One thing I'm happy to see is someone finally doing the hard math on excess mortality and taking in to account Swedish mortality is decreasing and was much lower than normal in the weeks before CV19 hit, and that the death toll may be as much as 40% higher than currently reported
On a quick read through they estimated significantly lower IFR than FHM found in an early report, which is interesting. -
Overall, the IFR for Sweden in scenarios (a)–(e) is estimated to 0.46; 0.44; 0.42; 0.34 and 0.30 %, respectively
(scenario d was best fit)
This unsourced claim raised my eyebrows though -
"The policy and measures were less stringent and economically damaging compared with those introduced in other Scandinavian countries"
Are you sure about that?
Most important though, this paper reinforces what I've been saying all along. The "Swedish model" shows that this virus is actually *very* amenable to NPIs. The relatively moderate interventions Sweden introduced had a dramatic effect on the virus spread.
It would be interesting to see them repeat the exercise with the other Nordic countries, for comparison. What seems apparent from them is that, with the right timing *just a little bit more* can have an ever bigger effect and decrease morbidity and mortality significantly.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
As many of you know, my eldest son has had Long Covid since January 2021. He turned 18 a week ago, and for the last 3 years has essentially been housebound. He's doing high school as a distance course on a reduced load.
>
What you may not know is he has a younger brother, now 13. He doesn't appear to have Long Covid, but is home today sick. Again. He's coughing badly and headache. He seems to be getting sick *all the time*.
>
We took him to the Doctor about this at the end of last year, they found nothing wrong in various standard tests, and, to quote the letter after all these tests "ended the investigation".
So that was that. Doesn't matter he's sick, as long as the standard tests are OK. 🤷♂️
>
This PISSES ME OFF. The Nobel Prize festival tonight, with amongst others @kkariko and Drew Weissman receiving the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
F**cking Anders Tegnell is invited, and says the vaccine saved at least 500000 lives in Europe
Here's the truth about Tegnell ->
March 17 2020 -
At a press conference Tegnell says that vaccines against Covid are at least 5-10 years away. It's one of the justifications for Sweden's "sustainable" approach (and of course, the herd immunity goal)
>
March 16 2020 -
The day *before* Tegnell's press conference saying vaccines were 5-10 years away, the first human was injected with the new Moderna vaccine.
>
A lot of talk about @Karl_Lauterbach's recent talk referencing 3% risk of Long Covid, so I've done a new version of my Cumulative Risk of Developing Long Covid graph, below, incorporating this figure. I'm not sure which study he was referencing.
Some important caveats in the🧵
>
(1) The graph assumes that risk from any particular infection neither increases nor decreases. Much like the odds of rolling a 6 remain the same each dice roll, but the more you roll, the more likely you'll eventually get a six. I've seen studies supporting both directions.
>
Note that cumulative risk will *always* increase until or unless the per-infection risk goes to zero, which there is currently no evidence to suggest ever happens. If risk decreases, the curves will rise slower. If it increases, they rise quicker
A recent Swedish study out on risk of Covid infection and severe Covid by profession, using data from Oct20-Dec21 (h/t @WicMar)
No surprise, the most likely to be infected - Prison Guards. After that things get interesting for the Swedish narrative ...
> sjweh.fi/article/4103
HALF of the top 10 riskiest occupations for Covid infection were in occupations working with children, with daycare and primary school teachers at second and third.
Who's not on the list? High school teachers. Sweden closed high schools.
>
This should be no surprise to those paying attention. Way back in August 2020, despite false claims by Sweden's Public Health Authority about no school transmissions, their own data showed primary school teachers more at risk than those working remote
> x.com/DavidSteadson/…
Nearly a year ago I posted this graph based on elementary probability mathematics (and for which I was viciously attacked)
At the time there was a lot of differing information about Long Covid prevalence, and in particular the effects of vaccines, variants, and reinfections.
>
This week a new study was published in @jama that estimates risk of Long Covid on first infection at 9.7%. For those with multiple infections, the estimate was just over 20% - exactly what the 10% risk grey line in the graph above suggests for people with 2 to 3 infections.
Full study here. It's primarily a (very worthy, imo) effort to offer a more rigid clinical diagnosis definition for Long Covid.