125 new #covid19sverige deaths reported this week and 35302 new confirmed infections for the 7 days until Thursday, decreases of about 7.5% compared to the previous 7-day period.
Total deaths now 14048.
Adjusting for date of death and reporting lag, deaths are at about 20/day.
By comparison, that's almost 3 times as many deaths as our Nordic neighbours reported in the past week - combined.
And about 4 times as many confirmed cases - combined.
While Sweden has dropped just below 500 cases/million/day, we continue to be one of the worst hit countries in the world. Out of countries with more than 1 million population, currently only Bahrain (pop 1.4 mill) and Uruguay (pop 3.5 mill) are doing worse per capita than Sweden.
Swedish social media has been full of defences for this, primarily claiming that Sweden is finding more cases due to more testing.
One way of controlling for this is to look at the positivity rate - what percent of tests return a positive result, ie a "case".
If cases are increasing because of more testing, so you're catching more of them, then the positivity rate should be declining.
This is not the case, and we still far exceed our Nordic neighbours, and far above the WHO benchmark of 5% - indicating Sweden is not testing enough.
For a comparison of what large scale testing actually means -
Sweden reported conducting 316107 tests in Week 16.
Denmark is conducting approx 400000 to 500000 tests *a day*, a combination of PCR tests and rapid antigen tests.
The decline in cases in Swede, albeit slow, is however good news and has been apparent for more than a week now, so it would appear to be real, and hopefully sustained.
There are however some concerning signs in Stockholm, with a slight uptick in the last few days. Something to keep an eye on when new data comes in next week.
Hospitalisation rates continue to decline, however ICU appears to have plateaued somewhat. (graph @covidxix)
Over 80% of 70+ yr olds and more than 50% of 60-69yr olds now having received at least 1 vaccine dose, and nearly a third of all adults. We should continue to see a decline in transmission rates, and mortality should start to reflect this over the next week.
Remember though, this virus is not just about mortality. Sweden's case rate continues to be far above the European average.
35000 new cases/wk means 3500 new people with long term health issues. 14000 *new* a month. This will have ongoing massive negative effects on society.
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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.
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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*.
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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. 🤷♂️
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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)
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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.
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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🧵
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(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.
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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.
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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.
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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.