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David Steadson 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
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5 Jan, 15 tweets, 5 min read
A few days ago I outlined my concerns about Anders Tegnell's lack of training and experience in statistics and it's affect on his ability to operate effectively as Sweden's Chief Epidemiologist.

We already know he didn't understand R - the reproduction number - with emails from early on in the pandemic revealing him asking colleagues how it works.

And later in an interview claiming simultaneously that the spread of infection was increasing, but R was below 1.

This of course makes no sense.

omni.se/tegnell-om-utv…
Today we can add another concern regarding another basic concept in epidemiology - "community spread".

Tegnell today reported that Sweden has found several cases of the UK variant of the pandemic virus, including one that they cannot trace to the UK.

The definition of community spread is that you have found a case with no known connection to another case or to travel from a country with known cases.

They have found such a case. We have, by definition, community spread of the new variant in Sweden.

bit.ly/38goDmA
This is the usual definition of the term, and you'll find it in used in this way throughout this pandemic when the first case of community spread has been detected.

bing.com/search?q=first…
Later in the press conference, Erik Nilsson from @ttnyhetsbyran follow this up, asking if there's a case with unknown source, how is that not community spread?
Tegnell goes on to define "community spread" as meaning the virus has taken over from other variants.

That's a whole new definition.
Where he might be getting confused - perhaps as a bureaucrat - is that WHO and ECDC has a surveillance classification called "community transmission" when discussing regions as a whole, not cases.

It's defined as follows -
ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/su…
Community transmission: Countries/area/territories experiencing larger outbreaks of local transmission defined through an assessment of factors including, but not limited to:
* Large numbers of cases not linked to transmission chains
* High proportion of SARS-CoV-2 positive cases from sentinel lab surveillance
* Multiple unrelated clusters in several areas of the country/territory/area

ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/su…
This is not the same as the standard epidemiological term community spread nor is it the same as his new definition of it meaning the variant has taken over.

Perhaps he just playing his usual role as Pappa Sweden, ensuring we don't worry?

#anderstegnell #hobbyepidemiologist
Addendum: I missed that @Benjaministern from @Bulletin_Nu hit Tegnell further on this. Tegnell says that they're doing enough testing they'd see if there was community spread.

Dr Wellander presses further pointing out Denmark has said they have community spread on few cases and asks how much testing Sweden is doing.

Tegnell replies he doesn't know (!!!!) and then says it's enough to know it's not like the spread in the UK (!!!!!!!!!!!)
Want a job as Sweden's Chief Epidemiologist, @Benjaministern?

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More from @DavidSteadson

David Steadson 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
6 Jan
Long thread incoming!

So as I reported earlier, I tested positive for Covid on Tuesday. I thought I'd explain the process that has occurred with testing and contact tracing. This is applicable to my region only (Uppsala), but is similar for all over Sweden.
I hope this gives some insight in to how Sweden is handling the Covid crisis. (hint: badly)
On Saturday, my wife started experiencing symptoms. Coughing and feeling of burning up along with fatigue. No temperature.

Sunday evening, despite having had #longcovid symptoms for nearly 10 months including a cough and SPO2 problems I began to experience additional symptoms.
Read 31 tweets
David Steadson 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
5 Jan
258 new #covid19sverige deaths reported today, taking the total to 8985. As noted earlier, this data is not even close to up to date due to holidays. Oldest change +1 to Nov 7. Additions to every day from Dec 9. Current peaks 83 on Dec 10 and Dec 14. 35 deaths with no date.
For new followers, each line on the graphs is the data as reported on a particular day. New reports update the data on many previous days, hence the curve keeps changing. Not understanding this leads to believing a plateau has been reached when in fact it is just an artefact.
This is even more apparent when we look at the rolling 7-day average of deaths per day. It always looks as if things are improving. As data updates, you can find it was an illusion. Current peak at 76 on Dec 16 and 17, up from 71.
Read 13 tweets
David Steadson 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
3 Jan
Here's what gets me about so so so many people and their response to the Swedish pandemic failure.

This is literally true ....

Sweden: We want the virus to spread
Norway: We want to stop the virus spreading

And then people are wondering why more people died in Sweden?
Was it immigrants? Population density? Age structure? Poor aged care? Timing of holidays? "Dry tinder" etc etc etc etc

There's a new freaking excuse every week or two.
Here, again, is the Deputy Chief Epidemiologist of Sweden

"The disadvantage of a complete lockdown is that there is not so much spread of infection ..."

Get that? Low spread of the virus is a *disadvantage*.

Read 6 tweets
David Steadson 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
2 Jan
@bills_n_thrills points out another complete lie from Anders Tegnell about the Sweden's place in Europe.

He states, unequivocally, that Sweden was lowest in Europe during summer.
Here is the daily mortality data for the Northern European Countries during summer.

At no point is Sweden the lowest of even it's neighbours
Even if we take cases, at a time when Sweden was testing *way* less than most other countries, Sweden also fails to come even close to being lowest.
Read 4 tweets
David Steadson 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
2 Jan
In today's Folkhälsomyndigheten preference conference, when Tegnell was asked why Sweden differs so much from our neighbours, he said it was our neighbours that were the outliers, Sweden was similar to the rest of Europe.

Here's how Sweden looks like compared to the EU average.
When @AnneliMegnerArn pointed out that Sweden was actually one of the worst in Europe, he then said it was because we were in a different phase to the other countries, having started wave 2 later.

In reality, we're far higher than the *peak* EU average of cases.
So Tegnell's excuse changed from "we're like the rest of Europe, not the Nordics" to "we're not like the rest of Europe" within the space of about 90 seconds.

When any excuse will do, any excuse will do - and this has been constant over the last 10 months.
Read 4 tweets
David Steadson 🇦🇺🇸🇪🇪🇺🌍 Profile picture
1 Jan
Non-Swedish followers are probably not aware, but this week in a "cultural" piece, Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, when asked what the "Year's pandemic" was, answered "hobby epidemiologists".
So let's talk about Anders Tegnell and epidemiology.

Epidemiology is the study of patterns of disease (and health) in a society. While today we're all discussing it re a virus, it applies also to studies of things like alcohol abuse, obesity etc, not just communicable diseases.
What is the #1 field of skill and knowledge needed in epidemiology?

In my opinion, statistics. Now, statistics alone is not enough, but it is *necessary* to have a reasonably good handle on statistics to understand (or do) epidemiology.
Read 17 tweets

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