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Orange Devil posted:This checks out with the corona mortality. Is that really a thing? I thought the narrative was 'Sweden didn't take any precautions yet they're doing fine'
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May 22, 2020 14:16
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Last I heard that was what chuds were saying to support opening everything up
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May 22, 2020 14:18
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Phlegmish posted:Is that really a thing? I thought the narrative was 'Sweden didn't take any precautions yet they're doing fine' Sweden had the worst per capita covid death rate in Europe last week. How their plan works out in the end we'll see, but the "our young people don't visit their grandparents so they'll be fine" thing seems not to have worked at all.
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May 22, 2020 14:19
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glynnenstein posted:Sweden had the worst per capita covid death rate in Europe last week. How their plan works out in the end we'll see, but the "our young people don't visit their grandparents so they'll be fine" thing seems not to have worked at all. Their per capita death rate overall is still less than the UK or France by a wide margin. Then there's also uncounted deaths and other factors; which could tilt the numbers in either direction. Sweden's method doesn't seem to be the worst, at least. I really hope we'll be able to do a half-way honest reckoning when this is over. Look at different places and see what worked, and what didn't. The thing is super politicized/polarized in the US; hopefully that mentality doesn't become the norm. I find it odd how Belgium has consistently had the worst per-capita rates of anywhere except micro-states, and yet they get practically zero mention in any media I consume.
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May 22, 2020 14:44
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Belgium has from the start been really good about accurately reporting deaths related to covid though. Like, their official covid deaths and total over-deaths are very close. Whereas in NL and UK for example overdeaths were twice reported official covid deaths.
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May 22, 2020 14:52
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It's also worth noting that even though I used it to counter the narrative of people saying "Sweden is fine", per capita isn't necessarily a great way to look at stuff like this.
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May 22, 2020 15:13
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glynnenstein posted:It's also worth noting that even though I used it to counter the narrative of people saying "Sweden is fine", per capita isn't necessarily a great way to look at stuff like this. On top of that, covid is apparently quite variable in how many people any given infected manages to infect. The average might be 5.7, but the median is close to 1 apparently, meaning the majority of cases are caused by superspreaders infecting dozens of people each. You basically just need a couple of those people to majorly change the outcome of a country early on when numbers are real low. Count Roland posted:I find it odd how Belgium has consistently had the worst per-capita rates of anywhere except micro-states, and yet they get practically zero mention in any media I consume.
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May 22, 2020 15:52
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Population density is another factor that muddles up per capita rate comparisons. And yeah, when this was just arriving in the US, the per capita death rate might have looked comparatively great because there were just plenty of people left to infect. That's not a very useful bit of data to base policy on.
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May 22, 2020 16:10
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glynnenstein posted:It's also worth noting that even though I used it to counter the narrative of people saying "Sweden is fine", per capita isn't necessarily a great way to look at stuff like this. What other methods would you suggest? Asking the thread, not just glynnenstein. I'm sure we all peruse charts and graphs and articles, I'm curious to see how other people do it.
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May 22, 2020 16:51
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Count Roland posted:What other methods would you suggest? there are drawbacks to both total case numbers and per capita (is iceland still the per-capita leader? they were for a while due to both the smaller population having more variability and having comprehensive testing). i think largely that there isn't a good solution if your objective is to make apples to apples comparisons across polities. there's been some work on using information theoretic measures and/or bayesian modeling to try to promote comparison in other sorts of maps of measures like these, but i'm not sure that that helps with the communication problem, just the modeling problem. john burn-murdoch over at FT has been doing a lot of work thinking about this and appears to have settled on something like smoothed excess mortality measures: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest but even things like his log cases per day spaghetti plot that FT is so proud of are highly sensitive to where you start counting/syncing up curves and what you put on the y-axis. i just really don't think there's a silver bullet here: all of the measures are highly uncertain, noisy, and all inter-related. Tree Goat fucked around with this message at 18:23 on May 22, 2020 |
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May 22, 2020 17:15
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Tree Goat posted:but even things like his log cases per day spaghetti plot that FT is so proud of are highly sensitive to where you start counting/syncing up curves and what you put on the y-axis. i just really don't think there's a silver bullet here: all of the measures are highly uncertain, noisy, and all inter-related. Maybe you're gonna need another option on that scale for the countries that appear to be going for just pushing through the virus, which will get so bad that eventually things will only be able to improve despite the best efforts of politicians.
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May 22, 2020 18:18
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A Buttery Pastry posted:On top of that, covid is apparently quite variable in how many people any given infected manages to infect. The average might be 5.7, but the median is close to 1 apparently, meaning the majority of cases are caused by superspreaders infecting dozens of people each. You basically just need a couple of those people to majorly change the outcome of a country early on when numbers are real low. That's interesting; do you have a source on this?
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May 22, 2020 20:56
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The cost in lives of Sweden's policies can be seen simply by creating a table that compares some basic numbers to some countries that contained the outbreak by traditional methods. (I've broken down Australia to focus on the parts that have population densities that actually register) Every one of these polities would have had more than 1000 deaths if they hit the Swedish death rate. You can factor in the effects of land borders, testing rates, Baltic traffic, whatever you like, but no factor will completely invalidate any of these comparisons. For example, Sweden may have land borders, but they still had an extra month on two of the other countries here, all three of which have many direct flights to China, their biggest trade partner. I can't speak for South Korea, but excess deaths directly attributable to Covid in NZ and Australia will be close to nil simply due to the road toll, let alone other factors that reduced during the lockdown. Now, of course Sweden's strategy is based on an extreme long term analysis which we can't quantify easily at this point. Economically, unemployment in New Zealand has skyrocketed as the entire tourism sector is dead and all the other sectors that have been hit everywhere received a massive blow. But frankly I don't care. Unemployment is something I and most other people can recover from, whereas my Grandmother or my immunocompromised co-worker are people who are gone forever if they die from a virus. *Edit: 'Contained' is in scare quotes since I've just gone off some countries that I know have managed their outbreaks well. Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 01:34 on May 23, 2020 |
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May 23, 2020 01:27
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Basically Sweden's gambled that having a huge death wave right up front will spare them further suffering as this goes on. No way to know if they're right yet. From what I've read from epidemiologists, they're probably wrong and this was a horrible idea, but.  We'll know after it's over.
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May 23, 2020 01:39
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I mean, there's no question that they've (or you've as the case may be) flattened their curve and are managing what they have, but it frustrates me because there's this idea making the rounds that they've found the third way, even in NZ where we have very direct evidence that what we did was manageable and very effective. Like the media was running articles on it after we were reducing our alert level and cases were reducing day by day.
Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 01:57 on May 23, 2020 |
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May 23, 2020 01:51
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Here in the US my grandma just politely died of covid back two months ago and I'm still recovering from it along with my roommates, and it really loving blows! Currently I'm mostly ok but I've got a fractured rib from falling over in a feverish daze trying to pick up my roommate who collapsed walking to the bathroom! If anyone, swede or otherwise, who genuinely supports herd immunity wants to change places I will absolutely wish upon a monkey's paw for it because yes, it sucks so bad that it probably couldn't get worse.
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May 23, 2020 01:58
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Grand Fromage posted:Basically Sweden's gambled that having a huge death wave right up front will spare them further suffering as this goes on. No way to know if they're right yet. From what I've read from epidemiologists, they're probably wrong and this was a horrible idea, but. Boris Johnson was allegedly trying to do that as well before pivoting at the last moment.
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May 23, 2020 02:19
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tractor fanatic posted:That's interesting; do you have a source on this? https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all Based on those numbers, 90% of infected infect 1.3 other people on average, while the remaining 10% infect 45. If you assume it fits an y=e^ax curve, you'd actually need to get into the 70th percentile before you get to people who are gonna infect at least one other person, which is consistent with the claim that most people do not infect, ending at around 80 infections for the top 1%.
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May 23, 2020 06:44
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How much of that is behavioural and how much is physiological?
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May 23, 2020 08:16
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Platystemon posted:How much of that is behavioural and how much is physiological? That's all pure speculation as layperson, but I'm pretty sure behavior is by far the bigger factor. Even the most physiologically infectous people could limit the number exposed to just their household, which is like two other people on average in the areas we have stats for, if you assumed a China-level response where the government delivers groceries. The slightly higher single-digit infections would then be asymptomatic heavy breathers or people with a mild cough who attempt to socially distance (without masks) but just go on their shopping trip at exactly the wrong time, while all the double digit infections are people deciding to be social/forced to work indoors. e: Basically, infections happen when people decide to do this: Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Reopen Churches, what could go wrong or force people to work in meat packing plants where low temperatures and heavy exertion in close quarters allow the virus to run rampant. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 09:25 on May 23, 2020 |
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May 23, 2020 09:19
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SlothfulCobra posted:Boris Johnson was allegedly trying to do that as well before pivoting at the last moment. Dutch government went for herd immunity in the first instance as well, but came back from it after the UK changed course.
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May 23, 2020 10:46
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Jaguars! posted:The cost in lives of Sweden's policies can be seen simply by creating a table that compares some basic numbers to some countries that contained the outbreak by traditional methods. I don't think comparing Sweden with a number of countries on the Pacific is terribly informative. Your arguments are all valid, mind you. Its just that you could take practically any European country, put it in Sweden's place and show the same disparity. Be it the UK that promoted herd immunity early on, or Germany which seems pretty widely praised for its lockdown; they all have much, much higher rates than the like of SK or NZ.
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May 23, 2020 12:12
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Count Roland posted:I don't think comparing Sweden with a number of countries on the Pacific is terribly informative. Your arguments are all valid, mind you. Its just that you could take practically any European country, put it in Sweden's place and show the same disparity. Be it the UK that promoted herd immunity early on, or Germany which seems pretty widely praised for its lockdown; they all have much, much higher rates than the like of SK or NZ. OK how's this: Sweden is pretty much Finland except with twice the people and a lot more hugging. We have like a few hundred deaths for now, they have thousands. e: No I'm not saying hugging is the cause.
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May 23, 2020 14:43
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Count Roland posted:I don't think comparing Sweden with a number of countries on the Pacific is terribly informative. Your arguments are all valid, mind you. Its just that you could take practically any European country, put it in Sweden's place and show the same disparity. Be it the UK that promoted herd immunity early on, or Germany which seems pretty widely praised for its lockdown; they all have much, much higher rates than the like of SK or NZ. First up, It's not my aim to single out Sweden as uniquely awful, more on that in a bit. Second, hell yes it's comparable, the Oceanian countries have similar governmental abilities, remote borders with relatively few crossing points, similar populations, similar car transport rates and as alluded above are even closer to the origin of the virus. Korea is less comparable but was worth including since it's had good results from a potentially very bad situation and because it has a lot of International ferry transit which NZ and Aus don't have. So let's have a look at Germany and the UK. I wanted to include Germany the first time but it has a large population and, well, I'm not an epidemiologist, I didn't want to research more countries from scratch. Both are much larger countries with correspondingly larger Covid numbers, so their raw numbers are not going to say much at a glance. Germany also has an enormous border with thousands of crossing points and enormous air traffic that is a major confounding factor, and the main reason I excluded them. The UK really isn't going to show much except how much worse it could get.  The new columns here give the other country's populations as a ratio to Sweden (So the UK has 6.8 times Sweden's population) and the second one takes the amount of deaths in Sweden and normalizes it to the other country's population, showing how many casualties they would have had if they had hit the Swedish death rate. It is I hope fairly obvious Germany does NOT want to hit the Swedish death rate. The UK, sure enough, shows that things can get much worse. So why am I saying such mean things about Sweden in particular? well: Phlegmish posted:Is that really a thing? I thought the narrative was 'Sweden didn't take any precautions yet they're doing fine' Basically, the 'Swedish model' is becoming a political football. Here's the news article I mentioned earlier today. link Note the date. Even at the time you could go to the Johns Hopkins Covid tracker and note that a country with twice NZ's population had several times the amount of deaths. (Which is what I did.) Similar stories ran on the other major NZ news sites across our political spectrum. ( Although in the last few days they have been running stories along the lines of 'Maybe things haven't worked out so great') Basically there's an idea among people who value economics over public health that the Swedish government measures represent a way to avoid the more onerous sacrifices of a lockdown. I don't agree and it turns out that I feel pretty strongly about people who are prepared to sacrifice lives for economics. Jaguars! fucked around with this message at 15:32 on May 23, 2020 |
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May 23, 2020 14:56
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Swedens high death rate or part of it is probably due to incompetence and decades of dismantling and privatisation of the health sector. The main killer seems to be not closing elderly care homes quickly enough and not having proper equipment. Also FHM thought everyone speaks bureaucratish and understood that "recommendation" isn't actually a recommendation but more like an order. Turns out most people don't.
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May 23, 2020 15:04
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Fader Movitz posted:The main killer seems to be not closing elderly care homes quickly enough and not having proper equipment. This is absolutely the case. Half of NZs deaths were from one rest home.
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May 23, 2020 15:13
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Here in the US my grandma just politely died of covid back two months ago and I'm still recovering from it along with my roommates, and it really loving blows! Currently I'm mostly ok but I've got a fractured rib from falling over in a feverish daze trying to pick up my roommate who collapsed walking to the bathroom! I think some swedish researchers said that looking at the current numbers, it would takes half a decade before herd immunity was a fact, so not only are the swedes dying, they are not doing it fast enough to reach their objective. Also, their government scientific advisor said that people should not travel during their holiday to avoid increasing infections, yet saw no reason why tourists from neighboring countries with far fewer infections should avoid coming to Sweden.
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May 23, 2020 15:32
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May 23, 2020 16:37
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I mean I guess technically according to whichever metric they used, but why would I ever go to Brussels
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May 23, 2020 16:39
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Phlegmish posted:I mean I guess technically according to whichever metric they used, but why would I ever go to Brussels overpriced chocolate waffles
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May 23, 2020 17:32
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The whole "do nothing and just build herd immunity" strategy reminds me of how politicians like to shop around for an economic policy that just happens to jive with the opinions they already had regardless of whether it'll work at all. I'm surprised that Italy, Germany, and Poland are all lower than Russia. Switzerland I knew the population was kinda spread out rather than focused in one place, but that's a lot of spread through such a small country.
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May 23, 2020 17:45
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Wait, there are parts of Luxembourg that are not Luxembourg?
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May 23, 2020 18:09
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May 23, 2020 18:11
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Numerical Anxiety posted:Wait, there are parts of Luxembourg that are not Luxembourg? You might've heard of the village of Schengen? It's right near the Lux/France/Germany border tripoint in the river. Some small little treaty nobody really cares about was signed on a boat sitting on that tripoint.
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May 23, 2020 18:30
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One of the hotbeds of infection in Serbia is a South Korean owned factory, "Yura" in Leskovac. (and because of it, the city of Leskovac and the surrounding villages too) A bit over 3 years ago, I posted the following in this thread: my dad posted:Actual Serbian factory work conditions: Spend 12 hours a day 6 days a week working on an assembly line, be forced to wear diapers because you aren't allowed time off, be paid less than 200$/month, and get fired if you're in a five mile radius from someone who is complaining about work conditions. You should, of course, consider yourself one of the lucky ones because you at least have a job, or at least that's what you're constantly being told. Oh, and make sure to vote for whom the boss tells you to and bring some evidence of it. Or else. I was actually referring to this specific factory. I probably should have added regular sexual harrasment, physical assault on workers who fail to meet the quotas, practice of firing women who get pregnant, and the high rate of mental illness among people who spent more than a year working there.  The worktime is usually lower and the pay is usually better than I said back then, it's ~300-400$ a month, I brought up an extreme example of what the management was prone to doing with the help of some creative accounting and unpaid overtime. The factory kept working 3 shifts throughout the pandemic (the state ordered them to stop the night shift for the duration, which is honestly a laughably ineffective measure, but the company ignored even that), what little prevention measures existed were done by the workers themselves (strikes were banned due to the pandemic, because of course), and often against directions from the management (do I even need to mention that the management was blatantly breaking multiple laws here?). One of the activists even got arrested for "spreading panic". People would collapse during work and no one would be allowed to help them, there were... Actually, I could go on about this bullshit for a very long time, but just imagine more of the same for months and fill in the blanks with the pettiest evil you can come up with, and you'll get the general idea. The Serbian part of the management are your run of the mill jerks in expensive suits, but some of the Koreans are complete loving psychos. A few days after one of the workers who were active in trying to organize a union to try to do something about this disaster was noticed by the management and said something along the lines of "You're killing us", a Korean was witnessed walking up to his spot on the assembly line and making the throat slitting gesture while giggling like a lunatic. The police did nothing, of course. Also, not that it matters much, but the initial vector of infection was possibly someone from the management. However, the infection mostly spread more via the crowded busses bringing people to work rather than in the factory itself. The silver lining of the this fiasco is that the workers there are starting to more actively organize, since the management is running out of ways to intimidate them that are worse than just the normal day to day existence in that hellhole.
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May 23, 2020 18:58
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double nine posted:overpriced chocolate waffles I wonder just how they determined the metro areas geographically. It seems too much for Brussels. Considering how big a city it is (by Belgian standards) it actually has a fairly small sociological radius in my estimate. Main reason for that is probably linguistic, other than the standard big city problems.
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May 23, 2020 19:13
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Phlegmish posted:I wonder just how they determined the metro areas geographically. It seems too much for Brussels. Considering how big a city it is (by Belgian standards) it actually has a fairly small sociological radius in my estimate. Main reason for that is probably linguistic, other than the standard big city problems. What do you mean when you say 'sociological radius'? On an average working day A LOT of people from all over the country work in BXL.
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May 23, 2020 20:01
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Carbon dioxide posted:You might've heard of the village of Schengen? It's right near the Lux/France/Germany border tripoint in the river. Some small little treaty nobody really cares about was signed on a boat sitting on that tripoint. There's a joke to be made here, something about Google saying there are more than 400 million people in the area of that tiny little town.
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May 23, 2020 20:46
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Traveling outside the Schengen Zone is such a bother. Someone actually checks your passport and you need to go through like half a dozen checkpoints and have your picture taken. Being able to enter another country with nothing more than a library card as identification is where it's at
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May 23, 2020 20:58
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Jaguars! posted:First up, It's not my aim to single out Sweden as uniquely awful, more on that in a bit. Second, hell yes it's comparable, the Oceanian countries have similar governmental abilities, remote borders with relatively few crossing points, similar populations, similar car transport rates and as alluded above are even closer to the origin of the virus. Korea is less comparable but was worth including since it's had good results from a potentially very bad situation and because it has a lot of International ferry transit which NZ and Aus don't have. Thanks for taking the time to write that up. Taking the death rate of one country and applying it to others is quite illustrative.
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May 23, 2020 22:41
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