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COVID-19: ‘Et Tu, Sweden?’
Many of us held out hope that Sweden with its contrarian approach to COVID-19 would validate our beliefs that you give people information, give them the freedom to make decisions, and survive the pandemic as best you can. There were early hopes that Sweden had made it through and that its approach would be deemed superior to authoritarian government responses to the pandemic.
Now, that is no longer clear. There are reports that the Swedish government is becoming restive with the laissez-faire approach of chief heath officer Andres Tegnell. My understanding is that under the Swedish constitution, Tegnell operates with unusual independence. This has allowed politicians to absolve themselves of responsibility and avoid electoral consequences for Tegnell’s action (or inaction). But now that the death toll is rising in Sweden associated with COVID-19, politicians are getting worried. So there is pressure for Sweden to get in line with authoritarian responses to COVID-19 practiced elsewhere in Europe.
Someone with greater capabilities than myself needs to do a deep dive into Sweden’s data. Do they suffer from some of the same problems that US data suffers: CDC guidance on designating deaths as COVID deaths whenever the virus is present, questions on whether “excess deaths” exist when other causes dip from prior years as COVID deaths replace them, testing protocols that generate false positives? Are younger people dying in Sweden at higher rates than previously?
And, of course, there is the greatest unknown: is this virus engineered? And if so, what does that mean for strategies to contain/combat it?
We need Sweden to stay the course. This is the closest thing we have to a controlled study about alternative approaches to combatting COVID-19 consistent with overall societal well-being. If we lose Sweden we lose important information for future pandemics. And there will be more. The value of pandemic to authoritarian government is too great to resist.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
I agree. But the international pressures to conform must be enormous. I have a dream that someday, someone will say, we botched up the whole thing and we might as well stop all the restrictions. Well, I did say it was a dream. . . .
It is hard to get definitive reporting on what Sweden has actually done because, from the start, reporting has been either skewed towards, “it’s horrible what the Swedes are doing” or “absolutely the right strategy” with the evidence presented whatever best supports the thesis. Based on what I’ve read I suspect what’s actually happened in Sweden is not as dramatically different from much of the rest of the world as either its supporters or detractors say.
As a practical political matter, the issue is how, after 8 months, Sweden is doing compared to its closest geographic and cultural neighbors. That’s where the political pressure is coming from. As of yesterday, the per capita death rate per 100,000 is 66 in Sweden. Finland is 7.1, Norway 6.0, and Denmark 14.2.
I dunno. I recently watched a Deutsche Welle video where their news people were chortling over the prospect of Sweden joining the rest of the EU in lockdowns. Didn’t seem very objective to me.
And the Sweden-hate seems to be going on at OurWorldInData
Note the fine print that says, “Recent days may undercount deaths.” Well, yeah, deaths may be undercounted everywhere. That’s a fact of life (and death). But of all countries for which we have reason to mistrust the data, Sweden gets that little note.
Also note that the data for Sweden aren’t that bad.
For now I think the cruise ships also give us an idea of the contagiousness of this virus. It’s been interesting to watch. It is surprising how many people in confined quarters with other people who have tested positive do not test positive.
Weather seems to be the most influential factor in how many people develop active infections and become sick from this virus. Every time I go to a source of information that I had been checking last spring, the reports and information all seem to stop about in June. That’s when I stopped following these reports too. :-) Like the flu, the virus just seemed to disappear from areas that had been hard hit in the winter and spring. It looks like I had a lot of company in moving on to other topics of interest. :-)
I don’t think “community immunity” or “herd immunity” is achievable with this particular virus because so many people appear to be already immune to it, probably because they have innate immunity because of their parents’ exposure to another virus that looks like it. If only 20 out of 100 people are susceptible to this virus and respond to exposure to it by developing protective antibodies, that means that the virus is skipping a lot of people to get to someone who reacts to it so the virus can replicate in that person and infect others.
In other words, leaving community immunity to develop on its own through chance encounters may not be a viable strategy for protecting the 20 people in every 100 who are susceptible to it.
Politicians are always a month behind in their actions. Today’s infected in Sweden are 5 weeks past their peak. I am sure there is plenty of pressure to “do something”. Here in the USA, half of the population thinks that Donald Trump is personally responsible for every “Covid” death. I assume that Swedes are less stupid than Americans, but Greta, so there is still pressure. With a vaccine so close, I expect people and politicians to be more cautious with politicians telling people to do things they started doing 2 weeks before.
If people are already immune, then that helps herd immunity. If herd immunity threshold (HIT) is 70% for Covid19 (we don’t really know the threshold until we get close to it), then it really helps if 50% of people have T-Cell immunity from past corona virus infections. Only newborns inherit immunity from parent exposure. Innate immunity means that it is genetic and sometimes related to environmental exposure as opposed to specific immunity from exposure to a specific pathogen. Google anti-microbial peptide for more info.
helps but does not achieve it–not in a time frame to protect the 15 to 20 percent who are not immune to it
They will probably do the BS shutdowns, etc., and it won’t make a scrap of difference until the vaccine gets here. But at least the politicians will look like they are doing something.
Sadly true. Being seen to do something to save their phony baloney jobs.
And maybe not even then.
Sweden has already done enough for us in that their curve in March-June with no interventions was identical to the outcome pattern in countries and US states that imposed various futile interventions.
That fact is a permanent refutation of the idea that any of this “saved” us or worked at all despite the horrific costs imposed on our societies.
People who get a buzz on the ‘exaggerated fear & government overreach’ drama are wearing down western political systems and most politicians are delighted to assume the role of savior. These are fascism-susceptible types but the good news is that they are also fickle and will turn on their saviors when they realize the emptiness of their promises. Fauci, Cuomo et al would do well to remember how Mussolini wound up.
If the “science” cannot explain why COVID has identical regional patterns despite disparate policy approaches, why COVID incidence falls at the same rate over the same period of time without reaching a spread anywhere near what is expected to create herd immunity and why children are so resistant despite a more limited exposure history and “educated” immune systems, then those who tell us they are basing their policies on science should STFU and be more modest and less destructive in their policies.
All we know about COVID is that we don’t know enough nor have the tools to do anything to really stop it. As we finally unveil a vaccine option, COVID-19 will already be heading into that dormant hideout where viruses seem to live forever and will laugh at us as it leaves town ahead of the vaccine delivery trucks.
Look not to government officials to save us. If there is to be salvation, it must percolate up from the people. If the people prefer safety over essential liberty, that will be the outcome independently of the whims of bureaucrats. We get the government we deserve, good and hard.
Facts and data have nothing to do with this. The only things that matter are how people feel and how they make tradeoffs. Li’l Ben Shapiro has it exactly backwards: Feelings don’t care about your facts.
In any case, we already have plenty of data. The science is settled: none of the measures taken are of much use but they cause plenty of harm. The rest is commentary.
Not that bad compared to Spain and Italy and France … better, in fact, in terms of Deaths per 1MM population.
But horrible compared to its direct neighbors. Per Worldometers Sweden has 660 deaths per 1MM. Denmark 143, Finland 71, Norway 60.
Sweden was in the top ten globally in deaths per million back when there was criticism and a prediction of runaway fatalities. Now they are #24. And 42nd in cases per million.
Go to Ivor Cummins YouTube page and watch the one discussing Swedish data. And his Nov 7 update is one of the best analyses available.
Understood. But I also understand that they might be comparing themselves to their next door neighbors and that comparison is not favourable. It’d be one thing if what they bought with that early high fatality rate was herd immunity. And until late October it looked like they had. But the recent spike in new cases and fatalities call that into question. It might still work out.
This pattern does not hold for the Nordic countries as far as deaths per 1MM population.
I’m not positing a reason why, but the results to date are very different.
Sweden did badly with its nursing homes early in the epidemic. I don’t know whether or not that’s enough to account for the difference between Sweden and other northern countries. Is that topic covered in these Ivor Cummins videos?
👏👏
I remember a statement from Sweden’s department of health on that point. It turns out they had a very low death rate for people in nursing homes the year before. So they said that the most vulnerable population was much larger than normal.
If you look at the death rate graphs, theirs fell to very low levels from late spring until November. It would be interesting to see their current rates compared to the current rates in their neighbor countries.
As mentioned above, Sweden’s death rate is multiples above those of its neighbors since the start of this. None of them are having major outbreaks now – over the past two days Denmark reported 13 deaths, while Norway and Finland both reported zero.
Here are the data on deaths per million population for the northern countries, as well as for the US and the EU. The recent surge in Sweden did not occur to the same extent in Finland, Norway, and Denmark. So the early high rate of nursing home deaths is either still happening (not likely) or not enough to account for the difference. It’s looking better than the EU as a whole and the US, though, on that score. However, if you look at the case fatality rate, Sweden is the worst of this group. Not horribly worse, but definitely worse. So maybe Swedish health care isn’t so great.
How do we know their reporting is accurate?
It is not the raw numbers. Demographics, dry tinder, population density, age distribution and LTC conditions (said to be bad in Sweden) all affect that that but the pattern, the shape of the pandemic is still the same. Especially deaths. You don’t see an overriding similarity here across Northern Europe?
Swedish analysts noticed that that case incidence in the south, across the bridge from Denmark had the exact same infection rates as Denmark even though the intervention policies in both places were very different. Stockholm, especially its immigrant areas, was much worse. (Ivor Cummins pulled together a lot of interesting stuff on Sweden worth watching.)
As for for regional similarities stateside, guess which of these graphs is daily reported cases of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia:
The southern US states all peaked in case numbers within the same week at the end of July/beginning of August. NY, NY and MA all peaked on the same day (April 17).
The almost metronome-like pattern in related areas has not been explained. It matters because lockdowns, closings and other mandates did not disturb this rhythm in the least. No curves were flattened or delayed. What kinds of people is COVID finding on the way up and more importantly, why does it decline at the same rate in such a near fixed interval? Why would it decline at all given that it is highly contagious and there could not be possibly pure herd immunity in place that quickly at that presumed incidence level?
The lack of curiosity about these questions appears to be driven more by a desire to protect the narrative that what is being done was correct and effective and should be continued until everyone is vaccinated and carries the appropriate stamped ID tags to prove it.
I am also bored with sterile debates about rates of mask compliance, restaurant hours, school policies because the data is in, the science has spoken but is ignored whenever the narrative needs cover. The interventions failed. Period. Dropping them altogether will almost certainly not kill more people than the interventions already have and will continue to do so. COVID cannot spread any faster than it’s built-in rhythms have pre-determined. Also the flatlining of daily deaths in NY, NJ & MA (and the comparatively fewer deaths in Sweden) seems to suggest that once COVID has done its thing, the second act (despite case numbers) is vastly weaker.
The eyeball test comparing current Swedish COVID deaths during the European second wave (AKA flu season) to neighbor countries and waters Europe in general is highly favorable. That does not prove that their approach of encouraging herd immunity worked but it does lean that way.
A very clear expression of the problem we are grappling with.
I don’t think we on Ricochet are alone in finding these charts puzzling. I’m sure that curiosity is driving the study that Massachusetts has embarked upon with 10,000 people testing every day.
I agree with you completely that the elected officials throughout this country are more interested in protecting their narrative (and their egos too, I’m sure) than they are in getting to the truth.
I also think @drbastiat nailed it too a few months ago when he said that the officials did not leave themselves a way out. It was very obvious that there was no way to back out of these measures they were taking.
I wish there were some discussion forum like Ricochet throughout our various institutions and organizations. We get more real work done here than anyone else in the entire country.
Are these charts (I can’t see them clearly enough) based on per capita numbers, or just raw numbers of cases and numbers of deaths? Even if the social distancing, masking, stay-at-home orders, etc are very effective you may see these same patterns in terms of the raw numbers. A per capita chart will be better in showing the effectiveness of the containment measures – or social distancing, mask wearing, etc habits of the population – whether or not by gov. order.
How do we know anyone is reporting accurately? How do we know Sweden isn’t lying?
Fair question. I guess this whole experience has made me very, very cynical where COVID is concerned. I’m not sure I really trust anyone where it’s concerned.
I’ve seen lots of charts like this, many from US states. For example, the AZ vs NM charts. NM has some of the strictest lockdown orders in the country, while AZ has been much less strict. Yet their seasonal patterns (the spring Navajo outbreak excluded) are virtually identical.
I’ve seen many comparison charts from all over the US. The only conclusion you can draw is that masks and lockdowns are so unimportant that their effect, if any, is lost in the noise.
I’m convinced that masks do some good. Maybe not as much as some people think, but enough to help.
However, mask mandates are a different thing. A lot of people seem to confuse masks with mask mandates. They see that mask mandates don’t do any good and draw the conclusion that masks don’t do any good. But really, the data about mask mandates are about mandates, not masks.