The overall Swedish strategy is a separate point (he admitted they made mistakes well over a month ago- have a look at his recent interview). Let’s stick to this point.
Hospitalisations have fallen. You asked for evidence - I gave you it. If you accept that hospitalisations follow real infections- then the curve tells you everything you need to know. 49 persons admitted on April 21st - on Irish stats alone for ICU admissions (1.6%) that would have translated to over 3,000 cases there a day and likely more given they are testing broadly and capturing asymptomatic cases.
Their ICU stats have a pretty clear curve peaking and beginning to fall. They peaked in real cases weeks ago. Other arguments on the rate of the slowdown are separate.
I have no real skin in the game and wasn’t highlighting Sweden to make any point about strategies or LIDTFing or anything of the sort. I merely mentioned them because unlike most of the rest of Europe, their new case rates (hospitalised or otherwise) haven’t dropped. Which isn’t really surprising given their approach.
“Very arrogant”- no it’s just not being misleading. Their poor testing and contact tracing regime, protection of care homes etc are strong arguments, no need to fudge obviously half baked stuff.
The rate of slowdown there is certainly interesting (and that’s where 1,000 new cases is a talking point, not as a peak but a slower decline than elsewhere)…it isn’t dropping like countries that locked down, but neither is the U.K which locked down an age ago. I agree there is lots we just don’t know about.
What in the name of God makes you think that? For all you/we know they could have a 30% infection rate by now and Ireland has <5%. That would suggest the opposite, that they are much closer to herd immunity. It is far far too early to reach any conclusions on how countries will end up, this thing could rise and fall for another few years as it mutates. As far as we know people are building immunity, otherwise there would be much higher numbers due to reinfection.
On the cases, the only metrics that really matter are hospitalizations (load on HC system) and deaths. The primary factor influencing that are the number of older people that have been infected, as they are by far the majority of deaths. Sounds like Sweden didn’t do any better than anyone else protecting the elderly, and worse than some.
That’s fair enough, just that you need to preface stuff like that. Like I said, I’m going to guess at their true infection peak days they were getting 3k+ a day in new cases, they just weren’t testing.
I don’t understand why Sweden were so adverse to considering setting up a track and trace system. I can understand the point that it is ineffective with widespread community infection but beyond that I think it’s worthwhile trying to monitor it more. The only thing I can think of is actually trying to hide it from the population as a whole and trying to build widespread immunity- when people hear big numbers of new cases they tend to panic and look for a different course.
The new cases metric is very misleading, you’d need to know how many are in each age group. Everyone 0-18 could get infected and it barely impacts the hospitalizations and deaths, as most of them are not even getting noticeably sick.
Countries that have locked down have reduced spread in the community, and can open up now with track and trace, isolate clusters and be far more agile in dealing with it while keeping other places open.
Sweden can’t really go back or forward. They are on a track they cant get off.
If community spread is 0% in most of western Europe and its rampant in Sweden, how will that play out economically for Sweden?
It depends on what what you are looking at the metrics for; the hospitalisations could be dropping because the at-risk groups are taking precautions effectively, but there could still be a “shit tonne” of Covid out there.
The counter to that is that Sweden must have far more healthy people who have been exposed, simple common sense tells you that as they left schools open and didn’t lock up their population for 3 months.
Community spread isn’t 0% anywhere, it is obviously a lot lower due to lockdowns, but I would say the biggest factor recently is older and vulnerable are being protected, so those that would end up in hospitals, ICUs or dead is greatly reduced…
It’s far easier to trace and isolate community spread at 1 and 2% than at higher rates. Its trending towards zero in most of western europe now, I’d imagine that trend is the same in the U.S. I think it’s easier to control the contagion that way. Lockdown any future clusters, isolate them. Keep the spread low. Rinse and repeat.
Sweden have performed 275k tests and have 44k cases, considering they were only testing sick people for a while, that would suggest the virus is not spreading as quickly as anticipated.
They are doing a remarkable job of keeping it from running riot. But they’re on the edge of a blade, in my opinion.
I do get @Tim_Riggins view of the hospitalizations, but I cant marry that up to the outcome they are passed their peak. If they got 1k cases Tuesday, the hospitalizations from that will make Tim’s chart spike again.
Less than 2% of them going into ICU as in Ireland (1.6%) or the 2% globally who have ended up criticism would be 20 people. That is still 40% of their peak.
Of course there are variables in who gets infected, but they aren’t just closing down the field hospital for the laugh.
Agreed but the problem is the number that are asymptomatic and that number will go up a lot as kids go back to school. Anyway we will see how it pans out.
