Wrong, It is lower than most, but not all. Per table in link, Sweden has 0.3 deaths/100K, Norway and Finland has 0.1, Cyprus has 0.0.
ETA: Saw that you were about cases/100K: Sweden has more than Greece, Finland, Norway and Estonia.
You’re right (I wasn’t seeing the bottom part of the table).
My apologies 
No that’s a context. The international context, to be more accurate. Locally the context is that there has been a massive rise over the past week (which would not be fully reflected in a two week rolling cumulative figure), to the point where the government has, after so much written about Sweden doing something different, taken the strongest measures they can do under the current law on three cities, including the capital.
This, arguably, is a sign that Sweden could well be on the same path as other countries but with a slightly delayed start. For example the UK’s rise started around October 2nd, whereas Sweden’s appears to have been around October 13th.
To give a bit of an illustration about how this is being seen locally, I’ll give you a little anecdote. I am a programmer, working in games. Our entire company is set up to be able to work remotely. Yet through all of the spring and summer, when the shit was really hitting the fan, our office was kept open. We were given the option to work from home, but the office was still open. Many people continued to go to the office. There were some restrictions about how many people were allowed in the office, but to the office people still went. I went once, it wasn’t as full as usual but there was still quite the crowd.
Today we were told that, for the first time since the pandemic began, our office was officially closed and we were under orders to not go to it.
I think what you’re talking about is the raw facts, and what I’m talking about is the context. But I don’t want to quibble over language here, and the logic is what’s important.
The discussion in this thread has been about Sweden’s approach to dealing with the pandemic. The discussion has been about how this compares to alternative approaches that they could have taken, as illustrated by other countries which have chosen those alternative approaches. Many or most of the posts in this thread have been about how the results in Sweden compare to those of other countries which chose alternative approaches.
If you’re pointing to the fact that Sweden has recently experienced an uptick in infections, then for purposes of this discussion, whether the other countries who have chosen alternative approaches have experienced even bigger upticks is highly relevant to the issue at hand, and leaving out the fact that they have in fact done so leaves a misleading picture, for which reason I supplied that information.
It seems like you’ve now come up with a suggestion that perhaps Sweden will in the future experience an uptick as great or possibly greater than those other countries but is on a later timeline. That may be so but is speculative. Therefore, my point remains. Adding to the picture the fact that most other European countries have experienced bigger increases than Sweden changes the picture from an apparent failure of the Swedish approach to mere speculation of a failure. Worth noting.
I think what you posted is a bunch of bullshit that mostly uses semantics to try and move facts into a category of “disputed and/or interpretable items”.
I’m trying to figure out what it is that the uptick in cases can be attributed to, since it sounds as though little has changed in the way of loosening restrictions or people voluntarily changing their behavior? Is there any speculation there? Or is it being chalked up to seasonality?
To be honest I think you just calling it an “uptick” shows exactly that you are arguing from a position of if not dishonesty but at least going out of your way to minimise the situation.
This “uptick” is the number of daily new infections dwarfing what it was at the height of the pandemic. We are now seeing almost double the number of daily infections as we did back in June. I mean, have you seen the graph of daily new infections? Here’s a handy link for you:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=sweden+covid+19+cases
As I said, we are at the point where we are approaching double the amount of daily infections that we were experiencing at the peak during the summer. Today it went up again, 3188 new infections were recorded. Just two days ago it was 2128 and that was a record, we’ve added 50% to that record in two days.
That is not merely an “uptick”.
But the information you supplied clearly show that Sweden is currently experiencing a larger uptick than its neighbors Finland and Norway. Much larger.
Firstly, as I said to the other chap, this isn’t just an uptick.
It is a very good question though. The most common answer is fatigue, but personally I am at a loss as to what people are fatigued by as everyone seems to have been living their lives as normal. There has been quite a few reports of things like larger social gatherings, more and more parties and whatnot. My belief is that when the new measures were announced they specifically mentioned social gatherings, like dinners, because of this.
I am actually the (very hands off) administrator of a COVID-19 specific group for British people in Sweden, which is mainly used for spreading information as not everyone can speak Swedish. I was really disappointed at a thread where someone asked about people’s Christmas plans and half the people responding seemed to think traveling to the UK, or relatives coming here, was some kind of necessity.
A friend today told me that she forgot about the measures and went to work anyway and that apparently a load of other people in her office did as well. And so she’s decided to just continue doing that because reasons.
People just aren’t listening or if they are they just don’t care.
Might you have any insight into what the testing regimes are like there, and have been? Like, who are the people being tested. Is it mandatory for certain groups? Is it all just entirely optional? Is it mainly from people who think they are sick? I’ve long wondered about this, for many places.
If the protocols are the same now as they were during the first peak, I’d also be curious to know if they publish additional details like positivity rates. I suppose I’ve been under some impression that Sweden is a place with lax testing, and that there may have been a much higher prevalence during the first peak than the same numbers would indicate now.
But the point - yet again - is that if you go to the very source that you cited, and substitute other European countries, such as France or Germany or Switzerland etc., you see an even bigger increase as compared to their prior highs. So you can’t point in isolation to the Swedish increase as evidence of the failure of their approach while ignoring the even bigger increases in most countries which chose alternative approaches.
That’s fine. You want to make a case that Finland and Norway, by virtue of being neighbors, are better points of comparison, that’s a fair point. You may be right and you may be wrong, but you’re entitled. (I’m not inclined to get involved with that - too complex and detailed for my current interests.) All I’ve been saying is that you can’t point to the current Swedish increase and just entirely ignore the fact that Sweden is currently on the low end of the spectrum in terms of the current European increases.
…you actually can ignore this (alleged fact) because you are not the boss of this thread. At the start of this thread people strongly advocated for the Swedish approach because it allegedly balanced the economy and healthcare. Many of us argued that was bollocks. Some argued that it was "too soon to tell. But others argued that “we know enough.”. All of this is on topic. The fact that some European countries are doing worse doesn’t change that.
Alleged fact? Do you really see it the other way round?
I am very happy standing strongly by the assessment that the entire world would be in entirely better shape right now had they all taken the basic Swedish approach. Yes, New Zealand as well. Essentially, the entire world took the entirely opposite approach, and on balance the entire world got entirely screwed.
Cite? Even now there are very few here who argue that.
I recall the op claiming that people were holding them up as such and a resounding response of “they are?” and from there a progressively tiresome back and forth between those who declared from early April that it was clear that Sweden’s relative light touch approach was a complete failure and those who said it was too early to know. And also some who pushed back against the portrayal of the approach as “do-nothing”.
There has been no debate that Sweden made huge early mistakes in how they protected (or did not protect) their nursing home population (the most vulnerable). But the fundamental premise of the Swedish approach that the rigid hard lock down approaches that many other countries were engaged in would not be sustainable for what they saw as very likely a long haul past the next winter and spring, and would come with health costs of their own over the longer term? Regarding that some, like me, went out and argued that we can’t yet know.
I guess individuals can pick the context that matters to them.
In terms of the context to other countries on a per capita rate, i.e. compared to other approaches?
New confirmed cases per capita using 7 day moving average. They’ve just overtaken Denmark with Iceland still in the lead. About tied with Germany and way below the EU as a whole.
New deaths per capita 7 day moving average. A pretty important context. Half of Denmark’s, and middle of the Scandinavian five. (Iceland also higher, so hard to pin their higher case rates on just more testing.) And that group essentially nothing compared to the EU as a whole. May or may not rise from here. Your crystal ball mileage may vary.
Apparently not much increase in hospital utilization either: “So far the increase has not resulted in more people needing to be admitted to hospitals.”
Sustainability of approach? Apparently neither Sweden’s lighter touch nor Denmark’s firmer hand were sustainable. Sweden is responding to new case number highs with slightly stronger “recommendations”, and Denmark has been relatively Swedish in their response as rates rose, more akin now to using a feather duster than a heavy hammer.
I don’t think @SayTwo is correct, but remain of the opinion that I don’t know what will happen and will await being on the other side of January and February, usual peak influenza season. It isn’t even November yet.
…do you really think I can be bothered hunting through this thread to back up a point that was only ever tangentially related to my larger point, that you snipped? I mean, literally in the post before yours:
It doesn’t matter if “very few” argue that. Those “very few” can be very influential, those very few can sway opinions, and those “very few” were saying the exact same thing at the start of this thread. (“Start” of course, being a relative term)
Its never too late to admit you got it wrong.
Ah. By “at the start of this thread” you actually meant something that had not occurred. Got it.
Yeah I think I’m not bothering much here anymore.
Take care.
…being on the “low end of the spectrum” is a subjective assessment, and its based on the numbers now, which are a reflection of what actually happened 2-3 weeks ago. Any corrective mitigation won’t be seen for at least a month. And as Sweden doesn’t appear to be taking any corrective mitigation, there is only one direction that exponential growth is going to take.
Do you remember when you laughingly cited an article about the New Zealand conference industry (that contained comments from two people I actually know and work with) as evidence that New Zealand were screwed?
Last night my photography crew covered a conference dinner for 300 people. They dined and danced in a single confined space, no masks, no social distancing required. That morning I booked another job for next week and I sent out a quote for another. I visited someone very close to me in hospice care. My friends went to a rugby game with thousands of other people. I’ve got other friends who work in the film industry who haven’t had a day off in months.
Meanwhile, in Sweden they still have restrictions on crowd sizes over 50. Violate the ban and you face a prison sentence of six months. Restrictions on visiting nursing homes and healthcare facilities. Sweden has a population of 10 million had just under 6000 Covid related deaths. We have a population of 5 million and only had 25. 124,000 cases compared to 1,957. We’ve got zero people in hospital right now. Zero cases of community spread.
So I’m confused here. How can you assert we would be in better shape if we had taken the basic Swedish approach?
…no, by “at the start of the thread” I meant “sometime around May or June”, as in five months ago, and not specifically the 4th of April.
Well, there was HoneyBadgerDC for one, who did advocate for opening things earlier and was generally of the mind Sweden did things right. At least at the time.
Was that “strongly advocating” for emulation? That’s a matter of opinion but certainly did not turn out to be right about a lot of things (like declaring India successful at containing the pandemic much too early or how successful Florida was being without restrictions).
There’s probably a bit of cross-pollination. Some of the posters early on in this thread did advocate for measures closer to Sweden’s in other threads but not necessarily in this thread. Or downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic to justify the relative lack of action in much of the US.
I’m certainly happy that you are getting back to some sense of normality. Though, I note that it’s been a somewhat tortuous road back to it for your country, and there seems to be a sense among some that you’ll always, at least in the short term, be walking on eggshells of sorts. And I suspect not every industry has quite fully recovered, even at that.
Still and all, the point is far less about what a handful of countries, given their relatively unique circumstances, were able to achieve, or at least achieve to date. It’s about what would have been, or would be, best on balance for the entire world. I still think that the most prescient thing ever said about New Zealand was from Professor Gupta, who likened their approach to ‘not vaccinating your children’. Had the entire world said ‘we’re in this together’ and not walled off any outsiders, the world would be far less dystopian than it is now.
The countries I respect are the ones that have courageously done their part to try to help us not live in such a world. And New Zealand is absolutely not among that bunch. Hell, they won’t even reciprocate with the Tasman bubble, will they? Or has that now changed? I hope the vaccine they are waiting for is coming from their very own laboratories, but something tells me they’ll be purchasing it from some other government.