I note that they seem to have selected a specific date when recorded infections were at a low point in the reporting cycle.
Sweden has an obvious weekly cycle of peaks and troughs, April 20 was at the lowest part of that cycle - worth noting that only 4 days later the number of reported new infections was just over double that figure - so it is to be hoped that their calculations are based upon a 7 day average - and yet on the 3 day rolling average their caseload per million is actually higher on 2nd May than it was on 20th April.
If I were from Sweden I would not be at all reassured in their national statements.
No question that Sweden has a 7 day cycle. And that confirmed cases are of limited value. Death rates are better but lag and will show being past the peak only two to three weeks later, and the 7 day moving average of daily death rates (preferred to avoid that 7 day cycle noise) will lag even more … and it shows a very consistent drop now, having peaked on 4/24, now 63% of its peak rate. You have to go back to 4/14 to have that number being lower.
It is quite clear that they are past the peak of this surge anyway, and did it without overwhelming their healthcare system. They nevertheless failed at protecting their most vulnerable to the degree their approach had called for.
How will they do from here? Are they right that having taken the hit they’ve taken now will lead them with less deaths over the longer haul while allowing them to recover faster? That we won’t know for many months.
One key question is the extent to which the peak and decline in cases in countries which have implemented stricter lockdown measures can be attributed to those measures. Government officials seem to take for granted that this is the case - which you would expect, given that they like to credit themselves for things - but ISTM that the evidence is shakier. It looks to me like there’s a natural cycle which is somewhat independent of such measures. In particular, it seems that even as hot spots peak and begin declining, other less plagued areas are still rising, even though they have the same lockdown measures in effect. So it looks to me like it’s at least to some extent a matter of timing, and that at a certain point in the cycle cases will decline. Assessing the comparison of Sweden’s approach vs that of other countries could also shed some light on this.
Obviously this is not to say that these measures have zero effect. It seems obvious that they have some effect. But even assessing the level of the effect is of enormous importance, because when balancing the beneficial health impact of these measures against the devastating economic impact, it’s important to know just how much value to put on each side of the scale.
Bears repeating yet again - Sweden was relying on its citizens’ trust of their government and willingness to voluntarily engage on restrictions themselves.
They didn’t “do nothing”. They engaged in fewer restrictions, for example closing schools and banning events with large crowds but largely leaving restaurants and bars open, and asked people to voluntarily limit their own actions and engage in responsible social distancing practices. They also pro-actively set up field hospitals and ramped up acquisition of testing and PPE supplies.
You can compare results across nations, but trying to tease out ‘trust in our government’ out of the data as a confounding variable is difficult to impossible. However, it clearly doesn’t exist in the US to anything remotely the same degree, so as a strategy, it’s one that even Sweden believes is not possible everywhere.
Also, by their own metrics, they have not succeeded yet. Their stated goals was to minimize deaths. They believed they could achieve this over the long term while enacting fewer restrictions but still not overwhelming their medical system. The latter appears to be achieved (?) but the former won’t be established for quite some time. At the moment, that former goal is not looking so good unless their neighbor countries see more and worse secondary and tertiary waves of infection and death - which is what Sweden is essentially betting on.
It shows that Government orders do change the (stay-at-home) behavior of people to a statistically significant degree (compared to states whose governments didn’t have those orders), and that those behavior changes in turn do correlate with a very significant reduction in infection rates after 2-3 weeks (but not a few days).
I wonder if it’s possible that in some cases different countries are predominantly infected with different strains of the virus, so that both the natural patterns and the effect of various courses of action will vary by country/area.
I have not seen a lot of glowing coverage of Sweden’s approach. However, assuming this ends of up being effectivelya “piggy back” flu (we have no guarantees this wont’ mutate, we have no guarantees an effective vaccine will ever be developed), a disease that just comes back every year, I think the U.S. needs to take a strong look at following this model. Hope is not a strategy. We’re banking on game changers that may not happen.
Two huge differences between Sweden and the United States: socioeconomic inequality is one difference, and access to affordable healthcare is another. These factors discourage a lot of people here from using the healthcare system. We’d also need to do a much better job of contact tracing and producing readily available (and reliable) testing. Right now, we’re just engaging a a big guesswork exercise.
And, a third may be a difference in adherence to the social contract between the two countries. Even without a government order to socially distance, many Swedes might well have been doing so anyway, because it’s prudent and responsible to do so. We Americans do seem to have a stronger tendency to say “you can’t tell me what to do,” and more skepticism about advice from health experts.
Right, most Swedes are like that*. About half of Americans arent.
And Sweden has just about the best health care system in the world, free to citizens, and with plenty of hospital beds. The risk there is lower. There wont be- as in America- lots of people going untreated. Not a lot of people in prisons, not that many homeless either.
Whether or not the Swedish system was a Good Idea or not is a interesting question. Both sides have good points. **But it couldnt work in America. **
they have their own Nazis and goth youths, of course.
In every freakin’ direction. We need to have much more serious analysis at granular levels to determine, in which specific regions and circumstances, because each is unique, which intervention is likely to be a great return on the investment, saving more lives and life quality than it costs in the same over time, and which may, over time, be causing more harms than goods. Guessing that something is required without evidence when there is solid evidence of harms caused is not a tolerable approach any more than guessing that removing it is for sure safe enough is.
We can at least rank order some things that are likely the biggest long term costs producers vs the least and rank order things that most clearly of major benefit vs the least evidence thereof.
The way in which Sweden failed demonstrates the huge importance of protecting the most vulnerable very strongly.
On the other hand they also demonstrate that closing schools is not necessarily required, and that is an item of huge costs to kids, their families, their families ability to work inclusive of essential jobs, and, given that some of those who are essential workers will upon grandparents to help them in lieu of school days, and have more contact with them, increases exposure to a higher risk population.
Doing the exact same as Sweden is not a good idea and not realistic in American culture even if it was. But their lack of complete disaster and still to be determined possible better outcome by end of all waves of infections, shows minimally that the same blunt hammer is not necessarily the only possible approach to all places that rates of infection need to be nailed down.
i am not so sure I would be so quick to call Sweden a failure. They are at 300 deaths per million with no major disruptions to the economy and have already turned the corner. When 500 deaths per million is closer to what most European countries can expect to end up.
It’s a higher death rate than it’s neighbors Finland and Norway which did lockdown. And their economy is expected to contract just as much as any other European countries (7% decrease of GDP).
I think it’s fair to say that Sweden’s approach didn’t result in disaster, but it likely resulted in deaths that might have been otherwise prevented. As I’ve said before (either here or elsewhere), maybe Sweden just got lucky.
So, Sweden could have prepared a little better but chose to show up to every other class and cram the night before the midterm. Ended up with a B, though they could have gotten an A with a better approach. They’re relieved and realize that they got a little lucky in that the professor put the questions on the exam that they were able to answer, so they’re still in good shape, I guess, but that doesn’t mean that the results are replicable. At least they can do better going forward.
I’m curious why you’re talking in past tense. I’ve noticed a lot of people doing this. We’re not even in the middle of this thing yet. Saying Sweden has “ended up” with anything is kind of driving me crazy.
By the same token, it’s already not a success, at least by their own metric, which they claim is overall deaths.
It’s not an abject failure and may not become one, but it’s certainly not a success story, either. That is, unless their neighbor countries suddenly see more deaths for whatever reason.