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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
Charts are screenshots of Worldometer reported cases. To see the dates of each state order or other COVID action plotted onto the curve of cases counts, go here: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-timeline/new-confirmed-cases/alabama
You will see that nothing changed the curve anywhere at any time.
I am trying to recast your argument in a way that makes a bit more sense to me: If one assumes 100% compliance in mask wearing under mask mandates, then the failure to stem viral spread would tend to suggest that masks are ineffective. If you assume low compliance in mask wearing under mask mandates, then masks could be effective but mandates are not effective in promoting compliance. Therefore, your argument is that while mask wearing reduces viral spread, mask mandates are not causing a sufficient number of people to wear masks for its efficacious use to be demonstrated.
I agree that compliance is a material factor. But within a smaller range of outcomes than advertised. The Danish mask study, the studies that find that the vast majority of COVID positive persons surveyed claim to be diligent mask wearers, the fact that 900 employees of the Mayo Clinic have been reported positive and the fact that part of the narrative of lockdowns is that because health care pros are dropping like flies, we need to flatten curve with lockdowns because the health care system is overwhelmed all seem to indicate that (a) mask-wearing is perhaps not as effective as hoped or expected (if even health care workers who know more and have better PPE are still getting infected) and (b) there is clearly an upper limit to sustained mask compliance.
I would love to see a study on how often masks are removed and under what conditions. I am pretty sure most of us do not have hazmat antechambers at home to properly decontaminate at mask-removal time. It does appear to be the case that a very high percentage of cases occur at home and in closed spaces in general. So when those sneeze-emitted viruses still alive in the rapidly drying micro-loogies captured in my mask are set free when the air pocket behind my mask gets vented sideways or when the mask comes off…. CDC guidance seems to have moved away from obsessing about contaminated surfaces towards worrying more about A/C and circulating viruses. (VITALLY IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a study which says COVID can only survive an average of 24 hours or less on the surface of most fruits and veggies but up to 3 days on cucumbers!! The fearful should avoid cucumbers except that there are studies that show eating veggies including cucumbers reduces the risk of serious COVID infection. Confusing. What is a fear-addict supposed to do? )
I recommend George Gilder’s article about this:
https://www.aier.org/article/viruses-lockdowns-and-biomic-learning/
Close enough. But also, mask mandates are not causing a sufficient number of people to wear masks in an effective manner. There is mask wearing and there is mask wearing. If you wear a mask as part of a set of practices intended to limit the spread of the virus, that is one thing. If you wear a mask as a talisman or if you wear a mask under duress, that is not likely to be so helpful, even at 100 percent compliance.
Here’s the best answer I can give you on the 4 Scandinavian countries. Don’t know if it’s the right one, but it’s my sense of what is going on for what it is worth.
I don’t know the comparative methodologies for how each of the countries counts covid deaths, so there could be a gauge problem lurking underneath the raw data.
Nor do I know if there are other factors, demographic or otherwise, that might explain at least some of the differences between Sweden and the other countries. As noted above in a couple of the comments, some explanations have been forwarded to explain the higher death rate in Sweden.
I’ve not seen anything anywhere alleging deliberate under counting for any of the 4 countries, unlike credible allegations made about other countries like China, or in the earlier stages of the pandemic, about Russia, Iran, South Africa and Mexico.
The countries where under counting is alleged tend to be autocratic and/or low trust societies (and the U.S. increasingly is falling into the second category) and I don’t think any of the 4 countries fit in that category.
And unlike some other countries where incompetence and disorganization of the health care system creates doubts about reporting, the 4 countries don’t fit in that category.
All 4 countries have small populations (Sweden biggest at 10 million) either within a small geographic area (Denmark) or heavily concentrated in a few urban areas (the other 3). Along with relatively free press and strong informal communication networks I think if there were major death tolls unreported it would be difficult to keep the info suppressed.
So, on balance, I lean towards accepting the general trends on reporting for all 4.
I have to contradict this comment actually. The 10, 15, and 20 percent positive test rates are something I’ve seen numerous times–for example, the cruise ships, a New York City test of plasma samples from last spring taken at the height of the outbreak, and the Boston suburb covid-19 antibody study from early spring. But I think there’s something off about the testing we’re using. Looking at how quickly this virus spreads from person to person, those low numbers don’t seem plausible to me.
It could be that we’re not testing the right body parts. I read early on last winter that this virus tends to hide. So if we’re looking for it only in nasal passages, we might not find it if it is hiding out in the GI tract. That’s why the sewage tests have been so interesting. They provide a check on the accuracy of the numbers we’re getting elsewhere.
This NYT article about the CDC’s finding only 10 percent of PCR tests that were positive when they retested the samples seems implausible given the uptick all over the country we are seeing right now. Something is off with the testing.
I also don’t think the weather is the factor I thought it was last winter and spring. Florida is in the 80s right now, medium humidity, but the state is reporting new cases at a fairly good clip.
I’m out of working theories as to what is going on out there. :-) The almost complete absence of flu in the Southern Hemisphere is really interesting.
Sweden recently had a mini-peak in 7-day moving average of 31 deaths per day on 11/23 and has since declined to 12 on 11/29. To compare against Europe and the USA, 31 deaths per day divided by 214,118 active cases yields 14.5 per 100k and 12 deaths is 5.6 per 100k. For the last seven days, Europe’s daily death rate is 50.8 per 100k per day, the USA is 28.3 per 100k, and Germany, formerly the best performing in Europe, is 99 deaths per 100k per day.
Sweden seems to be setting a better pace than the rest of Europe. I would recommend they continue what they are doing.
Edit: Sweden is doing better on my daily death ratios than Denmark, Finland and Norway. The latter active cases are an order of magnitude less than Sweden, and the recent deaths are much more granulated for them as well.
The overall death count in Sweden is still low and most of the deaths have been from nursing homes.
Is the average covid death AGE in Denmark and Norway lower or higher than Sweden?
My guess is both are the same, approximately 79 or 80 YEARS.
Denmark and Norway have done a better job of protecting nursing home patients but is that luck or policy?
What have 9 months have lockdown accomplished?
? I’m not sure how you measure the height of an average covid death. I’m not even sure what an average covid death is.
But the number of daily covid deaths per million population is currently higher in Sweden than in Denmark, Finland, and Norway. Lower than in the U.S., though, and much lower than in the EU as a whole. See graph at Our World in Data.
Sweden’s case fatality rate is a different story. It’s currently higher than in any of those other areas. If you go to the above link, you can see it by going up higher on the page and clicking the “case fatality rate” button.
What are Denmark and Norway doing that Sweden and the rest of Europe isn’t?
They speak Danish and Norwegian in those two countries, and not so much in Sweden and the rest of Europe. That probably doesn’t explain the differences, though.
This is an interesting take on Sweden: https://youtu.be/J3vDsKEOIQI
I meant average age covid death
I forgot to write ‘age’
Flu season starts in November and we have a ‘surge’ in covid ‘cases.
I wonder if this ‘covid surge’ is influenza…
That provided information I had not seen before. Thanks!
A much better answer to your question is provided in #44.
That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure about the best way to get data on the age distribution. But the video in #44 did refer to age-adjusted mortality. One would have to check the paper it cites to see just how that is done.
No, but the “dry tinder” of those not wiped out by influenza last year is shown to matter a lot. (Note that influenza isn’t always influenza, either.)
I also liked the way this video was able to avoid the YouTube nanny-droids that try to steer the conversation to officially approved government information.
I don’t know. It could simply be luck and timing. If you looked at some Eastern Europe countries in late August, such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and the former Yugoslavian states, they looked relatively unscathed six months in – now they are going through what Western Europe did in March/April. It’s particularly difficult making judgments about this in the middle of it, rather than at the end, because the situation can completely change in a month.
LOL
Most Swedes can speak Danish and Norwegian and vice versa.
The three languages are very similar.
You probably know this better than me being from Michigan
I was around a lot more Swedes and Norwegians when I lived in Minnesota. I did learn that Swedes and Norwegians don’t like to be confused with each other.
Do we have nursing home statistics for Sweden and her neighbors?
Could it be that Sweden has more nursing home residents than Denmark and Norway and that the ratio of nursing home deaths is roughly the same between the 3 countries?
Have you noticed the dearth of nusing home data and transparency?
Covid deaths and death rates in Africa have been low.
I have a few explanations and feel free to correct and dispute me because I have not researched this topic carefully.
COVID attacks regions at a time. The peaks all occur within a few days in the countries or states. Places that have similar climate and demographics get similar outbreak patterns. Go look at the graphs for NY-NJ-MA in March and April and then compare to Sweden, Spain, Italy. COVID’s gonna COVID. Eastern Europe got it later. The bug also seemed to move mostly eastward across Africa too.
Maybe 7. The upside of poor health care and high-density living is that (a) metabolically and immunologically impaired people get culled early and steadily for the usual CODs and (b) cold and flu bugs spread unchecked and goose those T and B cells more often.
I saw an article that suggested that there was genetic evidence of COVID strains having attacked people as early as 25,000 years ago mostly in China so the likelihood of some kind of general resistance to COVID in that region which may help explain why Japan and Vietnam were not hit anywhere near as hard as most other countries.
That makes a lot of sense. The proximity of people to their livestock combined with close living quarters are the variables in the coronavirus equation.
This, as you wrote, has always been true. I really enjoyed this humorous-at-times and crystal clear explanation for the movement of diseases from Europe to the North American continent:
Good video.
There is also something to the length of trade routes between China and Europe that guaranteed that everybody on that big landmass got to share all the germs. The book Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond does a good job of covering the bio impact of Columbus.