Sweden, could we do it the swedish way?

[SQuueze]

Maybe they have just got lucky but they aren't in complete lockdown. There is social distancing and other measures in place. But with masks, not coughing on people, a few rules, could we make it work?

And even with deaths we need to be recording them in exactly the same way and within the same perameters.

Derby - I am guessing Sweden is as sparsely populated as Ireland. Only difference is that there is free movement into Ireland from the UK and Europe.
Ireland moved before the UK to shut down schools when they only had something like 100 cases. Then they shut down gyms/cinemas/restaurants/pubs. I think they only have deaths in the tens still, rather than the thousands or hundreds.
Varadkar wants the rate of increase daily to fall below 5% before he lifts lockdown measures and I guess that's the number he wants to keep it at.

Sorry - free movement should read 'frequent movement from the UK' and Europe

International flights are not grounded.

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/ireland/

98 deaths in Ireland so far. (More stats in the link).

3,605 deaths in UK so far (same source) Here's the link www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

I genuinely don't know in the long term how it's all going to pan out as Ireland hasn't had a massive spread, and I'm inclined to think that the death rate is equal all things being equal.

We'll see I suppose.

Balmytissues - figures for Ireland aren't updated for today yet. They're normally later than the UK. www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries (scroll down a bit).

Oh that's interesting and wonderful *thatgingergirl if Ireland have no new deaths?
Looking good for them to lift the lockdown then at the end of next week I guess - or at least a little bit. Leo did say exams would be going ahead, so I am guessing schools might be first to go back?

I think he said the increase was 10% generally, but 11.6% yesterday in terms of cases though (not deaths). Must look at increase in cases now.

Am I the only person who thinks those figures should be given a weighting against the population size.
They keep going on about how many have died in which countries but
98 from a population of 5m v 3605 from a population of 67m.

Ok, so I see they haven't input their figures yet for new cases or deaths. Thought that was too much to hope for!

Blackbear I think the death ratio in the UK is twice what it is per capita in Ireland. Yes, I think it would be a useful statistic to see too.

If it's die now or die later, I'll pick later!

I'm not sure I believe that 2/3 of those who will die from this would have died within the next year - my dad has had a quadruple bypass and is diabetic. If he gets this, he will die and the Dr will likely say he was on borrowed time. But at the moment, he is healthy and could live for years. Unless someone is terminally ill, how can someone possibly predict real life expectancy in individuals.

I think Sweden's approach is wrong and will cause thousands of needless deaths.

There have been multiple articles where experts are frankly astounded by their approach.

They are behind us, in the same way that we are behind Spain & Italy. They will catch up and potentially overtake us all.

Spain's approach has worked. Yes, there are thousands of deaths but without the lockdown there would have been hundreds of thousands of deaths, possibly millions. Ditto for Italy, ditto for us.

No, Balmytissues - I meant that the figures haven't been released yet (or worldometer hasn't put them on their system yet). I think they're issued early evening for Ireland (not sure).

UK: 274
Sweden: 23
population per km^2

Tonyaster

I'm sorry but I completely disagree with your take.

Firstly there aren't enough masks in existence and in production to take a strategy where every country relies on tests and masks.

Secondly people can't be trusted to use masks correctly, we've seen in other countries that people have done all sorts of things with masks such as wearing the same mask for several days which makes them pretty much useless.

Thirdly the lockdown has massively reduced the number of infections that would have been seen without it being in place.

The R0 has reduced from somewhere around R2-4 to R0.6 thereby saving many, many lives.

So effectively we have taken the current strategy over herd immunity and a strong economy because the NHS has been starved for years?

This is partially correct but an over simplification.

If the virus had been left to spread until 70-80% of the population had it the peak would have been so enormous that no healthcare system would be able to deal with it.

There would have been hundreds of thousands, potentially up to 2 million deaths in an absolute worst case.

Worldometre shows death rates per 1m population.

You really can't decide how effective countries have been by comparing their death rates against each other on the same day.

A country having a lower death rate on any given day when you are in the middle of a pandemic means nothing because different countries are at different stages of the bell curve.

So you might for example compare UK to Ireland today and think Ireland is doing well, but it might in fact just be 1-2 weeks behind the UK and end up with a similar number of deaths.

There are plenty of graphs circulating where the % growth rate in deaths is compared from the (for example) 100th death. That is the best way to compare strategies at the moment.

An example graph below - taken from the 50th death our rate is now starting to overtake Italy's.

You can literally see the flattening of the curve in Spain and Italy's deaths which is as a result of the lockdown. Without the lockdown they would have continued to see exponential growth.

At the same point as us Italy had an average of c.400 deaths per day over a three day period. We have an average of c.600 deaths per day which isn't a coincidence - our lockdown is less strict than the Italian lockdown.

Graph now included

We will most likely have a bigger hit but as it’s not the end of it whatever you don’t do in the first peak is still waiting for the next one. Having said that time is good though - anti virals / antibody tests might help.

how can someone possibly predict real life expectancy in individuals.

I think you can - that's what actuaries do for a living when they sell you life insurance.

it would help if everybody wore masks

If I could get masks, I'd wear masks.

But even hospitals don't have enough.

My husband made the point that in the future epidemiologists will be able to study how different countries dealt with the pandemic and work out the 'right' strategy

He is wrong. There is no “right” strategy for every country. There are so many variables of communities, cultures, availability of healthcare. You absolutely could not do here or in the US, what has been done in Sweden, because the culture is very different. You couldn’t do here, what they did in China because the power of the government over the people is completely different. Italy and to some extent Spain are far more tactile with more nuclear families so a UK style lockdown wouldn’t be so effective.

There will be lessons to learn about how definitely not to do things, but there is no one size fits all way to respond to this.

Another interesting thing someone told me is that each country has an average "personal space" that people find is acceptable when talking to one another. In Italy/Spain/China I think it is a lot closer than for example Nordic countries, where people will stand over a metre apart.