlation with causation, and leaping to unfounded conclusions. Also, Sweden has not been less affected, it's the 6th hardest hit country in the world in terms of deaths per capita.

interested reader wrote:

Apologies, I reported data from a weekend version of my spreadsheet. The top ten rankings are the same, but with the following current total fatalities per million:

Belgium - 809

Spain - 580

UK - 549

Italy - 544

France - 437

Sweden - 411

Netherlands - 343

Ireland - 331

USA - 302

Switzerland - 223

Sweden is now in gradual decline in new cases (2-week change), at -12%. However, all other countries on the list except the US (-8% over the past two weeks) are in steep decline, with an overall average decline of 50% over 2 weeks. On the weekend, Sweden was 42 fatalities per million behind France, and four days later (date to 26 May instead of 22 May) it's only 26 back; look for Sweden to overtake France in the next week or two.

Sweden for #5, you can do it!

So Italy and Spain, two countries with most stringent lockdowns in Europe, have a higher death count than Sweden, a country with the most relaxed lockdown policy in Europe.

Very interesting! But I’m sure you science denying stay-at-homers will find some way to avoid this inconvenient fact though.

energeticlotuseater wrote:...Italy and Spain, two countries with most stringent lockdowns in Europe,...

Italy was very slow out of the starting gate, as was Spain. Italy waited almost three weeks after reaching 0.1 fatalities per million before tightening restrictions, Spain, UK, USA and the Netherlands almost two weeks. Belgium waited about a week. That's most of your top ten right there:

WHO official is an idiot.

Sweden population is 10 million. Or about the population of London.

Sweden population density: 63 per sq mile.

UK population density: 671 per sq mile.

People in Sweden are socially distanced by geography!