Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture
Nov 8, 2020 16 tweets 16 min read Read on X
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.



Image
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… Image
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… Image
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… Image
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? Image
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… Image
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… Image
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… Image
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… Image
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… Image

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More from @AtomsksSanakan

Dec 9, 2024
@luckytran Bhattacharya' NIH nomination for 2025 is reminiscent of Scott Pruitt's EPA nomination for 2017:

Position a contrarian ideologue whose views contradict published evidence + expert assessments.

x.com/_johnbye/statu…
x.com/pjavidan/statu…

cnbc.com/2017/03/09/sco… Image
@luckytran In which Bhattacharya does the intellectual equivalent of claiming vaccine denialists are being unfairly persecuted because Andrew Wakefield's blog told him so

🤢

x.com/AlastairMcA30/…

x.com/AliNeitzelMD/s…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan… Image
@luckytran x.com/AtomsksSanakan…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan…

Bhattacharya, November 2020:

"What they're doing is focused protection, and you can see the result. The infection rates are going up in Sweden, but the death rates are not."
edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/vi…

ourworldindata.org/explorers/covi… Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 18, 2024
@luckytran No, 'focused protection' did not lead to herd immunity within 6 months in Florida.

"Florida, which adopted a focused-protection approach"
spiked-online.com/2021/08/02/the…

x.com/GidMK/status/1…

x.com/AtomsksSanakan…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan…

gbdeclaration.org/frequently-ask… Image
@luckytran When your main non-lockdown example... has a lockdown.

"announced a ban on public events of more than eight people"
web.archive.org/web/2020120111…

"upper secondary schools are again closing"
thelocal.se/20201203/swede…

x.com/DrKatrin_Rabie…

Bhattacharya:
gbdeclaration.org/frequently-ask… Image
Read 5 tweets
Nov 17, 2024
@luckytran Re: "Bhattacharya has spread disinformation on COVID"

You may want to support this claim, if you haven't already.

There are plenty of examples of him spreading misinformation.

For instance: on masking

x.com/AtomsksSanakan…
x.com/RobertoCast212…

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap… Image
@luckytran Promoting obvious disinformation about China's COVID-19 policy.

x.com/ResidingCynic/…
x.com/doritmi/status…

web.archive.org/web/2022010218… Image
@luckytran Saying a majority of Indians had "natural immunity" when the real number was ~25%, weeks before India suffered a large COVID-19 wave

x.com/GYamey/status/…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan… Image
Read 28 tweets
Feb 23, 2024
71/J

I recently got a copy of Dr. Judith Curry's book without buying it myself.

Looking over it confirmed to me that it's largely misinformation.

I'll illustrate that by assessing its claims on COVID-19.

x.com/AtomsksSanakan…

"11.3.1 COVID-19"
amazon.com/Climate-Uncert… Image
72/J

To reiterate: Curry draws parallels between COVID-19 + climate change.

But some of the sources she cites suggest an ideologically convenient narrative misinformed her.

That becomes clearer when assessing her claims.

x.com/AtomsksSanakan…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan… Image
73/J

No mention of the misinformation she + other contrarians promoted, and which conflicted with knowledge advances by experts.

(8/J - 12/J, 32J - 36/J, 44/J, 45/J, 63/J, etc.)

x.com/AtomsksSanakan…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan…
x.com/AtomsksSanakan… Image
Read 47 tweets
Feb 17, 2024
1/J

Dr. Judith Curry recommends people read at least the 45-page preview of her new book.

I did.

It's bad enough I wouldn't recommend buying the book.
It's largely contrarian conspiracist misinformation.




amazon.com/Climate-Uncert…
Image
Read 72 tweets
Aug 30, 2023
PapersOfTheDay

"Executive Summary to the Royal Society report “COVID-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions”"


"Effectiveness of face masks for reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2: [...]"
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
Jefferson + Heneghan don't like the papers.

Makes sense they wouldn't given their track record, especially Jefferson on the Cochrane mask review he led.







brownstone.org/articles/royal…



cochrane.org/news/statement…
Image
Read 5 tweets

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