How is Sweden doing with COVID-19 today?

Clay wrote:

Kaare is from Norway, all he is doing is trying to have a rational debate on the impact of Sweden's approach.

Nono...

If that was interesting he'd have acknowledged and mentioned the good stuff as well.

So you choose typical/more representative?

Want to have another go?

What is the MEAN here Kaare?

There is a reason MEAN is often used in mathematics instead of AVERAGE.

What's the danger of using average Kaare? Please enlighten us?

Gävleborg at the top of that list of yours might provide a clue.

If I tell you that Våsterbotten, Kalmlar, Gotland, Norrbotten, Jamtland , all rural, are all SIGNIFICANTLY CLOSER to Varmland than your example (one of them lower even)

That would mean for 5 of 9 the other rural läns in Sweden Värmland are in fact more typical wouldn't it?

In fact, if you included Värmland, 6 out of 10 are in 430.760 range...

Significa

And that means only 3 of the other 9 is closer to your example, the rural one, that doesn't claim to say anything about rural sweden, only mentions that it is not densely populatedsince the last is in fact Värmland.?

You forgot that Västerbotten on the very bottom is of course Norrland too.

Using your logic on yourself, (and fitting with all else you're doing) I strongly suspect that was not a mistake.

Budda wrote:

In fact, if you included Värmland, 6 out of 10 are in 430.760 range...

If you included Värmland, 6 of the 10 are in the 430-760 range..

Within 190 of that latest värmland estimate..

And within what? 300 of Norrland?

Again:

I know I cherry picked when I mentioned Värmland.

I've said as much TWICE, explained that it was to show that by cherry picking you could tell the story you want, and YET it is still MORE REPRESENTATIVE of rural Sweden than your Norrland example.

It is, no matter how much you try and twist it otherwise.

And I have shown that NO Kaare, even if you did not mention rural, you said "not very densely populated" and "few big cites" before comparing it to Netherlands which you made a point of being "densely populated", which for all practical purporses meant that your intention was to compare rural Sweden vs densely populated Netherlands..

I've given the source and date of my data...

You don't like them because they were too low. Fine.

I've argued: What cut off date you use, do not change my point at all..

And you have shown it beautifully by using even newer data that shows excactly my point.....

Sweden's reported over 12,000 dead now.

Per million, they are at 1187

Denmark 376

Finland 124

Norway 107

xczvzxcv wrote:

Sweden's reported over 12,000 dead now.

Per million, they are at 1187

Denmark 376

Finland 124

Norway 107

Yup...

Your point?

That Sweden have more deaths than their neighbors?

Haha!

We know..

So how are they on European list?

EU/EEA list?

How where they in spring, where are they now?

What freedoms have they had, that others haven't had?

Any comparison of Sweden vs their neighbors will show Sweden way ahead for perpetuity.

When will this become stop being newsworthy?

Do you not think that the swedish government/FHM considered that some deaths would be a consequence when they today decided to open up organized training again for people born 2002-2004?

I can inform you that they did, but they chose to anyways, because the public health good was deemed greater than the disadvantage.

This pandemic is somewhat more layered than what obsessively pumping out data that shows Sweden to do worse than their neighbors or other cherry picked target of comparison will tell you.

I think that they may have guessed wrong about the number needed for herd immunity. They also may have weighted economic effects vs public health. I recall seeing statements that lead me to believe that they would not have made the same choices if they knew how things would develop.

It was and a complicated calculus. What % would be needed for herd immunity?, what is the IFR? How quickly would the vaccine become available?

Everyone screwed it up to a fair extent, but it appears that Sweden’s guesses were further off than most.

trashcan wrote:

I think that they may have guessed wrong about the number needed for herd immunity. They also may have weighted economic effects vs public health. I recall seeing statements that lead me to believe that they would not have made the same choices if they knew how things would develop.

It was and a complicated calculus. What % would be needed for herd immunity?, what is the IFR? How quickly would the vaccine become available?

Everyone screwed it up to a fair extent, but it appears that Sweden’s guesses were further off than most.

Not neccecarily disagreeing.

Most of your criticism would apply for the 1st wave appproach.

They even look to have reacted somewhat late in 2nd wave. 7-10 days maybe.

Other than that, they've been doing mostly the same as their neighbors (that seem to be vary important) in this wave.

The decicion of reopening organized training for people born 2002-2004 was communicated in press conference yesterday.

A decicion that COULD come back to bite them, who knows,

but it also show that they still have other negative effects of lockdowns weigh higher than their nordic counterparts, for BETTER and for WORSE.

What we can say is that Sweden have indeed have been hit harder than their neighbors in terms of deaths/million...

1st wave, 2nd wave both!

You COULD argue that Denmark shows the margins here.

Extremely proactive to the point where they as only country of not micro size they do genomic sequencing on all tests, was among the very first europeans to close borders and schools, and started mass slaughtering of minks, inlcuding healthy ones, (unlawfully at first) to the cost of $billions..

They mass test to a scale that makes Norway's positivity rate seem high, even though community spread in Denmark have been higher than Norway's more or less throughout!

And STILL, their 2nd wave deaths are what? 40% of Sweden?

And you could argue the only reason they've not done worse is that the genomic sequencing of all positives showed them the B.1.1.7 grew even as infection numbers fell.

What is also true:

Compared to rest of Europe: Bad 1st wave, much improved 2nd wave to the point they are better performing than most, whether you want to limit it to Western Europe alone, but obviously even more when you include all of EU.

Peaks are most interesting in showing the load on the health system.

Sweden's peaks, while high, are lower than the worst hit countries, including the US.

The disclaimer for umpteenth time:

I am not saying Sweden is best practice for the pandemic.

In preventing people to die they are certainly not!

I have previously written lot's of criticism on Sweden's approach.

An obsession on hanging them out to dry when so improved after all the deniers are long gone seem very strange to me....

I would say that the only reason why Sweden still interesting in terms of Covid are used to see whether it is doing dramatically BETTER than its neighbors during the second wave. If they were catching up, one could argue that “ basically everything will even out after a year, so the amount of life years lost is equal to the difference of lives lost in the first wave times about half a year.” That has not happened though, and herd immunity via vaccination is close enough so that I am very confident that it won’t.

So this is a long-term follow up on the effects of the spring policies, and as you noted, they still look bad.

[quote]xczvzxcv wrote:

Sweden's reported over 12,000 dead now.

Less than 1,000 of whom did not have other deadly health conditions.

Be afraid.

Very afraid.

And do whatever we tell you.

Double mask, Close your business. No gym for you.

A lot of that is gibberish, and believe me about that, because I have become good at trying to figure out what students are trying to say on papers. Compared to Germany, which finally got hit really hard, they are still way behind. Those are all of their closest neighbors. Your neighbors tell you whether you're doing really, really badly, like Sweden, in relation to the presence of the disease and cultural similarities, which are the single greatest predictor of COVID death rates. Pick any around the world and you're likely to find high similarity. The exceptions are countries like the U.S. which should be more like Canada (with cultural and economic similarities) but is much more like Mexico and Latin America in COVID deaths (Mexico probably has a lot more than reported, but then so do Republican states, by analysis of excess deaths by state). The point here really is to denounce the kinds of COVID skepticism that the Trump administration represented in bad faith for so much of last year, and which infected literally and figuratively our population. Masks, social distancing, and selective shutdowns (indoor dining, bars) with government support to individuals and businesses to compensate work really, really well where practiced universally, as in much of Asia. And the Swedish 'model' was repeatedly invoked in its support.

I understand both why the thread was made and why people entered the thread to disoute.

I entered the thread for the same reason. (Dispute the deniers)

But some time since, a few of you have lost perspective.

Is the situation that Sweden is without restrictions? No!

Are the deniers still coming here and pointing to Sweden? No!

Gibberish..

Germany finally got "hit hard" you say..

Really?

No context there either?

LIke "hard" is 1 in 2000 people have died in 2nd wave?

Like hostpitals have not been overwhelmed "hard"?

Like significantly less hard hit than almost all their neighbors "hard"?

Comparing Sweden needs to be done comparing them vs their nordic neighbors....

Right.. Got it.

(Lets disregard the swedes being inluenced by Germany for centuries and is a neighbor by sea)

I mean, you insist on comparing with neighbors as the "the greatest predictor"..

I assume that goes for Germany too?

How have Germany done compared to their Neighbors:

Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Netherlands?

Bad?

I think we have different definitions of hard hit mate..

When comparing to Norway and Finland, you forget/disregard that these countries are not really "hit" at all..

Covid 19 deaths are so low and influenza is gone, so current covid-19 deaths would not even have warranted a headline in normal times.

For first half, if anything, Norway were BELOW normal in excess deaths (not so much as to b statistically significant mind)

That's the base line that's good enough for you?

Denmark have 3,5 x higher numbers than Norway.

No criticism warranted? Surely they must have done something wrong?

No?

Sweden is to Denmark, as Denmark is to Norway. Roughly.

As we have page up and page down of evidence for, somewhere in between Denmark and Sweden warrants this criticism.

Is anything above Demark worth criticizing?

That's the rule then?

Surely you become "hard hit" somewhere in between Denmark's world heralded extemely proactive, top of class testing, tracing, genomic sequencing and mink slaughtering approach and Germany's level that's about double Denmark's level according to you?

So somewhere in between 0,037-0,072% of the population having died?

Haha.. That sounds like gibberish to me, and makes quite a few countries that have fought hard, bravely and with some succeess look bad.

And singling out Sweden, I got to ask:

Where is the thread on Latvia and Lithuania performing horribly (I mean, look at their baltic neighbor Estonia. Estonia doing better than glorified Denmark after all)?

The UK doing horrible thread? (Ireland is less than half)

The Belgium thread, sounds like an obvious one to me?

Where is the Brasil thread?

The Czechia thread (Slovakia and Germany are doing so much better after all)?

No.. Sweden.!

They are the" underperforming" country that needs to be singled out with updates going on for months after the trumpster deniers having left the thread and long since they left the alternative route of hardly any forced measures.

Let's bring up Sweden even if that difference in strategy is less and less relevant to their numbers for every day that goes even if they have in fact been among the performers in 2nd wave in Europe.

It can't possibly be agenda posting can it?

Start with the last. I never suspect, I never use logic that way. But it was a mistake. So to say as slip of the pen, whether it was freudean or not I don't know.

Budda left out/ excluded what I wrote:

" Another ways of seeing, Median is about 750, so closer to Värmlands 570 than the whole landscape of Norrland. The point is: There are no typical cities or rural läns in Sweden. Could look at a lot of explantaions. The number of immigrants, poor people, fat people, old people ... we could go on. As of now the discussion between Budda and me is meaningless".

Why he left this out, I don' know. Because I can't use logic to suspect anything. But is makes a change, because he didn't take it into consideration.

So to MEAN, AVERAGE and MEDIAN.

Budda: "Want to have another go? What is MEAN here, Kaare? There is a reason why MEAN is often used in mathematics instead of average".

I may be on thin ice here. It is nearly 50 years since my courses in statistics. But let's have a try.

OK. We have the average for all ten läns - approx now 975. As of today no change in the Värmland number 570. We also have the numbers for today. Here they are, it is todays numbers:

440 - 570 - 740 - 760 - 770 - 820 -1040 - 1400 - 1520 - 1640.

MEDIAN is 795. I wrote 750, but was to low. Though not to my "advantage". So the MEDIAN is 225 higher than the Värmland number and 275 lower than todays Norrland number which is 1070.

Budda "insists" on MEAN. So here we add the ten and divides with ten, as far as I remember.

So MEAN is 876. That is 306 more than Värmlands 570 and 194 less than Norrlands 1070.

Budda critizied the use of AVERAGE. Yes, it was one way of doing it. But if I had used MEAN then he would have been "falsified" too. By using MEDIAN he could have his words intact.

No place, no region, no landscape is representative. When I write that Sweden is hit hard all over it has to do with my frame of reference. Budda knows mine, first and foremost the Nordic countries. His is more or less both the Nordic countries and so the comparasion with the rest of Europe. I think, because of the similarties between the Nordic welfare states, the trust, the degree of equality, the healtcare systems etc. that this ought to be the main comparasion. Though the Stockholm area sticks out and also the number of immigrants.

But when Budda uses the metaphore 'child' and confronts me with the false children analogy he miss the target i.e. me.

What made him go "bananas" was my Norrland illustration, was even naive or "childish" enough to think we could have a discussion on the high numbers high up north, so to say an explanation. But he accuses me again and again of having an agenda. This time it was about the rural läns as if I ever mentioned the word. But it is right, Norrland is diverse and rural. And it is hard hit. No läns of the 21 in Sweden has as low numbers of deaths/1M as Denmark, not to mention Finland and Norway.

But what worries me about him is that he mentioned my age, 71 years old. Not very relevant I think. But how did he know? It is Friday evening and actually I am tired. But I might come back to morrow to answer more of his questions. There are many of them. But this, in my opinion, was the most central; closest to his heart. He also accuses me of not seeing the good in the Swedish approach, he is right I am not able to see it. Because the "good", no lockdown, freedom of travel, open restaurants and so on was one of the reasons for the bad. So without his "good" it would have not gone so bad. But he thinks that Sweden has done fine, within his frame of reference.

SWEDEN THIS WEEK

524 deaths reported this week. Going slowly down, Stablizing at infection level approx 2500-3000. So may be down to 40-50 deaths per day now.

KaareV wrote:

Get help Kaare..

As you I am not a native english speaker.

I mixed up mean and median, mistakenly assuming mean is median..

Which OF COURSE is the way to look at a skewed distribution...

Anyone with a semblance of mathematical insight would use median as MORE REPRESENTATIVE in that distribution....

And Norrland's average is very much skewed by their most populous län being (now) the most hard hit region of Sweden.. (Apparently british strain is taking hold in Gävleborg)

After several encouragements you've finally posted deaths by läns.

They are very different, and does not show picture of being hit hard all over....

Sure you are not getting paranoid because you have forgotten that you've told us how old you are?

Scroll back Kaare, you can do it!

trashcan wrote:

I would say that the only reason why Sweden still interesting in terms of Covid are used to see whether it is doing dramatically BETTER than its neighbors during the second wave. If they were catching up, one could argue that “ basically everything will even out after a year, so the amount of life years lost is equal to the difference of lives lost in the first wave times about half a year.” That has not happened though, and herd immunity via vaccination is close enough so that I am very confident that it won’t.

So this is a long-term follow up on the effects of the spring policies, and as you noted, they still look bad.

So the fact that they are in top 20% in Europe for later wave are not interesting?

They do have a couple of neighbors that are not scandinavian you now...

One of them being Germany...

A country that the Swedes are much closer to than us Norwegians, both geographically and culturally..

A bit like Denmark.

Sure, there are lots of things that's similar between Nordic countries.

Nothing more than the number of people living in the different countries, and sure,

3 out of those 4 (I am deliberately leaving out Iceland, not relevant for this).

And these largely social democratic countries were vikings a millenium ago.

And to be fair: there are no countries that have influenced these 3 countries more than Germany, to the point the languages are extremley influenced and the nobility in the 2 countries that still have them in the north looks like sub branches of german noble houses.

And Germany neighbors one of these countries by land and another by sea.

You could argue there are many similarities with Netherlands as well, and the UK...

Well.. to be fair: it'¨s the same.. more or less..

(Siginifcant improvement 2nd wave vs Denmark, more or less the same vs Norway and Finland)

Amongst Germany and Netherlands much much improved, much more the same than not.

Against vast majority of rest of Europe, they are doing better!

Remember, they were top 4-5 bad in terms of death/million in the World for a time..

But the only interesting measure is how they do in terms of death/million towards their 3 nordic counterparts?

And when doing these comparisons we neglect that having schools open, organized training for youth/adolecents open to a larger degree than their neighbors have value?

*sigh*

So narrow minded thinking it's hard to fathom.

But I'll give you this Kaare:

Seems indeed this thread is only interested in comparing Sweden with their 3 nordic neighbors on deaths/million metric.

An excercise this thread is much more interested in than the Swedes themselves, and then I am not talking about Tegnell/Government, but the swedish opinion that seem marvelously disinterested in the subject if they are not named Expressen.

(I am sure you can cherry pick some sources that will make that statement look false)

Never mind Sweden compared to rest of Europe, never mind any benefits the swedish approach might have, never mind any downsides to these neighbors approach.

Pump out what makes Sweden bad, that's what people want to hear!

I am obviously in the minority here in thinking the Swedish situation is more nuanced and complex than that quite random metric.

As I can't be bothered to keep repeating the obvious anymore and with the knowledge you can't admit to agenda posting even after confronted with evidence of it, I am going to leave this thread.

I am sure the americans on this board can't wait to hear how this bang average european country for the duration of the pandemic and amongst the better performing since summer are doing as bad as your cherry picked stats will show.

I am out.

Budda wrote:

KaareV wrote:

Get help Kaare..

As you I am not a native english speaker.

I mixed up mean and median, mistakenly assuming mean is median..

Which OF COURSE is the way to look at a skewed distribution...

Anyone with a semblance of mathematical insight would use median as MORE REPRESENTATIVE in that distribution....

And Norrland's average is very much skewed by their most populous län being (now) the most hard hit region of Sweden.. (Apparently british strain is taking hold in Gävleborg)

After several encouragements you've finally posted deaths by läns.

They are very different, and does not show picture of being hit hard all over....

Sure you are not getting paranoid because you have forgotten that you've told us how old you are?

Scroll back Kaare, you can do it!

Your english sure is much better than mine.

But even when you mistakingly wrote MEAN you werea bit mean towards me. But that's just fun. Part of the game.

And when you make mistakes at least you have an apology; always ends up as small mistakes. You have an MBA. But perhaps what you read was in Norwegian? May be so.

And when you thought I made a mistake: "Be careful with the rocks in the glass houses and all that". But in the end it turned out to be your mistake.

And when you overlooked that I actually wrote about MEDIAN. But for all those mistakes you made lately I give you the benefit of the doubt. We are all sloppy from time to time. Myself included.

"Anyone with semblance of mathematical insight would use median as MORE REPRESENTATIVE in that distribution". May be so. I have tried to keep up with you. So 570 - median 795 - and 1070. Close, but the first one significantly better. But that was your point, about all these rural läns, not mine.

Yes, I sure must have written that I am 71. No paranoia. More surprised that you used it. In a way you "betrayed" your own ethical standars I assume : "You are deflecting like a child. Hard to believe are 71, but so you say". It is hard to take it personally and I don't. Sometimes part of the game.

I didn't see this before I posted my last answer to you, Budda. Not a very nice good bye, though. We have continued to disagree about Sweden. You state that you are the one who owns the obvious and that I can't admit to agenda posting even when confronted with evidence. That is a bit paternalistic. I don't think that Sweden qualifies as an average European country, and has argued for that. One could turn it around, you see that? I have argued for the simililarties between the Nordic countries, though I want to say, when it comes to knowledge and facts and interpretations nothing is obvious. And when it comes to cherry picking ... many are in the same boat.

We have learned, or we may think we have learned, much about each other, Budda. But at least, I think that you are a decent guy, And very, very, knowledgable. All the best!!!

Fear isn't a solution. The solution is wise action to prevent transmission, which is not difficult at all.

Almost everyone who dies of anything outside accidents and homicides has other conditions, making them susceptible to dying. 94% of cancer victims have comorbidities as well. That doesn't mean people don't die of cancer. Your act has worn thin here. 2.2 million people have died of COVID and world excess mortality is above that. Over 450,000 Americans have died and excess mortality is likely over 1/2 million. To me that is significant and most Americans agree. You're part of the problem.