
A Swedish doctor's perspective on Covid - gofiggy
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/08/04/how-bad-is-covid-really-a-swedish-doctors-perspective/
======
gorkempacaci
Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot. In the grocery store
the cashiers are in a plastic bubble. Wherever there is a line there are marks
on the floor to show where to wait to keep distance. Nobody shakes hands for
quite some time. Yes, people go to Cafes/restaurants but restaurants have been
assessed and assigned covid-friendly seating layouts. There are many more
things that clearly separate today from last year for daily life in Sweden.

So numbers going down and death rate staying low should be partly connected to
this. Also, Sweden is quite a different country to begin with. Sparsely
populated and half of all households are single person. So this ‘doctor’ is a
bit careless while he tells the world to do like Sweden. It might end up much
worse.

~~~
Majromax
> Sweden didn’t go into total lockdown but still did a lot.

Indeed; both Sweden
([https://ycharts.com/indicators/sweden_unemployment_rate](https://ycharts.com/indicators/sweden_unemployment_rate))
and Norway
([https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_unemployment_rate](https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_unemployment_rate))
have experienced anomalous increases in their unemployment rates that seem
clearly linked to the pandemic.

If the article's thesis is correct that Sweden minimally-disrupted the status
quo, then we would have expected to see little employment response.

~~~
hiram112
That would assume Sweden's economy is completely independent of its European
neighbors and even the rest of the world. In 2020, that's not true at all.
Even without Covid, recessions in the US or Germany or other large economic
partners will cause problems for small countries like Sweden.

------
alltakendamned
"COVID is over in Sweden" is a pretty bold claim with ~400 daily infections,
and increasing again as per
[https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...](https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa)

Just like in other EU countries, it is now the younger population which seems
mostly affected, and thus the mortality is lower - which is ultimately some
good news.

Summer holidays are now almost over though, so people are traveling home from
vacations abroad, are going back to work, schools will start up soon and
people finally get access again to health care (good luck seeing a doctor in
July in Sweden). The impact remains to be seen, but it would be surprising if
most other EU countries see infections increasing but not Sweden.

I remain pretty skeptical of this Swedish exceptionalism, so my guess is this
blog post will not age well.

~~~
schemy
[https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+covid+deathrate&oq=sw...](https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+covid+deathrate&oq=sweden+covid+deathrate&aqs=chrome..69i57.7800j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

Sweden's death rate is down to zero today and has been trending down since mid
April. Summer Holidays did not start until late May where deaths were already
half of what they were in mid April. This post isn't aging, it's already aged.

~~~
microtherion
> Sweden's death rate is down to zero today

No, it isn't.

Sweden has fairly laggy reporting of deaths, with the deaths often taking
several weeks to show up in statistics, so at any given date, deaths
attributed to the last few days are always dropping to close to zero.

I looked into this a bit in mid-APRIL, when somebody claimed that deaths were
dropping to zero. At the time, substantial revisions occurred for about three
weeks after the date, and occasional revisions for about four weeks.

(It's entirely possible that similar phenomena occur in other countries;
Sweden is the only country I looked at in detail).

~~~
morberg
Several weeks is a bit of an exaggeration. Lag in reporting has been around
4-5 days on average. Lately the lag has increased somewhat as the number of
reported deaths has gone down.

Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself at
[https://morberg.github.io/covid-
notebook/covid.html](https://morberg.github.io/covid-notebook/covid.html)

GitHub repo here: [https://github.com/morberg/covid-
notebook](https://github.com/morberg/covid-notebook)

------
chki
There are a lot of highly problematic claims in the article. This one stood
out to me:

>Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only
makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available.
That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.

Actually it might very well just be half a year until we have a vaccine.
Multiple candidate vaccines are in phase 3 and they are already being produced
en masse, ready to be released if the vaccines prove to be successful. And
it's not like other countries in Europe "shut down completely" and remain shut
until today. In Germany people are leading their normal lives, the only
difference being that people wear masks in super markets, register on a list
when visiting a restaurant and there are no mass events/discotheques.
Remaining at this status for half a year or maybe a year to prevent tens of
thousands of deaths seems extremely doable.

~~~
gnicholas
Unfortunately, it appears that a significant chunk of people are not
interested in taking the vaccine. [1] If only half of Americans are going to
get the vaccine (that figure is from May polling, referenced below), we can't
pin all of our hopes on it.

I should note that I'm not saying it's unreasonable of people to be hesitant
to take this particular vaccine, given how it is being rushed. Even scientists
have said that there is not currently enough evidence of safety/efficacy that
they would feel comfortable taking it or giving it to their families. [2]

1: [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/08/01/897939117/public-health-expert-calls-to-repair-distrust-in-
a-covid-19-vaccine)

2:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/sunday/coronaviru...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-
vaccine-efficacy-trials.html)

~~~
mensetmanusman
Those that don’t take the vaccine will get the virus and, if they survive,
similar immunity.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Clarification: You can still get infected by viruses after you receive
vaccines for them. Your severity of infection will be lower, but it's still
possible to get sick even with a vaccine, just less sick than you would've.

------
swang
i don't know what is the actual truth and we probably won't know which way was
the "correct" decision until well after this pandemic is over (assuming it
ends). i think the biggest issue with the US response is the bad messaging and
iffy attempts at lockdown and reopening.

taiwan didn't go into lockdown but the country respects social distancing and
masks and is very adamant about quarantining, tracing and cleaning.

do you think the average american citizen will adhere to any of that? forced
quarantine for 14 days if you are infected or fly-in while a phone app
afterward traces your movements to make sure future outbreaks can be traced?
will people wear masks? will people maintain the social good over the
individual? (answer for the US is apparently not)

i don't know culturally how sweden viewed these things but from what i can
tell most people at least tried to maintain some form of social distancing.
some swede can chime in here and correct me on that.

but what they've said about the nordic countries though, is that sweden's
economy has shrank the same size as denmark's[0], while denmark which went
into lockdown, suffered 8x fewer deaths, 5x fewer by percentage of population.
that is the effect no lockdown has had on sweden.

also as a discussion to that both sweden and denmark's new cases are slowly
creeping up, but denmark's is at about a quarter (~100/day) compared to sweden
(~400/day).

[0]: 4.5 for sweden, 4.1 for denmark.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-
economy-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/sweden-economy-
coronavirus.html)

~~~
olodus
Yes you are correct during the worst part of corona my experience is not the
same as the doctor from the article. Many people strictly kept away from
places with large amount of people close together. A lot of employers changed
to work from home. My employer says we will continue WFH until end of year.
That said people still socialised, though outside and in smaller groups.

In the end our high mortality rate can't be overlooked. We need to change our
strategy for future similar pandemics. That said, I think the most interesting
stats to look at when deciding what we should have done differently is the
breakdown of deaths per age-group. Less than 100 deaths are among people
younger than 50. So almost all of our ~6000 deaths were among the elderly.
That is what needs to change. Next time we need to be quicker at protecting
the old. Otherwise our strategy could have worked, the rest seem to be able to
build up their defences to the virus.

------
larsga
"In total covid has killed under 6,000 people in a country of ten million. A
country with an annual death rate of around 100,000 people."

This is basically deliberate disinformation. In April and early May Sweden had
30-50% excess mortality. And this was despite actually stopping the virus
through soft lockdown. What the full count would have been had they let the
virus rage unchecked is hard to say, but he's comparing the numbers from a
virus that was stopped relatively early with the normal numbers of deaths for
a whole year. Do the same exercise for April and it doesn't look good at all.

The reality is that more than 5000 people died unnecessarily in Sweden through
failed government policy. And that's before we start counting the adverse
health effects on the people who survived.

~~~
kybernetikos
Yes, the charts are pretty stark and show that Sweden has fared worse than the
other nordic countries: [https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-
chart/?areas=swe&areas=nor&are...](https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-
chart/?areas=swe&areas=nor&areas=dnk&areas=isl&areas=eur&areas=fin&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=1&values=deaths)
or compare excess mortality between Sweden and other nordic countries in the
charts halfway down
[https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386...](https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938)
I'm surprised the myth of Sweden doing well is still being bruited about.

~~~
throwaway202020
Sweden chart is going downhill at the same rate as other countries with strict
lockdown. There is a significant gap in mortality but I think the point is
that people initially thought they would explode with COVID cases like early
days in Wuhan (i.e. graph will go up, not down). Now it looks like they either
have already hit zero new cases or going to hit them very soon. I think this
is important fact worthy of studying deeply.

~~~
kybernetikos
Check the charts I shared. They did explode initially, with far higher rates
than similar countries, and they have taken much longer than similar countries
to bring their death rates down. The earlier poster suggesting over 5000 more
dead as a direct result of the policy is borne out by all cause mortality
comparisons with similar countries.

Now possibly all these countries will be able to keep their low rates, but I'm
concerned about the future: number of cases is on the rise again in Europe as
a whole and increases in deaths will probably follow within the next month. I
think we're still a way from being able to make a final reckoning.

The do-not-lock down case is mainly that we won't be able to control it until
there's a vaccine, so lock down or no, total deaths will be similar. This
isn't bourne out by the figures. Countries that allowed a larger spike
initially have had much higher mortality rates (e.g. Compare the UK and
Germany with now similar infection rates but very different mortality rates).
Flattening the curve genuinely does seem to save lives.

The UK was keen to play the herd immunity game until they realised just how
many people that would kill.

~~~
usrusr
Every "minor second wave" rise I have seen seems to be followed by a much
smaller (if any!) rise in deaths than the waves in the first half of the year,
at least in countries were the health system isn't completely overrun. It
might be improved testing capacity and strategies leaving a smaller fraction
of infections undiscovered but I doubt that: we are _less_ and to predict test
outcome now that the virus is everywhere a little instead of concentrated in
few, intensive clusters and capacity hasn't improved _that_ much. Another
explanation that I often hear is that somehow spread has now shifted to
younger people but why would that be? Older people tend to be less mobile,
aren't socializing as widely, in short: they are more likely to be dead-ends
for the virus than the young. Is expect the elderly to be just as much
receivers infection chains spread by the young in March as in July.

That leaves us with improved treatment. We clearly don't have a miracle drug,
but my impressive is that doctors know much better now than a few months ago
what actually causes Covid-deaths and that they are now far beyond just
supplying oxygen according to treatment recipes for completely different
illnesses and hoping for the best. I expect the implications of this to become
the center of heated debates any day now.

------
chrisjs96
Only thing anyone can do is go to a shoe store, buy some running shoes and
start running like 5 to 10 miles a week. Lay out in the sun and start eating
healthier. If you can't run just walk. Play basketball, play soccer whatever.
Why do people worry so much about things they can't control, when there are
things they actually can control. If some of my facebook friends were more
worried about walking everyday instead of who is and isn't wearing a mask they
wouldn't be 250lbs.

~~~
mensetmanusman
This.

Have been taking hour walks in the sun since May.

Never have I gotten so much sun before! Feels great

~~~
treeman79
Some of us are allergic to the sun...

Still do what I can at sunrise and set

------
mcguire
" _Covid has at present killed less than 6000 in Sweden. It is very unlikely
that the number of dead will go above 7,000. An average influenza year in
Sweden, 700 people die of influenza._ "

The average number of people who die of influenza in the US is about 35,000.
So we should expect 350,000 deaths and then we'll be all good?

~~~
refurb
I think his point is you can't compare the impact of the flu because 1) it
hits every year (versus a quick outbreak) and 2) many people are vaccinated.

Don't forget the '17 flu seasons was 65k deaths in the US. So we're at a
little under 3x right now. So yes, Covid is worse, but we don't bat an eye at
65k deaths due to the flu.

~~~
HarryHirsch
Consider that recovery from coronaplague is lengthy and that a good amount of
those discharged form hospital are looking at permanently reduced lung
function. Death isn't the best metric here.

~~~
Marsymars
I hear this a lot, but I've never seen this claim put in context of a
comparison to lung function following viral pneumonia from viruses other than
SARS-CoV-2.

~~~
8note
Yeah, I've only hear about it as a typical result of pneumonia

~~~
HarryHirsch
Yes, but severe pneumonia is what sends COVID patients to hospital. It's a
frequent complication, much more frequent than in the annual flu.

------
tomohawk
Sweden achieved zero excess mortality in June.

Excess mortality is the best measure, because it accounts for the impact of
the disease, as well as the impact of actions taken to fight it (not all of
which will be good).

Looking only at covid deaths is therefore misleading, as it only optimizes for
that one thing. Looking at the big picture is the better way to make policy.

[https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-
covid](https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid)

------
adrinavarro
> "it is nonsensical to compare covid to other major pandemics […] Covid will
> never even come close to those numbers. And yet many countries have shut
> down their entire economies"

> "That makes covid a mere blip in terms of its effect on mortality."

This sounds wrong to me for several reasons. First of all, it's silly assuming
that other countries are shutting down their economies without a very good
reason for doing so. As I understood it, the "good reason" for doing so was
that the infection & death rate was growing so fast, that it was putting
hospitals & morgues way beyond their capacity. At the same time, the situation
was keeping non-COVID, hospital-worthy visits out of the healthcare system,
thus creating a massive public health problem.

(Let's not forget the improvised hospitals, improvised morgues, etc. These
were very real.)

It'd be interesting knowing why somehow the COVID cases 'vanished' from this
doctor's hospital. But instead of looking into why this happened, this doctor
is just saying "turns out that the problem went away, so in the end it was
good that we didn't bother too much about it".

And the thing is - we're not through it yet. Thankfully the death rate seems
not being as bad as we thought it could be, but this could very well be down
to current measures such as isolating elder people, testing at-risk
populations, higher awareness levels, and the fact that the average infection
age is now much lower than it was in March. So, now, healthcare systems are
not collapsing.

There's a myriad of variables that likely affect the virus spread and outcome.
For example, the age and characteristics of the populations where the virus is
spreading, how population is distributed around the territory (and its
density), how frequently this population "comes together" (social behavior -
ever seen a swede profusely hugging and kissing?, public transportation,
remote working…), and so on.

And when it comes to the healthcare system capacity debate: Sweden frequently
put elder, infected people straight in palliative care
([http://archive.is/VC5vb](http://archive.is/VC5vb)), bypassing hospitals.
Other countries did admit elder people into hospitals, thus putting more
strain into the healthcare system, which later on prompted a lockdown to
prevent said system from collapsing.

~~~
_-___________-_
> First of all, it's silly assuming that other countries are shutting down
> their economies without a very good reason for doing so.

I certainly wouldn't want to assume that governments only ever do the correct
thing, or the thing that is in my best interests, so I think it's reasonable
to ask questions.

> As I understood it, the "good reason" for doing so was that the infection &
> death rate was growing so fast, that it was putting hospitals & morgues way
> beyond their capacity. At the same time, the situation was keeping non-
> COVID, hospital-worthy visits out of the healthcare system, thus creating a
> massive public health problem.

The UK enlisted the army to build enormous field hospitals and staffed them
with doctors and nurses from other hospitals. Most of them closed after seeing
only a few patients, since all other hospitals were operating far below
capacity. Emergency rooms were ghost towns. Meanwhile, all elective surgery
was cancelled, reducing the quality of life for thousands of people while
doctors stood around waiting for the promised influx that never happened.

It seems to me that the response in the West has been largely reactionary,
driven by fear and public opinion, and disconnected from any real analysis of
what genuinely works and what the long-term plan is -- with the possible
exception of Sweden, who despite all the "they don't care" rhetoric you see in
other comments, not only put a lot of analytical care into their approach, but
discussed that analysis openly.

~~~
adrinavarro
Maybe it was based on seeing what happened in other countries, ie. Spain and
Italy? I can say for sure that the impact in the health care system here in
Spain was very significant.

~~~
thu2111
It's hard to disentangle cause and effect though. Countries that were very
hard hit also had the most extreme government reactions to it. This can
compromise the efficiency of the healthcare system, for example, I've read
that in Spain at the peak of the epidemic many nurses and doctors were self-
isolating because they'd tested positive, so there was a huge loss of
healthcare capacity. Then later on it was discovered that a lot of positive
tests are asymptomatic and asymptomatic people don't transmit the disease, so
this just hurt healthcare capacity for no reason.

Many countries had problems with care home workers abandoning their jobs, for
example to return to their home countries before borders closed. There are
some quite horrific stories of the terrible conditions created in care homes
in some of the places with excess death spikes.

The imagery of ice-rink morgues etc had a similar effect. There was no real
demand surge for morgue space, but undertakers were refusing to work until
they were supplied with ample PPE because they thought they would be infected
by the bodies with a killer virus. Same story in Bergamo. So then a sudden
shortfall in PPE was converted into a shortfall in funeral capacity, even
though at that point there was no sudden tsunami of bodies. This then led to
more panic especially amongst health system workers.

It's very hard to disentangle what really went on here.

~~~
adrinavarro
> "Then later on it was discovered that a lot of positive tests are
> asymptomatic and asymptomatic people don't transmit the disease, so this
> just hurt healthcare capacity for no reason"

I think it makes sense to isolate anyone who tests PCR positive for
coronavirus, right?

Also, is it 100% sure that asymptomatic people will not transmit the disease?
What if they are just pre-symptomatic? Where do you establish the cut-off?

~~~
thu2111
No. Why would it? Given how mild almost all infections are, and that
doctors/nurses can routinely save lives from much more serious conditions,
it's a strange cost/benefit analysis that assumes it's better to lose huge
chunks of healthcare capacity than for some people to get COVID.

Asymptomatic is being used as a different classification than pre-symptomatic
in the literature. Asymptomatic means you never develop symptoms. Pre-
symptomatic means you haven't yet but will. Pre-symptomatic phase is not long
though. Typically just 1-3 days, I think, from the latest literature.

Given the tiny window of time that exists when people are infectious and might
not know it, and given the very low likelyhood of a PCR test being done in
exactly that time, and given that PCR testing has a lot of problems (e.g.
triggers even if your body has destroyed the virus), and given that nurses and
doctors are pretty important, I can't see it being useful to actively test in
hospitals. It's everywhere by now anyway.

------
ouid
Sweden is effectively as locked down as anywhere else. The prevalence of the
virus is diminishing there because people are not going out and getting sick,
rendering R_t<1\. I don't participate in social distancing because my
government says to, and I certainly don't stop because my government says to
either.

~~~
refurb
_Sweden is effectively as locked down as anywhere else._

Is that true? Are all the schools closed? Are most people working from home?
Are most businesses shutdown?

That's not what I've read (outside this article).

~~~
chki
But this is also not the case for all the other countries in Europe which
(according to the author) have taken the wrong approach to COVID. The more I
think about it the more this article confuses and worries me. It's a
thinkpiece that is not grounded in the scientific reality.

~~~
dnautics
> It's a thinkpiece that is not grounded in the scientific reality.

What does that _mean_? As a scientist myself, 'science' can basically never
say anything definitive about reality. Not for something extremely well
measured and controlled like GR, and especially not something where the
evidence on the ground and influencing factors (policy, social opinion,
culture) shift with a frequency on the same order of scale that our
measurements can be tallied.

~~~
schemy
It means that people who have no idea what science is like to pretend they
have a deeper reason for their biases other than their innate preferences.
They do not like that pointed out to them and will violently react to anyone
who does.

You can't have a scientific response to the virus when you don't know what the
asymptomatic transmission rate is, or what the true death rate is. As can be
seen here it does not go well when they are made to even consider that they
don't have all the information needed for a scientific response:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077233)

------
ghj
NYC is a good case study since it's one of the first place hit and is now more
or less "done" with covid in the same sense used in this article (it had a
peak and is now on the right tail).

NYC is at 2716 cases per 100k and 281 deaths per 100k:
[https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases](https://www.cdc.gov/covid-
data-tracker/#cases)

States with aggressive reopening policies like Florida/Louisana/Arizona etc
had spikes recently but are also coming back down. They are sitting at around
2-3k cases per 100k (deaths will lag).

Even if the reason why those states "peaked" is because of herd immunity, it
seems like it still requires at least 3k cases per 100k. That would translate
to 300k cases for a population of 10 million but Sweden is only at 80k right
now.

I highly doubt they have herd immunity.

~~~
glofish
Your numbers are way off.

25% percent of NYC was seropositive in May. So that works out to about 25k per
100k people.

The reported cases have always been just the tip of the iceberg. And we never
knew how big the underwater part was. We still down't.

Take the current situation, is the disease penetration larger than that in
March/April? Most likely not, not even close, yet the reported new cases are
about 5x larger.

~~~
hn_check
The most recent, randomized studies of the NYC metro area finds SARS-CoV-2
antibodies in about 14% of participants when they randomly solicit people
directly. Prior studies put out ads looking for participants, naturally
drawing in people who "had that unexplained thing a few months back".

Even when directly appealing to people the participation rate is likely higher
among people who suspect they may have had it.

We know that testing was very limited early in the outbreak, when NYC was hit,
and that it caught only a fraction of the people infected. But all metrics are
that there is still a huge victim base in the area.

The drop is more likely entirely behavioral.

~~~
glofish
Good to know. My 25% numbers were from an announcement by Cuomo where the
report claimed that the sample collection and data processing (corrections)
were statistically sound.

Even at 14% seropositivity the true number of people that had the virus is
likely larger. There are reports that some (many?) people that recover do so
without needed antibodies.

Working backwards, taking the fairly accepted value of 0.6% fatality rate, the
30K deaths in NYC would indicate around 5 million infections. Now the the NYC
fatality rate is likely higher due to Cuomo's mind boggling order regarding
nursing homes.

Regardless I think it is fair to estimate that the true number of cases in NYC
is likely to fall between the reported 400k and the upper limit of 5 million.
At 25% seropositivity would be around 2 million, to me sounds believable.

------
bawana
Would COVID have been a "pandemic" if we did not have the internet? The
Swedish perspective is interesting. I wonder if Google trends can be broken
down by nation to reflect what the concerns of different countries are. How
many COVID searches in Sweden vs the US vs other nations ?

~~~
Markoff
it's not even pandemic really, in Czechia we consider flu epidemic when we
have 1500 active cases per 100K population, with coronavirus we are on like 50
active cases per 100K population with roughly 1-2 infected deaths (don't
confuse with deaths because of virus, it's just very sick people who are at
same time also infected) per day, some days 0-1, some days max 4-5 despite
everything completely open - bars, restaurants, shops, you don't need face
mask anywhere even indoor like 1.5 month and pretty much nobody wears face
mask

------
agildehaus
Finland has roughly half Sweden's population but 5% of their COVID deaths.
Sweden's economy contracted 8.6% to the EU's 11.9%.

Hope those 5000+ unnecessary deaths were worth 3.3%.

"Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old,
quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway."

Wow.

~~~
tripletao
At $100k per quality-adjusted life-year and 10 QALY lost per death, those 5k
deaths are $5B, about 1% of Sweden's GDP. So by the same math used to
determine if medical treatments are cost-effective, it's breakeven if that GDP
difference persists for about four months. We should also account for QALY
lost due to people who get severely ill but recover, but I'd guess the net
result is surprisingly close to breakeven. Perhaps this means the policymakers
just chose different but roughly equivalent (by that math) options, or perhaps
that's just chance.

Of course you could say that math is horrible and inhumane, and any equation
involving dollars and human lives will feel that way. But the point is that
health care spending is already rationed by something like that standard, and
every dollar of GDP that disappears is a dollar that's unavailable to spend in
other ways (including medical treatments that are cost-effective by that
standard).

To be clear, I think Sweden erred by not mandating masks, which seem cost-
effective to me by that standard. Their response otherwise seems reasonable to
me, not obviously better than stricter approaches but not obviously worse.

~~~
nopinsight
Plausible long-term damage to the brain of a significant percentage of COVID
patients, in both severe and non-severe cases—-according to a Lancet
paper—should change the QALY-based calculation by a great deal.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1290916583137...](https://mobile.twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1290916583137738752)

~~~
timr
That is an incredibly bad paper. They have gone on a fishing expedition across
dozens of algorithmically detected differences, barely adjusted their
statistical significance thresholds to make up for the fact that they're
searching for _something_ that might be "significant", and even then, the best
they can do is come up with...50% of people have something. A coin toss.

This is the medical literature version of the xkcd green M&M comic:

[https://xkcd.com/882/](https://xkcd.com/882/)

------
mynegation
Are we now going to ignore the weeks of horror that New York went through and
many South American countries are going through right now?

Contrary to the author’s claims, no one in their right mind went into lockdown
trying to decrease the total number of deaths, not directly at least.
Lockdowns were/are there to smoothen the spike of cases and prevent medical
system from the overload.

As to diminishing cases, could it be that people got the habits of social
distancing and hand washing? In a small country without large cities it would
not take much to take R_t to the values that are close enough to 1.0.

------
matz1
Its baffling that lots of government still want to continue the lockdown.

~~~
hootbootscoot
It's baffling that you would take this singular anecdotal factually-cherry-
picked account of one doctors experience during one nations allegedly
ineffective (lack of a) response to COVID as sensible advice moving forward.

For one, his per-capita-death-rates are wayyy off. (1 out of 200 dying? try
around 8% in Spain and Italy...)

For 2, yes, it's precisely about slowing the spread 1) giving a chance for
emergency services to handle the influx instead of being slammed in one go 2)
attempting to quash a given outbreak

So many sweeping generalizations here and so little counter-point to the facts
the general public have become well-acquainted with, I'm afraid our Good
Doctor seems a bit eccentric and witless writing such a trivializing
dismissive blog post.

Let's call him "an outlier" even for Sweden, as travel is not making his
strange claims that "covid is over for Sweden" look even sillier.

Covid is not finished for "the world" at large, and it's an interconnected
world, and suspicion of "t-cells bearing COVID immunity rather than
antibodies" as if the PCR were just a cheap placebo test and no antibodies
were detected in prior COVID sufferers (it does detect them.)... this is all
making light of what deserves serious engagement.

Fire this man or get a committee investigating his various claims as flippant
blogs are not the appropriate realm for such incendiary topics.

~~~
tripletao
> 1 out of 200 dying? try around 8% in Spain and Italy...

You have conflated the CFR and IFR, and are thereby spreading gross
misinformation. From the article:

> And remember, the risk of dying is at the very most 1 in 200 if you actually
> do get infected.

They're talking about the risk of dying "if you actually do get infected"
(i.e., IFR), not the risk of dying if you get infected and test positive
(i.e., CFR). Most people infected suffer mild enough symptoms that they don't
seek a test, so the CFR is much higher than the IFR. This is especially true
during severe outbreaks, where people with mild symptoms are explicitly
encouraged to just stay home until they get better (or worse) to avoid further
stressing the medical system.

A recent meta-analysis estimates the IFR around 0.7%[1], a little higher than
the Swedish doctor's numbers but pretty close. The exact number will vary
dramatically with the age structure of the population, since the IFR is >100x
for old people vs. young.

1\.
[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v4.full.pdf)

------
zaroth
I’ve posted this in replies but I want to put it as a top-level comment as
well.

Here’s a chart showing the effective transmission rate (R value) as a function
of “social connectivity” and “herd immunity”;

[https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1291860668342079490?s=21](https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1291860668342079490?s=21)

I think what you can find in many examples across the globe is that without an
innate geographical advantage or well-established cultural protocols, you
cannot reduce “social connectivity” enough with an immunity of 0% to keep R
below 1.

For most peoples and places, it’s only through a combination of reducing
social connectivity and increased immunity that R will ultimately fall below
1.

Interestingly, both factors do not necessarily only move in one direction
along the axis over time, and neither factor can be entirely controlled, even
given an effective and widely produced vaccine.

I can only pray that at least immunity is quite durable, lest we find
ourselves in a repeating cycle of R cresting well above 1.

At least until an effective vaccine is available, there is a massive cost to
pay to push R downward, _regardless_ of which axis you choose to push on.

And the next time someone laments why did we lockdown if only to end up with
so many cases, I think for most countries the only answer to get to R below 1
is actually that “you need both”.

~~~
HALtheWise
If I'm interpreting this series of graphs correctly, it's also assuming that
social contact is uniformly distributed across the population (i.e. every
person has an equal number of daily contacts). The less true that is, the
fewer people need to be infected for herd immunity effects to become
significant. We don't have good numbers on what the real distribution is, but
there is growing evidence this is a significant effect.

------
unexaminedlife
I've seen some other comments echo this sentiment. I was never "stunned" by
how lethal this virus is. Though I have read plenty of stories to realize it
can be (and in a lot of instances) was brutal for people who had it. I did,
however, have a breakthrough in my understanding as to why they shut
everything down.

Everyone, as far as I'm concerned, has a right to proper healthcare. The
medical professionals realized early on that based on how easily the virus
spreads and how it is plenty more lethal than a common cold, they knew letting
everyone catch it at the same time would've overwhelmed the healthcare system.
There is no chance most people would've gotten proper care, thus more people
would've died than had to.

I'm still not fully convinced of what the doctor had to say. Let's give it a
full-year where we've gone through all the seasons to see if he really is
right about the fact that Sweden did it the right way.

EDIT: Also, during those first months medical professionals learned more about
how to handle it. They took those learnings and applied them to the next group
of patients. That knowledge would've never been put to use (in theory) if
everyone had the virus at the same time.

------
bowyakka
Counter arguments:

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.10.20096909v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.10.20096909v1)

[https://covid19-projections.com/denmark](https://covid19-projections.com/denmark)
vs
[https://covid19-projections.com/sweden](https://covid19-projections.com/sweden)

Its also possible Sweden just got lucky with the prevalent strain
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.233866v1....](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.03.233866v1.full.pdf)

I would love it if Sweden was right and tackled this in a way that does look
like a seasonal flu, but I think the science is still out on that. It does
seem the science points mildly towards it being quite as deadly as initially
thought, but I would not the Swedish death rate a total win.

<snark> Forget all that Sweden is the best approach, we should copy it in
America especially the very solid social health care system :) </snark>

~~~
refurb
Your first paper isn't a counter argument at all. It's just a measure of
excess deaths (which the doctor never claimed weren't happening).

~~~
bowyakka
true that.

I guess my counter would be:

* It was solved at a greater expense of human life, its easy to say "those people would have died" but that is harder to prove ethically. Could the excess deaths have lived on _longer than a flu season_?

* Is there a good argument that it is in fact over in Sweden?

* Are there other variables that might have made Covid-19 not so bad in Sweden?

If I was to take more direct counters to the article:

> I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will
> see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t
> have been any point in shutting down in the first place, because all those
> countries are going to end up with the same number of dead at the end of the
> day anyway.

Maybe, but that could also be a case of thinking that the death rate is a
fairly simple linear model, which would fly in the face of the various
epidemiological models that we use (not just for covid but since the 1920s)

> No, because influenza has been around for centuries while covid is
> completely new. In an average influenza year most people already have some
> level of immunity because they’ve been infected with a similar strain
> previously, or because they’re vaccinated.

Is Covid-19 completely new? By this reasoning it would as stated be more
infectious due to a lack of known immunity. With this line of reasoning why
wouldn't a _different_ cornovirus also give a more uniform immunity? Why would
a novel Cornovirus strain have a greater impact over a novel Influenza strain?

I could go one but I feel like I am sniping.

Personally I dont think the world wide response has been great, I do think we
have overreacted but I also would argue that its not just another influenza
and should be ignored as such.

------
nopinsight
Plausible long-term damage to the brain of a significant percentage of COVID
patients, in both severe and non-severe cases—according to a very recent
Lancet paper—should change any tradeoff analysis by a great deal. The range of
harm could be far beyond the number of deaths.

Cerebral Micro-Structural Changes in COVID-19 Patients – An MRI-based 3-month
Follow-up Study

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370\(20\)30228-5/fulltext)

“Interpretation

Study findings revealed possible disruption to micro-structural and functional
brain integrity in the recovery stages of COVID-19, suggesting the long-term
consequences of SARS-CoV-2.”

[https://mobile.twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1290916583137...](https://mobile.twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1290916583137738752)

“Manifest brain damage in 55% COVID-19 patients

..higher bilateral gray matter volumes (GMV) in olfactory cortices,
hippocampi, insulas, left Rolandic operculum..

No significant difference between severe and non-severe COVID”

------
torobos
Just for information there is a next step for the locked down country and that
is to test and then track down all those who potentialy has been infected. I
heard the ipedimiology expert of Denmark tell that this would make it possible
for even the most high risk groups to be free in society with out risk. So the
lock down was not in order to eliminate the virus, but in order to get time to
build up the capacity to test, track and trace. The reason for this is that in
order to have a well functioning social contract in a welfarestate it’s
neccessary that no part of the population is consodered expendable. So as a
society we can not afford the kind of deaths that sweeden had. The high degree
of trust that is necessary to work is created by everybody are taken care of
and that everybody has value. It’s very different to a social contract like
the one in us. And I am not stating that one is better than the other. Just
different.

------
doodlebugging
Is this guy an undertaker or a urologist? His tag seems to have both words but
I do not speak Swedish.

Anyway it may not be a perfect extrapolation or comparison but if you take his
numbers, 6000 dead in a country of 100 million people and you adjust that to
the US population don't you come out with 330 million people and 198000 dead?

We are not far from that now and if the trend continues we will blow past that
in a month or so. That's one race I didn't want to be winning.

~~~
greenyoda
> Is this guy an undertaker or a urologist? His tag seems to have both words
> but I do not speak Swedish.

His name tag says "Underläkare", which is a title meaning "assistant
physician". The term is defined in this Swedish Wikipedia article:

[https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underl%C3%A4kare](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underl%C3%A4kare)

Google translates it as follows:

"Assistant physician in Sweden is a title for all the doctors on duty who do
not have specialist competence..."

Underneath that it says "VO kirurgi och urologi" which translates as "Acting
supervisor[1] - surgery and urology".

The red tag says "Läkare", which is just "Doctor".

[1] [https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO)
(literally "officer on duty")

~~~
doodlebugging
Thank you for the interpretation of the name tag. I appreciate the effort. I
should've made the same effort myself.

In fact, in rereading my own comment I notice that I fat-fingered a number in
the comparison I was trying to make. Where I show their Dead vs Population
size as 6000 / 100 million that should've been 6000 / 10 million. I had one
too many zeroes on their population figure.

Not my finest hour and a real drag for me personally since I have spent so
much of my career QC'ing other people's work and pointing out their defects. I
need to pay closer attention to my own output since I obviously am not perfect
either.

------
jhanschoo
I'd note that the article doesn't address the issue of ER capacity at all.
Most wealthy countries' citizens expect to be able to get treatment if they
catch COVID, but if the US didn't implement lockdowns, that wouldn't be
tenable. The author's thesis may still hold that this would still be a small
proportion of deaths, but it would be a less popular decision than lockdowns.

------
d1zzy
It seems to me the only conclusion we can draw by studying Sweden is that
Sweden's policy may have worked for their country for the studied timeline.
Let's see if it continues to work going forward. We can't say for sure that
the policy was what kept virus propagation under control, it might just be the
set of factors outside of the government policy. Similarly we can't just apply
the same policy elsewhere, in completely different circumstances, and expect
for it to yield similar results. Policy has to be decided based on as much
data as you can gather, find out the main virus propagation causes and try to
deal with those in an effective way. Don't do something because "Sweden did
it".

------
Jedd
Interesting take from someone inside one of the outlier nations -- but all his
numbers are about morbidity.

Claims are made that SARS-CoV-2 must be widely spread through the community
now (because cases requiring hospitalisation are dropping) but what then are
the numbers for neuro, renal, respiratory etc complications caused by this
virus?

Personally, the stats make me reasonably confident I would survive an
infection, but the fact that significant quality-of-life effects in the mid to
long term seem to be a random distribution scares the willies out of me.

------
lefstathiou
There is a political element to covid that is often... ignored.

~~~
eternalban
You win the prize for the understatement of the century.

The ideological clarity of the covid _regime_ is sublime. All sorts of debated
matters are decided, by "science", and that is that. Whether by accident or
design, the covid _regime_ , the "new normal" that MSM has been educating us
about from the very beginning, is a blueprint for a global authoritarian
technocracy with its own internal logic, ethics, and mores.

~~~
stallmanite
I share your concerns about authoritarians using this occasion to bend things
in a bad direction but are you asserting that the virus is not a real thing or
that some group with authoritarian aims is behind its release? Because if the
virus is a real thing then surely protesting by gathering into crowds and
falling victim doesn’t harm the bad guys right? Help me understand if you
don’t mind, serious questions it’s hard to word things so they don’t sound
incendiary to one side or the other (or both) since the issue is so
politically charged.

~~~
eternalban
It's a perfectly reasonable set of questions.

Please note I stress that I am commenting on the virus "regime".

Is the virus real? I think we should assume it is real, regardless of the
facts. Let's say it is real.

Should we concern ourselves with whether it is (a) natural phenomena, or (b)
man-made;

and whether regardless of its provenance, the spread of the virus was due to
(a) chance events, or (b) intentional release?

Again, I say, to seriously answer any of these questions is an unreasonable
burden. So, let's call it an "act of god".

Now, we are at the point to discuss sensible response, rational response,
_reasonable response_ , to a collective health issue: a virus that has reached
pandemic stage and posses certain risk probabilies across various
demographics.

Does the above scenario mandate that governmental norms be bent if not broken?
For example, is it acceptable that from now on society will be governed by
executive decrees and not legislative bodies?

How long should we tolerate such encroachments on what we know to be the basis
of free societies?

Should not a health care matter of such grave import and impact on our lives
be subject to the input of a wide range of experts in related subject matters?

What "authority" has designated certain institutions, such as the Imperial
College as an example, as fonts of indisputable claims regarding the gravity
of the situation and required remedies?

Why are dissenting experts and workers in the "frontlines" subject to media
blackout, de-platforming, and loss of income?

I could go on and practically write a little book here. But that should
suffice as to "why" some of us are rather concerned, to say the least.

~~~
sterwill
You asked a lot of questions that seem to imply a lot of conspiracy-driven
actions, but you didn't really state any definite opinions or present any
evidence that supports those implications. If you're going to "write a little
book here," you're going to have to say what you believe and present the
evidence for why you believe it.

~~~
eternalban
That is a _laughable_ mischaracterization of the post to which you are
responding.

These are legitimate questions that definitively need to be asked and answered
in context of a complete workover of our societies, instead of being
dishonestly dismissed.

~~~
sterwill
You said you had so much information that you could write a little book. Is
your book going to consist entirely of questions that appeal to thoughts of
conspiracy and shadowy action by oppressing forces? Or will you simply state
your opinions about how things are and support those with evidence?

~~~
eternalban
That is your characterization and borderline trolling. Only a troll would
claim that insisting on legislative oversight of executive, to take one item,
is indicative of irrational fears.

------
mzs
FWIW this is being pushed by fringe elements like this:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR8d4wQT-
iOj7bJynoBTEeg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR8d4wQT-iOj7bJynoBTEeg)

edit: also state backed TRT
[https://twitter.com/RachaelRuble/status/1291957654697455621](https://twitter.com/RachaelRuble/status/1291957654697455621)

------
rsweeney21
Wouldn't this article be considered "misinformation" on most social media
sites?

It's important information that I don't think should be censored, but it goes
contrary to WHO.

~~~
borvo
"Sebastian Rushworth M.D." clearly states at the beginning of his internet
post that it's anecdotal, even though his bio suggests he's trying to correct
internet misinformation with "science". It absolutely shouldn't be censored. I
mean, if I was considering taking this guy's medical advice - I'd want to know
about this.

~~~
henrikschroder
I agree with most of the things in this article, but it smells an awful lot
like a planted piece.

The name is very unusual for a Swedish person, I can only find three people
with that last name in Sweden, and none of them has the first name Sebastian.

The image of him in a gas mask is vague enough that you can't identify the
person based on that.

The blog is a hosted wordpress that only has a couple of articles going back a
few days.

The English is very good, I didn't see a single Swedishism, which makes it
less likely the writer is actually Swedish.

The article talks about other kinds of deaths that are also bad, and mentions
opioid deaths. That is a cause of death that is _extremely_ rare in Sweden,
but which would be familiar to an American audience. Using that as an example
while talking about Swedish deaths is very odd.

So all in all this piece smells off.

~~~
aliswe
Henrik I believe you are being overly suspicious. A simple call to KI or
wherever he stated he worked would have brought an end to that.

~~~
pietkuip
That would not guarantee that the texts on Wordpress were written by a Swedish
medical doctor.

I have now tried to contact him by Facebook Messenger, where he has had an
account for many years. I asked if he wrote those texts on Wordpress.

~~~
pietkuip
And he confirmed that it is him on the Wordpress site.

------
T-A
[https://www.thelocal.se/20200806/its-a-bad-sign-sweden-
sees-...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200806/its-a-bad-sign-sweden-sees-renewed-
rise-in-infections-among-young-adults)

------
biolurker1
Long term consequences are where it's at. This article talks none of it. Let's
hope that Sweden doesn't have heart failure and ground glass lungs for the
next decades at high rates. Such a gamble from one doctor.

~~~
aliswe
If you have any info, please share? I don't really get what you're saying.

~~~
biolurker1
Google Covid-19 long term consequences

------
foogazi
Confused by this:

> Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths
> only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is
> available.

Wouldn’t shutting down completely for a month or two effectively end covid ?

~~~
lsllc
The UK, France, Spain, India and Australia who all shutdown (to varying
degrees) are now experiencing significant upticks in cases. Even Vietnam is
now fighting hard to tamp down a resurgence of C19 despite impressive initial
measures to try to stop it.

You'd have to be completely sure that during your lockdown, the virus burned
itself out inside each household. You'd have to have a really strict lockdown
(e.g. troops on the streets, imprisonment for violation) to do that; I think
maybe only Italy & China did anything close to that. And of course it would
only take a handful of exceptions to re-ignite the virus (see Australia).

~~~
foogazi
Have not heard about India’s shut down

I know the UK was going for herd immunity at first and then switched

Spain did lockdown drastically once things got pretty bad

My next question would be on Sweden’s case: is herd immunity real? Or as the
virus spreads it reinfects ?

~~~
mhh__
Is there a citation for herd immunity and the UK? It was bandied around by the
left wing press when they were looking for blood but I never saw any concrete
evidence beyond it apparently being mentioned in passing.

~~~
lsllc
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/uk-
backed...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/uk-backed-off-
on-herd-immunity-to-beat-coronavirus-we-need-it/)

------
Markoff
it's same here in Czechia except only ~390 infected people died (not because
of COVID, but they were infected when they died), in country of 10.6M where
each month die roughly 10000 people, so roughly 400 people out of 40000 dead
within 4 months of virus. truth we had mandatory masks like one of the first
in Europe and even outside (insane), but we don't have them like two months,
not even indoors more than one month and there is NO spike in deaths, quite
opposite, there is less than 1-2 people dying per day and whole country has
<30 serious cases in hospital. most of the newly infected cases are
asymptomatic or very mild cases, almost nobody needs hospitalizationd espite
daily new infections between 200-300

we will know only later what was the impact of this virus, but everything
leads to completely unproportiante response with pretty much no excess deaths,
if you look at yearly stats even in failed countries like UK or US

in UK is already in 6 consecutive weeks total death toll from all causes lower
than 5 year average implying people who would die through the year just died
within short time window and now the stats are catching up and number of
excess deaths is falling

[https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1290568780251308032](https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1290568780251308032)

I can imagine it's gonna be pretty much same in US despite anti-Trump hysteria
amd scaremongering, but of course you won't have huge headlines about lower
than average death toll per week, that's not very attractive for media

I wish people would be so enthusiastic about other deaths too, half million
people in US die every single year from smoking, but I don't see anyone
banning smoking as much as we wasted tons of money on this minor virus killing
pretty much nobody

------
SergeAx
> Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths
> only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is
> available.

We forgot about the whole "flatten the curve" thing awfully quick. Overwhelmed
medical system of Italy was the main cause for their grim consequences. Good
for Sweden their healthcare has so much backup capacity.

------
sytelus
TLDR;

 _It is now four months since the start of the pandemic, and I haven’t seen a
single covid patient in over a month. When I do test someone because they have
a cough or a fever, the test invariably comes back negative. At the peak three
months back, a hundred people were dying a day of covid in Sweden, a country
with a population of ten million. We are now down to around five people dying
per day in the whole country, and that number continues to drop. Since people
generally die around three weeks after infection, that means virtually no-one
is getting infected any more._

------
YeGoblynQueenne
According to the comments the article was cross-posted to a UK doctor's blog,
Dr. Kendrick's blog (which I haven't visited). So I'd like to comment on this
article from the point of view of a UK resident, as I am.

The first thing to note is that in the UK, with a supposed lockdown imposed
(now lifted), the number of deaths from Covid-19 so far is 46,596 [1]. That's
in a country of almost 70 million [2]. The article above reports about 6,000
deaths in Sweden so far. We can look at different ratios and statistics, like
per capita death rate (for the entire country) or case fatality ratio, etc,
and we must of course accept that "death from Covid-19" sometimes means "death
_with_ Covid-19" and sometimes "death _by_ Covid-19". Finally, we can note
that the majority of the people who died were of a certain age and had
underlying issues so they may have been dying already anyway.

The fact remains that more than 45,000 people is a big number of people to die
within a couple of months. It's a much larger number of deaths than 7,000 and
it's not a number that justifies sitting around doing nothing. Not for policy
makers, not for doctors, not for the general population.

Of course the article makes the point that the situation in Sweden is now much
better than in other places, because Sweden did not impose a lockdown like
those other countries. So, in theory, without a lockdown the UK would have
many fewer infections thanks to heard immunity. But, what would be the cost of
acquiring this herd immunity? If more than 45,000 people died under lockdown,
how many would have died without it? Of course this is a difficult question to
answer- but it stands to reason that we would see more deaths, perhaps many
more [4]. How many peoples' lives saved justify a lockdown? 50,000? 100,000?
10,000?

To be honest, I can't get my head around this dreadful arithmetic.
Epidemiologists and perhaps some doctors also are used to thinking of case
fatality rates and population-level statistics, but the fact still remains
that even a thousand people dead from a single, possibly preventable cause, is
something that the majority of the population of any country would accept as
intolerable. See for instance the recent explosion in Beirut which killed
"only" 135 people (last I looked). And yet, this seems to be considered by
everyone as a great tragedy (certainly by the press, always obsessed with body
counts, but by everone else also). If we accept that everything should be done
to avoid losing 135 people in an explosion, shouldn't everything be done to
avoid losing more than 45,000 people in a disease outbreak?

_______________

[1]
[https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom)
reports a 2020 estimate of 67,886,004.

[3] This all is before looking at excess deaths in the UK in the months of the
lockdown, which I won't do because I find the way these are measured and
reported a bit confusing (e.g. I've found excess mortality plots for the last
five years - but that's a short time and there may be much more variation over
10 years, say, or 35, so I'm not sure we learn much by looking at those
plots).

[4] Again I'm not going to try to quantify "how many more would have died
without lockdown" because we simply don't have the data for accurate
estimates. Some estimates have been derived, notably the estimates from the
Imperial Colledge modelling team, but there's no way to rely on them with any
certainty.

------
spirobel
its time to stop this! I am so proud to see my fellow germans rise up:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=htDrDieOgh0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=htDrDieOgh0)

~~~
chki
> proud to see my fellow germans rise up:

That is (luckily imo) only a tiny minority of Germans. I would be very
interested: are the current restrictions really that bad? You need to wear a
mask in supermarkets, do you think that's actually that big of a deal?

~~~
mellow2020
It's the patronizing way things get pushed that is a problem. Including you
pointing out someone being in the minority, _followed_ by asking a question:
the answer is kinda moot if you already established might being right as valid
in your view. It's a very thin veneer of good faith, and completely
transparent to the person it's done to.

If I told you to list 3 things you're grateful for each day, and hounded and
sanctioned you for not doing it, if I talked about all these Nazis I know who
incidentally _also_ are not doing it, and meaningfully nodded your way every
time, and made fun of you in filter bubbles... wouldn't you _just do this
minor thing that may actually be beneficial and is unlikely to do harm_?

This is the problem, and to _use_ a pandemic to normalize that just makes it
worse, morally speaking.

~~~
chki
>If I told you to list 3 things you're grateful for each day, and hounded and
sanctioned you for not doing it, if I talked about all these Nazis I know who
incidentally also are not doing it, and meaningfully nodded your way every
time, and made fun of you in filter bubbles... wouldn't you just do this minor
thing that may actually be beneficial and is unlikely to do harm?

The difference being that there is a strong scientific consensus that wearing
a mask will save many peoples lives. I don't want to be patronizing and me
pointing out that op was in a minority merely wanted to correct the "fellow
germans" statement. But sometimes it's difficult not to be patronizing if you
are following the strong scientific consensus on a topic. Because wearing
masks shouldn't be a political issue if you can't develop a reasonable
counterargument.

~~~
mellow2020
Listing 3 things you are grateful for each day will improve your whole life
and all your relationships. As something that is likely to do good and isn't
much of a sacrifice, it's the same thing, and you didn't answer the question.

> Because wearing masks shouldn't be a political issue if you can't develop a
> reasonable counterargument.

You are the one making it about the masks and only the masks, even the
protests aren't, and I for one said IMO the pushiness is the problem, not what
is being pushed.

~~~
chki
> it's the same thing

It is not. Masks are meant to protect everybody, they are not meant to protect
yourself. I'm not in favor of preventing consenting mentally stable adults
from doing basically anything to themselves and – to answer your question – I
would obviously object to other people forcing me into adopting any
unreasonable habit. But this is about protecting society and risk groups.

> IMO the pushiness is the problem, not what is being pushed.

By "the pushiness" do you mean the laws that are in place to force people to
do things? Because those are pretty common in all sorts of situations.

Or do you mean the general attitude by commentators (in the media/on twitter
etc.) towards people not abiding by those laws?

~~~
mellow2020
I didn't say "it's the same thing", I said " _As something that is likely to
do good and isn 't much of a sacrifice_, it's the same thing"

> I would obviously object to other people forcing me into adopting any
> unreasonable habit.

There is nothing "unreasonable" about naming 3 things you are grateful for
each day. If you did it each day, you could probably get it down to taking a
few seconds.

> Or do you mean the general attitude by commentators (in the media/on twitter
> etc.) towards people not abiding by those laws?

I do mean the attitude, but not about not abiding to laws per se. It's just a
wholesale dismissal. Like, what does "mentally stable" have to do with
anything, why did you weave that in there? Because instable people are
complaining about masks or think G5 causes Corona? What do, for example,
arguments put forward in the OP article have to do with that?

------
tsherr
An observation and a question:

1) I'm glad I don't have this guy as a doctor. 2)If it's not a big deal, why
is he wearing a mask in the picture? Catch covid-19, rub some dirt on it, and
move on. If you die, you were going to anyway.

------
gnicholas
Cynical perspective:

Trump doesn't want to reopen too fast because it won't be clear by the
election (October, when mail-in voting happens) that this was a good strategy.

Democrats don't want to reopen too fast because keeping the economy shut down
is bad for Trump's reelection chances.

Too cynical? Perhaps. But I do think that perspectives like the author's are
dismissed too quickly because neither 'side' sees a way in which following
this advice will help them in the upcoming election.

Regardless, it is a real shame that COVID has been so politicized, given the
tremendous medical and economic repercussions that we are seeing.

~~~
refurb
_Trump doesn 't want to reopen too fast_

Hasn't Trump been the one flippantly saying "it's not a big deal" and "we'll
be back to normal quickly" and "we'll get the kids back to school shortly"?

How could anyone view his behavior as "not wanting to reopen too fast"? It
seems the exact opposite to me.

~~~
8note
He wants the points for arguing that it's the right thing to do, but without
the risk of finding out it wasnt

------
supernova87a
The author doesn't state (and I don't know the real-time info) about whether
the country is locked down and social distancing/masks, etc.

If so, it's not like their laissez-faire attitude (the previous months) is the
success he's making it out to be. They only have stabilized because they
adopted the recommended measures finally, if that's true.

~~~
rsweeney21
The Swedish government never locked down or encouraged any sort of social
distancing. Their plan was herd immunity and they appear to have gotten it
right.

~~~
chki
That's simply incorrect. Even just looking at the government website it
literally states that people should distance themselves.
[https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-
risks/disaster...](https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-
risks/disasters-and-incidents/2020/official-information-on-the-new-
coronavirus/sa-minskar-vi-smittspridningen)

~~~
rsweeney21
You are right. I should have said that they didn't enforce social distancing.
ie. They didn't ban church or arrest people that held parties.

------
RobLach
2 separate studies are pointing to herd immunity being impossible because
SARS-CoV-2 antibodies disappear over time and previous carriers could become
infected again.

There haven’t been any cases of reinfection afaik but we’ll see in due time.

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.09.20148429v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.09.20148429v1)

[https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2025179](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2025179)

~~~
goalieca
Memory B cells exist and will produce antibodies as needed.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_B_cell)

Proving herd immunity impossible is a rather bold claim and the threshold for
that has simply not been met.

We do have a rather large confidence that this virus isn’t going anywhere and
will be endemic. It will join the 200+ Cold viruses that hit us every year.

------
hn_check
This doctor[1] is basically claiming that all of Sweden, or the vast bulk,
have had SARS-CoV-2 and are now immune. This goes completely contrary to every
medical authority, and is the sort of claim that generally gets something
removed as disinformation. Disinformation does well on HN.

Of course you get to the article's slant when it claims that Sweden is
"normal" right now, which is an outrageous lie.

Virtually all events are cancelled. Social engagements are non-existent.
Streets are empty. Huge percentages of people work from home. Bars and
restaurants were closed for a period of time in hot areas, and regardless have
operated under a significantly reduced capacity. Sweden's summer school break
began at the PEAK of their outbreak, and we'll see what happens when they
return in a little over a week.

Sweden's societal reaction to COVID-19 is basically _optimal_ as a general
society, and some parts of the US that are "locked down" have much higher
social engagement. Either we've redefined normal to be "completely and
absolutely unlike the before times", or this guy is just twisting reality
pretty generously because he likes the views, particularly among a certain
conspiratorial segment of the US population (a Swedish MD whose blog is in
English).

[1] An MD who has extraordinarily little expertise in virology or immunology.
Yet he discounts immunity tests. This is like a JavaScript developer telling
you why Metal is better than Vulkan.

~~~
supernova87a
Yes, I was noticing this too -- author doesn't state whether the country is
locked down and social distancing/masks, etc. now.

If so, they've only stabilized because they adopted the recommended measures
finally.

~~~
refurb
First paragraph - "Unlike other countries, Sweden never went in to complete
lockdown. Non-essential businesses have remained open, people have continued
to go to cafés and restaurants, children have remained in school, and very few
people have bothered with face masks in public."

~~~
hn_check
Sweden has adopted virtually every recommendations _without it being
mandated_. This is an enormous difference from some Florida Man arguing why
lockdowns are unnecessary. As much as people focus on face masks, in Sweden
the sparsity of people given their response makes it much less of a necessity.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/i58jjj/helgtr%C3%A5...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/i58jjj/helgtr%C3%A5d_coronavirus_20200807_09/)

There you go -- read about Swedes talking about their COVID-19 experience. It
is a universe removed from normal, or what Florida-man-using-Sweden-as-their-
no-biggie-example claims.

Here you go - [https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/nastan-alla-fick-
coro...](https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/nastan-alla-fick-corona-efter-
fest-i-dals-ed)

Someone had an ill considered party. Despite the amazing herd immunity
nonsense this guy is arguing (again, contrary to the entire expert community),
most of the partiers got COVID. Ooops!

~~~
refurb
So if I understand you correctly, although Sweden hasn't closed schools,
children aren't attending?

And although non-essential businesses aren't closed, Swedes aren't going to
those stores?

And masks aren't mandated, but most people are wearing them?

~~~
hn_check
The snark is adorable and comically out of place.

Swedish schools closed for the summer break just as COVID was peaking. They
return in just over a week. Businesses are sparse because few people are
shopping. Restaurants and bars were closed, and other than that have strict
reduced occupancy.

But Florida man is sure that Everything Is Normal. It's hilarity. That "look
they didn't close their schools"...when they were closed regardless. Hurr.

"And masks aren't mandated, but most people are wearing them?"

Masks are necessary when you're in close proximity to other people. Swedes
aren't getting in close proximity to other people. Are you getting this?

The Cult of Idiocy that has overtaken the US isn't there in Sweden. Florida in
their highest level of lockdown has dramatically more social interaction than
Sweden minus it.

~~~
dang
Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You break the site
guidelines routinely, and we ban accounts that do that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

