Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by slaw 2069 days ago
Sweden and Belarus handled pandemic by not doing lockdowns. In Sweden for the last 3 months only 0-3 people a day die with covid-19. There is no second wave like in other European countries. https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/se
3 comments
masak 2069 days ago
I know the Swedish like to repeat that there is no second wave like in the other European countries, but... I've been looking at this graph for the past few weeks: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/sweden?countr...

Now, it might be that the new cases this time are less severe, I don't know. But it's a second wave.

link
jariel 2069 days ago
???

1) The data you showed literally displays a full blown tidal wave 'second wave' hitting Sweden, 1500 cases/day in a country of 8M people and growing exponentially is absolutely a 'second wave'. Seriously, what are you looking at? That rate of expansion, if not controlled with further social modifications, will overwhelm the country in about 3 weeks.

(Remember that quite some number of people need to be hospitalized, that the hospitals have to refuse other patients, that it will force other lockdowns, and it eventually will trickle to the older people - who will die.)

2) Sweden avoided an 'initial lockdown' but most countries only did a 'lock down' for several weeks. Otherwise, a lot of the de-facto policies have been quite similar. As of 4 weeks ago I suggest Sweden was 'on par' with the rest of the Western world.

link
slaw 2068 days ago
Scientists predict Sweden will be overwhelm in about 3 weeks for 6 months already. https://swprs.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/sweden-projection-...
link
jariel 2068 days ago
The data is right in your graph. Right now it's almost 1.5K infections per day, it's about a 3 week doubling rate. So 6K new infections / day in 3-6 weeks - at almost any % of those needing hospitalizations, they will be overwhelmed.

Whatever Sweden did at the end of June, where you can see a precipitous drop - they will obviously have to do again.

link
justusw 2069 days ago
Interesting to hear about Belarus. Did you find more resources that detail their approach to dealing with COVID-19?
link
harambae 2069 days ago
Not sure if this is what you're looking for or not, but Belarus nightclubs are still open: https://djtechtools.com/2020/07/27/clubbing-in-the-covid-19-...

(I have friends in Belarus who have confirmed this as well)

I have to imagine any place with nightclubs open indoors doesn't care too much anywhere.

link
soco 2069 days ago
Given all the street fights and unrest in Belarus I really don't know what to think of their official numbers - like in any dictatorship, there might a great deal of "lets make it look good to the world" in there.
link