Sweden’s Annual Deaths Remain the Same
limitlesscuriosity.com
limitlesscuriosity.com
So, in the limit of effective response, COVID saves net lives, and in the limit of ineffective response, it costs net lives. The simplest explanation might be that Sweden has hit the intermediate point where it does neither.
What happened? On the one hand, few people died of COVID. On the other hand, there are other deadly respiratory diseases, especially influenza. They're all less contagious than COVID, so the measures taken to contain COVID had the side effect of pretty much eradicating them. (Looking at it the other way: if influenza is still circulating in your community, there is no way you're going to get COVID under control.)
This might not last: the psychiatrists are saying that a lot of Australian teenagers have developed eating disorders, that in ordinary times would lead to very high suicide rates, and the recession is bound to kill lots of people in various ways. No one will know the optimum response for some years, and Sweden could still turn out to be right.
The Australian response could certainly be improved. Mostly by public servants who promptly owned up and asked for help when they got out of their depth in implementing it, and made fewer and less catastrophic stuff ups for want of awkward conversations with their ministers.
> As you can see here, the first half of 2020 was an exceptionally deadly year.
In fact, what the plot shows is a milder flu season than usual, followed by an exceptionally deadly spring.
> After that, and especially now, Sweden compares favorably with other years.
Summer and fall, mortality was very slightly below average. Not much to write home about. But "especially now"? Does the author actually believe the sharp drop at the end represents actual data, instead of the fact that in Sweden, reported deaths lag by roughly 2-3 weeks? This means that at each given date, deaths reported for the preceding few weeks seem to sharply plummet: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-sweden-death-reporting
too long; couldn't understand moon language: November 2020, compared to 2015-2019, has a 10% higher excess mortality, and the highest figures reported since 1918, the year of the Spanish flu hitting hardest in Sweden.
Compared across the last 5 years' average (Jan-Nov 2015-2019), 4859 excess deaths in 2020 during the same monthly span (about +5.8%).
The press release also says that the numbers for November will probably be adjusted upwards, since the current figures are preliminary and Sweden is well into the second wave with hundreds of deaths attributed to Covid-19 every day now.
[1] is an earlier study of excess deaths for several countries. "The US suffered some 275,000 more deaths than the five-year average between 1 March and 16 August". It looks like Spain has a significantly higher death rate as well.
Why did Spain and the US do so much worse than other relatively uncontrolled countries in Sweden, Africa, and Asia? Is it genetics? Population health/demographics/density?
1. https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid?fbclid=IwA...