[heracles]

The amount of misinformation (or the very least, confused statements) in this thread is high for being HN. Soo many people know much about Sweden without ever setting their foot here. Interesting that.

The world's apparent obsession with the Swedish strategy isn't about Sweden at all. It is about their own strategies, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for doing the right thing, whatever that was. There's myriads of variables that differ between Any two countries.

[drtillberg]

This.

Sweden's path has been conventional. The attention is coming from nations that executed extreme and even revolutionary policies of universal home arrest, "shutting" an entire nation like a coffee shop, and sending a 30%+ of the workers onto unemployment.

This ultimately comes back to the so-called "Trolley problem,"[1] which some posters in this thread have brilliantly acknowledged. Would we throw the whole world out of work, or imprison them, or bankrupt them, to save 1 life? If not, what is the limit or deciding principle?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

[craigsmansion]

> This.

You say "this", and then proceed to state the exact fallacy the OP made as a truthful observation.

> Sweden's path has been conventional.

Yes. Sweden's path has been conventional. Italy's path has been conventional as well.

There is this whole wave of misapprehension and misunderstanding on HN, especially when it comes to the pandemic: "My opinion is backed by facts, therefor all other opinions must be political and I do not need to think about them because my opinion is correct", which is a form of circular reasoning.

> This ultimately comes back to

This ultimately comes back people whose day-job entails shoveling data with computers and being (or at least feeling) smarter than average, and as such feel at least somewhat qualified as a statistician/epidemiologist.

One of the few things that is clear is that the spread and the course of the disease has an enormous amount of unknown confounding factors.

This means that any approach within general ethical boundaries is valid: from making future prediction based on the most advanced epidemiological data to date, to a system-wide shutdown of "doing the things that are very likely to worsen the situation".

None of the scientific advisors to the various democratic governments are complete idiots, and even none of the elected government officials involved are out to willfully wreak havoc on their populations.

Find out what works. Find out what doesn't work and why it doesn't work even though it seems to work elsewhere.

Sweden's approach is valid. Italy's approach is valid. The chances of any one person getting it exactly right the first time are negligible, so there is no point in cheering for what one believed to be the "winning team".

To spell it out for you: you are not right. You are, at best, less wrong. And to paraphrase the OP, "it is about their own opinions, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for believing the right thing."

[goodcanadian]

Find out what works. Find out what doesn't work and why it doesn't work even though it seems to work elsewhere.

Absolutely. The trouble is that there is no consensus on what "working" means. Is it minimising short term deaths? Well, then it is easy to see what worked and what didn't, but is that the correct metric? Perhaps, it is minimising impact on society? Well, it is less easy to see, but there is enough information to make some reasoned statements. However, you will probably come up with a different answer than you had for the previous question. And are we talking about short term or long term impact? Perhaps the goal is to minimise long term deaths and suffering? I don't think that we can begin to claim to have enough information to make any definite statements on that (though, of course, I have my opinions).

[thu2111]

Italy's path has been conventional as well.

Conventional in what sense? They did hard lockdown which I believe has never been tried before, outside of Mexico, once, for a few days. This type of long term shutdown is entirely new.

None of the scientific advisors to the various democratic governments are complete idiots

Given their behaviour a lot of people have concluded otherwise.

Sweden's approach is valid. Italy's approach is valid.

Nobody is arguing about validity, which is undefined here and thus meaningless anyway, but cost and proportionality.

The stated justification for lockdowns was to avoid overflowing hospitals. Sweden avoided this despite taking far less harsh measures than Italy. This automatically makes Sweden's approach better than Italy's (or "more valid" if you like).

In Belarus they locked down less than Sweden, and still didn't see hospital overflow. Presumably that means Belarus is even less wrong than Sweden!

[smallnamespace]

Italy’s starting point was that they were in the midst of getting overwhelmed (and were already over capacity in some regions) when they executed their shutdown.

Sweden had a better starting point and more time and room to maneuver.

[sampo]

> revolutionary policies of universal home arrest

Quarantine is an age-old method of disease prevention. There is nothing revolutionary about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine#History

[Mattasher]

Quarantine for the sick is an age-old method. Lockdowns of entire populations for extended periods is a massive experiment, and the closest analogy we have is the wholesale internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, based on the idea that some of them might pose a danger.

[oblio]

In 1918 they did the exact same thing, they shut stuff down : https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-citie...

[lowdose]

> Weekly deaths per 100,000 from 1918 pandemic above the expected rate.

The 1918 with worst cities 400+ Weekly deaths per 100.000 people are not comparable with the following numbers of COVID-19. Note that covid numbers not weekly but total.

> The Johns Hopkins University looked into the number deaths per 100,000 of the population in the top-10 countries worst affected by COVID-19. Belgium had over 57,000 cases on May 25 but it had the highest number of deaths per 100,000 of its inhabitants at 81.53. By comparison, badly-hit Spain and Italy had 57.43 and 55.64 deaths per 100,000 people respectively. The U.S. has surpassed 1.5 million cases and its deaths per 100,000 inhabitants stood at 30.02 on May 25.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/2117...

[oblio]

The 1918 flu was awful, however Covid is nothing to sneeze at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPCkVrdZVjM

Keep in mind that the graph from that video looks the way it does despite almost the entire world taking measures to prevent the spread of Covid ;-)

[zosima]

Quarantine is only for the healthy.

The sick are isolated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine

And quarantines have been used since the earliest times. In Boccacio's Decamerone the protagonists escape to the countryside.

[akiselev]

> The quarantine against chol era has been lifted in the Black Sea port of Odessa, Pravda re ported today, but Soviet travel organizations said they were still limiting travel to the city.

From the New York Times archive, 1970 [1]. The Soviet government quarantined Odessa in 1970 during the cholera outbreak in a rather cruel way - information about the outbreak was suppressed but since it was a popular vacation spot, people kept coming only to be trapped there [2]. It's hard to find much information on the event due to the iron curtain but I've heard several personal accounts and the similarities are striking.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/21/archives/cholera-quaranti...

[2] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/chorela-quarantine-odess... - My apologies for a long form article but search for "quarantine" deeper into it.

[oska]

There is nothing 'extreme' or 'revolutionary' about adopting strong containment (quarantine) measures during a pandemic. That has been established human practice for millennia. What is extreme is not doing so.

And your mention of the trolley problem is bogus. Early containment measures would have saved lives and the economy. There was no dilemma there.

[spacemanmatt]

It's like the trolley problem, but Sweden pulled the lever that sends the trolley over lots of people rather than just a few.

I think you used the right ethical analysis tool, but I think you got the ethical analysis wrong.

[natch]

Sweden’s position is that the trolley in this set of choices is eventually going to roll over roughly the same number of people no matter which lever is pulled. The timing varies in different scenarios, not the total numbers.

It just appears that the numbers are worse for them because the scenario hasn’t fully played out yet in all countries, and they chose the lever that has them taking their hits early. Comparisons with other countries aren’t appropriate, they would say, until all trolleys have stopped rolling.

And they are choosing their strategy deliberately, because they think there are various benefits (including epidemiological ones) of this path.

>rather than just a few

No. It looks like just a few. But that’s a false conclusion, taken only because we are still in the early stages. Other countries will catch up to their numbers.

[matthewdgreen]

> Other countries will catch up to their numbers.

The fatality rate seems to be declining globally, in part due to improved treatment. Even if that was the only objection to your claim, it would be a serious objection. In addition to that, we're also rapidly learning lessons about how to protect vulnerable patients in care homes (part of the "learning" here is just manufacturing enough PPE to do the job). Many of the elderly patients who died in Sweden's first wave might have been saved if they'd delayed the infections enough to apply what we've learned.

[new2628]

By this logic any great loss can be rationalized as the prelude to some even greater win.

At the moment the best we have are the current numbers. By that measure, Sweden looks terrible.

Comparisons between counties of similar population are quite informative: https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png

[jimmyswimmy]

I think that's not quite correct. Sweden didn't pull any lever at all. They advised their citizens but left them individually free to choose their own path, or pull their own lever. I would argue that's a different ethical choice than what most other countries made.

[cowbellemoo]

> Sweden didn't pull any lever at all

Your analysis of their passivity does not acknowledge the assumptions underlying an individualist strategy. The lever Sweden pulled was permitting the atomization of a collective public health problem.

[mikem170]

>The lever Sweden pulled was permitting the atomization of a collective public health problem.

Did that happen? I didn't hear that their health system broke under the load.

To the contrary, everyone else atomized their economies and still had the virus go through their populations.

Per-capita Sweden did about the same as France, and better than Italy, UK, and Spain.

[alkonaut]

> over lots of people rather than just a few.

This is too soon to say

- We don't know whether different actions would have produced a very different outcome (I don't beleive a Norwegain strategy would have yielded significantly better outcome, for example).

- More importantly it's too soon to say given we don't have the effects of public health on other mitigations which come much later (e.g. GDP for healthcare spending etc). We also aren't even nearly through the pandemic. More outbreaks are likely, and we don't know how much effect the places with 10%, 20% or 30% immunity will have compared to places with places that have a much lower immunity.

[matz1]

There is no wrong answer in the trolley problem, ethics are subjective.

[literallycancer]

>Sweden's path has been conventional. The attention is coming from nations that executed extreme and even revolutionary policies of universal home arrest, "shutting" an entire nation like a coffee shop, and sending a 30%+ of the workers onto unemployment.

As opposed to abusing the situation to rebalance a ponzi scheme pension system? After all, most of the people dying have stopped contributing taxes, so nothing of value was lost. Right?

Another thing to note is that most countries didn't just cause a huge number of people to lose their jobs with no plan, only US did that (because it's a 3rd world country). Normal people use the QE money to keep everyone safe and healthy until the danger passes. Which it does, if you take proper measures and close down travel from red zones.

Viruses don't become benign just because people aren't in the mood to deal with them anymore.

[zosima]

A large part of this confusion has been caused by Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM).

Tegnell and folkhälsomyndigheten (FHM) have clarified their strategy as:

Keep the number of infected people down at any one time to not overwhelm the health system.

Groups at risk for severe disease should quarantine themselves.

But they have also repeatedly indicated that they don't want to stop the spread of infection completely.

And that they are not running a strategy aiming at herd immunity, though when most people have been infected there will be herd immunity.

That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic.

[alkonaut]

> That sort of communication leads to confusion, as the difference between a strategy that aims for herd immunity and one that will lead to herd immunity, at best is purely semantic.

I think it's a bit more than semantic at least. "use mitigations that are as effective as possible while still being sustainable in the long term". So long as healthcare isn't overwhelmed and R is kept under 1, these mitigations aren't leading to herd immunity because the outbreak is going to disappear before that, most likely.

If you accept an R on or over 1 then you are using a strategy that will lead to herd immunity.

[zosima]

Again I think we are getting into semantics, where there's no reason to not be clear.

If you make R < 1 you are in fact suppressing the disease. However slowly. If you are keeping R around 1 or above, you are mitigating.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172840/

Currently, it seems the disease is being suppressed in Sweden. I have no idea what Folkhälsomyndigheten or Anders Tegnell thinks about that.

[alkonaut]

Of course it’s being suppressed. R has been below 1 since what, mid-April? (Deaths and hospitalizations peaked on apr 24).

[heracles]

I agree a bit, I'm not certain exactly what their game is either. The one thing that feels consistent is the priority to endurance, to push for actions that are sustainable in the long run.

Of course, in the long run we are all dead anyway, so I'm not certain what's best!

[JoeAltmaier]

Well, Sweden's 4:10000 death rate is alarming. In only a few months. And their confident approach (doing very little) in the face of scant information was bold. With lives at stake, its natural to be alarmed/scandalized at their lack of effort to control a pandemic.

[sojournerc]

A pandemic cannot be controlled, only mitigated. That's what one part of the definition of epidemic vs. pandemic.

What's alarming is that there isn't sympathy or discussion of the way lockdowns are putting lives at stake, when control of the virus is an illusion.

It's natural to be alarmed at overly authoritarian responses, the justifications of which are diminishing as we get more information.

Sweden, as far as I understand, is doing very little authoritarian intervention, but are providing thre public information so they can make their own choices with respect to risks they want to take.

[graeme]

But several countries have basically eliminated the virus. SARS-COV-2 spreads in clusters. Tracing these clusters, testing people, and isolating patients seems to work.

Neighboring Denmark is down to ~30 cases a day. Is it impossible to believe that with border control and testing they’ll basically have it eliminated on their territory?

Countries which have basically eliminated it: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, iceland, luxembourg, monaco, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belize, China

Also the Canadian provinces of new brunswick, nova scotia, newfoundland, PEI, Saskatchewan, Manitoba

I’m sure I’m forgetting some. What do the countries in that list have in common? Yes some are islands but not all. Yes some are small but not all.

For the most part, they took action early, and used contact tracing, testing, isolation, and border control systems.

According to this article the small, poor country of Belize has outdone the province of Quebec, where I live. Belize developed a software based contact tracing system. Quebec still does it by fax. It is not a surprise which jurisdiction has better results.

What’s your theory for how the systems built in these countries will inevitably fail? The virus is contagious but it isn’t magical. It has to spread from person to person. If you test people, isolate the infected, trace their contacts, the virus has nowhere to go.

Most of the west is still not isolating the infected, instead sending them home to their families, and in many cases free to leave home if they decide to break quarantine.

https://www.vancourier.com/living/government-of-belize-credi...

[ApolloFortyNine]

The only virus ever to be eliminated globally is smallpox, and it took a vaccine to do so.

Unless Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, iceland, luxembourg, monaco, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belize, China plan on never reopening to the World, the virus will spread again. It's already been proven you can go from 1 case to full pandemic in 4 months.

[graeme]

> It's already been proven you can go from 1 case to full pandemic in 4 months.

When nobody was testing, and nobody was expecting it. Testing and tracing infrastructure will only get better, not worse. You won’t see cases in Hong Kong suddenly go from zero to thousands.

> Unless Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, iceland, luxembourg, monaco, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belize, China plan on never reopening to the World, the virus will spread again.

I suspect they'll reopen with mandatory testing and isolation of travelers. Many of those countries already have varying versions of this.

This will go until a vaccine exists. Then once a vaccine exists you’ll need proof of vaccination to enter.

Tourism is nice for economies, but not being in lockdown and not paying the costs of an outbreak is even better.

Why exactly will it be impossible for those countries to use this system for 1-2 years until a vaccine is ready? The alternative on offer in countries with outbreaks is hardly compelling.

Perhaps we’ll discover a treatment in between that will make this unnecessary, but barring that the world may divide into cold zones and hot zones.

[dredds]

Indeed. NZ & Aus exchange about 20% of each other's tourism in a regular year. Sometime in July we should see open borders across the ditch, saving a good number of jobs in travel and tourism sectors. Job subsidies have been timed to maximize this 'bounce back' economy as well.

China, Singapore, and Qatar seem to have less-lethal strains if their recent numbers are to be believed. Perhaps in lieu of an early vaccine we might see weaker asymptomatic strains as providing a safer path to herd immunity. Someone here from these countries might be able to explain their low death rates in more detail.

[JoeAltmaier]

Of course there's discussion. All over.

And the point of lockdown was, time. Time to understand what to do next. Now that's happening.

The concern is all the idealism and absolutism thrown about, instead of measured intelligent discussion, IMO.

[alkonaut]

> With lives at stake,

I think we must remember that "lives at stake" aren't just Covid infected. People will die in 10 years from budget cuts coming from things we do now. This isn't about counting bodies in the spring of 2020 (only).

[tharne]

That's pure speculation and not very informative to the debate. Basically you're saying, "In a decade the government will spend less money on a number of unspecified things and those cuts are going to kill people in some unspecified way".

You could just as easy make a number of different equally speculative arguments, such as:

"This will force drastic cuts in spending, including military budgets, leading to fewer deaths from war".

"This will kill a lot of the elderly and chronically ill, drastically reducing government costs for things like healthcare, socially security and pensions, freeing up money for other things".

"This will leads to more people moving to suburbs, increasing carbon emissions."

"This will lead to more people working remotely, decreasing carbon emissions."

What this pandemic has taught us so far is that we're really bad at predicting the future. In the meantime, we should try to minimize the death toll in the here and now.

[alkonaut]

> What this pandemic has taught us so far is that we're really bad at predicting the future. In the meantime, we should try to minimize the death toll in the here and now.

While I agree that it’s hard and speculative, I don’t agree with this. We have to minimize total suffering and lives lost and in the long term even if it means using very difficult predictions.

[heracles]

I certainly don't like the death rate either. Unfortunately lots of countries are in the same ballpark, 3-4/10000, but with wildly varying stragies. "Only a few months" happens to be the same timeframe for almost everyone else, so not sure why that is relevant. We aren't "doing very little", lots of restrictions on behaviour and travel, but certainly less strict than many other places. "Effort" isn't a good proxy for effective in these circumstances.

I think there is at least two things going on: - The long-run approach being taken makes it seem like nothing is going on, since there isn't much action. Slow and steady easily registers and stillness. - Tons of misreporting, in all directions. I get newsclips from friends in the UK that are just out wrongwrongwrong, and they are wrong in different ways and directions!

With this being said, I hope that Sweden's approach is in't the best! Why? Well, that would mean that large parts of the rest of the world is doing something better (if we simplify it into "lockdown" vs "limited restrictions"). That would cost us here in Sweden 1000's of unnecessary death, but perhaps spare millions in the rest of the world.

[matz1]

With only 4:10000, its not worth being alarmed. I like their approach.

[cwhiz]

That rate is in line with the US and most European countries. The US lost 40 million jobs and spent $4 trillion dollars to achieve the same outcome as Sweden.

And now the US is reopening and attempting a similar approach to Sweden. You can’t shut the world down for months and months waiting for a vaccine.

[MagnumOpus]

You compare two of the worst approaches in the world and present a false fallacy of "shut down the world" when in fact the countries with stricter quarantine/tracing/tracking approaches had far better outcomes:

Germany, and Japan, and Korea, and Taiwan lost far fewer jobs, killed far fewer people per capita and nearly eradicated the pandemic while it is still rampant in the US and Sweden.

[tlear]

Japan is an interesting one. They did next to nothing.

Life is almost back to what it was before atm. How did Tokyo not have a massive outbreak is an absolute mystery. But it did not.

Was it that 99% of people when told to started wearing masks and people do not hug or shake hands? We have no idea, no tracing, very small amount of testing, no house arrests of any kind.

[claudeganon]

They didn’t do “next to nothing.” They used a cluster-based approach through their public health center network, that was put in place to combat TB in the 30s. Turns out, that was pretty effective at combatting COVID.

> In 1935, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Japan opened its first public health centre (PHC) in Tokyo. The country then put in place a programme that led to the building of another 187 nationwide. They survived the war and the occupation. But the thing of note is that before and after the war, their priority, says Taniguchi, was always to “stay watchful all the time” for the emergence of TB cases. If one was found, they were tasked with rushing to the patient's residence, checking for clusters and sterilising the house Seventy-five years on, 469 PHCs are in operation across the country, with each manned, on average, by 64 medical professionals, including one to two licensed doctors. They still locate clusters, track links and conduct tests. It is this “accumulated wealth of expertise, rarely found elsewhere” that has made the difference. Japan has not had to rely on mass testing strategies because it’s health care history had already left a cluster-crushing strategy embedded in its system

https://moneyweek.com/economy/global-economy/601264/cluster-...

[ardy42]

> They didn’t do “next to nothing.” They used a cluster-based approach through their public health center network, that was put in place to combat TB in the 30s. Turns out, that was pretty effective at combatting COVID.

Also, IIRC, their culture is naturally more socially distanced than western ones (e.g. mask wearing was already common in some situations, bowing instead of hand shaking, etc.).

[JoeAltmaier]

America's rate was kept under control ever since the lockdown. As planned.

[supportlocal4h]

By definition a pandemic is not eradicated if it is still rampant.

Without a vaccine, Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and anyone else are still at the same risk they were five months ago.

[riffraff]

not really: in five months we (humans) have gathered ideas on how to treat the disease; we've ramped up the production of masks, ventilators, tests, an so on; we've educated the population on how to be safer; we've set up special paths to manage infected people in hospitals so we can avoid contamination; we've increased IC beds; we've learned how to identify the disease earlier rather than just consider it a flu; and many other things.

Everyone is still at risk but the risk today is lower than 5 months ago.

[cwhiz]

Worst approaches? In what way? Certainly not in outcome. Just in your mind?

[JoeAltmaier]

It is a doubling or tripling of other places. 5% of all deaths due to a single infection.

The US lockdown had concrete effect, limiting cases to what the hospitals could manage. Further, we understand more now (1000's of studies and papers published in a few months).

To compare blindly ignoring the disease and crossing fingers (Sweden's approach) vs wait-measure-respond, I know which way I prefer.

[cwhiz]

Doubling or tripling? Belgium 8.2, UK 5.8, Spain 5.8, Italy 5.5, France 4.4, Netherlands 3.5, Ireland 3.3, US 3.3.

The US lockdown may not have had any impact. Mobility trends are disconnected from government orders. The people more likely stemmed the tide in the US more than any government action.

Sweden is just marginally worse off against Covid overall than the US. And they didn’t have to spend $4 trillion or lose 40 million jobs to achieve that.

[useerup]

> Sweden is just marginally worse off against Covid overall than the US. And they didn’t have to spend $4 trillion or lose 40 million jobs to achieve that.

Sweden took less drastic action than the US. Sweden did take some action early, encouraging social distancing, increased hand hygiene etc. Then again, in Sweden you can take sick leave with full pay. More people will stay home if they feel sick.

Parts of the US took more drastic actions, but very, very late (during a pandemic where number of cases double every 4-5 days, one week is late, several weeks is very late). Shutting down borders to foreigners doesn't cut it when the virus is already spreading in the communities.

While they ended up in almost the same place, you really cannot compare them. The Swedish circumstances are so different from those of the US, that you cannot expect the Swedish same strategy to work the same way in the US.

And before you claim that the Swedish strategy is a success, consider how Sweden compares to its Nordic neighbors, where you can compare the circumstances.

Per 1,000,000 inhabitants:

    Sweden  4042 cases, 450 deaths
    Denmark 2040 cases, 101 deaths
    Finland 1247 cases,  58 deaths
    Norway  1567 cases,  44 deaths

[mikem170]

But yet Norway's prime minister thinks they overreacted with their lockdown:

>Leaders in some European countries have suggested enforcing tough lockdown measures early in the COVID-19 outbreak may not have been entirely necessary.

>Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg said during a television interview last week with state broadcaster NRK that its approach had been over cautious.

>“I probably took many of the decisions out of fear. Worst case scenarios became controlling,” Ms Solberg explained.

>She assured viewers that strict restrictions were imposed based on the international state of the disease at the time, but said that on reflection perhaps they were misguided.

[0] https://au.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-norway-pm-regrets-not-...

[kspacewalk2]

Why are we cherry-picking Nordic neighbours? Because they happen to back one of several competing narratives? We can find plenty of other countries that have implemented stringent lockdowns and have similar or higher cases and deaths per capita.

That's the beautiful thing about these almost meaningless cross-country comparisons - the data is so low-quality and heterogenous that you can pick a pair of countries and validate pretty much every hypothesis with it.

[claudeganon]

Again, as someone else up thread pointed out, you’re just comparing various notches on the “bad response” scale. Your calculus doesn’t work if you compare Sweden to Taiwan or the US to South Korea, even with adjustments to population.

If your argument is that “it doesn’t make that much of a difference choosing between doing nothing and pursuing a bungled, haphazard response,” then sure, a lot would probably agree with you. But these are not the only choices any of these countries had.

The economic damage is part and parcel of the overall mismanagement, which is why Taiwan and South Korea are doing better with both handling the pandemic and the state of their economies.

[cwhiz]

I specifically said Europe. You all are the ones who continue to move the goalposts.

In context of the European response Sweden is doing just fine. Japan and Korea have a different culture around surveillance than people in America or Europe. What worked in those two countries isn't relevant because Europeans and Americans reject that kind of surveillance.

Sweden has done about as well as any other western country in regard to the coronavirus and they did it without ruining their economy.

Sometimes I think people here on HN are just hoping the economy will tank.

[thu2111]

You're cherry picking data points. JP Morgan amongst others have studied all the data and found no correlation or even declines in infection rates before and after lockdowns:

https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/20/jp-morgan-infection-rates...

Sweden is about middle of the pack. Most of that is because of the virus getting into care homes, which a lockdown can't prevent anyway given the staff have to come and go, and blocking the elderly from all visits forever is deeply inhumane. Given their age many of them would rather catch the virus than live longer but always be alone, and have said so.

So far it appears lockdowns didn't affect the virus much at all. However, they are definitely killing people if you look at the changes in suicide rates, the backlogs for cancer treatment that have built up and so on.

The problem with believing that Taiwan and South Korea are doing better for fundamental reasons is that it may simply be random. Japan did very little or nothing, probably due to trying to avoid the Olympics getting cancelled, and had similarly good results. The differences in testing levels and definitions between countries alone make comparisons based on reported infection and death rates meaningless.

[blaser-waffle]

A vaccine which might never come. Or which may come in a year or more. Or which has side effects.

[JoeAltmaier]

Just the beginning of it. There are antibody treatments, new knowledge about ventilators vs oxygen, triage and testing advances. All because we took the time for that.

[mayama]

Here are the deaths per 1M for few countries around Sweden's death number. Even ignoring Italy which was affected first, all other countries deaths per million are within 2% of each other. What is alarming about Sweden's numbers?

* UK 585

* Spain 580

* Italy 556

* Sweden 450

* France 445

* Netherlands 350

* USA 330

[cygx]

Here are the deaths per 1M for few countries around Sweden's death number.

Why that restriction? Let's expand your list a bit more, shall we:

* Portugal 142

* Germany 103

* Denmark 100

* Austria 75

* Finland 58

* Norway 44

* Czechia 30

* Poland 29

* Greece 17

The contrast between Sweden and its nearest neighbors Denmark, Finland, Norway is kind of glaring...

[geoffreymcgill]

A chart to help visualize some of those countries...

https://i.imgur.com/WrYORJL.png

[JPKab]

You are 100% correct about the world looking at Sweden through a lens to validate their own opinions (and enacted strategies) about how best to deal with the virus.

I've watched over the last few months as people in the US flip flopped:

Center-left folks who cite Sweden as an economic model but trashed the way they handled the virus due to their support of lockdowns.

Center-right folks who normally claim Sweden is nothing like the US and therefore we can't emulate their economic policies, but then point to them as a model for reopening.

Similarly, every single mention of antibody tests on here results in a similar collection of highly-intelligent people not recognizing their own drive to validate their preconceived beliefs.

[psweber]

We're more susceptible to god complex because we're highly skilled at one thing already. We also don't want to admit to ourselves that we're living through a confusing time that we can't make sense of in them moment.

[legulere]

I have lived in Sweden, and see why people living there would believe that Sweden’s policy is normal. But it’s not. It’s not only killing Sweden’s population but also recklessly endangers the rest of the EU. I really hope borders stay closed towards Sweden

[heracles]

I can only speak for the parts of Sweden where I live and socialise, but I know of no-one who things our policy is "normal", whatever that means. It is some kind of myth that we are ignoring the risks and pretends like nothing is happening. Lots of restrictions, just not as strict as it could have been.

That part about recklessly endangering Europe (!) is hyperbole, UK, Spain and Italy has more deaths capita but apparently the EU can handle them, so...

* Source for death per capita is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries. I've heard something about them not being fully reliable, but the death statistics should be comparatively easy to aggregate, so I'll use that number unless obviously wrong.

[oska]

Hyperbole or not, Sweden is going to have to live with being excluded from a lot of EU & international travel relaxations.

[bryanrasmussen]

I would suppose the world's obsession would be seeing a lot of people dying and thinking in a perhaps mistaken way "that seems unnecessary" and then being upset enough by this idea to not think as highly of the Swedish government as it might otherwise wish people to think of it.

A lot of course being in the eye of the beholder.

I think that seems a less cynical and perhaps simpler explanation for why people would be obsessed with Sweden.

[heracles]

Let me try to rephrase it in a less cynical manner, best as I can.

It seems to me that Sweden's strategy is attracting more attention (in form of primarily criticism) than f.x. Belgium's, despite the latters deathrate being ~2x that of Sweden's. To me that indicates that the issue is the strategy in itself, and not the magnitude of the failure of it. Other countries have failed worse (although thankfully the vast majority of countries are currently doing better than Sweden, hopefully forever). Why would people care about 4000 dead in a small country far away, when many don't give a damn when 4000 people die from starvation or malnurishment?

Because it says something about _your_ country and _your_ strategy.

For me that is the simplest and not at all cynical interpretation of this. I will admit this is speculation, but I don't think I claimed certainty.

PS. I'm _guessing_ our Achilles tendon is certain organisational deficiancies in the care of the elderly. How it's done and at what stages of life one is moved between different kinds of care. Even if I'm right (big if) I fear that the outfall from this might be "me caveman gruk, weak restrictions bad for COVID19, dum-dum-donut", or the equivalent opposit. That would be sad. PS.

PSS. Belgium seems to be the most "liberal" country in terms of including suspected COVID19-related deaths in the official statistics, but those are the numbers at our disposal. DSS.

[bryanrasmussen]

Maybe but I think in the case of media attention on the strategy - I'm sure you're aware of the saying that man bites dog is news and dog bites man isn't. Sweden is trying a notably different strategy than most everyone else - that makes it newsworthy.

Then there is another saying - if it bleeds it leads. Sweden has a high percentage of deaths in comparison to a lot of other countries. Two uncommon things make interesting news in the media's calculation - now what story to construct about these uncommon things. The story is pretty obvious given the parameters.

[riffraff]

but other countries are having worse results due to mismanagement by their authorities, and yet are not at the center of the public discourse.

I am inclined to agree with grandparent's comment: there is a lot of "we did better then them!" at play in the media.

[blub]

Countries have various institutions and organisations tracking and reporting on the virus within their borders. Then there's the press and the locals publishing info on various channels.

One doesn't need to set foot in Sweden to form an opinion about how things are going.

[heracles]

You are right. I meant to point out that for some significant proportion of people, Sweden are in these circumstances not a country, but a tool to prove their point. And unless one is careful, which some people are, one will reach whatever conclusions one is looking for simply due to lack of resolution. From far away enough you can come up with the details yourself...

[catears]

I agree with this.

It scares me that there are people (even in this thread?!) who say Tegnell is some wicked scientist experimenting on the swedish population.

Feels like some people read a buzzfeed article on viruses and suddenly they are an expert that somehow figured out the things that the government agency for national health did not. "No, my extremely limited knowledge about virology tells me that I am right and the only logical conclusion is that Tegnell is a wicked scientist". For gods sake... Grow a brain, will you?

[v77]

Heh, I don't think Europeans get to get their tails up given that they are the world kings and queens of criticizing everybody else in the world.