Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
Christian; Science, Denialism Debunked, Philosophy, Manga, Death Metal, Pokémon, Immunology FTW; Fan of Bradford Hill + Richard Joyce; Consilience of evidence

Nov 8, 2020, 16 tweets

1/S

Sweden did not lockdown in response to COVID-19. Many politically-motivated COVID-19 contrarians try to support Sweden's policy by making misleading comparisons between Sweden + other countries. This thread will address that.



2/S

On average, it takes a virus less time to spread thru + kill 50% of a population of 10 people vs. 50% of a population of 10,000 people.

So smaller populations have less time for public health changes, behavior changes, etc. to limit their COVID-19 deaths per capita.

3/S

Also, on average, it takes less time for a virus to spread thru a smaller geographical area.

So microstates' combination of smaller geographical area and smaller population make them a poor, apples-to-oranges comparison to Sweden.

ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

4/S

Italy, Spain, + Belgium suffered from the pandemic earlier than did Sweden. So those 3 countries has less time to improve treatments, learn lessons from the responses of other countries, etc., than did Sweden.

So, again, apples-to-oranges comparison

ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

5/S

Belgium also counts deaths differently from others, in a way that relatively increases Belgium's estimate COVID-19 deaths.

npr.org/2020/05/01/848…
reuters.com/article/health…
bbc.com/news/world-eur…
euronews.com/2020/04/22/ana…

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

washingtonpost.com/world/europe/w…

7/S

So an ideal comparison to Sweden would be a country with:

- population and geographical size in the same vicinity as Sweden
- similar timing of the pandemic (being geographically near Sweden would help with that)
- prompt, relatively strong lockdown

So who fits that list?

8/S

Thus, comparing Sweden to other Nordic countries makes sense, even though Denmark is at a disadvantage due to a smaller population + smaller geographic size.

2019 population (in millions):
Sweden - 10.2
Denmark - 5.8
Finland - 5.5
Norway - 5.3

google.com/maps/place/Eur…

9/S

There are other benefits to selecting Nordic countries as a comparison to Sweden, such as some similar economic, climate, etc. factors impacting countries located so close to one another + sharing cultural/historical ties.

web.archive.org/web/2020062501…

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

10/S

So how does Sweden fare in comparison to other Nordic countries?

Disastrously.

That's why so many COVID-19 / lockdown contrarians evade that comparison, including by making apples-to-oranges comparison to microstates, Italy, etc.

ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

11/S

Just remember that the next time politically-motivated COVID-19 contrarians use misleading comparisons to defend Sweden's no-lockdown response to COVID-19.

There's a reason Sweden is such an outlier in its region:

ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

13/S

And appealing to excess mortality won't help contrarians, since Sweden did worse there as well.



euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

economist.com/graphic-detail…
archive.is/hD8rM
ft.com/content/a2901c…
bbc.com/news/world-530…

ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess…

14/S

Appealing to the economy won't help, since Sweden didn't do much better than its Nordic neighbors.



web.archive.org/web/2020070811…
web.archive.org/web/2020062901…

Quarter 2, GDP growth rate:
Sweden: -8.3%
Denmark: -8.5%
Finland: -5.2%
web.archive.org/web/2020081602…

16/S

Even Sweden's government now knows better.

“Sweden on Monday announced a ban on public events of more than eight people [...]."
swedishchamber.nl/news/sweden-ba…
thelocal.se/20201116/break…





ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-da…

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