Shutdown Karens throw rocks at Sweden

by philg

“Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale” (NYT, today):

Its decision to carry on in the face of the pandemic has yielded a surge of deaths without sparing its economy from damage — a red flag as the United States and Britain move to lift lockdowns.

This is what has happened: Not only have thousands more people died than in neighboring countries that imposed lockdowns, but Sweden’s economy has fared little better.

“They literally gained nothing,” said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “It’s a self-inflicted wound, and they have no economic gains.”

The elevated death toll resulting from Sweden’s approach has been clear for many weeks. What is only now emerging is how Sweden, despite letting its economy run unimpeded, has still suffered business-destroying, prosperity-diminishing damage, and at nearly the same magnitude of its neighbors.

Elevated death toll? Compared to what? The New York Times never lets on that IHME forecasts roughly the same death rate from Covid-19 for the U.S. and Sweden through October 1. They also don’t compare Sweden’s death rate to the U.K.’s (in Month 4 of shutdown?), Belgium, or Spain!

How do we know that the Church of Shutdown is a religion? The parishioners at the New York Times look at the graph of daily deaths in the US, the UK, and Sweden, smoothed over 7 days for reporting, and adjusted for population. The Religion of Shutdown tells them that it is obvious from these apparently similar curves which of these countries should be considered a “cautionary tale”.

“They literally gained nothing,” says the economist quoted in the article? This is a perfect illustration of the old adage that an economist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. How about this for a partial list:

  • Swedish children gained three months of education while American children were imprisoned in crummy apartments. Swedish children gained three months of playing with friends on playgrounds while American children were watching TV.
  • Swedish adults gained four months of work experience while Americans are now in Month 4 of cashing government checks, drinking alcohol, and smoking marijuana from the “essential” marijuana stores.
  • Swedish adults gained four months of time at the gym while Americans gained four months of being sedentary except for trips to the fridge every 15 minutes.
  • Swedes of all ages gained four months of socializing with other humans. That’s valuable if your goal as a human is something more than staring at a screen.
  • Swedes of all ages gained not having to watch people come out of lockdown to riot, loot, and burn their cities.
  • Swedes of all ages gained the advantage of a society in which fewer people hate each other. With no mask law, people can’t hate each other for mask rule interpretation. Without a belief that government policy will determine the outcome of a viral epidemic, the Swedes can’t hate those who voted for a different political party.

The article includes a portrait of the unmasked unrepentant infidels (from the perspective of the Church of Shutdown):

Photos like these will be the modern Rake’s Progress?

With the same death rate plus all of the educational, developmental, inequality, unemployment, and social ills of six months of lockdown (or partial lockdown), if Sweden is a “cautionary tale” what is the U.S.?

Some stats…

Sweden reported 0 Covid-19 deaths on Sunday and Monday to the WHO and 13 today. That averages to 4 Covid-19 deaths in a country of 10 million people. Here in the success story of Maskachusetts (population 7 million), there are roughly 15 deaths per day on a steady basis (July 7 report). Massachusetts will exceed 8,000 total deaths by tomorrow. Sweden is at 5,433 (i.e., less than half the total death rate, adjusted for population).

Swedish ICUs are emptying out:

This data nerd says that Stockholm reached “herd immunity” quite some time ago (though, remember that herd immunity was not a goal of the Swedish policy, but only a byproduct). Given how people tweaked their behavior, e.g., trying to stand farther apart and avoiding mass gatherings, the herd immunity threshold, he claims, is when roughly 6-10 percent of the population comes up positive on the antibody tests (remember that not everyone is susceptible to begin with).

Related:

  • “Big differences in mortality in spring 2020 based on country of birth”: People born in Somalia, Syria and Iraq, who are likely to be weakly established in Sweden, had a marked increase in mortality compared to people born in Sweden, the EU, the Nordic countries or North America in the spring of 2020 (Figure 2). A similar picture, but offset in time, is seen even if Stockholm County is excluded (not shown). In the age group 40–64 years, in March – May 2020, 122 deaths occurred in immigrant groups that are likely to be weakly established in Sweden, compared with an average of 38.5 in 2016–2019, a death rate of 220 percent. In the same age group, 1 percent lower mortality was seen among people born in Sweden, the EU, the Nordic countries or North America. Among those over the age of 65, there was the same excess mortality in the group with probable weak establishment (220 percent), but also some mortality (19 percent) among those born in Sweden, the EU, the Nordic countries or North America. (From Google Translate; the gist is that Sweden’s numbers may look uglier than some neighbors’ because Sweden has more low-skill migrants and these migrants have off-the-charts Covid-19 mortality.)

19 thoughts on “Shutdown Karens throw rocks at Sweden”

  2. In between excoriations of Sweden the coronafaithful are exultant over the righteous retribution inflicted on a prominent doubter: among many similar headlines, “After playing down coronavirus threat, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro tests positive“. For the faithful, catching the virus disproves claim of its mildness uttered by the catcher. Perhaps someone more conversant with this logic will come along to explain how it makes sense.

    Bolsonaro must now be terrified of facing the same ordeal as Boris Johnson. Three days of “intensive care” with no ventilator or invasive treatment; then a few days rest and “very good progress” recovering; resumption of duties beginning a week later. How horrible.

  3. Bolsonaro is age 65, and the case fatality rate is supposed to be around 1% for that age in Brazil (though apparently weighted heavily by genetics and comorbidity).

    • Germans, actually.

      Swedes would rather say Gud med oss. They just culturally appropriated it from Germans in 1618.

  6. Phil,
    Unlike me, you are a man of science so i have a question: which do you think is less of a science, economics or epidemiology. I think what differentiates scientific knowledge from other kinds of knowledge is the ability to make accurate predictions about the future. So the scientists tell us that water will at sea level boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit & that knowledge enables us to accurately predict the future. So where do you think epidemiology and economics fit in under that definition? I mean the economist/pundit Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize and that sounds like science to me but he does not seem any more able to accurately predict the future than a broken clock. And then there is epidemiology, which as you have pointed out has not exactly covered itself in glory over the last few months & presumably never did except that up until now no one paid it a lot of attention. So where do you come out on the question which discipline is less of a science, epidemiology or economics?

    • Jack: I’m not a “scientist”! The only way that a computer programmer can be called a “scientist” in our media is when the journalist identifies the coder as a “woman” or a “person of color”. But, from my humble programmer/engineer’s perspective, I will try to answer your question. Indeed, Krugman’s track record is poor. He predicted a major economic/market collapse due to the dictator Trump arriving at the Reichstag. We have had an economic collapse, of course, and it occurred during Trump’s reign, but Krugman never said anything about a virus!

      Microeconomics is pretty close to a science, I think. They can make predictions, e.g., what consumers will do if the price of beef doubles, that are fairly accurate. Macroeconomics is closer to a religion, as you’ve seen with Krugman (high taxes and a planned economy will make us rich!). I think it is a mistake to lump micro and macro into the same field. Maybe universities should have two departments: Microeconomics and Wealth Prophecy.

      Epidemiology? I think the field itself has been mostly devoted to studying what happened in the past and using that to make predictions regarding the future. Some epidemiologists went off the reservation (as Elizabeth Warren might say) in 2020 to make predictions regarding coronaplague without any basis. The virus was new. The idea of shutting down a global economy was new. So most epidemiologist probably said “We don’t have anything to contribute to this until a year or two from now when we can go to work with our traditional analytical tools.” There were some who confidentially made prophecies and brought ridicule down on the field, but it might not be fair to say that epidemiology is a joke because Neil Ferguson made inaccurate predictions.

    • Reminds me of a funny joke. Why was economics invented? Answer – to make astrology look good.

      @Philg – you are far too humble. And damn good insights on micro vs macro econ, as well as epidemiology. Thanks.

    • Microeconomics is pretty close to a science, I think. They can make predictions, e.g., what consumers will do if the price of beef doubles, that are fairly accurate. Macroeconomics is closer to a religion, as you’ve seen with Krugman (high taxes and a planned economy will make us rich!). I think it is a mistake to lump micro and macro into the same field. Maybe universities should have two departments: Microeconomics and Wealth Prophecy.

      This combines two things that right wingers repeat a lot on the internet – a preference for micro over macro and a hatred of Paul Krugman. I wonder how those two got started. I doubt that Krugman has claimed that high taxes and a planned economy would make everyone rich. If such a statement was an expression of religious belief, so would a claim that lower taxes would lead to higher prosperity. Of course, it’s interesting that this should come up as part of a discussion on Sweden which famously has very high taxes and a high standard of living.

    • Regarding this:

      He predicted a major economic/market collapse due to the dictator Trump arriving at the Reichstag. We have had an economic collapse, of course, and it occurred during Trump’s reign, but Krugman never said anything about a virus!

      Predicting the future is no easy matter. Trump was inaugurated and a deep recession followed, just as Krugman predicted. Things like viruses and masks are minor details and outside of his field.

    • Average salary in Sweden 2019: 35500 kr, which is roughly $3550 per month or $40200 per year. You will pay a few percent more than 30% tax on that, except on the first $1000 earned.

      Average US salaries is claimed by the BLS to be $48516 per year. Taxes: you figure it out.

      (That means Swedes make on average 82% of Americans, pre-tax for both.)

    • Krugman used to be cool but once he got that NYT column he completely flipped out. As a prognosticator … well, he leaves something to be desired.

  7. Elevated death toll? Compared to what?

    The answer to the question is right in the NYT article.

    Per million people, Sweden has suffered 40 percent more deaths than the United States, 12 times more than Norway, seven times more than Finland and six times more than Denmark.

    Just a few weeks ago, their death rate was 3 times the Danish death rate and seven times that of Norway.

    • I told a Swedish friend who was jeering at Trump’s Fascist America the same, and he reluctantly had to agree. However, from what I can see Phil is looking at individual states rather than the sub-continent as a whole.

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