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Comment by jamesblonde | Hacker News Reader

816 of the current 1400 deaths in Sweden have been in Stockholm. So based your math, we are at around 40% infection rate. I live here, and anecotely i can say that is too high. In my circles, maybe it's 10-20%. Lots of old folks homes were hit here that increase the IFR.

Reference:

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...

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In the Netherlands with about 3.5k deaths on 17 M pop the estimation for infection rate is 3%, based on tests done on people giving blood. I'm not certain whether that 3% is an under- or overstatement (people giving blood usually more active than average, but also younger than the average inflicted and you won't go in when actively ill). It's a long stretch from a 3% to anywhere near herd protection though. The 40% infection rate for Sweden seems too high.

The 40% infection rate is an estimate for Stockholm, not for all of Sweden. The Stockholm region has less than a quarter of the Swedish population (2.3 million out of 10 million) but well over half of the covid-19 deaths (816 out of 1442). Stockholm is also the region with the lowest average age in the country, and the largest proportion of one-person households, so the fatality in the region might be skewed down.

My Norse isn't what it used to be but you're still looking at an 8x difference per capita with the Norwegian number following from a mathematical model and the Dutch number coming from inference based on blood measurements. I don't know what's true, but 40% with 816 deaths seems low. That's a mortality <0.1%.

It is estimated that at least 50% of the infected show no symptoms.

If you take that into account, it's seems my numbers are on the right ballpark again.

Ask people more thoroughly. A lot of people in my circles have had vague symptoms like itchy throat or eyes, vague chest discomfort, general fatigue. I would say the 40% sounds about right.

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