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Northern Ireland27230 Posts
On October 12 2020 18:43 Longshank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2020 15:58 TheTenthDoc wrote:I think part of the issue is that "lockdown" means different things in different places, and its efficacy varies wildly based on geography and culture. A handy illustration is NZ's alert levels. I think their level 4 would definitely qualify as a lockdown. But what about level 3? Level 2? Is it purely whether non-essential businesses are open? Is it whether non-essential businesses are open but high-risk of transmission businesses are not allowed to open? Does it have less to do with businesses than it does with enforcing limited social contact (and I mean actually enforcing it)? Is it bans on gatherings of 30 people? 100 people? Is it mandating work from home? Is it largely about limiting local and international travel, as discussed in the WHO article? It doesn't help that special interests groups are doing their best to muddle the answers to all these questions. I mean, is "social distancing" a lockdown/part of lockdowns? Or not? Well, the entire world has been screaming at Sweden for not doing a lockdown so you can look at our restrictions and go from there. I can give you a starting point, it's not shutting down on-site education for people aged 15+, it's not banning all visits to our care home and it's not bans on gatherings of more than 50 people.
Weren’t care homes specifically grossly over-represented in deaths to the degree that Anders Tegnell said the Swedish response there specifically was a disaster?
That said I think there’s a huge amount of disingenuous rhetoric or unintentional poor recall around different international responses, who was saying or advocating for what etc. Or indeed a pointlessness in comparing different countries in certain ways.
How can the same approaches work in countries with different structural characteristics and cultural and social norms? Countries that are huge international business travel hubs like the U.K and London vs somewhere like New Zealand.
I think (and I think I aired it here, maybe not), that the Swedish response can work in the Swedish context. I have little faith in that being the case in my native land.
At a more extreme comparison, somewhere like Korea where people wore masks while sick before this pandemic, vs the US where some refuse to wear them as a matter of misplaced pride. Judging the effectiveness of say a strategy of opening up + distancing and masks from either state won’t necessarily give particularly useful data in adopting that elsewhere.
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Sweden is most remarkable for managing to maintain high levels of public approval in its "strategy" for handling the virus while at the same time doing a very poor job by any meaningful metric that involves numbers. Most other places that have numbers as bad as Sweden are very enraged indeed at their governments, so they must be doing at least something right.
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Northern Ireland27230 Posts
On October 12 2020 22:26 LegalLord wrote:
Sweden is most remarkable for managing to maintain high levels of public approval in its "strategy" for handling the virus while at the same time doing a very poor job by any meaningful metric that involves numbers. Most other places that have numbers as bad as Sweden are very enraged indeed at their governments, so they must be doing at least something right.
Most other places still have pretty bad numbers on top of life-altering restrictions. Sometimes with rank incompetence on top.
I’d assume approval will naturally be higher if Sweden has similarly or slightly worse numbers, but fewer of said restrictions.
In the rank incompetence field for example we have a government who spent millions on a track and trace system that didn’t work, and just recently lost 16,000 test results because they were being entered into an Excel spreadsheet. I’m in week 3 of a software engineering degree and what I learned in week 1 made this utterly baffling.
Add to an arbitrary nature of restrictions and people are going to be pissed off. I (think) people can stomach them as long as they are both fair and make some degree of sense.
I couldn’t get a computer repaired for weeks during lockdown. Garden centres reopened as essential, electronics places did not. At a time where people were expected to work from home this seemed neither particularly fair nor as making much sense.
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On October 12 2020 22:35 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2020 22:26 LegalLord wrote:
Sweden is most remarkable for managing to maintain high levels of public approval in its "strategy" for handling the virus while at the same time doing a very poor job by any meaningful metric that involves numbers. Most other places that have numbers as bad as Sweden are very enraged indeed at their governments, so they must be doing at least something right. Most other places still have pretty bad numbers on top of life-altering restrictions. Sometimes with rank incompetence on top. I’d assume approval will naturally be higher if Sweden has similarly or slightly worse numbers, but fewer of said restrictions.
Well, as it stands Sweden has significantly worse numbers than other comparable countries, or comparable numbers to countries that are inherently far more vulnerable. That doesn't seem to change the widespread popularity of the measures, though.
Of course, there's a price in blood that all countries are willing to pay for some sense of normalcy. That very much seems to be the theme of the last couple of pages of discussion. Guess you just have to see what balance seems to work when all is said and done.
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It really isn't rocket science. The reason why people are generally happy with Sweden's strategy is that we haven't had any great changes in the way people live and no great changes in public health (the excess mortality this year is the same as it was 2015 when the population growth is taken into account). If Swedes were more sick than usual, people would be upset. If people's freedom and way of life were too impacted they would also be upset.
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On October 12 2020 23:13 Elroi wrote:
It really isn't rocket science. The reason why people are generally happy with Sweden's strategy is that we haven't had any great changes in the way people live and no great changes in public health (the excess mortality this year is the same as it was 2015 when the population growth is taken into account). If Swedes were more sick than usual, people would be upset. If people's freedom and way of life were too impacted they would also be upset.
Not sure that that part is true (and the wording sounds like it's intending to cherry-pick in either case) given that the March to June period showed significant excess death and the rest of the year seems to be an average amount of mortality, but it's certainly true that requiring people to do less to sustain the strategy is likely to make people happier. It's only 6k people that died, a rounding error if you choose the right way of thinking about it.
Well, we all chose our own approach to it all. Sweden's just involves a more than average amount of death, popular support, and defensiveness about said support. I'm not going to pretend I think it's a good idea, but there's not a lot of nations that can really be called "success stories" at this point, so maybe optimizing for popular support is the way to go.
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On October 12 2020 22:24 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2020 18:43 Longshank wrote:On October 12 2020 15:58 TheTenthDoc wrote:I think part of the issue is that "lockdown" means different things in different places, and its efficacy varies wildly based on geography and culture. A handy illustration is NZ's alert levels. I think their level 4 would definitely qualify as a lockdown. But what about level 3? Level 2? Is it purely whether non-essential businesses are open? Is it whether non-essential businesses are open but high-risk of transmission businesses are not allowed to open? Does it have less to do with businesses than it does with enforcing limited social contact (and I mean actually enforcing it)? Is it bans on gatherings of 30 people? 100 people? Is it mandating work from home? Is it largely about limiting local and international travel, as discussed in the WHO article? It doesn't help that special interests groups are doing their best to muddle the answers to all these questions. I mean, is "social distancing" a lockdown/part of lockdowns? Or not? Well, the entire world has been screaming at Sweden for not doing a lockdown so you can look at our restrictions and go from there. I can give you a starting point, it's not shutting down on-site education for people aged 15+, it's not banning all visits to our care home and it's not bans on gatherings of more than 50 people. Weren’t care homes specifically grossly over-represented in deaths to the degree that Anders Tegnell said the Swedish response there specifically was a disaster?
They've still been on lockdown until Oct 1. And yeah, Tegnell said we failed to protect our elderly properly which is true. It's worth pointing out that we had a lower rate of our covid deaths at care homes than Norway for instance so it's not like we were the only ones.
As for our excess deaths, we've been below the 2015-2019 curve since week 25 so it depends on how the last few months play out. If the current trend lasts, 2020 should be an average year. Not sure it will though.
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On October 12 2020 23:28 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2020 23:13 Elroi wrote:
It really isn't rocket science. The reason why people are generally happy with Sweden's strategy is that we haven't had any great changes in the way people live and no great changes in public health (the excess mortality this year is the same as it was 2015 when the population growth is taken into account). If Swedes were more sick than usual, people would be upset. If people's freedom and way of life were too impacted they would also be upset. Well, we all chose our own approach to it all. Sweden's just involves a more than average amount of death, popular support, and defensiveness about said support. I'm not going to pretend I think it's a good idea, but there's not a lot of nations that can really be called "success stories" at this point, so maybe optimizing for popular support is the way to go.
It also involves constant attacks from idiots across the world who have no fucking idea about Sweden's strategy, spouting reddit facts and other truths that pop up in their social media feed. That could partially explain the defensiveness.
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On October 12 2020 22:24 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2020 18:43 Longshank wrote:On October 12 2020 15:58 TheTenthDoc wrote:I think part of the issue is that "lockdown" means different things in different places, and its efficacy varies wildly based on geography and culture. A handy illustration is NZ's alert levels. I think their level 4 would definitely qualify as a lockdown. But what about level 3? Level 2? Is it purely whether non-essential businesses are open? Is it whether non-essential businesses are open but high-risk of transmission businesses are not allowed to open? Does it have less to do with businesses than it does with enforcing limited social contact (and I mean actually enforcing it)? Is it bans on gatherings of 30 people? 100 people? Is it mandating work from home? Is it largely about limiting local and international travel, as discussed in the WHO article? It doesn't help that special interests groups are doing their best to muddle the answers to all these questions. I mean, is "social distancing" a lockdown/part of lockdowns? Or not? Well, the entire world has been screaming at Sweden for not doing a lockdown so you can look at our restrictions and go from there. I can give you a starting point, it's not shutting down on-site education for people aged 15+, it's not banning all visits to our care home and it's not bans on gatherings of more than 50 people. Weren’t care homes specifically grossly over-represented in deaths to the degree that Anders Tegnell said the Swedish response there specifically was a disaster? That said I think there’s a huge amount of disingenuous rhetoric or unintentional poor recall around different international responses, who was saying or advocating for what etc. Or indeed a pointlessness in comparing different countries in certain ways. How can the same approaches work in countries with different structural characteristics and cultural and social norms? Countries that are huge international business travel hubs like the U.K and London vs somewhere like New Zealand. I think (and I think I aired it here, maybe not), that the Swedish response can work in the Swedish context. I have little faith in that being the case in my native land. At a more extreme comparison, somewhere like Korea where people wore masks while sick before this pandemic, vs the US where some refuse to wear them as a matter of misplaced pride. Judging the effectiveness of say a strategy of opening up + distancing and masks from either state won’t necessarily give particularly useful data in adopting that elsewhere.
Not if you compare it to their neighboring countries. Both Norway and Denmark have a higher ratio of elderly death.
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On October 13 2020 01:36 Neneu wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2020 22:24 WombaT wrote:On October 12 2020 18:43 Longshank wrote:On October 12 2020 15:58 TheTenthDoc wrote:I think part of the issue is that "lockdown" means different things in different places, and its efficacy varies wildly based on geography and culture. A handy illustration is NZ's alert levels. I think their level 4 would definitely qualify as a lockdown. But what about level 3? Level 2? Is it purely whether non-essential businesses are open? Is it whether non-essential businesses are open but high-risk of transmission businesses are not allowed to open? Does it have less to do with businesses than it does with enforcing limited social contact (and I mean actually enforcing it)? Is it bans on gatherings of 30 people? 100 people? Is it mandating work from home? Is it largely about limiting local and international travel, as discussed in the WHO article? It doesn't help that special interests groups are doing their best to muddle the answers to all these questions. I mean, is "social distancing" a lockdown/part of lockdowns? Or not? Well, the entire world has been screaming at Sweden for not doing a lockdown so you can look at our restrictions and go from there. I can give you a starting point, it's not shutting down on-site education for people aged 15+, it's not banning all visits to our care home and it's not bans on gatherings of more than 50 people. Weren’t care homes specifically grossly over-represented in deaths to the degree that Anders Tegnell said the Swedish response there specifically was a disaster? That said I think there’s a huge amount of disingenuous rhetoric or unintentional poor recall around different international responses, who was saying or advocating for what etc. Or indeed a pointlessness in comparing different countries in certain ways. How can the same approaches work in countries with different structural characteristics and cultural and social norms? Countries that are huge international business travel hubs like the U.K and London vs somewhere like New Zealand. I think (and I think I aired it here, maybe not), that the Swedish response can work in the Swedish context. I have little faith in that being the case in my native land. At a more extreme comparison, somewhere like Korea where people wore masks while sick before this pandemic, vs the US where some refuse to wear them as a matter of misplaced pride. Judging the effectiveness of say a strategy of opening up + distancing and masks from either state won’t necessarily give particularly useful data in adopting that elsewhere. Not if you compare it to their neighboring countries. Both Norway and Denmark have a higher ratio of elderly death.
Sweden definitely has a much larger absolute number of elderly care deaths and deaths as proportion of overall population, though. From what I could find on a quick search, Sweden had 1.5k or so deaths in elderly care homes, Norway had 150. That was back when Sweden was at 4k deaths and Norway at 220, and more have died since then.
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On October 13 2020 01:39 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2020 01:36 Neneu wrote:On October 12 2020 22:24 WombaT wrote:On October 12 2020 18:43 Longshank wrote:On October 12 2020 15:58 TheTenthDoc wrote:I think part of the issue is that "lockdown" means different things in different places, and its efficacy varies wildly based on geography and culture. A handy illustration is NZ's alert levels. I think their level 4 would definitely qualify as a lockdown. But what about level 3? Level 2? Is it purely whether non-essential businesses are open? Is it whether non-essential businesses are open but high-risk of transmission businesses are not allowed to open? Does it have less to do with businesses than it does with enforcing limited social contact (and I mean actually enforcing it)? Is it bans on gatherings of 30 people? 100 people? Is it mandating work from home? Is it largely about limiting local and international travel, as discussed in the WHO article? It doesn't help that special interests groups are doing their best to muddle the answers to all these questions. I mean, is "social distancing" a lockdown/part of lockdowns? Or not? Well, the entire world has been screaming at Sweden for not doing a lockdown so you can look at our restrictions and go from there. I can give you a starting point, it's not shutting down on-site education for people aged 15+, it's not banning all visits to our care home and it's not bans on gatherings of more than 50 people. Weren’t care homes specifically grossly over-represented in deaths to the degree that Anders Tegnell said the Swedish response there specifically was a disaster? That said I think there’s a huge amount of disingenuous rhetoric or unintentional poor recall around different international responses, who was saying or advocating for what etc. Or indeed a pointlessness in comparing different countries in certain ways. How can the same approaches work in countries with different structural characteristics and cultural and social norms? Countries that are huge international business travel hubs like the U.K and London vs somewhere like New Zealand. I think (and I think I aired it here, maybe not), that the Swedish response can work in the Swedish context. I have little faith in that being the case in my native land. At a more extreme comparison, somewhere like Korea where people wore masks while sick before this pandemic, vs the US where some refuse to wear them as a matter of misplaced pride. Judging the effectiveness of say a strategy of opening up + distancing and masks from either state won’t necessarily give particularly useful data in adopting that elsewhere. Not if you compare it to their neighboring countries. Both Norway and Denmark have a higher ratio of elderly death. Sweden definitely has a much larger absolute number of elderly care deaths and deaths as proportion of overall population, though. From what I could find on a quick search, Sweden had 1.5k or so deaths in elderly care homes, Norway had 150. That was back when Sweden was at 4k deaths and Norway at 220, and more have died since then.
Obviously the absolute numbers are much higher since we had much higher spread. But assuming your numbers are correct, what do they tell you about the total deaths/care home deaths ratio?
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On October 13 2020 02:05 Longshank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2020 01:39 LegalLord wrote:On October 13 2020 01:36 Neneu wrote:On October 12 2020 22:24 WombaT wrote:On October 12 2020 18:43 Longshank wrote:On October 12 2020 15:58 TheTenthDoc wrote:I think part of the issue is that "lockdown" means different things in different places, and its efficacy varies wildly based on geography and culture. A handy illustration is NZ's alert levels. I think their level 4 would definitely qualify as a lockdown. But what about level 3? Level 2? Is it purely whether non-essential businesses are open? Is it whether non-essential businesses are open but high-risk of transmission businesses are not allowed to open? Does it have less to do with businesses than it does with enforcing limited social contact (and I mean actually enforcing it)? Is it bans on gatherings of 30 people? 100 people? Is it mandating work from home? Is it largely about limiting local and international travel, as discussed in the WHO article? It doesn't help that special interests groups are doing their best to muddle the answers to all these questions. I mean, is "social distancing" a lockdown/part of lockdowns? Or not? Well, the entire world has been screaming at Sweden for not doing a lockdown so you can look at our restrictions and go from there. I can give you a starting point, it's not shutting down on-site education for people aged 15+, it's not banning all visits to our care home and it's not bans on gatherings of more than 50 people. Weren’t care homes specifically grossly over-represented in deaths to the degree that Anders Tegnell said the Swedish response there specifically was a disaster? That said I think there’s a huge amount of disingenuous rhetoric or unintentional poor recall around different international responses, who was saying or advocating for what etc. Or indeed a pointlessness in comparing different countries in certain ways. How can the same approaches work in countries with different structural characteristics and cultural and social norms? Countries that are huge international business travel hubs like the U.K and London vs somewhere like New Zealand. I think (and I think I aired it here, maybe not), that the Swedish response can work in the Swedish context. I have little faith in that being the case in my native land. At a more extreme comparison, somewhere like Korea where people wore masks while sick before this pandemic, vs the US where some refuse to wear them as a matter of misplaced pride. Judging the effectiveness of say a strategy of opening up + distancing and masks from either state won’t necessarily give particularly useful data in adopting that elsewhere. Not if you compare it to their neighboring countries. Both Norway and Denmark have a higher ratio of elderly death. Sweden definitely has a much larger absolute number of elderly care deaths and deaths as proportion of overall population, though. From what I could find on a quick search, Sweden had 1.5k or so deaths in elderly care homes, Norway had 150. That was back when Sweden was at 4k deaths and Norway at 220, and more have died since then. Obviously the absolute numbers are much higher since we had much higher spread. But assuming your numbers are correct, what do they tell you about the total deaths/care home deaths ratio?
Probably "on top of failing to protect the elderly in elder care homes, Sweden had a large number of deaths among the elderly and less-vulnerable population outside of such homes." Or "Norway failed at protecting one portion of the vulnerable population, Sweden failed at protecting several."
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Possibly if that would have been the case, which it's not. Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden have almost the exact same covid death rate among people aged 70+, in and outside of care homes(all withing 87-89%).
This is something that's been triggering through out this pandemic. People like you who make shit up in bad faith in your inexplicable hatred towards Sweden's approach. I mean, not too long ago you were unable to even admit that our number of cases had even gone down since spring. I just don't get it. I work at a care home myself and I would much rather had seen us mirror Finland's or Norway's approach personally. Mars to June was a fucking nightmare, several colleagues have literally broken down and I've had panic attacks myself. I do however understand why we didn't even if I don't agree with it and it's really tiresome to constantly read through shit posts from people who do their outmost to misunderstand and misinterpret anything related to Sweden and Covid-19. You're sadly not unique.
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On October 13 2020 03:13 Longshank wrote:
Possibly if that would have been the case, which it's not. Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden have almost the exact same covid death rate among people aged 70+, in and outside of care homes(all withing 87-89%).
True, but the question was about the elderly in elderly care homes. Based on this and this, you get about 45% in Sweden, 65% in Norway. Maybe it all still adds up to around 90%, but Sweden killed more people in each one of these environments than these other countries with a "higher percentage" in a certain high-risk environment.
On October 13 2020 03:13 Longshank wrote:
This is something that's been triggering through out this pandemic. People like you who make shit up in bad faith in your inexplicable hatred towards Sweden's approach. I mean, not too long ago you were unable to even admit that our number of cases had even gone down since spring. I just don't get it. I work at a care home myself and I would much rather had seen us mirror Finland's or Norway's approach personally. Mars to June was a fucking nightmare, several colleagues have literally broken down and I've had panic attacks myself. I do however understand why we didn't even if I don't agree with it and it's really tiresome to constantly read through shit posts from people who do their outmost to misunderstand and misinterpret anything related to Sweden and Covid-19. You're sadly not unique.
I mean, you seem to be as defensive about accurate data as inaccurate data and you also straw-man my earlier points, so I think the real concern is that you're sensitive to any insinuation that Sweden is anything but a resounding success story. Not sure why you feel the need to defend it with some really curious contortions of logic, but as I say, Sweden's strategy does seem to include a lot of that. Your position is sadly not that unique either - it just seems to be parroting the exact words the Swedish government says to justify its questionable stance.
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The excess deaths went up 40 % over a period of 2-3 months, then went back to normal and are now below it. That is compared to 2015-2019 btw. In real numbers it was going from ~1750 deaths to 2500 for a short period.
The vast majority were people who were 80+.
It`s not great but not horrible either.
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On October 13 2020 03:40 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
The excess deaths went up 40 % over a period of 2-3 months, then went back to normal and are now below it. That is compared to 2015-2019 btw. In real numbers it was going from ~1750 deaths to 2500 for a short period.
The vast majority were people who were 80+.
It`s not great but not horrible either.
At the very least, "I'm comfortable with the number of additional people who died in return for us being able to stay mostly open" is an honest argument. Not one I would personally endorse in foresight or even in hindsight, but it's not disingenuous. What you wrote here is basically another take on the "only 6k" point I made several times before, which is a fair thing to argue.
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On October 13 2020 03:47 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2020 03:40 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
The excess deaths went up 40 % over a period of 2-3 months, then went back to normal and are now below it. That is compared to 2015-2019 btw. In real numbers it was going from ~1750 deaths to 2500 for a short period.
The vast majority were people who were 80+.
It`s not great but not horrible either. At the very least, "I'm comfortable with the number of additional people who died in return for us being able to stay mostly open" is an honest argument. Not one I would personally endorse in foresight or even in hindsight, but it's not disingenuous. What you wrote here is basically another take on the "only 6k" point I made several times before, which is a fair thing to argue.
We dont close down for the flue which (in absolute numbers) killed more people in 1993 and in relative numbers in 2000. I do not agree with our response (or preparedness) for covid but I do not doubt that the people in charge did what they thougth was best. At this point just wait for the final verdict and the consensus on how it should have been handled and learn from that.
Also this blog has a decent overview of excess deaths in Sweden.
https://emanuelkarlsten.se/number-of-deaths-in-sweden-during-the-pandemic-compared-to-previous-years-mortality/
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Did the flu kill a million people in 1993 tho?
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EPT
