Sweden made some very bad choices and a lot of people died unnecessarily. Compare with Portugal, same population, right next to Spain, lower GDP, a fraction of the deaths. There is no excuse, no 'second wave', no economic payoff, no wait and see.
Scientists are trained to make judgments based on experimentation and evidence. In a fast moving novel pandemic situation, where there is no time to carry out experiments, where evidence is confused and hard to corroborate, their utility is much reduced. That is why politicians exist, to make these hard decisions. It is unfair to pillory scientists such as Tegnell, as it is the politicians who abdicated responsibility in the face of this crisis that should rightfully face condemnation.
Except of course, there was evidence, from China, Taiwan, South Korea and elsewhere. It was clear what needed to be done, and how to do it. Shame on Sweden, and other places, for not heeding that guidance.
I was under the impression that quarantine was an option only to "flatten the curve" (and make it easier for the hospitals to treat people) and that the same amount of people would die regardless (from the virus), is this wrong?
This is one of the assumptions underlying the Swedish approach, yes. The knob you can fiddle is how soon people die: with relaxed response, people who would have died a few months or a year from now might die of the pandemic tomorrow. (But of course, strict countermeasures also have their long-term costs, which are harder to quantify in terms of lives, although that's definitely a component of it.)
That's only assuming we never get a vaccine or an effective treatment. If we do, then the number of people to die before that point matters a lot, because we would get a sharp decline after.
In addition to your points, another reason for "flattening the curve" is to give time for hospitals and health care systems to prepare for a spike in cases, so that every patient who needs critical care can receive it. For countries like Italy that were hit at the start of the pandemic, this was a serious problem.
Where I live, in Victoria, Australia, the state government has used the lockdown time to plan for and deliver a huge increase of ICU beds [1]. Thankfully, it looks like these beds may not even be necessary, but initial modelling suggested a peak of 10,000 active cases with only 500 IUC beds available.
Precisely. I've simulated this numerically and shown that the curve of [deaths]-vs-[duration of widespread economic crisis] is concave, like an inverted parabola that's been truncated by eventually getting a vaccine (or effective treatment).
Perhaps counterintuitively, the points on the strategy curve that have both lowest death counts and shortest widespread economic crisis are the same. I've published these simulations here: "Surprising COVID-19 Strategy: Reduce Economic Damage and Deaths Simultaneously" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuNrkG188HA
The Swedish assumption (not officially, but what I take away from communication is what they assume)
- No effective treatment or vaccine will arrive within a year.
- Measures that completely eradicate the virus aren't sustainable for the time it takes to do so or until a vaccine arrives (e.g. lockdowns),
- Without at least some immunity, "Test, Trace, Isolate" is not a viable strategy for dense regions.
- Without at least some immunity, a second wave is unavoidable, and risks being worse than the first, if it arrives early next season. It's better to have a small immunity in the low risk population now, than let risk high risk groups later.
- Even a small level of immunity has a large effectiveness in limiting spread, i.e. 10% or 20% immunity in a region can make a big difference, so if that can be achieved in the low risk population that is a good thing.
- Asymtomatic spread, presymptomatic spread, and spread from children are all possible but not significant (That is: if symptomatic spread is controlled, that is enough).
Some of these assumptions have been challeneged, some were not at all controverrsial to begin with but have changed over the last months.
It was, yes, under the early assumption that the virus spread rapidly but had a relatively low death rate. It turns out it's the opposite - it's surprisingly easy to stop the spread, but the death rates are higher. So countries that locked down under the plan that they were just flattening the curve still managed to nearly eradicate the virus despite that not being the original strategy.
> surprisingly easy to stop the spread, but the death rates are higher.
Are they? The current IFR estimates (general, not counting age divided groups) range between 0.2 and 0.9%. That might still include a significant number of individuals, but it's not very high (of course by age groups, this changes).
I still wonder whether the high death rates in some countries, including my own, were not due to the virus itself being very deadly, but because it found "niches" of vulnerable people (hospitals, nursing care homes). I don't think anyone has yet studied these dynamics in depth.
Early random sampling in Sweden indicated a IFR around 0.2%, but the more recent antibody test points to 1.1%, putting the expected final death toll up an order of magnitude
Why compare with Portugal? Why not compare with some other country with similar deathrate as Sweden but completely different choices? Maybe because you assertion about "very bad choices" then wouldn't hold any water.
It might still be true, but the actual support for it seems to just be cherry-picking.
Rereading my own post some hours later I don't like the tone of it, so I'll willingly appologise for that. This might warrant a FUD-claim (I had to look up FUD to start with).
The point I was trying to make, which I don't at all think is based on fear, uncertainly and/or doubt, is that any two countries will differ on so many variables that one can almost freely pick what correlation one thinks is the important one. To do something akin to that and the go "shame on you" feels wrong.
Honestly, I wouldn't trust the numbers reported by the Portugal, in particular the reported number of daily COVID-19 deaths, I feel the numbers are being misreported.
I have been closely following the progress of the situation in the country and the leadership is very messy and very clueless about the entire situation, both from the government and from the portuguese health agency in particular.
You don't know what's causing the deaths. Maybe it's lockdown/fear: we know that fewer people are seeking medical treatment for non covid related issues, fewer organ transplants are happening, fewer cancer screenings occuring, etc.
Unfortunately we have a 'mini-outbreak' in the greater Lisbon area right now with 90% of new cases - previously this had been masked in the overall numbers by success in the North of the country, which was hit first, and hard (something similar happened with US data, NY's better numbers hid a growing problem elsewhere).
Data for each county in Portugal is available here: https://github.com/dssg-pt/covid19pt-data/blob/master/data_c... - graphing this data shows that Lisbon and its surrounding councils have been putting on new cases at a steady rate (linear for now!), albeit low numbers in the grand scheme of things. I don't know what the Portuguese government is going to do about that, or how effective their action may be. I live nearby, so I am particularly concerned.
Scientists are trained to make judgments based on experimentation and evidence. In a fast moving novel pandemic situation, where there is no time to carry out experiments, where evidence is confused and hard to corroborate, their utility is much reduced. That is why politicians exist, to make these hard decisions. It is unfair to pillory scientists such as Tegnell, as it is the politicians who abdicated responsibility in the face of this crisis that should rightfully face condemnation.
Except of course, there was evidence, from China, Taiwan, South Korea and elsewhere. It was clear what needed to be done, and how to do it. Shame on Sweden, and other places, for not heeding that guidance.