Why the Swedish Model for Fighting Covid-19 Is a Disaster | Hacker News Reader

Why the Swedish Model for Fighting Covid-19 Is a Disaster

time.com

43 pointsT-A26 comments

Less than 5 people die a day from Covid-19 in the last 30 days. 220 people total people die a day in Sweden. Average age of person that died with Covid-19 is 84. How is it a disaster? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden

Politics.

Their excess mortality is much higher than their neighbours: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Whether that’s a disaster or not is probably up to the people in Sweden - for people who lost family members or got “long covid” then it probably is. For people who didn’t and are enjoying freedoms other countries aren’t, possibly not.

Their excess in mortality is 0.06% for 2020

I’m not sure why you posted that stat in isolation, but you can do some comparisons here: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

Their excess in mortality is very low. It doesn't matter there are countries with even lower excess in mortality.

Matter to who? You? The family of someone who died? The person who died? Someone who lost their job or home due to lockdown?

Even "herd immunity" requires a vaccine [0]!!!

"But it remains unclear whether these antibodies will protect individuals or generate herd immunity. Until there exist vaccines that can do both of those things, societies will need to continue to try to control the spread of the virus..." [1]

[0] https://www.jems.com/2020/08/18/who-herd-immunity-requires-e... [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> Countries that locked down late, came out of lock down too early, did not effectively test and quarantine, or only used a partial lockdown—including Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Spain, Sweden, the U.S. and the U.K.—have almost uniformly done worse in rates of infection and death.

I'm skeptical of this kind of underspecified hypothesis. Is there some concrete definition of for example "came out of lockdown too early" being applied here? Or is it just the post-hoc reasoning of "well, they didn't achieve good results, so their methods must have been bad"? You could probably explain any pattern in the data with such vague criteria.

The question your posing for the author is how thorough s/he would have to go into the details to capture his/her audience. I don't know exactly the audience but I know that the argument (s)he makes is more than enough for me. As I've followed the news especially regarding US, UK, Sweden and [as a good example - for now!] Germany and just nod along when I read the quote. It has been pretty clear to the avid (real) newsreader how much impact letting it spread has (and going out of lockdown when the R0 has not sufficiently subsided). We can currently watch in awe how the second wave manifests in Europe because we did not react fast enough when the numbers shot up again... I mean the pattern is always the same. It's not exactly rocket science...

The question I'm posing is whether the hypothesis is well-specified and true, not whether it's persuasive to the target audience. I think the target audience largely follows your "can I nod along to it" heuristic, but underspecified hypotheses are the easiest to nod along with, because they'll continue to make sense no matter what data you see. If a second wave hadn't manifested in Europe, nobody would see that as a contradiction; they'd just say "well, ok, Europe must have done the right things then".

I'm sure there's a matter of article length if every claim requires writing extensively about a country's policy. You can look up articles on your own to corroborate these claims. For example, Brazil's Bolsonaro's stance was pretty much a mirror of the US response (down to the president downplaying the seriousness of the problem and subsequently getting infected and all)

Canada provides another interesting data point. They have very strict quarantine policies for incoming travelers, but now that domestic flights are at full capacity again, schools are reopening and the general public is getting more lax, they're seeing an uptick in cases again.

There are certainly examples of countries that both had a lot of deaths and didn't have very strict responses. But the list also includes Spain and the UK, which had long and strict lockdowns - Spain kept kids locked indoors for 6 weeks!

Sure, but that doesn't refute the claim that not taking the necessary precautions leads to worse outcomes. What the Spain/UK cases suggest is that lack of lockdown policies aren't the only leading factors to the spread of the disease.

This is why I think the Canada case is interesting: yes the government tells travelers to quarantine under the risk of a million dollar fine, but go to a park now and 80% of people aren't wearing masks despite reports of people breaking quarantine. So clearly, a dissonance between policy and what's going on on the ground can have a non-negligible effect.

Again, my concern is that this claim is so underspecified that no data could refute it. No matter which countries achieve better or worse outcomes, you can (and people do) define whatever the countries with better outcomes did to be the necessary precautions.

Maybe a concrete example would help express what I'm getting at here. If Brazil saw a rapid improvement over the next month, would you consider that a refutation of the claim, or would you conclude that they must have started taking the necessary precautions?

> would you conclude that they must have started taking the necessary precautions?

Well funny you asked, because this is exactly what has been happening. Much like in the US, due to the double-down on the president's part on his "just a little flu" characterization of covid, brazilian regional governments are taking matters into their own hands. So we can expect a similar curve as the US, as state measures slowly kick into full gear to contain the spread and as people scramble to deal with the economic impact in their lives, negating the impact of policies. We're seeing poorer areas getting impacted more severely, much like it has been documented in the US as well.

On a more general level, it isn't particularly relevant what factors might be a confirmation or refutation of a claim in a hypothetical scenario, because by definition, hypotheticals are not data. Of course, if hypothetically, the US suddenly registered a dramatic decrease in new cases of Covid without any intentional changes in containment strategy, then it would behoove to re-evaluate previous assumptions and policies. But since that hasn't happened, we make judgments based on what we see is actually happening worldwide instead.

As for the definition of "necessary precautions", my understanding is that it's not some nebulous handwaving, but rather, it's the WHO guidelines that everyone references.

I think it's still way to early to call any cases failures, and I would rather my country had followed the swedish model or almost literally any other model than "strict" quarantine we have which is causing millions to go into poverty and who knows how many to die from lack of care for other stuff. We will only know the true cost of different models once all this is over and the data is in.

The medical chauvinism on display here is the real disaster. We need to have a broader conversation.

Too late for that I think, the authoritarians have had a taste and they like it. From the Dutch Prime-minister in a story posted on HN earlier today:

The government also plans to make face masks compulsory in all indoor public spaces, but that still needs to be worked out legally. ‘We want to prevent discussion about the measures,’ Rutte said. ‘We want people to stick to them.’

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/10/the-netherlands-goes-i...

Discussion, conversation, yesterday's thing; shut up and do as you're told.

He was referring there to discussion caused by inconsistent rules resulting in people being unsure what the intention is, not that discussion in general is intended to be prevented.

Here is a story that's currently not getting much traction on HN:

70.6% of people who were infected with Covid-19 “Always” wear masks [pdf] (cdc.gov)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24777029

And probably something like 90% of people who die in automobile crashes always wear seatbelts.

I only have a couple of drinks a week.

It's not a very powerful data point to me, as in fact the linked HN discussion covers. What if 99% of those dead mask wearers had been going to daily naked foam parties with N95 masks properly covering their faces?

I think you have the direction of protection of masks the wrong way round.

Anybody who's actually seen the Dutch PMs press conferences has cringingly witnessed the lengths he has been going through not to 'tell anybody what to do'. What he is finally realizing his biggest contribution has been creating confusion.

The government doesnt even issue mask wearing instructions for fear of being raked over the coals for having the gall to 'prescribe' the sovereign people of the Netherlands.

Get a grip. Theres a million actual reasons for blaming Rutte for making your life worse, yet all these overnight liberals cannot see more than the mask an inch in front of them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com