Sweden seeing much smaller increase in cases compared to rest of Europe

[SussexDeb]

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

No massive surge like in France, Spain, UK and Netherlands.

More and more it looks like Sweden has taken the right approach with limited restrictions. Avoiding fatigue among the public around the measures and making sure good hygiene is practiced.

93% increase in cases in three weeks. No official "Lockdown" but Swedes are supposed to minimise contact with anyone outside their household.

https://amp.news.com.au/world/europe/swedish-approach-to-fighting-covid19-takes-a-turn-as-cases-spike/news-story/f6a717f462db065dcb0be94dee5292b9?twitterr_impression=true

@Ecosse

I think there will always be a few cases of people testing positive twice, whether it be due to one of the tests being a false positive or dormant virus remaining present.

There is no evidence that widespread re-infection will take place.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Your opinions always reek of cognitive dissonance. I appreciate it is comforting for you, but it’s tiring for others and damaging overall.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Yes.

"There's no evidence of asymptomatic spread"
"There's no evidence that masks are useful"

And, yet, here we are, a few months later...

@Lweji

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Yes.

"There's no evidence of asymptomatic spread"
"There's no evidence that masks are useful"

And, yet, here we are, a few months later...

My friend at Portsmouth Uni says their in-house asymptomatic testing is finding as many cases as the government's symptomatic testing.

And South Korea tested a control group of people without symptoms in January and found just as many people tested positive as the group with symptoms.

So there was evidence, but the denial is strong in some people. And unfortunately some of them are in government.

I remember seeing Boris Johnson on tv in March and whereas I'd been worried about Covid since January he didn't seem to know much about it or understand that it was important. Then he went on This Morning and talked about "Taking It On The Chin"and still seemed like he had just heard about it.

Our government, of course, had refused to test anyone unless they were ill in hospital and they'd been to China for months. . And you don't find community spread or asymptomatic spread if you don't look for it.

Or if you deny it when you do find it.

How many times can people be wrong without having a rethink? Covid has been "not here" "mild", "not a problem for the young", "just flu" and "over" several times now. It has been declared that there won't be a second wave, and that we should just go back to normal and get on with it even though we know what the consequences of that are because our government did it from January to March and that's why so many people died in this country compared to other countries.

This pandemic has made me realise how many people don't see reality.

And honestly I think engaging with them is pointless.

Death rates in Sweden. Can anyone explain why Sweden is not seeing a substantial second wave, without referencing immunity, unlike the UK, France, Spain, Germany etc?

Likewise, can anyone explain why London is seeing a much smaller R compared to the rest of the country, again without referencing immunity?

That’s interesting @starfro. So infections in Sweden are rising but not deaths?

That London graph mirrors what my doctor friend in Hillingdon is saying. 4 in ICU I think. They had their peak end of Feb and in to March. He said it was quiet from May.

@starfro

Likewise, can anyone explain why London is seeing a much smaller R compared to the rest of the country, again without referencing immunity?

But surely it is due to immunity? That's the most obvious answer.

Deaths are the only accurate indicator for Sweden I can get hold of, even though it lags quite a bit. There is likely a small rise in infections, because there will be smaller pockets that weren't hit in the first wave, meaning small populations where limited spread is still possible.

Although you'd typically model a population as homogenous and essentially fluidic, the reality is that there will be areas of the population with different immunity densities, some above HIT, some below.

Clearly in the UK the rest of the country has much lower immunity than London. There is no other way to explain the different R number. Numbers are still rising slowly in London, and we'd expect a very broad epidemiological curve there, but hopefully with a much lower peak than April.

@toxtethOgradyUSA - yes of course it is, but on here you get people denying science and claiming immunity isn't a thing, or it only lasts 60 days.

R = Reff * S

Reff = Ro adjusted for local restrictions
S = the % of the population still susceptible to the disease

@starfro

Likewise, can anyone explain why London is seeing a much smaller R compared to the rest of the country, again without referencing immunity?

This is very interesting. I have found the charts at briefings more positive than they might have been. Not sure why, but maybe as you say.

London has a younger population than the rest of the country - it has more hospital admissions for covid in the under 65s than in the 65-74 age group. It is seeing rising hospital admissions and some deaths will follow from that eventually - but there is a time lag. Young people are not immune to dying from this.

@alreadytaken

London has a younger population than the rest of the country - it has more hospital admissions for covid in the under 65s than in the 65-74 age group. It is seeing rising hospital admissions and some deaths will follow from that eventually - but there is a time lag. Young people are not immune to dying from this.

That wouldn't explain the difference in R, which is the crucial measure to comparing S between regions.

So far in England four 0-19yr olds have died from Covid, and 35 in the 20-40yr old bracket. Not 100% immune, but for young people the risk is practically zero. Older people it's obviously a lot lot higher.

No reason why London did so badly the first time around and has done relatively well since. The only plausible explanation is a buildup of population immunity. I think it's pretty obvious. Any other explanation is insanely convoluted

@MarshaBradyo

This leveling off and reduction in cases in the young did please me. It is possible it's due to a change in testing amongst the young, but hopefully it is because of immunity (think Uni students now all immune after most having contracted the virus in freshers week).

strfron no-one really knows how fast infections are rising in London, because testing is not always available. The only reliable indicator, since we dont yet look at sewage is hospital admissions, they are rising. And if you look at Croydon, Brent, Ealing (all hit very hard first time round) they have rising positive cases. (Sweden does look at sewage, it's having a second wave in Stockholm)

Google mobility data suggests London has a lot of people working from home, well above the England average.

Was looking for the thread that said " no evidence of reinfection" _ I could post more of these kvia.com/news/border/2020/10/19/juarez-mayor-infected-with-virus-for-2nd-time-as-death-toll-in-his-city-nears-1000/

And whenever people post about Sweden - why not Brazil with its 155,000 deaths or America - well into its second wave www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/scienceandhealth/2020/10/with-662-new-covid-19-deaths-brazil-approaches-155-thousand-deaths.shtml?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsen

[quote alreadytaken]Was looking for the thread that said " no evidence of reinfection" _ I could post more of these kvia.com/news/border/2020/10/19/juarez-mayor-infected-with-virus-for-2nd-time-as-death-toll-in-his-city-nears-1000/[/quote]
@alreadytaken - so you really think Reff is much lower in London than the South West (barely hit 1st wave, now highest R in th country) because of "working from home"? A huge tightly-packed city has a lower Reff than much more spread out towns and villages?

There have been a few cases of re-infection. The epidemiological data however shows us this isn't common for the majority of people.

[quote starfro]@toxtethOgradyUSA - yes of course it is, but on here you get people denying science and claiming immunity isn't a thing, or it only lasts 60 days.

R = Reff * S

Reff = Ro adjusted for local restrictions
S = the % of the population still susceptible to the disease[/quote]
Why has immunity become a dirty word in the past few months? It's genuinely weird.

Can you remember in the UK, a few weeks ago, we had people saying "Yes, cases are rising but hospitalisations and deaths aren't."

Then when hospitalisations went up, they started saying "Yes, hospitalisations are rising, but deaths aren't."

Now, when deaths are rising in the UK, the same people have switched to "Cases are rising in Sweden, but deaths aren't."

Can anyone guess what might happen next in Sweden? And if it does (and I hope I'm wrong), which cherry picked country out of all the world are we going to go for next to try to show that actually we can get through this without doing fuck all?

@starfro @toxtethOgradyUSA

I complete agree. I keep thinking I'm going mad because to me the Swedish graph tells us something really important regardless of everyone's arguments about population density etc. It tells us that with CONSISTENT measures over time, the epidemic will peak by itself. That's not to say that Covid19 disappears, of course there will continue to be cases and sadly deaths, but it's not the epidemic it was. I also agree that's what London versus the big Northern cities seems to indicate too. I just can't understand why everyone is so reluctant to accept that immunity is playing a part in slowing growth compared to last January- March. Why is this constantly being ignored or disputed?

Can anyone guess what might happen next in Sweden? And if it does (and I hope I'm wrong), which cherry picked country out of all the world are we going to go for next to try to show that actually we can get through this without doing fuck all?

Deaths will start to rise, but not because of the current increase in cases, which are mostly young people. The deaths will rise because they've just changed the advice for elderly and other risk groups and we are now on the same restrictions as everyone else.

Sweden is having a "2nd wave", but the closer you get to HIT in the 1st wave, the broader and flatter the 2nd wave is.

Remember "squash the sombrero" to ensure the NHS doesn't get overwhelmed? The idea there was to lower Reff and spread infections out over a much longer period. This is more what second waves will look like. Note that total deaths can still be high, depending on how big the 1st wave was.

There have been 37 million cases of COVID worldwide and a handful of reinfections. There must be some immunity!
Sweden didn’t do f all. Just playing a long game with sustainable measures that the population agrees to and complied with.

Why do we think just because countries
have different population densities and healthcare systems that we have nothing to learn from them about this disease and how it plays out? Why do we shut down every discussion about Sweden with no discussion?