Comment by jamie_ca | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamie_ca | Hacker News Reader

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Sweden's got 10m people, and 87k cases as of mid-Aug. That's less than 1%, so claiming "herd immunity" is BS. They also have almost 6k deaths. Analysis from a month ago projects Sweden's GDP falling 4.8% in 2020, and eyes a 3.6% growth in 2021 - overall down 1.4% across both years.

Denmark's got a little over half the population, 1/5 the cases, 1/9 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 5.1% this year, up 4.0% next year, overall down 1.3%.

Norway's got half the population, 1/11 the cases, 1/22 the deaths. Projected GDP is down 4.7% this year, up 3.7% next year, overall down 1.2%.

If you're saying Sweden didn't lock down and achieved comparable economic results to their neighbours, I'd say yes you're right. A little bit worse on GDP, but very comparable. But they also had thousands more deaths, and tens of thousands more cases with uncertain futures, to no economic _benefit_ that I can see.

Sources: - https://www.statista.com/topics/6123/coronavirus-covid-19-in... - https://www.focus-economics.com/regions/nordic-economies

We don't know the real herd immunity threshold. It had been previously estimated at about 70%. However daily average deaths in Sweden are now down near zero even though there are minimal pandemic control measures, and seroprevalence studies have indicated an exposure rate probably below 20%. So what accounts for the current situation?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

Seroprevalence only measures anti-body resistance, but SARS-CoV-2 is quite similar to common cold viruses and it appears many people have pre-existing immunity to it for that reason. Or so goes the theory.

The 20% antibody threshold seems to be fairly common across many countries however, at least outside non-China Asia/Pacific countries that were not badly affected at all. The body learns how to fight viruses and can do so quite quickly.

The 87k are the verified cases, there are a magnitude more cases. So there is some herd immunity in some areas which may with the current or possibly a bit more lax precautions be enough to keep the new cases at a fairly low level in the fall and winter. Still of course no full herd immunity in all areas.

Some epidemiologist say that we'll live with this virus for 30 years and that pretty much everyone will get it sooner or later. If that is the case some countries have only postponed the inevitable.

Or vaccines or better treatments will soon be available and distributed to a couple of billion people, in that case the harder lockdowns saved some lives or months/years of living.

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