Of course they did. So did everybody else that did not take the same approach New Zealand did. I get that.
Absolutely. Every country should be a couple of large islands on the other side of the world, and if they had just done that, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in now.
Considering that Switzerland has better than 3 times the world’s death rate (981/million compared to the world’s 255), I’d say it has more to do with their failed response than any factor of geographical isolation. Goes even more so for the US at 1186/million.
Did they look at how many children are actually attending school? Schools are open here, but well over half of kids are choosing to stay remote. In my school, I have between 0 and 1 student in person in each class.
That’s not the same as having 30 kids in a room.
That’s a good question. I’m afraid I haven’t read the actual studies yet. I do think you point out a good example of how you have to be careful with all these articles about studies, even when they come from reputable publications, because we’ve seen time and time again that there are any number of ways to spin things. Or, maybe a fairer way to say it is that the situations are often either so confounded or so replete with limitations that it makes it hard to say anything definitive.
Sorry, goodness knows where I got Switzerland into my head. Sweden, of course.
Same point can be made, with 1005 deaths/million in Sweden.
I think the confounding variables aren’t even known a lot of the time, because so many decisions are being made on the very local level and the data isn’t even available. I don’t know how many students are attending in person in any school but mine, really: that data is not released. When we went remote, the district talked about “fewer that half” were intending to come to in-person school. About 40% said they’d come to mine. But fewer than that actually showed up, and then that number dropped to almost nothing when they realized that at-home was working pretty well and that with most kids remote, the lessons and class structure were designed around that expectation and they didn’t get much from being here in person, anyway. But I don’t know if that second drop happened in other schools.
It’s the failed response that’s the common element for most every country, right? Are we keeping a current list of all the successes?
Are we also keeping a list of the likely outcomes for NOT taking action?
Define success.
We’re bound to see many more of these as the weeks and months roll on, but here’s another well-executed study that would suggest it was not Sweden that fucked up, but rather those that kept schools closed.
…New Zealand closed their schools during Lockdown Level 4. According to the study did New Zealand fuck up?
The study you cite only looked at the dates between April 22 and May 15, 2020 and only in southwest Germany. How did you reach the conclusion that Sweden didn’t fuck up from that?
Comparing Sweden with the rest of Scandinavia seems like the closest thing we have to a controlled experiment regarding the impact of different government policies. I expect that it will be referenced in all the medical literature in future pandemics.
We have a few countries that have similar climate, similar population density, similar availability to healthcare, even similar culture and similar genetic makeup of the population. And their governments made different choices. I doubt we’ll ever see anything else that is remotely as close to a controlled experiment of the impact of government policy in fighting a pandemic.
Now, i grant that we don’t yet know the results of this experiment. Long term, maybe the “infect everyone up front and get it over with” approach will turn out to be the winner. Or maybe vaccination will work, and the year or two of lockdown will be something people can recover from, and Sweden’s relatively high death toll will be a cautionary tale in the future. I think we’ll have an excellent idea in 5 years, but maybe not much before then.
Are the respective government choices the only things that were different? Are you sure? What about the theory that Sweden was more ‘seeded’ with the virus when the borders were closed?
But still and all, I don’t think you’ll find many people arguing that culture and genetic makeup are strong enough factors to override other epidemiological principles. You wouldn’t have to look hard to find country comparisons on more relevant criteria. It’s certainly not as though Belgium or the Netherlands are that far removed. They are certainly much closer to Sweden than they are to Swaziland.
I’ve always been a little curious about the similarities between Sweden and Quebec. They’re about what you would expect, if you didn’t believe in the sheer magic of masks and closing schools and (some) businesses.
Read the study if you want to know more about their conclusions. They acknowledge its limitations forthrightly, while pointing out that the core findings remain. They don’t find any evidence at all that children in schools (or even children, period) were drivers of viral spread. That Sweden had the foresight to not close its schools out of panic and hysteria is a mark in their column.
Regarding Sweden you will most definitely see that. The culture here is for people to move out from family homes as soon as possible to get independence, which has lead to Sweden being (I believe) the country in the world with the most (per capita) people living alone. Many have pointed out that this helped stop the spread as it didn’t spread amongst families.
ETA:
And arguably this is one of the prime reasons, along with inability to read government recommendations, that immigrant groups were affected much more than native.
Probably not. I said “the closest thing we will see to a controlled experiment”, it obviously wasn’t a controlled experiment.
The county studies are interesting, but are much smaller, over shorter time spans, and have generally “dirtier” data in lots of ways. Sweden’s experience as compared to the rest of Scandinavia is going to be the exemplar everyone looks to when the next pandemic rolls around.
We can come back in 5 or 10 years to see if I’m right. 
…you have apparently read the study and you reached a conclusion. Why don’t you share how you reached that conclusion?
And? They looked at just over a 30 day period over eight months ago in a very specific locale. Why does that lead you to the conclusion that “everyone else” fucked up? Were NZ wrong to close the schools at Level 4? Were the UK wrong to close the schools a few weeks ago?
Have you forgotten that things got so bad that Sweden did close schools? We talked about that in this very thread. And does the fact that Sweden didn’t close schools early mean that the 11,000 people that died from Covid in Sweden aren’t still dead?
And you use emotive words like “panic” and “hysteria.” Can you be specific and which country displayed hysteria when they closed schools?
Would we be able to find a number of comparisons that are closer to controlled within the US? Like, say, North and South Dakota. Or Iowa and Kansas. I’d venture that North and South Dakota are far more similar than are Sweden and Norway. Wouldn’t you?
I read the section that says ‘Conclusion’.
(And all the other sections too.)
No, I don’t think North and South Dakota are more similar. Also, I don’t think North and South Dakota had government actions that were as starkly different for as persistent a time as Sweden and Norway.
I’m sure there will be lots of comparisons made, and of course that’s all for the good of future knowledge. But come back in 5 or 10 years and let’s see if Sweden v the rest of Scandinavia isn’t the poster child of comparisons.