Meanwhile, in Sweden...

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Liamo said:
I think it's worth noting that not only does their current rate of deaths per capita (in terms of the 7-day rolling average) remain stubbornly high but their per capita death rate since the very beginning is still the fifth highest in the world (excluding micro-states). Everybody acknowledges that Belgium, the UK, Spain and Italy have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus but for Sweden to be the major country with the next highest rate of deaths per capita in the entire world after these 4, is quite something.

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As I said yesterday, they changed their reporting to be more fastidious and inclusive. You really can't compare death rates when countries are collecting different data. They are also much further along the pandemic curve than many other nations ... so their strategy and those of other countries can only really become comparable at least 12 months down the line, and the comparisons should be excess deaths. I'm a bit bored with repeating this. And the rolling death rate you are talking about is based upon the day of reporting (with lag of up to two weeks) not the current death rate.
I have to say that I find the "league table" notion to be pretty tasteless anyway. These are lives ... not just lives lost, lives devastated too, by the economic consequences, most of which have yet to be fully felt.
 
bear66 said:
There was an increase in total new cases of over 10% in three days. Some of these were apparently catching up on previous tests not counted but not all. There was an apparent spike of younger people getting positive tests in the West of the country. Do you know why these younger people would have been tested? Were they random or people with more serious health problems?
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They came under pressure to test more, basically. They have the laboratory capacity to process100,000 tests per day, but the responsibility for the actual testing falls to local bodies ... and they are struglling to actually carry out the extra numbers of tests. The Public Health Authority are applying pressure from above (which may explain the increase in the number of younger people tested). As with the UK, it's a question of resources, manpower etc. I couldn't answer definitively, I'd guess it's more to do with more random testing (as oppopsed to just testing those presenting with symptoms in hospitals).
 
borolad259 said:
They came under pressure to test more, basically. They have the laboratory capacity to process100,000 tests per day, but the responsibility for the actual testing falls to local bodies ... and they are struglling to actually carry out the extra numbers of tests. The Public Health Authority are applying pressure from above (which may explain the increase in the number of younger people tested). As with the UK, it's a question of resources, manpower etc. I couldn't answer definitively, I'd guess it's more to do with more random testing (as oppopsed to just testing those presenting with symptoms in hospitals).
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I've come to the conclusion the past few days that misery loves company. Some on here simply can't accept that Sweden (and other countries) who haven't locked down aren't apocalyptic landscapes.

I for one appreciate the balanced updates from someone actually there in Sweden and not relying on a news story. Much the same as our friends in Spain @spanishman and @Malaguena have kept us updated from their locales.
 
RandySavage said:
I've come to the conclusion the past few days that misery loves company. Some on here simply can't accept that Sweden (and other countries) who haven't locked down aren't apocalyptic landscapes.

I for one appreciate the balanced updates from someone actually there in Sweden and not relying on a news story. Much the same as our friends in Spain @spanishman and @Malaguena have kept us updated from their locales.
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Although I have a place there, I'm not in Sweden at the moment. However, many of my close friends are, so I get their perspective from on the ground and I also follow the Swedish news, I always do, not just covid stuff. I am a little worried about my local area up in the north. Although everyone has plenty of their own space, much of the population is quite old. The youngsters tend to leave the rural areas for the main cities. Having said that, they are generally rather fit and healthy old folk who spend a lot of time outdoors, working on the land, chopping firewood etc.
 
RandySavage said:
Some on here simply can't accept that Sweden (and other countries) who haven't locked down aren't apocalyptic landscapes.
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What the figures are starting to show is that Sweden is in fact an apocalyptic landscape. Most countries figures are tailing off more and more. But for Sweden the best case scenario seems to be maintaining a steady state, and in the worst case scenario they are deteriorating.
 
otto62 said:
What the figures are starting to show is that Sweden is in fact an apocalyptic landscape. Most countries figures are tailing off more and more. But for Sweden the best case scenario seems to be maintaining a steady state, and in the worst case scenario they are deteriorating.
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Show me the pictures of looting? Homes on fire? Riots? Military on the streets?
 
Billy Horner said:
Pretty balanced article on Sweden's experience (with a bit of implied criticism of the UK's approach thrown in):

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/whats-up-with-sweden/
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Again, not a terribly well researched opinion piece (I read it yesterday). It seems that half the world's press is itching to point at Sweden and shout "see, we told you you'd got it wrong". In actual fact, most swedes I know are quite bemused by this. Tegnell certainly was. This week they have started to relax some of their "rules" ... including allowing healthy 70 to 80 year olds to get out and about, meet grandchildren in outside spaces etc. Travel restrictions are being relaxed. This is because, although they are not, as Tegnell puts it "out of the woods", they are comfortable that things are stable, with the death rate in gradual decline, ditto for ICU admissions.

The emergency field hospitals were closed this week and many hospitals are getting back to normal staffing and admissions.

Swedes will be able to live a little less in fear of any second wave than their Nordic neighbours who are having to be very careful about opening borders for inbound tourism etc.

And, I can tell Otto, from my many friends on the ground in Sweden, that there is no apocalypse. There's some economic pain, as with everywhere, in particular in the travel and tourism sector ... but Sweden should be able to open up to more inbound tourists fairly soon.
 
otto62 said:
What the figures are starting to show is that Sweden is in fact an apocalyptic landscape. Most countries figures are tailing off more and more. But for Sweden the best case scenario seems to be maintaining a steady state, and in the worst case scenario they are deteriorating.
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Here's what the daily deaths graph looks like. There is some reporting lag, as with the UK. As I said yesterday, they changed their criteria to include all cases where covid was present, even if it wasn't the cause of death ... so they went back over historical data and updated it, which accounts for some of the higher spikes in the daily reports recently. They have only had 4 days where more than 100 deaths were registered as covid and that was in mid April when the pandemic was at its peak in Stockholm. There has been a steady decline since. Things will slow even further now that the other major cities have had their dose (Gothenberg and Malmo).


Opera Snapshot_2020-06-07_151156_experience.arcgis.com.png
 
bear66 said:
I see they're thinking of allowing domestic travel within Sweden from 13 June. I hadn't realised they had such a restriction.
Domestic travel restrictions to be changed
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Yeah, two hours drive is the furthest you are supposed to go. This is actually important in some parts of the country though. For instance, my nearest A&E up there is the best part of two hours drive away. And If I want to go to one of the mega supermarkets, like ICA Max in Skelleftea, that's a good 75 to 90 minutes too (although it's only about 10km to my nearest community supermarket).
 
borolad259 said:
Yeah, two hours drive is the furthest you are supposed to go. This is actually important in some parts of the country though. For instance, my nearest A&E up there is the best part of two hours drive away. And If I want to go to one of the mega supermarkets, like ICA Max in Skelleftea, that's a good 75 to 90 minutes too (although it's only about 10km to my nearest community supermarket).
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I guess there must be some give and take for those circumstances? Is it actually enforced or a recommended guideline?
 
The Swedes just expect people to comply and they generally do. The reason for the two hours is so that you can get home if you start to feel unweel, and then can attend your own local hospital if needs be and not burden another municipality. To be honest, there's not much enforcement of any laws in my region. There's only a couple of cops covering several hundred square kilometres. The local public health authorities have been enforcing the rules on bars and restaurants ... closing the ones that don't comply down.
 
It seems that Sweden is not now experiencing "excess deaths". The overall death rate is consistent with the annual average. However, Anders Tegnell was quick to point out that there are still too many daily deaths where Covid is present (if not the actual cause).

There is reporting lag but I'd estimate that daily deaths are below 30 now. It's almost 3 weeks since the confirmed daily rate was over 40.
 
otto62 said:
What the figures are starting to show is that Sweden is in fact an apocalyptic landscape. Most countries figures are tailing off more and more. But for Sweden the best case scenario seems to be maintaining a steady state, and in the worst case scenario they are deteriorating.
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Maintaining a steady state?.. The UK plan is to try and hold new cases under 1k a day..
 
borolad259 said:
There's been a steady decline in daily deaths.
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The slowest "steady decline" of any European country, and they never even had a large infection to deal with. Their 7 day moving average was about 50 at the beginning of April, and got up to about 100 by about mid April, and they're still on around 50, that's terrible for 2.5 months, they're not flattening the total deaths curve, they've flatted the deaths per day curve (the wrong one).

borolad259 said:
Their overall deaths per million is way lower than in the UK.
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The UK has done a terrible job and had the third highest initial infection, not exactly comparable. Even if it were, don't compare with the worst, you need to compare to the best. Or compare with Norway, Findland and Denmark (Sweden has about 4x the deaths of all of these combined, and the others are now down to zero deaths per day, pretty much).

borolad259 said:
They are also more fastidious about reporting Covid deaths: so someone in end of life cancer care who tests positive for covid 19 is recorded in the data as a Covid death, even if it was actually the cancer that killed the patient. This is in stark contrast with some countries who have not counted care home or community deaths, just those in hospital.
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Every country is claiming this, pretty much, and I've heard those defending the UK say similar. The UK claimed we over counted, but we're about 50% down on what the excess deaths figures suggest.

borolad259 said:
The death toll is too high, for sure. They screwed up in the care homes just like we did here. But at least they didn't just abandon care home residents to their fate as happened in Italy and Spain.
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Can't really compare it to Spain/ Italy. Italy and Spain had a lot less notice, a massive initial infection and a super steep curves that massively overwhelmed their services and put their care staff at massive risk. I'm pretty sure any other nations care staff would have done the same if faced with similar circumstances, and I wouldn't criticise them for it. Care home staff and nurses aren't paid enough to be working with their lives at risk.
 
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