Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[mongers]

You can't escape that society has to make such decisions. Roads remain open in the US despite ~35,000 deaths a year. Just based on remaining life expectancy, I'd guess in terms of years of life lost that is probably equivalent to over 100,000 lives lost to coronavirus. That isn't a one time loss of life to a (theoretically) once in a century event: it is recurring annually.

Sure - my point is it's a social decision so individual risk appetite/assessment isn't really relevant.

Sweden's nordic neighbors have reopened with less loss of life to coronavirus. Time will tell how things play out from here, but even if there is a cure tomorrow and nothing changes, it isn't a simple score of how many people died from coronavirus. That would be like judging road policy by just a body count, with the obvious winning strategy to simply shut down the roads.

I agree and we won't know until the end of this and we can look at all the costs.

I suppose my point is except for keeping bars and churches open I can't think of a metric where Sweden comes out ahead of their Nordic neighbours. They have significantly more deaths (5,500 to Denmark's 600, Norway's 250 and Finland's 350). The current projections have Sweden taking a bigger economic hit than Denmark and Finland (and Norway's slightly different because oil). I don't actually think schools closed in the other Nordic countries. So the only bit that I think you would say is better was probably that bars and churches were open for two months.

As you say timing matters and that may shift if there's a second wave, but I think Denmark was the first country in Europe to re-open (I want to say early May) and so far there hasn't been a sustained second wave anywhere in Europe - though there have been outbreaks. If we are able to keep cases low enough to identify and isolate outbreaks and avoid community transmission then I feel like the other Nordics have probably dealt more successfully than Sweden on any measure.

And I totally agree with Zanza it's a mistake to think of it as restrictive measures v economy. People won't go back to normal until they feel safe and chances are we're going to need a lot of government support for business until that happens (for whatever reason).

[Tamas]

Cabinet minister Michael Gove explicitly says face masks should not be mandatory in England, giving his first clear answer on this.

When asked by the BBC's Andrew Marr if the wearing of face masks should be mandatory, Gove answered, "not mandatory, no".

"I trust people's good sense," he said. However, he said that the situation was evolving and "tougher measures could be taken".

This government feels like we are being led by this guy:



If it makes a difference if people wear masks, make them. If not, say so. If you don't know, say so. FFS.

[jimmy olsen]

Conclusions
The Swedish COVID-19 strategy has thus far yielded a striking result: mild mandates overlaid with voluntary measures can achieve results highly similar to late-onset stringent mandates. However, this policy causes more healthcare demand and mortality than early stringent control and depends on continued public will.

Conclusions
The Swedish COVID-19 strategy works out pretty well as long as the population is willing to voluntarily self-impose lockdown restrictions, and as long as we keep the dying out of the ICUs.

Their economy has tanked just as much as neighbourhing countries and they have 3x the number of deaths.  Plus, other countries don't want Swedish visitors at all without a quarantine.  It didn't work.

Sweden has become the World's cautionnary tale

That is a judgment call. Sweden has only had 5,526 deaths due to covid. If I'm in a nursing home someday, and presented with a choice to continue living at the cost of 1,500 kids out of school and a shut down of the local church, bar, etc., I think I know how I'd weigh that cost benefit.

They only had that many casualties because their population is small. America has nearly 33 times the population of Sweden. An equivalent casualty rate here would lead to 180k dead. (We're probably going to blow past that by September).

[Tamas]

In light of the increasing cases in a lot of countries, Hungary has enacted a 3-tier system to categorise foreign countries. Green means free travel from, Yellow means testing and quarantine for two weeks (Hungarian citizens can end it after 1 negative test), Red means no travel in for non-citizens, and two weeks quarantine for citizens (2 negative tests to end it before that).

UK is in Yellow for now.

[DGuller]

In light of the increasing cases in a lot of countries, Hungary has enacted a 3-tier system to categorise foreign countries. Green means free travel from, Yellow means testing and quarantine for two weeks (Hungarian citizens can end it after 1 negative test), Red means no travel in for non-citizens, and two weeks quarantine for citizens (2 negative tests to end it before that).

UK is in Yellow for now.

Are they going to make exceptions for the Hungarian Grand Prix next week?  Or are they going to hold Hungarian Grand Prix in Austria?

[viper37]

That is a judgment call. Sweden has only had 5,526 deaths due to covid. If I'm in a nursing home someday, and presented with a choice to continue living at the cost of 1,500 kids out of school and a shut down of the local church, bar, etc., I think I know how I'd weigh that cost benefit. 

everywhere they went on lockdown for 2 months, they gradually reopened and are seeing much less damages to their economy and their population.

Aside death, there are a number of complications due to covid-19 that are still possibly permanent, like a 15-20% decrease in your pulmonary capacity, and other things to, like kidney damages.  Since we don't know yet if it will disapear by itself, since we don't know yet who will be affected in advance, we have to err with caution.

Besides, having ICUs full of sick people and being overwhelmed is not an ideal solution in any case.  Unless you want to say your Southern States did it better than Canada?

[viper37]

You can't escape that society has to make such decisions. Roads remain open in the US despite ~35,000 deaths a year. Just based on remaining life expectancy, I'd guess in terms of years of life lost that is probably equivalent to over 100,000 lives lost to coronavirus. That isn't a one time loss of life to a (theoretically) once in a century event: it is recurring annually.

Currently, their economy thanked as much as that of their neighbours.They have a lot more deaths than their neigbhours.Their closest economic partners have put travel restrictions toward them.
Right now, it ain't working.
In a year from now, I doubt the economic situation will be much better than their neighbours.
The travel restrictions might be lifted, if we have a vaccine.What is left is the number of deaths and cases with sequels.  On that, maybe Sweden had the right approach, maybe not.  That we can't tell now.

But for everything else, it was a losing strategy.  Herd immunity is not there.  The economy is not faring better. All we have is currently more infected and dead people. 

Will that translate into similar -or fewer deaths later on, I do not know.  What I know now, is they have more deaths and nothing to show for it.


As for you road examples, road accidents aren't contagious.  Just because there's an accident on highway X between city A and B does not mean you will suffer an accident at the same place if you travel there tomorrow.

And also, unless the US is radically different than Quebec and Canada, I assume everything is being done to minimize casualties.  Dangerous roads are redone, curves are smoothed, highways are builts away from houses where children could run in the street, etc, etc.
To have your example meaningful, it would mean that in the US, whenever a road segment is problematic and causing a lot of accidents, due to bad signalization, broken road, dangerous curve, lack of visibility, increase in heavy weight traffic, etc, you do absolutely nothing because the tradeoff in repairing the road is too high for the 1000 deaths a year there are at this particular intersection/road segment.

[alfred russel]

You can't escape that society has to make such decisions. Roads remain open in the US despite ~35,000 deaths a year. Just based on remaining life expectancy, I'd guess in terms of years of life lost that is probably equivalent to over 100,000 lives lost to coronavirus. That isn't a one time loss of life to a (theoretically) once in a century event: it is recurring annually.

While I agree with the argument, I don't think it matters. Many people argue for less stringent measures as a way to keep the economy healthy. But I don't think that is a sound analysis of what's going on.

I think relaxing the rules in unlikely to result in a healthier economy right now. In fact, the outcome could well be the opposite, as more and more people withdraw voluntarily. Reactivating the economy is contingent on proving to people that they are safe(ish). And to do that you need a) credibility and b) to actually tackle the infection.

I see plenty of restaurants that are full, but I know aggregate activity is less. Still, if you can make 30% of your old revenue, that is way better than 0%.

But in any event, I wasn't making an economic point. There is more to life than staying alive.

[viper37]

You can't escape that society has to make such decisions. Roads remain open in the US despite ~35,000 deaths a year. Just based on remaining life expectancy, I'd guess in terms of years of life lost that is probably equivalent to over 100,000 lives lost to coronavirus. That isn't a one time loss of life to a (theoretically) once in a century event: it is recurring annually.

While I agree with the argument, I don't think it matters. Many people argue for less stringent measures as a way to keep the economy healthy. But I don't think that is a sound analysis of what's going on.

I think relaxing the rules in unlikely to result in a healthier economy right now. In fact, the outcome could well be the opposite, as more and more people withdraw voluntarily. Reactivating the economy is contingent on proving to people that they are safe(ish). And to do that you need a) credibility and b) to actually tackle the infection.

yeah, I don't see the American economy faring better than Canada currently.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

There is more to life than staying alive.

it's a base requirement though

[alfred russel]

Conclusions
The Swedish COVID-19 strategy has thus far yielded a striking result: mild mandates overlaid with voluntary measures can achieve results highly similar to late-onset stringent mandates. However, this policy causes more healthcare demand and mortality than early stringent control and depends on continued public will.

Conclusions
The Swedish COVID-19 strategy works out pretty well as long as the population is willing to voluntarily self-impose lockdown restrictions, and as long as we keep the dying out of the ICUs.

Their economy has tanked just as much as neighbourhing countries and they have 3x the number of deaths.  Plus, other countries don't want Swedish visitors at all without a quarantine.  It didn't work.

Sweden has become the World's cautionnary tale

That is a judgment call. Sweden has only had 5,526 deaths due to covid. If I'm in a nursing home someday, and presented with a choice to continue living at the cost of 1,500 kids out of school and a shut down of the local church, bar, etc., I think I know how I'd weigh that cost benefit.

They only had that many casualties because their population is small. America has nearly 33 times the population of Sweden. An equivalent casualty rate here would lead to 180k dead. (We're probably going to blow past that by September).

Tim, you are so consistently alarmist about every problem in the world it is hard to see you acting in good faith. When you post the most terrible predictions and news from twitter sources it really looks like you are intentionally trying to create a panic. Someone who does that really should be described by a sequence of four letter words.

In the post above, you are so reflexive in your need to throw the US under the bus you don't even realize you undercut your own position. After all, if we are only gaining a couple months on Sweden while not following their approach, why not just follow it?

[Sheilbh]

In the post above, you are so reflexive in your need to throw the US under the bus you don't even realize you undercut your own position. After all, if we are only gaining a couple months on Sweden while not following their approach, why not just follow it?

I mean the Swedish approach has a lot of social distancing - it's just encouraged, voluntary and depending the sort of social capital of Swedish society. I'm not sure it's a model that could be easily adopted in the US.

The Swedish approach is based on the idea that this will be around for a while and there will be multiple waves. So to use your speeding analogy it's more sustainable if the speed limit is cut from 60 to 30 than if it's cut to 10. That could be right. But the antibody studies show relatively limited spread so they're still not close to herd immunity, it was still difficult to protect care homes (with predictable and awful consequences) and they could be wrong. It could be that what we're seeing in the rest of Europe is an alternative route - so far, no second waves just isolated outbreaks. So with that analogy actually you just cut the limit to 10 for a couple of months and you can then go back to, say, 40.

[Threviel]

Nordic countries are not very ease to compare economically. Danish economy is heavily based on agriculture and shipping, Norwegian on oil, Swedish on iron, forestry and industry. Swedish and Finnish economies could be compared perhaps. Swedish economy is heavily export oriented and if the global economy tanks Sweden is usually hit disproportionally hard. I don't believe numbers would be better with a total closedown.

Also, this is interesting. Shows what me and Brainy has been trying to say, Swedish statistics have been trustworthy from the beginning. Expect Sweden to drop in the rankings when more data gets available in the following years.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries

[DGuller]

What's up with Belgium?  Covid is almost at a point of saving lives there.  Was it hitting age 100+ population exclusively over there?

[Sheilbh]

Also, this is interesting. Shows what me and Brainy has been trying to say, Swedish statistics have been trustworthy from the beginning. Expect Sweden to drop in the rankings when more data gets available in the following years.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries

Yeah the FT has been tracking that as well and updated it to June:


Agreed it'll be a while before we can see what's effective - but I don't see any evidence that other countries can't count (this is also the Belgian government's excuse).