The Swedish Experience - Printable Version

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The Swedish Experience - Genuine Realist - 06-27-2020

Sweden famously did NOT impose the complete lockdown that most European nations did. So how is it faring? This article suggests that the policy worked out tolerably well:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/26/883931594/swedish-disease-expert-says-who-covid-19-warning-is-a-total-mistake

But this article, now three weeks old, suggests that the policy, while not a total failure, was flawed by the absence of measures calculated to protect the infirm:

https://www.livescience.com/results-of-sweden-covid19-response.html

And, for Mick, a pessimistic view that this less restrictive approach did not save the Swedish economy:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sweden-didnt-impose-a-lockdown-its-economy-is-just-as-bad-as-its-neighbors-who-did-2020-06-25

(To be fair, maybe the Swedish economy is so dependent on neighboring countries that it was dragged down by the rest.)
Note the reference to 'herd immunity' in the first one. You might remember that Boris Johnson's UK implemented policies early on, locking down only the vulnerable, letting others go unregulated, before greater wisdom prevailed. But it does raise with me the possibility that a nuance approach - lockdown for the infirm, strict social distancing guidelines for others, rather than complete lockdown. I think that's where we're going to end up;

We're in for a brief (I hope) resurgence of C-19 until the public gets the message that this is not over - may not be over for years. The blend of measures suggested, strict lockdown for those at greater risk, BUT serious social distancing for the rest, is probably the way to go. 


It's three weeks old but the best summary I read. I

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RE: The Swedish Experience - BostonCard - 06-27-2020

The problem for Sweden is that if that if they had hoped that they would achieve herd immunity by letting the virus run through, they failed.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-hopes-fade-for-swedens-herd-immunity-experiment-2020-6

Only about 6% of Swedes have antibodies to Covid-19, so not only did they suffer from the effects of the virus, they are still vulnerable to it.

BC

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RE: The Swedish Experience - akiddoc - 06-28-2020

Sweden's death rate from C-19 is 10 times that of Norway's. Norway had an effective public health response, Sweden did not.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - 2006alum - 06-28-2020

Realist and I must be looking at different facts:

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1276698852448522240?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ObsoleteDogma/status/1276577943930707969?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/MarkkuPeltonen/status/1276266460151767043?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1264303240180572161?s=20[/tweet]

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RE: The Swedish Experience - burger - 06-28-2020

The economic data that 2006alum shared has implications for the false "jobs vs. virus fighting" tradeoff that some people on this site have been promoting endlessly.  There was never any tradeoff.  If enough people reduce their spending voluntarily, you get a recession or a depression, period.  This is what's happening now in the US.  The "reopening" hasn't brought back most of the jobs lost, and things will probably get worse economically, not better, in the coming months as the virus spreads again, even if we don't reverse the reopenings.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Goose - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 07:29 AM)burger Wrote:  The economic data that 2006alum shared has implications for the false "jobs vs. virus fighting" tradeoff that some people on this site have been promoting endlessly.  There was never any tradeoff.  If enough people reduce their spending voluntarily, you get a recession or a depression, period.  This is what's happening now in the US.  The "reopening" hasn't brought back most of the jobs lost, and things will probably get worse economically, not better, in the coming months as the virus spreads again, even if we don't reverse the reopenings.

I think there is no question that consumer spending reacts to uncertainty about economic prospects. Until the general public feels their economic situation is predictable and stable, they are going to cut spending. The epidemic produces uncertainty no matter how it is addressed. The job losses due to the SIP would not ever have been good for the economy. Neither would overflowing ICUs and even more deaths been good for the economy. The real problem is that nobody knows what comes next, and when "next" is. It for sure doesn't start now. There is going to be more economic pain.

I also think there were serious underlying structural problems in the world economy before the epidemic. Zero or negative interest rates for a long period that do not produce significant real growth at all levels of society are, or should have been, a big warning that the status quo wasn't sustainable. These problems eventually would have caught up with us. The epidemic has hastened the process.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - chrisk - 06-28-2020

In the US, the personal savings rate was running 7-8% prior to the pandemic. In March, it jumped to 13% and in April to 33%. The April numbers would include a lot of the stimulus payments.

We should get the May number soon, and it will surely be higher than the levels previously. Federal fiscal programs will need to be implemented in targeted, surgical fashion in order to be effective. The reopening will not proceed as quickly or as safely as necessary to disgorge enough savings from the super savers to get the economy back to an acceptable level.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Genuine Realist - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 07:10 AM)2006alum Wrote:  Realist and I must be looking at different facts:

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1276698852448522240?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/ObsoleteDogma/status/1276577943930707969?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/MarkkuPeltonen/status/1276266460151767043?s=20[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1264303240180572161?s=20[/tweet]

I didn't take a position. I posted three links with different perspectives, one of which noted the dismal state of the Swedish economy. Be a little less trigger happy.

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(06-28-2020, 08:14 AM)chrisk Wrote:  In the US, the personal savings rate was running 7-8% prior to the pandemic.  In March, it jumped to 13% and in April to 33%.  The April numbers would include a lot of the stimulus payments.

We should get the May number soon, and it will surely be higher than the levels previously.  Federal fiscal programs will need to be implemented in targeted, surgical fashion in order to be effective.  The reopening will not proceed as quickly or as safely as necessary to disgorge enough savings from the super savers to get the economy back to an acceptable level.

The increased saving rate is to some extent reflective of decreased opportunities for consumer spending, e.g., reduced travel, recreational spending, dining out, etc. That's certainly true in my own case.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - 2006alum - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 08:23 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  I didn't take a position.

I guess I misread what I understood to be your proposed "possibility of a nuance approach" based on the Swedish approach:

(06-27-2020, 07:18 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  Sweden famously did NOT impose the complete lockdown that most European nations did. So how is it faring? This article suggests that the policy worked out tolerably well . . . it does raise with me the possibility that a nuance approach - lockdown for the infirm, strict social distancing guidelines for others, rather than complete lockdown. 

What I was reacting to is that from everything I have read, Sweden seems to be regarded as one of the largely failed approaches, and is therefore *not* the model we should be looking to for guidance. So allusions to the "possibility" of Sweden as a potential model are, to me, not based in a complete picture of the facts, especially when there are sources less than three weeks old that make this point somewhat abundantly clear, such as this one, published on Friday:

[tweet]https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1276373422222827520?s=20[/tweet]

Quote:As a result, many European countries now opening up to tourism have barred Swedes from entry until 30 June, while to its considerable annoyance the county’s neighbours have also excluded it from a Nordic travel bubble.

So to recap, the "Swedish experience" is: vastly higher deaths, no near-term prospect of herd immunity, frayed relations and travel bans from its neighbors, falling popular support, and negligible economic benefit relative to those who locked down. Given all this, it's just not clear to me why you'd credibly raise Sweden as an approach we should consider following. (And I say this recognizing that we in the U.S. are following a non-approach "approach" that is rudderless, incoherent, at war with itself, and vastly worse on nearly every measurable metric...)

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Mick - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 07:51 AM)Goose Wrote:  I think there is no question that consumer spending reacts to uncertainty about economic prospects. Until the general public feels their economic situation is predictable and stable, they are going to cut spending. The epidemic produces uncertainty no matter how it is addressed. The job losses due to the SIP would not ever have been good for the economy. Neither would overflowing ICUs and even more deaths been good for the economy. The real problem is that nobody knows what comes next, and when "next" is. It for sure doesn't start now. There is going to be more economic pain.

I've had some interesting conversations with my peers over the past month regarding the impact of the civil unrest on how their organizations are treating furloughed workers.  A number of organizations were more fully committed to rehiring furloughed workers in the July/August time frame and have now decided to further delay rehire in part because of the uncertainty about economic prospects resulting from the civil unrest.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - fullmetal - 06-28-2020

It helps that Sweden has universal healthcare and that citizen healthcare isn't tied to their employment -- more people can get sick without the looming threat of medical bankruptcy.  I wonder how much of Sweden's ICU bed/staffing capacity was used up before they started coming to their senses from the policy side.

The thing with ICU bed capacity is that it's a lagging indicator...by about 14 days.  So we're watching politicians play catch up from 14 days back against an exponential curve of degree greater than 1, and it's not a pretty picture.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - terry - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 12:06 AM)akiddoc Wrote:  Sweden's death rate from C-19 is 10 times that of Norway's. 

Yes, there's a big difference in death rates between Sweden and its neighbors --

Covid-19 deaths per million of population:

523  Sweden
46    Norway
104  Denmark
59    Finland

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Mick - 06-28-2020

Curious to see what Sweden's economic performance was in Q2 compared to the EU and other Nordic countries.  Q1 was pretty good:


Sweden's death rates were closer to that of the larger European countries, and much greater deaths per million than the other Nordic countries:


I was under the impression that Sweden had no compliance measures at all.  In point of fact, Swedish authorities have social policies similar to other countries, but rely upon individual discretion as to implementation:

https://voxeu.org/article/underpinnings-sweden-s-permissive-covid-regime

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RE: The Swedish Experience - oregontim - 06-28-2020

Interesting also about Q1 for Sweden (thanks Mick) as the only positive bar on the chart. The Sweden example has appeared on this board as an alternative answer to the health vs. jobs dilemma, one that some thought was an alternative to the March-May shutdown. The Sweden question is turning now towards whether or not they optimized jobs at all, while sacrificing health. Maybe they just postponed the health measures until later, and will suffer them worse over the long term, for not having clamped down early on. Time will tell. 

What if they and a lot of us — many in the USA, this board  too — got the health vs. jobs comparisons dilemma wrong? What if, as it turns out, more stringent pandemic response would have been the optimal for both health and jobs? As we look at it today, doesn't this chart argue for a more stringent shutdown which would have been followed by a better health situation and a better economy later?



If so, too bad, this is just hindsight. We don't get a time machine to go back and do it right. My point is even if we are disastrously late, we might still be better off if we were to start today and do better from now on. Our trajectory right now sucks. Do we have to keep going this way, so we'll have to look back to this time and bemoan what we didn't do?

I heard that Pence today publicly advocated using masks. About damn time. Obviously too little and too late, but at least it's a change of direction and better late than never. I'm still hoping we get out of this without millions of deaths and crippling the economy for a very long time.

To borrow from an old African proverb, the best time to do this was last March. The second best time is today.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Goose - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 04:46 PM)oregontim Wrote:  Interesting also about Q1 for Sweden (thanks Mick) as the only positive bar on the chart. The Sweden example has appeared on this board as an alternative answer to the health vs. jobs dilemma, one that some thought was an alternative to the March-May shutdown. The Sweden question is turning now towards whether or not they optimized jobs at all, while sacrificing health. Maybe they just postponed the health measures until later, and will suffer them worse over the long term, for not having clamped down early on. Time will tell. 

What if they and a lot of us — many in the USA, this board  too — got the health vs. jobs comparisons dilemma wrong? What if, as it turns out, more stringent pandemic response would have been the optimal for both health and jobs? As we look at it today, doesn't this chart argue for a more stringent shutdown which would have been followed by a better health situation and a better economy later?



If so, too bad, this is just hindsight. We don't get a time machine to go back and do it right. My point is even if we are disastrously late, we might still be better off if we were to start today and do better from now on. Our trajectory right now sucks. Do we have to keep going this way, so we'll have to look back to this time and bemoan what we didn't do?

I heard that Pence today publicly advocated using masks. About damn time. Obviously too little and too late, but at least it's a change of direction and better late than never. I'm still hoping we get out of this without millions of deaths and crippling the economy for a very long time.

To borrow from an old African proverb, the best time to do this was last March. The second best time is today.

Good questions. What this points out IMHO is that nobody really knows what the "optimum" way ahead at any given moment in time actually is. It may turn out that the EU spikes up again and ends up where we are, just a different trajectory. Not saying I expect that, but we just don't know. What we also don't know is whether the American public would/will cooperate with a SIP until our curve falls like the EU did. If they won't, will our leaders have the guts/leadership to force it upon us?

I fear that the answer to the above is no and no. I think we got stuck on a plateau due to non-compliance, and our leaders were afraid the public would not tolerate more SIP or enforcement. They opened up knowing full well it probably was a bad idea, but hoping we would get lucky and pull it off. Once again, we see hope is not a strategy. Unfortunately, if our leaders don't think they can obtain compliance by persuasion and/or force, there is no viable alternative to what we are doing. If that is the case, the situation may become very ugly.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Genuine Realist - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 05:43 PM)Goose Wrote:  

(06-28-2020, 04:46 PM)oregontim Wrote:  Interesting also about Q1 for Sweden (thanks Mick) as the only positive bar on the chart. The Sweden example has appeared on this board as an alternative answer to the health vs. jobs dilemma, one that some thought was an alternative to the March-May shutdown. The Sweden question is turning now towards whether or not they optimized jobs at all, while sacrificing health. Maybe they just postponed the health measures until later, and will suffer them worse over the long term, for not having clamped down early on. Time will tell. 

What if they and a lot of us — many in the USA, this board  too — got the health vs. jobs comparisons dilemma wrong? What if, as it turns out, more stringent pandemic response would have been the optimal for both health and jobs? As we look at it today, doesn't this chart argue for a more stringent shutdown which would have been followed by a better health situation and a better economy later?



If so, too bad, this is just hindsight. We don't get a time machine to go back and do it right. My point is even if we are disastrously late, we might still be better off if we were to start today and do better from now on. Our trajectory right now sucks. Do we have to keep going this way, so we'll have to look back to this time and bemoan what we didn't do?

I heard that Pence today publicly advocated using masks. About damn time. Obviously too little and too late, but at least it's a change of direction and better late than never. I'm still hoping we get out of this without millions of deaths and crippling the economy for a very long time.

To borrow from an old African proverb, the best time to do this was last March. The second best time is today.

Good questions. What this points out IMHO is that nobody really knows what the "optimum" way ahead at any given moment in time actually is. It may turn out that the EU spikes up again and ends up where we are, just a different trajectory. Not saying I expect that, but we just don't know. What we also don't know is whether the American public would/will cooperate with a SIP until our curve falls like the EU did. If they won't, will our leaders have the guts/leadership to force it upon us?

I fear that the answer to the above is no and no. I think we got stuck on a plateau due to non-compliance, and our leaders were afraid the public would not tolerate more SIP or enforcement. They opened up knowing full well it probably was a bad idea, but hoping we would get lucky and pull it off. Once again, we see hope is not a strategy. Unfortunately, if our leaders don't think they can obtain compliance by persuasion and/or force, there is no viable alternative to what we are doing. If that is the case, the situation may become very ugly.

The data points presented on Sweden, which go well beyond what I first presented, are fairly decisive that the Swedish approach didn't work. One of the articles said as much (the one dated June 5th). It was a mistake not to lockdown the most vulnerable members of society. 

The reason for examining this experience, and the the suggestion of nuance, is simple. It isn't so much that persuasion or force won't work, but that we have run out of authority. The basic anti-authoritarian 'don't-tread-on-me', element in American culture is in full play now. The absence of Presidential leadership doesn't help, but it is also true that it runs very deep in this society. Generally, that's an aspect of the culture to be appreciated. However, no question it is a problem in a pandemic.

So you try to think of some way to finesse this situation. Generally speaking, the slow retreat being undertaken by Newsome and Abbot seems most practical.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Farm93 - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 06:58 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  The reason for examining this experience, and the the suggestion of nuance, is simple. It isn't so much that persuasion or force won't work, but that we have run out of authority. The basic anti-authoritarian 'don't-tread-on-me', element in American culture is in full play now. The absence of Presidential leadership doesn't help, but it is also true that it runs very deep in this society. Generally, that's an aspect of the culture to be appreciated. However, no question it is a problem in a pandemic.

So you try to think of some way to finesse this situation. Generally speaking, the slow retreat being undertaken by Newsome and Abbot seems most practical.

It was like driving a car with worn or defective brakes.   Given that some knew it would take a very long time to stop and if needed back up we were driving way too fast on an unfamiliar route.  Now our driver (Gov Newsom) knows there is a big problem, but some of the passengers are still screaming to drive faster.

We appear set to have a problem with COVID in July and August, when projections just 4 weeks ago had almost zero deaths per week in those months. 

If the USA can't navigate July and August properly, then October, November and December will be brutal.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - oregontim - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 06:58 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  

(06-28-2020, 04:46 PM)oregontim Wrote:  

The basic anti-authoritarian 'don't-tread-on-me', element in American culture is in full play now. The absence of Presidential leadership doesn't help, but it is also true that it runs very deep in this society.

I chose that specific chart to illustrate my point because it includes Canada and Australia also. My sense of Canada and Australia is that both have cultures roughly similar to our own regarding independence and anti-authoritarianism (that's not my expertise, so correct me if I'm wrong). And yet they managed to deal with this pandemic way better than we have. I think that despite our culture we would have done way better given the right leadership and the right messaging. And I'd hope we'd still be willing to pull together if we got the right message of unity from the right span of leaders. Of course not likely with this president, we all know that. But maybe starting in November?

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RE: The Swedish Experience - Goose - 06-28-2020

(06-28-2020, 08:01 PM)oregontim Wrote:  I chose that specific chart to illustrate my point because it includes Canada and Australia also. My sense of Canada and Australia is that both have cultures roughly similar to our own regarding independence and anti-authoritarianism (that's not my expertise, so correct me if I'm wrong). And yet they managed to deal with this pandemic way better than we have. I think that despite our culture we would have done way better given the right leadership and the right messaging. And I'd hope we'd still be willing to pull together if we got the right message of unity from the right span of leaders. Of course not likely with this president, we all know that. But maybe starting in November?

I am pretty sure you are wrong. I spend lots of time in Australia, and I have worked with the Canadian Forces in the past. Certainly in Australia there is a sense of obligation to society and to your fellow Australian that simply does not exist in the USA. My Australian friends have commented on this several times. The idea of individual rights is very much tied to individual obligation. Australians routinely put up with things their government (particularly the police) does that would never be tolerated in the US. That said, there is lots of rough and tumble in politics, and many Australians really don't like the "opposition party" much. Things are said that would get you in trouble in the US. At the end of the day however, they are remarkably cooperative with whatever the plan comes out to be.
From my experience in Canada, it is somewhat similar. There are definite differences between Eastern Canada, Western Canada, and British Columbia in how Canadians see themselves with respect to others. However, the sense of "Don't tread on me" isn't really there. There are lots of historical reasons for this, but Canadians basically complain about things a lot and then do as they are told.
However, IMHO that turns out not to be the real issue anyway. See below.

(06-28-2020, 06:58 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:  The reason for examining this experience, and the the suggestion of nuance, is simple. It isn't so much that persuasion or force won't work, but that we have run out of authority. The basic anti-authoritarian 'don't-tread-on-me', element in American culture is in full play now. The absence of Presidential leadership doesn't help, but it is also true that it runs very deep in this society. Generally, that's an aspect of the culture to be appreciated. However, no question it is a problem in a pandemic.



So you try to think of some way to finesse this situation. Generally speaking, the slow retreat being undertaken by Newsome and Abbot seems most practical.

I don't think the failure to bring the curve down is based on a political statement or a "don't tread on me" attitude. Yes, such people exist. However, the vast majority of the problem is IMHO people who just don't get it or that get it and just don't care. . In the Bay Area, where the "don't tread on me" political sentiment is absent almost entirely, we have tons of people crowding into bars, going to the beach, not maintaining social distance, and not wearing masks. The reopening of the beaches themselves was basically forced by the fact the authorities felt they couldn't control the crowds. I saw many Memorial Day family get-togethers in my own neighborhood that violated all the rules. Many people on this board  have pointed out things like the 20 people elbow to elbow at the Gelato shop, or my pointing at the bike riders clustered around a table at Starbucks.
If all the trouble was clustered in "Red States", I would agree it might be political. But that is not the case. We have lots of trouble right here in California.
I do believe that the states who opened up quickly (like Texas) did it more for economic reasons than political ones. It was just plain stupid. Some people are using personal freedom arguments to just do what they want. Many. many more are just going to the beach to hang out because they want to do so, and don't care at all about having any justification. In the US, most people don't much care if what they do is detrimental to the society as a whole. It isn't their problem. They probably won't get COVID-19, and if they do, they probably will survive. What the effects of such behavior on others via virus spread just doesn't matter. This attitude is partly are result of the fact that in the US we don't socially punish failure to conform to social norms nearly as much as is done in other societies. At times, that is an advantage, but in this case, it is not. We also don't accept the idea that federal troops/federal police in the streets to enforce a curfew is a normal and proper activity. Most EU nations do.
Yes, better leadership might help this problem a bit, but I think only a bit. Many of the people not following the SIP guidelines would tell you how socially responsible they are one minute and then turn around and do the opposite. Maybe when these people are scared enough that will affect their behavior. Until then, it won't. These people may eventually get with the program, but by then it may be very late in the game.

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RE: The Swedish Experience - akiddoc - 06-28-2020

"I don't think the failure to bring the curve down is based on a political statement or a "don't tread on me" attitude. Yes, such people exist. However, the vast majority of the problem is IMHO people who just don't get it or that get it and just don't care."

I think the don't tread on me attitude goes hand in hand with the just don't care attitude. And I think it is often political. 

In my small part of the Bay Area, compliance with social distancing and mask wearing is amazingly universal. My wife and I went to the farmer's market in Montclair Village (Oakland) today and I did not see a single person without a mask on. Even the little kids had them on - although most people did not have their kids there. All of the restaurants were allowing one customer at a time to come in and pick up their orders. One restaurant had outdoor tables - very far apart. Same story in Rite Aid - everyone with a mask, everyone keeping their distance. Maybe it's just my neighborhood. I'm not sure. I was sure happy to see that everyone cared about their neighbors. 

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