▲ 68 points
back
89 comments
Not going to comment on whether their strategy was effective or worth the cost in human toll, just going to say Sweden seems to be one of the few countries with no detectable signs of a second wave.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/
EDIT: Before I start a flamewar, I guess I have to comment on whether I think Sweden's strategy was effective, so...
1. They might get a second wave in the future. But so far they seem to have avoided it.
2. It's too early to tell whether the cumulative loss in life and the cumulative economic damages will be better than those of other countries. So far, they do seem to have had more loss in life with less economic damage than their neighbors, but if they don't get a second wave, they might end up in a much better spot economically.
So yeah, in conclusion, we should keep watching them to see how things play out but not draw conclusions like "they had more loss in life" or "they had less damage to the economy", because it's still too early.
>Sweden seems to be one of the few countries with no detectable signs of a second wave.
It’s really just too early to say. There’s a strong tradition of spending summers in a country cottage in Sweden. These are naturally very socially distanced (often alone in the forest), and they go together with spending all day, every day out in the sunshine - and thereby getting a massive vitamin D boost.
Furthermore, the weather is still mild, and a lot of people who’d normally be back in town, are choosing to work from their country cottage instead. This is especially true of the older, vulnerable generation.
Finally there’s also been a few days when deaths have crept up. But counting has continually been hampered by chronic delays - so I’d say wait a few weeks before assuming Sweden is in the clear.
Sweden also has one of the highest per capita COVID-19 mortality rates in the world, yet still suffered economically from the virus same as anyone else. This should always be in the conversation every time we're talking about the Sweden response.
Have a look at the following: https://i.redd.it/8gugazufo1o51.jpg
it looks like Sweden is fairing the same as far as new infections as most of the other European countries. So the fact is that its population didn't develop herd immunity (or at least it didn't in any measure better than other countries who did lock down) and its economy was still hit quite hard comparatively (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53664354)
You mean this Sweden?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man-behin...
When that interview was done, Sweden was in a pretty bad spot. Today their strategy is looking much more successful. Do you have anything more recent from him?
Maybe because the first wave didn't end? The USA is still in it's first wave too.
The first wave definitely did end (and yes, it was pretty bad). But look at the linked data. Cases and deaths are significantly down from the peak.
Compare them to another country like the UK, where the peak was in late April, they got down to a low point in early July and then it didn’t start to look like an unmistakable second wave for 2 months, around early September. Sweden’s peak and then trough are shifted by about 2 or 2 1/2 months from them (their peak was in mid July and they only hit their low point at the end of August/beginning of September).
So it’s way too early to make any conclusion about what will happen next there. If they do end up following the same trend as the UK, it won’t be clear in graphs until November.
And? Is there a lesson applicable for other countries?
Would we have had less deaths without lockdowns?
20 days after first symptoms, still tired and coughing, and I had very mild symptoms.
I've been very strict about social distancing EXCEPT the day(the first in 6 months) I went out for beers with two friends at and outdoor space.
What I want to say is: that one time you let your guard down is when you will get infected and the horrors begin, especially if you don't live alone and care for the people you live with!
This is something I can't find... how safe is being outdoor in close proximity? So I'll take your story.
How close were you to your friends/others and did you go inside the bar at all? Did either of your friends test positive?
We were more than 2 meters apart, but we did shake hands and I smoked cigarettes from one of them.
My friends did not get tested, but they also showed no symptoms.
I sprayed the table with alcohol, the seats, my beer bottles.
I did share an uber ride with one of my friends, I did open the windows, I think the driver might have coughed once or twice, I did make the huge mistake about asking him about his car model and he wouldn't shut up afterwards.
The fact that you have very mild symptoms, which most majority of the cases will be, should be viewed as a good thing, instead of fear and despite you've been very strict about social distancing and still got infected shows that lockdown is not effective.
Here something for comparison :
"Shopping in Sweden during Coronavirus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQat0vX-wjM&feature=emb_titl...
Hardly any mask and businesses seems normal
I wan to see some data about seasonal flu. Is that gone totally this year? Cause I know the yearly death toll of flu in my country (Hungary) and it's significantly higher than Covid so far.
We usually have 3-6k death of flu each year https://akjournals.com/view/journals/650/161/23/article-p962...
And so far 683 deaths from Covid http://abouthungary.hu/news-in-brief/coronavirus-09-19/
Flu is endemic. COVID is still spreading. This is a meaningless comparison. The only thing we can look at is case mortality and contagiousness, where COVID is 10x higher and 3x higher respectively than the flu
In the UK the flu has been killing more people than COVID over the last 25 weeks. That might change of course, but we’ve just been told this today during an interview with the health secretary Matt Hancock.
I feel like people around the world deal with this very differently, depending on how severely their country has been affected.
My (European) country did quite well so far, so from our point of view he would certainly seem overly cautious. People have much less fear than during the first wave. They try to live with the risk of getting infected by accepting that it is real, but not letting it dictate everything they do, which would make life more "surviving" than "living".
And I think that's a good approach! Within the confines of necessary precautions like wearing masks, keeping your distance, and banning big events, I think it is still possible to live a life which is worth living in a responsible way. After all, I also don't mind getting into a car while being fully aware of the risks (which could be worse than COVID's depending on where you live). So yes, I do think his recommendations are too drastic and also bad for your mental health. Next to that, most of them are impossible to realize for people who aren't lucky enough to be able to work from home etc.
Maybe I would have a different opinion if I was a US resident.
> Maybe I would have a different opinion if I was a US resident.
No, unfortunately in the USA, sensible public health recommendations are considered drastic. Heaven forbid Kyle can't buy his khakis and Wendy can't visit her hair salon. Restaurant dining is an inalienable right. Wearing a mask is briefly uncomfortable, therefore totally unacceptable. Banning large gatherings is communism. You gotta flex your freedom at all times to show how much of a good American you are. 2020 has drained me of my empathy. It sometimes feels like half the country has chosen suicide pact to avoid temporary inconvenience.
I'd like to see some actual data. This link has not a single number to back up it's claims. It feels like a politician saying "the data and science is on our side" yet never providing any data, studies or science, something every politician does. Round 2 is a good discussion but not using this article.
You will surely get the data by this time next year.
If you survive.
I read this post as well and while I respect this person his claim is hugely anecdotal. What if some decision far above his pay grade resulted in COVID patients being rerouted from other NYC hospitals to his? That could easily explain his experience without the idea that COVID is rising again in NYC. I’ll wait for the data to come in personally. The data you linked does not show a material change.
That being family or friends with someone does not influence how infectious they or one might be for each other, often seems to be forgotten or ignored as well.
Why was this story flagged?
This happens all too frequently on HN. A story blows up, then gets flagged - with no explanation whatsoever.
At the very least, it seems it would be in the interest of the moderators to include an explanatory comment as a guidepost for future submissions.
It's in the site guidelines for flaggers not to mention their flagging in the comments. Maybe there should be a separate area where they could put a reason though.
Who would flag a post like this? I would guess either people who are annoyed by the omnipresence of SARS-Cov2/COVID-19 coverage or people in denial.
I'm with you here. I found this article useful and informative. Why is this being flagged?
Because this is the daily covid panic submission.
It’s very strange in the UK- we all know it’s coming, and have known for quite some time now, but the government still doesn’t enforce masks, doesn’t have enough tests and spent the entire of August convincing everyone to go out and eat in restaurants/bars (they gave half price meals), thousands of people were eating out several times a week during the period we should have been suppressing the virus.
I don’t get it.
That's what flattening the curve means.
When this first kicked off. So many people were getting hospitalised that hospitals were overwhelmed and had to turn people away.
Lockdown happened but still there were workers that had to continue working and other people that didn't care about the measures going out.
A smaller proportion of the population were in the pool of potential covid catchers.
This meant that hospitals could handle new admissions.
Since proper hospital care reduced the chance of death.
The UK government has not indicated that they intend to do a full lockdown intending eliminate covid.
I don't think you're alone in being perplexed. I've seen neighbors take risks that strike me as insane. It's been a real eye-opener for me regarding differences in how people assess risk, make risk/reward tradeoffs, deal with stress, etc.
As a side note: it’s really annoying that the scroll bar is hidden on that page (Safari/iPhone).
I suspect that is a safari issue, I'm not aware of my website doing anything on purpose to give that effect. If you can tell me what to change I'll be happy to do so.
Perhaps on the plus side, at least in America, measures like distancing and masks are well-established, which very much wasn’t the case in May or so. And believe it or not, for the most part the measures are followed even by skeptics.
I don’t think it’s really fair to portray the resistance or skepticism as only originating from idiocy or “fringe”. Authorities have said everything and its opposite in the last 6 or so months. They started by telling us this wasn’t really contagious so don’t worry, they told us not to procure masks before they told us to wear masks always, etc. Some people definitely use that to reach all sorts of ridiculous conclusions, no doubt. But I think you can’t discount how disorienting that all is, not to mention the whiplash of being told you must do x after you were told not to. There is also, again at least in America, a certain amount of resentment over health officials and others endorsing certain group events and condemning others, on a political basis, when the virus actually doesn’t care what your politics are. So yep, it is a political football.
> Authorities have said everything and its opposite in the last 6 or so months.
Right wingers in a couple countries said that. If you listened to actual experts, by February you knew it was highly contagious, asymptomatic spread was a big control problem, etc. The mask issue is the strongest charge because the goal of not buying up the same supplies needed by healthcare workers was confused into general advice not to wear them but by April that had been recognized as a mistake.
The problem was that politics entered the picture when Trump blew off the experts briefing him starting in December and went with the Fox pundits desire first to hope that the economic impact wouldn’t be significant and later trying to pretend they hadn’t been so disastrously wrong. That meant that medical experts were overridden at previously non-political agencies, and that reporters were now pulled into treating advice as political opinions to be hedged.
>COVID-19 has a fair chance of affecting you for much longer than that you are actually ill if you have a severe cases of it. And the really long term effects (as in decade+) won’t be known for many years so we are all guessing about what they could be, but if there are any they likely will not be good.
This is just fear mongering. Millions of people have had covid now and so far there's zero evidence that it's significantly more likely to have long-term adverse side effects for the average person than any other respiratory virus.
>Reacting decisively, forcefully and without delay could make the difference between a disaster of epic proportions or something that we will barely remember in twenty years.
This is complete hyperbole. Sweden reacted minimally, and it was hardly a disaster of epic proportions: around four thousand people died in a country of ten million, and those were mostly nursing home residents, due to government failure to properly protect the nursing homes. In fact allowing the disease to spread seems to have brought some form of immunity, as predicted, since it's not experiencing a "second wave" like the other countries in Europe.
> Let me make something very plain here: it is not a choice between the health on the one side and the economy on the other. COVID-19 will continue to hurt us economically until there is a vaccin or we get our act together and decide to deal with it frontally.
This is also not true. After the lockdowns ended the economy has been continuously recovering, even in places where case numbers continued rising after lockdown (for instance the US, unemployment is falling now but covid cases never stopped rising). I don't understand how anybody can think the economic impact of literally forcing a bunch of businesses to close indefinitely is no worse than the impact of businesses just having fewer customers due to some people being scared to go because of the virus.
> Millions of people have had covid now and so far there's zero evidence that it's significantly more likely to have long-term adverse side effects for the average person than any other respiratory virus.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects....
> Sweden reacted minimally, and it was hardly a disaster of epic proportions: around four thousand people died in a country of ten million, and those were mostly nursing home residents, due to government failure to properly protect the nursing homes. In fact allowing the disease to spread seems to have brought some form of immunity, as predicted, since it's not experiencing a "second wave" like the other countries in Europe.
So far. Sweden was a few months behind the curve with every other Western European country due to accidents of Geography. They may have gotten off lucky, but they are the exception. The Swedish demographics and Geography do not translate well to other countries in Western Europe, even so, the thing here is to compare Sweden with the countries around it and based on that they could have done a lot better than they did.
> After the lockdowns ended the economy has been continuously recovering, even in places where case numbers continued rising after lockdown
I'm not sure if we are looking at the same data but the economy is still very much depressed compared to where it was in March. This situation is not likely to improve any time soon, wishing it so won't make it so. As an employer I too would very much like things to go back to normal ASAP, however, I'm not going to pretend that things are better than they are.
I haven’t substantively changed my routine since lockdown started.
> COVID-19 will continue to hurt us economically until there is a vaccin
That’s hardly going to be true. Only because we’re told that we might get a vaccine people like the author make it sound like that this is the obvious thing to happen, but that is really no different than someone hoping to win the lottery. Realistically we need to consider that currently there is no vaccine and theoretically there might never be one. If the above statement is true then theoretically we will never recover from COVID until eternity which is obviously quite ridiculous to say.
I think we should be planning for a way to live alongside COVID with the prospect of never having a vaccine and come up with a way of life that the population can get onboard with. Obviously we all hope that there will be a vaccine and we’ll get an easy way out, but it’s irresponsible to take hard damaging hits now with the outlook that this is a temporary hit only until the magic solution will follow shortly. We don’t know this. We should take actions which allow us to live in a worst case scenario, not the best case. Taking huge short term pains under the assumption of a magic way out doesn’t feel particularly smart. I think we need to consider more measured and balanced forms of dealing with this pandemic because we might be in this for a very long time.
We can reasonably expect the vaccine though. It's not a disease with unknown behaviours - we pretty much know what to do about it in general, and need to apply it. The vaccine work was predicted months ago to take until early 2021 and there are multiple teams / approaches which still confirm that timeframe. Even if a few of them fail the late stage tests, we have alternatives.
It's more of an ambitious project with multiple contenders then a lottery at this point. There's a chance they could all fail, but it's not huge.
What about Sweden then?
A few lines down from there:
"Even today it is not guaranteed that a useful vaccine will be developed at all"
Yes, we very well may be forced to live alongside the new corona. Just as we do the older coronas. Immunity will be gained in time with the cost of organ health and death along the way. No human decisions, action, or in-action are required for mankind to gain resistance eventually.
But... a vaccine in the US exists and is effective at making an immune response in all testing so far. Maybe the vaccine won't stop all woes. Maybe the virus will mutate too fast. But the vaccine exists today. It's not a pie in the sky dream.
Economy slow down is absolutely not a problem, it's a solution, for the environment, which is the most important thing on this planet.
Also humans are not an especially endangered species, so there is not much to fear on that side
People dying to save the environment? You first buddy.