What the Health - Ep 2: How did Sweden's Covid-19 strategy work out?

[@AshGreen359]

Swedish policy is actually set by scientists instead of politicians Comparing Sweden to Norway is like comparing California to South Dakota. Sweden is much more densely populated and has a more international population. Denmark would be a closer Scandinavian comparison, but why Scandinavia?

[@nurseabe]

In what way do you mean policy is set by scientists? And they had 6x the rate of deaths of Denmark.

[@bludika]

yea, isnt it funny how Sweden is doing so much better when they didn't force mandates and shut downs like other countries and Sweden has been doing way better lol

[@nurseabe]

@@bludika They aren't doing better at all, watch the actual video. Way more deaths.

[@bludika]

@@nurseabe way more deaths than who...they realized this shit is gonna go on forever unless you put your foot down and live with it, which is the right thing to do, you can go wear your mask and live in fear for the rest of your life, i don't

[@nurseabe]

@@bludika More deaths than the comparators I used in the video - Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Canada in particular. The chief failure was they were too open when it was deadliest, pre-vaccination. Wisdom isn't fear.

[@bengtsjoberg6498]

Sorry that you have misunderstood the Swedish concept completey. Pls refer to more recent info

[@ghostviggen]

So maybe time to revisit this video now when we have more data.

[@JohnnyOfSweden]

Exactly, today this video sounds stupid and everything he said about coming restrictions were a big lie. It never happened, I know, because I've been in Stockholm since late 2020. What a joke this guy is, but what I feel disgusted with is his lies, straight to face of the people that might believe him.

[@nurseabe]

Great question. With the luxury of time we can now see just how unnecessarily deadly Sweden's approach was compared to all other comparators: www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01097-5. The reports are now clear that they should have protected people particularly in the early days: abcnews.go.com/Health/scathing-evaluation-swedens-covid-response-reveals-failures-control/story?id=83644832. However, the positive side is that the King, elected governments, and public officials have at least now all apologized for these failures.

[@janetke6673]

Oh dear - so much misinformation, schools did stay open, restrictions weren’t nearly as hard, businesses stayed open resulting in less economic and social damage and I.n the ens less deaths per capita than anywhere else in Europe however you use the statistics.

[@nurseabe]

Deaths per million: Sweden - 1,849; Canada - 1,110; Finland - 893; Norway - 634. Only comparator countries that did worse were ones that let things go totally out of control after an initial response, like the US, UK, and Brazil.

[@annarosengren1716]

No we didnt get in line. You should research that some more.

[@slop123456789]

Wouldn't it be better to examine excess deaths rather than Covid attributed deaths to gain a more holistic understanding of the costs and benefits of both approaches?

[@nurseabe]

Yes, that's a good question. We can definitely do that as well, the only note being that because countries track this in somewhat different ways, there can be a larger margin of error. Essentially, the outcome is the same here, in terms of excess deaths per 100,000 people you get: Sweden - 112; Canada - 41; Denmark - 38; Norway - 15 (www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker).

[@lingfors]

@@nurseabe Would also be interesting to compare number of suicides and lost "man years" with/without lockdown.

[@Anfiro33]

Recent WHO report confirms that the excessive death toll puts swedish strategy to not be such a big failiure. Sweden is the 7 th best among whole europe (44 countries). As a swede I can agree that some earlier measures and particularly harder restrictions regarding elderly care homes would have saved some lives. Those 6 countries that did better include in majority only smaller countries with less population and density of the habitants, like Norway and Finland. All in all those countries only generally have about half the excessive death toll comoared to sweden. I as a swede am really proud that our lives, and social health, economy, younger children not forced away from school locking parents to stay home from work and so many other benefits with mental desease, home abuse etc largely with more long term effects that is not "visible" but yet also to consider. Also really high numbers accounted for in sweden as "death with covid" (with other sickness already with death around the corner) comparing to "death by covid". Also among death with/by covid is hugely high amount of really old people from ages 80-100. I wonder how figures compare in lower ages for example ages 50/60-80. Thank you for a really good vídeo and IMO great summary and many correct facts that are easy to agree upon, so do I.!!! My opinion is only that there are so many more factors to wage in to not categorize swedish strategy as such a failiure comparing to other countries, one could also debate considering many other factors that swedish strategy could come out on top. But i do agree that some lives could have been saved with some smaller earlier actions but still in general I consider the swedish strategy correct just as it was. Becsuse of general criticism just as in your video an independent commission on what good/bad decisions was carried out by swedish authoroties that also came to this conclusion more or less. Regards, André

[@adohko]

I’d like to know what Norway has done to stay so low.

[@nurseabe]

Great question. Norway took a much harder lockdown approach than Sweden, quite similar to Canada where I'm from. So closing schools, sports, non-essential businesses, etc. They also discouraged travel, required quarantines, and closed borders for a period of time. The lifted these restrictions more slowly, not reopening until Sept 25th (and even then with some light restrictions still in place).

[@jerryray9988]

@@nurseabe No this is wrong. Norway is a much less densely populated country. As introductory text no doubt teach, rate of spread tends to be related to population density. There of course are other factors, but final deaths tolls will probably be dependent upon age and general health or the populations in question. As I type this I see that the current daily death in Norway is 1.12 per million. Sweden is 0.35 per million. So about 3X worse. As to whether or not Norway will catch up, maybe, maybe not

[@nurseabe]

@@jerryray9988 Norway will literally never catch Sweden for deaths, look at the cumulative curves: imgur.com/gallery/50lvt7b

[@jerryray9988]

@@nurseabe Yes, it looks like Norway will never catch Sweden. Of course if one only looked at the first winter in Germany it appeared it would never catch Sweden. Now it looks more like a horse race. FYI, thanks for the link above. Have you looked at ourworldindata. FYI, Germany now has a death rate literally 10X of Sweden. Also Sweden seems to be staying very flat this winder. Western Europe is up a little but Eastern Europe seems to be extremely bad. This distinction between East and West is usually overlooked in new reports and is very misleading.