Sweden Swerved Covid Disaster(unherd.com)
unherd.com
Sweden Swerved Covid Disaster
https://unherd.com/2021/11/how-sweden-swerved-covid-disaster/
9 comments
I've looked through that paper a few times, and it's not clear that it's "powered by supercomputers". It used resources from supercomputing centers, but the referenced software appears to use either OpenMP or a GPU on standard hardware, and not a supercomputer.
Assuming I read the paper carefully, either I have the wrong citation, or the author didn't read the paper carefully, or the author is exaggerating.
Assuming I read the paper carefully, either I have the wrong citation, or the author didn't read the paper carefully, or the author is exaggerating.
Oh yeah, they've done a real bang-up job...
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
Exactly.
Sweden, like many other countries, estimated that the virus was spreading very fast, too fast to contain, but also with low symptoms or lethality. The assumption was wrong, a lot fewer people had contracted it, and a high percentage had bad symptomps or died.
A lot of other countries had these assumptions too, but they reversed them when they got new information. Instead of the virus being unstoppable, it was succesfully stopped in many Asian countries.
For some reason, Sweden didn't change their policies much. Sweden has a good healthcare system, so not so many died compared to the number of infections. 14,000 deaths is a massive legacy. Some 10% of Swedes have had Corona. So if 10% of those get long covid, there can be one percentage of the population affected by that. The Estonia disaster is nothing compared to this. Sweden avoided the world wars as well. One would have to go pretty far back to find a catastrophe of these proportions.
Sweden's policy has been held by some American politicians as a success, something to emulate. No, it has been a failure.
UK and USA are doing badly as well. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
Sweden, like many other countries, estimated that the virus was spreading very fast, too fast to contain, but also with low symptoms or lethality. The assumption was wrong, a lot fewer people had contracted it, and a high percentage had bad symptomps or died.
A lot of other countries had these assumptions too, but they reversed them when they got new information. Instead of the virus being unstoppable, it was succesfully stopped in many Asian countries.
For some reason, Sweden didn't change their policies much. Sweden has a good healthcare system, so not so many died compared to the number of infections. 14,000 deaths is a massive legacy. Some 10% of Swedes have had Corona. So if 10% of those get long covid, there can be one percentage of the population affected by that. The Estonia disaster is nothing compared to this. Sweden avoided the world wars as well. One would have to go pretty far back to find a catastrophe of these proportions.
Sweden's policy has been held by some American politicians as a success, something to emulate. No, it has been a failure.
UK and USA are doing badly as well. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
> So if 10% of those get long covid
Do you have a source for that estimation?
Also, note that in spite Denmark has like 1/4 od the death per million than Sweden, they have like 1/2 of the cases per million (and sadly going up with a higher slope). Do you think that 0.5% of the Denmark population will get long covid?
Do you have a source for that estimation?
Also, note that in spite Denmark has like 1/4 od the death per million than Sweden, they have like 1/2 of the cases per million (and sadly going up with a higher slope). Do you think that 0.5% of the Denmark population will get long covid?
Yes, if 5% of your population has had Covid and long Covid is 10% of those, 0.5% of your population has now Long Covid.
With the small caveat that Denmark is a bit special as they have been testing like crazy so they might have less actual cases than other countries, compared to the amount of positive tests.
But I don't know of any great sources pinning it to 10%. Could be higher or lower.
Some samples:
50%: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211013114112.h...
Over 25%: https://time.com/6073522/long-covid-prevalence/
One more thing is different now, that many people now get a positive test result when they have been vaccinated. The percentage of long covid might be different now, if the symptoms are milder too.
With the small caveat that Denmark is a bit special as they have been testing like crazy so they might have less actual cases than other countries, compared to the amount of positive tests.
But I don't know of any great sources pinning it to 10%. Could be higher or lower.
Some samples:
50%: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211013114112.h...
Over 25%: https://time.com/6073522/long-covid-prevalence/
One more thing is different now, that many people now get a positive test result when they have been vaccinated. The percentage of long covid might be different now, if the symptoms are milder too.
Yeah, other places did an even worse job, that doesn't really mean that the Swedes did a good one.
(And, of course, we should remember that the European line is not independent of the Swedish one.)
(And, of course, we should remember that the European line is not independent of the Swedish one.)
>From a human perspective, it is easy to understand the reluctance to face these numbers. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that millions of people have been deprived of their freedom, and millions of children have had their education gravely damaged, for little demonstrable gain. Who wants to admit that they were complicit in this?
Excellent point, and this is a big reason for the lingering restrictions in many countries.
Sweden, Denmark, etc. prove that you can just ignore Covid, drop masks, etc. and nothing bad happens. The whole thing is a fluke and they can’t admit they messed up and ruined lives, jobs, and businesses for nothing, because then people would be calling for their heads.
Excellent point, and this is a big reason for the lingering restrictions in many countries.
Sweden, Denmark, etc. prove that you can just ignore Covid, drop masks, etc. and nothing bad happens. The whole thing is a fluke and they can’t admit they messed up and ruined lives, jobs, and businesses for nothing, because then people would be calling for their heads.
As I recall from the news, older children mostly switched to distance learning, large events were canceled, restaurants, museums and the like were shut down or had restricted capacity, and people feeling sick were immediately were given paid sick leave by the government. Hardly the same as no response, nor really comparable to, say, Florida.
In comparison to the "noble experiment" of prohibition, well, the Swedes didn't go that route either - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922_Swedish_prohibition_refer... - but still put into place a system that those NYC protesters would have likely called "tyrannical" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratt_System .
> Researchers from Uppsala University, the Karolinska Institute and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm produced a model powered by supercomputers that predicted 96,000 Swedes would die before the summer of 2020.
I believe that's https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133v... , a preprint. Note that the 96,000 is without mitigation.
] Our model predicts that, using median infection-fatality-rate estimates, at least 96,000 deaths would occur by 1 July without mitigation. Current policies reduce this number by approximately 15%, while even more aggressive social distancing measures, such as adding household isolation or mandated social distancing can reduce this number by more than 50%.
See also the comments.