Notoriously, Sweden has not followed the lockdown model that other countries have adopted to address the coronavirus crisis. The result is a markedly different economic impact in Norway and Sweden as this FT charts shows:
And what has the consequence been in health terms:
It really does not look as though the Swedish model is working.
Unless life is cheap, that is. Some, I suspect, think it is.
I think Sweden has got this wrong. The likelihood that this will become very much clearer is high, I suspect.
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It is instructive to periodically refresh this page: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
Click on the right arrow on the middle graph until you reach “Tidsserie: Avlidna per dag” (Fatalities per day). The reported numbers lag by several days and keep shooting upwards.
There are other representations of the situation in Scandinavia available. From studying this graph of death rates per million of population you could draw the opposite conclusion!
http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/6apr2020/covid-eu-norm2-large.png
From thelocal.se – the swedish newspaper for english readers:
“The coronavirus outbreak appears to be hitting residents in two of Stockholm’s most vulnerable suburbs the hardest, with Rinkeby-Kista and SpÃ¥nga-Tensta overrepresented according to health authorities”
and from
https://www.icnarc.org/DataServices/Attachments/Download/76a7364b-4b76-ea11-9124-00505601089b
we can see a similar effect here in the UK.
I totally agree!
I agree It appears Sweden got it badly wrong.
The worse affected country so far per capita is San Marino.
They have 943 deaths per million.
If Sweden don’t change their strategy soon, then there is no logical reason why they won’t pass those figures.
The real question is how many thousands will die before Sweden change their minds?
I wouldn’t interpret the bottom graph in that way. It’s the slope of the curve that matters, and Sweden appears to be following the same curve as China – not the best but not the worst either, and certainly not on the same trajectory as the USA and Italy. I would say that it’s too early to tell with Norway – certainly a slower start, but that wee upward turn at the end means the fatality rate is rising – but certainly better than Sweden in the same time period. Sweden’s increase in fatalities are slowing now, so I wouldn’t say their model isn’t working – just maybe that it isn’t ideal – but if they do contain it and have a functioning economy afterwards so minimising the impact of deaths from poverty afterwards, might they actual have the balance right? There is an ‘afterwards’ after all!
Faroe Islands – testing, contact tracing, quarantine – and South Korea seem to be giving the best results. England isn’t even giving consistent updates to numbers, so it’s hard to tell exactly how well it’s managing. (Devolved nations do give daily updates on numbers and give consistent messages on how deaths are being recorded)
Thank you Richard, apology accepted.
🙂
KenM, San Marino is a small city state in northern Italy not a country. It lies to the SE of the worst affected area of the Po valley. The epidemic is not evenly spread across the country some towns and cities like Bergamo could have an even higher death rate. These figures, like the true death rate here in U.K. and more controversially in New York will not become apparent for some time.
I estimated the death rate in Wuhan was around 1200 per million. That’s the sort of rate the worst affected areas of Stockholm will need to reach before anyone can condemn Sweden. It is possible some towns in Italy have exceeded that rate. There are more than one ways to skin a cat. Sweden is providing a useful contrast which will help us understand whether destroying our economy was an intelligent response to this crisis.
I’m not sure I like the eugenic basis of such thinking Phil
I put you on notice….
Richard, the eugenics accusation is a churlish response. As an academic you surely know that.
The annual winter flu season kills anywhere between 5 and 15 thousand people in the UK each year. If we had reacted to that as we have done to covid-19 then those deaths would surely be reduced to. However we don’t. And I have never seen anyone argue that we should. Why is that?
Because quite simply the economic costs would be too high. The entire NHS as you know is based on buying quality of life years. The department of health make very difficult decisions on what we can afford to treat and what we can’t. I’m not specifically referring here to financial costs but broader economic costs.
The difference with covid-19 was not just the higher predicted numbers of deaths but the danger that the health service would collapse. Assuming the crisis can be stabilised and deaths and infections reduced then part of a return to normality will surely be the return of the usual health economics and buying quality of life years.
I was not saying this eugenic
I said it felt like that
And I was uncomfortable with that: it was a call for a change of tone
And as a matter of fact I have drawn attention to unnecessary flu deaths in the past since I know Danny Dorling and his work on such issues
I have also argued that the logic of NHS funding is wrong
I also fully understand the risk to the NHS – I am talking to medical professionals during this crisis
But as the editor here I still want care with tone and it’s my right to say so
So please don’t tell me I’m churlish, or that I do not undertsand: I’m just asking for care in presentation, that’s all.
There was no eugenics basis to my thinking, I would be interested to understand how you detected one from what I wrote. Epidemiology is a science, there is rarely one easy answer to anything. If everyone follows the same approach we will never learn anything.
OK – I misread Phil and apologise
To Philip EspÃn
Quick correction: San Marino is a country and a small city state.
You are quite right Ken. I was trying to make the point it is a very small geographic area. Obviously my language is not always as tight as it could be.
How do death rates for China arrive at 1200 per million from a city population for Wuhan of 10 million which suffered 3500 deaths?
Mea culpa, I’ve made 2 errors here. The graph I posted showed cases not deaths per million. My estimate for Wuhan was a recollection and it was wrong. Sorry Richard and Joe for the confusion caused.
‘Destroying the economy ‘ – we’ve been destroying the economy for years – the economy of face masks, testing regimes, the NHS, social care and the like. That is what Covid-19 has revealed to me.
Sorry if I’m bring really dim here, but doesn’t that second chart show Sweden to be doing ok relative to a lot of other places? I don’t think it’s anything to celebrate of course. But in context that doesn’t look catastrophic.
It looks far worse than Norway – that is the control point
I can’t find another conclusion
Richard
To bring some levity to international economics, have you seen this article on Jamaica’s central bank advertising using reggae songs? It is catchy (in a good way!)
Glad to see you are on the mend.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/interestrates/jamaica-reggae-inspired-monetary-policy-videos-central-bank-2019-1-1027877704
I confess that actually finding them was a cumbersome process..
if you want some levity in this increasingly bizarre world may I suggest this,
I’ve taken to getting my news from a niche outlet of the BBC website:
https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/world-51886348
not only do you stay well informed but also you get to broaden your language skills.