Sweden’s low positive test rate ‘vindicates coronavirus strategy’

Re:Sweden’s low positive test rate ‘vindicates coronavirus s... by elcritch on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @07:01PM (#24426929)

Precisely, it’s pretty easy to tell from the Covid-19 death rate in Sweden that’s its reached a saturation point. The last few weeks have had < ~5 COVID-19 related deaths per day. It’s flat-lined, while many countries will continue likely having second, third, or even fourth waves. If a vaccine is developed and widely distributed, then that’d be a good stopping condition as well.

The health institute in Sweden isn’t by running an experiment anymore than the "experiments" running in say NY & CA. Every thing I’ve read indicates broad national Swedish support, of course there’s dissenters but news sources would indicate they’re in the minority. Compare that to the contention in say CA, or Germany over the lockdown/shutdowns of normal life.

In the grand scheme I believe most people will realize a total of 5,000 deaths in a country that normally has a couple hundred thousand die every year isn’t extreme. Unfortunate, but not much different from most years (it’s possible Sweden will overall lose less people than the average on previous years). Just this cause has a lot of scary news behind it.

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Re:Sweden’s low positive test rate ‘vindicates coronavirus s... by SahAssar on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @07:22PM (#24427122)

> Precisely, it’s pretty easy to tell from the Covid-19 death rate in Sweden that’s its reached a saturation point.

To be clear: I said no such thing. I think it's far to early to evaluate that. Currently things in sweden look pretty good IMO, but "currently" and "pretty good" can shift radically and fast.

> that normally has a couple hundred thousand die every year

Seems like the normal deaths per year are around 95000.

My point is mostly that I think it will take at least a year for us to get stats that are comparable between countries since different countries track it differently and have different efficiency/centralization of tracking. What will be even harder will be to track secondary and societal effects of both the virus itself and the measures taken to prevent spread, which will probably have a ongoing effect for many years.

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Re:Sweden’s low positive test rate ‘vindicates coronavirus s... by elcritch on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @07:39PM (#24427256)

Oops, my bad, I misread your comment. I still agree with your point that it’s too early to draw complete cross comparisons. While also that it appears that Sweden has hit a saturation point. Other countries in Europe will take a while before things stabilize. Even then, there could be more outbreaks in either Sweden or other Western European countries so it’ll be a while yet before it’s really time to draw final conclusions. It’ll be years before we get truly thorough conclusions.

Also good to know the average numbers. I think even at about a hundred thousand yearly my point holds. It’s high enough that many wouldn’t agree too.

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