deniah

Every country peaks when the virus first breaks out of China.

Norway's peak is half as high as Sweden's, way narrower, the post-summer August hike is lower.
The total area under the curve is significantly smaller.



What exactly were these "radical" measures? They didn't have stay-at-home orders. They didn't have stay-at-home recommendations. There was no mandatory check-ins or trackings.

What abnormal life do you think people were subjected to - except that schools were closed for a few months?

I've been here in since February. I've literally seen 3 facemasks in this country, this entire year. Restaurants have all stayed open. Seating allowed inside and out -- except they spaced out the table assignments . People crowded the beach when the sun came out.

If you didn't read the news, you wouldn't have guessed there's such a thing as a pandemic. This wasn't late in the year, as a consequence of "flouting the rules" - this is how life has been here, for someone who lives here. Well, except I had a music concert that was canceled. But I did watch movies in the public theaters.

Where did you get your impression from?

RedChili

I don't know if you've read the entire thread (I can't remember your user name from previously), but this is actually a point that I've made earlier in this thread.

The narrative that's been in mass media, on Facebook, and sometimes here on Flyertalk, too, is that all countries in the entire world had a lockdown except for Sweden and Belarus. And that is the reason why Sweden had 10 times more deaths than Norway. I've previously tried to argue the case that Norway and Sweden had very similar measures, with only two major differences: Norway instituted a mandatory quarantine for people arriving from abroad, and Norway closed all schools and kindergartens. But overall, Norway's measures had far more in common with Sweden than e.g. France or the United Kingdom.

(There was one more abnormal thing which you didn't mention, and it was the ban on public gatherings: No theaters, churches, football matches, etc. But that was the same in both countries.)

But the previously mentioned narrative, that the absence of a Swedish lockdown caused 6,000 deaths, has been argued a lot in mass media and social media, and it has caused a lot of unneccesary fear among the population of both countries. Swedes that have visited Norway (and Finland) have had eggs thrown at their cars because people think they are carriers of a plague. Solberg recently strongly urged Norwegians to avoid shopping in Sweden, even in regions that have a lower infection rate than Oslo.

All of this fearmongering has lead to a situation where any small outbreak in a community immediately leads to a local closure, with hundred of people in quarantine, as we can see now in Sarpsborg, Fredrikstad, and Bergen. But we need to realize that covid-19 is an endemic disease, which will remain with us for decades and centuries to come. It will never go away. So, the false narrative, the fearmongering, and the lack of understanding for how long this disease will be with us, has lead to a situation where the national and local governments act in a way that is not sustainable for a long time period. This has put Norway in a downward spiral, which could go on for years unless they come to their senses and start treating covid-19 as an endemic disease instead of a pandemic.

CPH-Flyer

So, which one is it, Norway had radical extreme measures, or they had measures close to the Swedish ones?

My main take on Sweden is not that it went wrong because they had an open society, but because they failed to manage the chosen path. Sweden wanted to take an approach but failed, but probably did not have the infrastructure in place, to take the necessary steps to manage an open society through the epidemic. The main parts missing were an extensive testing regime, effective contact tracing, and effective quarantine of positive cases. And despite the clear evidence of failure in some areas, the people responsible keep claiming success.

In many ways the approach of Sweden reminds me of the one of Japan. Though Japan had much stricter border control measures, even if they started quite late. By some stroke of luck, the situation in Japan never escalated to extreme levels. It may not entirely have been luck, but partly because of the very practical way Japanese people react to situations such as these. But also the very quick roll out of masks, hand sanitiser, and plexiglass or plastic partitions. But we certainly had some of the same ingredients for disaster as Sweden, but so far went relatively unscathed.

As examples show, an open society does not equate disaster, nor does a lockdown equate success. It is really about managing the chosen course of action well.

RedChili

It all depends on the context and what you intend to convey with those words. In the prime minister's own words, they were the most radical measures since World War II. In historical context, the Swedish measures were quite radical, too. I'm not aware of any other time in history when Sweden has banned public gatherings, closed universities, and told people to work from home. But the usual narrative, that all other countries had strict and radical measures, while Sweden only had recommendations, is not correct.

The Swedish health care system simply wasn't ready for an epidemic at all. Health care workers have sounded the alarm for several years that hospitals are understaffed and underfinanced, but nobody cared. They simply didn't have time to test anybody except a chosen few, and they had no time for contact tracing. Nursing homes for the elderly are relatively big, and they don't have any doctor present, as they do in Norway. Also, we've seen all over Europe that immigrant groups are vastly overrepresented among covid-19 victims, for various reasons, and Sweden has far more immigrants than any other Nordic country. When you look closely at the numbers, a huge chunk of covid-19 victims were from the so-called no-go suburbs or "ghettos" of Stockholm. The virus spread like wildfire among these groups very quickly, due in part to their more social lifestyle, their denser living quarters, and their lack of knowledge of Swedish, which initially was the language of all recommendations.

RedChili

Here's a map from the ECDC which basically confirms my claim that there's no pandemic in Sweden anymore:

RedChili

Let me rephrase my previous answer.

Sweden closed high schools and universities, banned public gatherings, closed nursing homes for the elderly for visitors, banned visitors from outside of Europe, and banned passengers from entering the front door of buses. If I had told you a year ago that Sweden would do this, you would probably not have believed me, and you would certainly have agreed with me that these would have been radical measures if implemented. Norway's measures were a tad more radical than Sweden's. France's measures were far more radical than both of these countries.

With the sole exception of Belarus, all countries in Europe had radical measures, but there are degrees to radicality. Norway's radicality was far more similar to Sweden's radicality than France's radicality.

Im a new user

It looks darker if you instead look at Folkhälsomyndigheten's maps of Sweden for the same weeks: https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/...all-i-sverige/

I wonder if the discrepancy is because of Sweden reporting -3700 cases recently. ECDC seems to look at the date of reporting while FHM seems to look at the date the sample was taken, so ECDC might have about 3700 cases fewer than FHM.

Luxembourg is also listed as having no cases on EDCD's map, probably due to reporting -1385 cases on the 28th of August.

RedChili

Why, oh why, do you have to rain on my parade???

Seriously, though, you've propably got a point, but even the FHM numbers have seen a vast improvement lately.

CPH-Flyer

So basically Sweden picked a course of action that they did not have the resources to manage, were too adamant to admit that they needed to lockdown due to the lack of resources, and managed to get a fatality rate way above what was necessary. Did I miss something?

RedChili

Yes, you missed lots of things, such as:

1. The Swedish immediate fatality rate would've been high no matter what course they had taken this year. The high fatality rate is a result of mismanaged health care politics over the course of at least 15 years.

2. Statistics from the past few weeks show a very low death rate, indicating that many of the people that died of covid-19 in the spring were only robbed of a few months of their lives.

3. Although many people, me included, have used the word "lockdown" frequently, no country has had a 100% lockdown. Some parts of the economy have remained open everywhere.

4. Those countries that instituted the strictest measures, a.k.a. "lockdown," are now experiencing a second wave, presumably because that's the inevitable result when the "lockdown" ends. The "lockdown" has apparently only delayed the fatality rate in those countries by a few months.

5. In spite of doomsday prophecies that Sweden would experience a second wave once the school would start, there's no second wave in Sweden.

6. All countries, Sweden included, will in the long run see a high death toll due to the economic impact of the measures and the covid-19 fearmongering. Sweden's long-range death toll would have been higher with stricter measures. The more measures, the more damage to the economy, and the higher long-range death toll.

CPH-Flyer

The question really is if the countries with a lockdown only delayed the inevitable. If you look at Spain or France, though their fatality rates were higher than Sweden to begin with, the month long second waves has yet to see a second wave of fatalities. Denmark’s second wave which started in late July, has yet to show any significant uptick in fatality rate. Australia is now seeing an uptick in fatality rate on their second wave, but they had almost no fatalities in the first round.

There are better treatments available by now, which mean even very severe cases have seen big reductions in fatality rates. So the current peaks will happen in a more prepared and better equipped medical profession. So no, I don't think that countries have necessarily just postponed the fatalities. The may have delayed cases, but they are more likely to be able to treat the cases now than then.

If the Swedish healthcare sector was/is as ailing as you say, I don't know, then all the more reason to put heavy restrictions in place to make sure that things can be managed with the means that are available. There was basically no country in Europe well prepared for this.

There was a comment from FHM the other day, I'll have to see if I can find again, which made me think that their main priority was not the health of the people of Sweden, but they seemed more concerned about exocomy of the country than the health of the people.

I am just looking at data from Vietnam, they are still expecting positive growth in first half of 2020, and ran a quite open society. So it is possible to save the population and the economy. Very aggressive testing, tracing, and isolation, plus very strictly closed borders, but very limited impact on daily life. Unless you got caught up in getting isolated for being positive, or in contact with a positive case.

RedChili

This is a really interesting development, and I believe that there may be several explanations for it. Since the very beginning, I've suspected that vitamin D deficiency plays a major role in the outcome. Europe had high fatality rates in the spring, after the long winter, but almost no fatalities during the summer. Australia had almost no fatalities in their fall, but much higher fatalities now during their winter.

It's important to remember that economy is health. We need money to pay for our food, housing, welfare, and health care. If we destroy the economy today, it means that we won't be able to buy food and finance our hospitals tomorrow.

The most obvious recent historical example is the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's economy was reeling, and the Chernobyl accident of 1986 was the beginning of the snowball's roll. The result was a huge financial and political collapse between 1986-1991, with the result being hunger, malnutrition, alcoholism, wars, etc.

The European Union is today in a similar situation as the Soviet Union was in 1986, with an economy that was already stumbling long before SARS-CoV-2 came along. And I believe that the so-called "lockdown" is EU's Chernobyl; it has set in motion a train of events which will make the next 5-10 years resemble the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some countries will be harder hit than others, but all of the EU will experience a financial train crash. There's no doubt in my mind that the "lockdown" will, over the next 5-10 years, cause far more deaths than covid-19 could ever have done.

And that's the same point that Professor Ioannidis made in the quote I had from him in reply 1088: "A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies." If I could offer an analogy of my own, in the same style of Ioannidis: "A group of terrorists have hijacked an airplane and are flying towards a skyscraper in a major city. Realizing the threat, the government decides to ram the airplane with nuclear missiles, thereby obliterating the entire city."

CPH-Flyer

The EU economy is nowhere close to the issues of the Soviet Union. A major problem for the Soviet Union was that industry produced abysmal quality product that could not be sold if people had a choice, and they were doing that in a loss making operation. Europe has a lot of industries that profitably can produce products that people outside of the region are willing to pay for. There is not going to be a Soviet style collapse of the economy for the European countries, or the European Union.

The poor quality of the production in hhe USSR days is still haunting Russian industry, a key question from the middle class and upwards consumers, "Is it made in Russia?", if it is they prefer other products. So at the time of the USSR collapse, the people who had money to spend did not want to spend them on items coming from domestic areas. Europe does not suffer from this either.

Yes, Spain, Portugal, Greece, were still in a pretty poor state ofter the 2008 crisis. And this is another gut punch, but it is still not going to go in to a Soviet level collapse.

GUWonder

So it appears that as of last night or this morning, the Danish police at CPH have ended the fixed Covid-19 border control for those train passengers coming into Denmark from Sweden. And so passengers from Sweden on trains headed to Denmark can once again stay on the same train the whole time to go further into Denmark beyond CPH airport.

But now the Danish police may sort of do what the Swedish police do at Malmo-Hyllie when coming into Sweden from Denmark: possibly board the train and check (at least some passengers) for documentation of sort indicating allowance of the person to enter the country; that and they can be on the track to do the same for those Sweden-originating train passengers getting off at CPH airport. But while the Swedish police check all train passenger ID at those times when they are checking a train, the Danish police plan to do just some "random" checks at times. But this is still a work in progress, but a couple of people in the Danish police have told me the same thing that some train employees have told me: that the stop time at CPH will go down from the 15-20 minutes right now during the times of relevance to most passengers and return to the pre-COVID-19 stop times at CPH next week.

In what I'm still trying to find out to see if it's a reaction to the increased openness to border crossings within Schengen during this time, the Swedish police have substantially increased the percentage of trains (and passengers on the trains) from Denmark which the Swedish police do check for ID at Malmo-Hyllie. This increased border control activity may again have come with the Swedish government facing increased hotel expenses for this activity.

In other coronavirus developments in Sweden: some offices in Sweden are (or have been) closing for at least a week this week due to the discovery of those offices having one or more employees having been tested positive for this virus. Apparently there are a fair amount of people who are sick in some way and so stay away for a few days; and then some days later they think they are feeling fine and go back to the offices to work but then they get hit with the same kind of symptoms or worse and then their workplaces make substantial adjustments for a few days and maybe then some after an employee gets a test and the employer has been told the employee is positive for this virus.

The Swedish national health authorities for the Swedish coronavirus response have been again caught in ways peddling misinformation (or at least outdated) information even on the FHM website. In some cases, they have updated the website properly with new/current information; in other cases, they had updated the website with old/outdated information. It seems like incompetence from the FHM side again, but this has almost certainly contributed to some increased spread of this virus in Sweden -- whether the spread shows up as cases now or not or in figures in the coming months.

Vitamin D levels of sort that are insufficient correlate very much with weakened immune systems in people when it comes to ability to fight infections. But guess what happens to Vitamin D production in the human body when the Swedish sunlight hours go down: they go down too. That being a big issue in Sweden is yet another part of why I find these calls of "the pandemic is over in Sweden" to be risky calls.

The idea of comparing the Scandinavian countries with the Soviet Union? Please, let's get back to current day reality in Sweden and comparing it to countries more akin to Sweden than Russia was then or now. Sweden is nothing like the USSR/Russia, nor is the EU; and it shows with this pandemic too and the ability of Sweden to continue exporting and with the SEK during this coronavirus situation in Sweden.

deniah

This is the total covid death in Norway, histogram of age. There are a total of 6 people below the age of 49.

Keep in mind the avg life expectancy in this country is 83 for women, 79 for men.