Karen frets about Swedish ICU capacity

A variety of friends on Facebook (mostly identifying as “women” and in their 50s) have been posting their concern regarding the wicked Swedes running out of ICU capacity, implicitly due to their failure to don the Church of Shutdown’s hijab and continuing to run (unmasked!) schools for everyone under 16.

(For the first time in the year since Covid-19 reached the U.S./Europe, the Swedes have some real restrictions, e.g., movie theaters and similar large “public” gatherings are shut down; our Swedish helicopter instructors says that his mom’s hair salon has been open continuously, however, and remains open. His parents still don’t own a mask. They would be discouraged from hosting a party for 30 people at their house, but it would not be illegal for them to do so. Unlike in Maskachusetts, Swedes need not tell the government when they’ve traveled or to where nor do they need to submit medical records to government authorities “on request”.)

An example post: “ICUs in Stockholm reach 99 percent capacity: report” (The Hill).

In the best American fashion, this article presents all of the information out of context. How many ICU beds are there in Sweden? How does that compare to what we have here in the U.S.? How does the number of Covid-19 patients in the ICU compare to what Sweden had back in the spring of 2020?

First, it seems that the number of ICU beds occupied by Covid-19 patients is actually only about half what it was during the April 2020 peak:

How does 259 ICU patients with Covid-19 in wicked Sweden compare to the situation in place that is a model of shutdown (9 months) and masks (7-8 months)? Maskachusetts currently has 309 Covid-19 patients in the ICU (state dashboard) or 1.7X the rate when adjusted for population.

Second, it looks as though Swedes don’t have that many hospital beds that they designated as “ICU”. Reuters, under a headline that directly contradicts the above (“ICU bends not full”):

Sweden still has 148 unoccupied beds in intensive care wards nationwide, corresponding to 22% free capacity, said Irene Nilsson-Carlsson, senior public health adviser at the National Health Board.

In other words, the entire country of more than 10 million people has about 675 hospital beds designated as “ICU”.

How does this compare to the U.S.? Here in Maskachusetts, population 7 million, we have 1,500 “ICU” beds in ordinary times and that is boosted to 2,700 for a “surge” (boston.com). Sweden would need 4,000 ICU beds to have the same number per person as Massachusetts.

How about the rest of the U.S.? It looks as though 70,000 adult ICU beds is the baseline (aha.org). That’s 212 beds per million residents of the U.S. Sweden has 66 ICU beds per million residents.

So… even without coronavirus, if the Swedes organized medicine the way that we do, 100 percent full ICU in Sweden would correspond to 31 percent full in the U.S.

See also Infidels in Sweden are refusing to die (April 21):

For True Believers in the Church of Shutdown, what Sweden is doing is merely a variant form of their own religion, just as Hinduism was for the Portuguese who spent an entire summer on the west coast of India in the late 15th century. So strong was their belief in Christianity that they believed Hindu temples to be churches (and Ganesha was Jesus with a big Jewish nose?). They attended Hindu religious rituals and believed that they were observing Christian practices.