Outside the Beltway

Outside the Beltway

Remember Sweden?

One of these things is not like the others.

Steven L. Taylor
8

Comments

Remember back when a major right-wing media talking point (one that I heard repeated by a colleague just recently) that Sweden’s approach to Covid-19 (i.e., not engaging in a shut down) was proving the rest of the world wrong? Well, as James Joyner noted a while ago, that ended up not being the case.

The latest evidence to this point is pretty stark:

Source

There is whole lot more comparative data at the link under the map.

Here’s the whole world for comparison (also via the link above):

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8 responses to “Remember Sweden?”

  1. JohnMcC Avatar
    JohnMcC

    The things you don’t know until you look at a map! What’s up with Chili? And Saudi Arabia! Who’s doing the counting there? And I would have guessed that the Philippines would be dark brown unless there’s a real surprise in who gets to keep the roll.

    But Sweden? No surprises!

    Thank you, Dr T.

  2. OzarkHillbilly Avatar
    OzarkHillbilly

    Stupid is as stupid does.

  3. Slugger Avatar
    Slugger

    We should be grateful that Sweden took a different tack than Norway, Denmark, and Finland. This gives us a chance to analyze strategies for the next pandemic which will certainly occur.
    Maps based on area give misleading information. They should be normalized for population. US political maps make Montana, populated by four guys named Ennis, look more important than Connecticut, populated by a million guys named Bryce.

    8
  4. gVOR08 Avatar
    gVOR08

    @Slugger:

    US political maps make Montana, populated by four guys named Ennis, look more important than Connecticut, populated by a million guys named Bryce.

    One of my (many) pet peeves is tthe usual excuse that well of course Ds are under-represented, they insist on crowding into cities so of course they’re all jammed together into a few districts. All redistricting should be done on cartographs with square inches on paper representing population, not acreage.

    3
  5. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @Slugger:

    Montana, populated by four guys named Ennis, look more important than Connecticut, populated by a million guys named Bryce.

    I laughed out loud at this one. Well done.

    1
  6. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @gVOR08: Redistricting is done via population, not acreage.

    1
  7. A Engholm Avatar
    A Engholm

    @JohnMcC:
    It’s not a map of covid infections, but of Covid *test*, and it further doesn’t seem to be adjusted for population. Sweden has *tripled* the amount of tests the last week, so you get more “case notifications” while in reality infections have dropped.N Sweden has very little population for instance, so without population adjustment single cases makes it shine “red”.
    There are lies, damn lies, statistics and corona statistics…

    –AE

  8. Joakim Wahlström Avatar
    Joakim Wahlström

    Hi, Swedish here. These curves are totally insignificant, because they only mirror the amount of people being tested. Sweden has started to ramp up testing like crazy in the last two weeks. In most parts it is now free for anyone to get a Covid19 test and/or a anti-body test. This means that the amount of reported has risen sharply, since the amount of tested people has gone up 2-3x times in just 2 weeks time. It does not mean that spread is increasing. The peak was around April 11.

    The only 3 important metrics are:
    1) deaths due to corona <- dropping steadily
    2) ICU patients due to corona <- dropping steadily
    3) excess deaths compared from earlier years. <- since beginning of June, no excess deaths.

    3 is most important. It means that no more people are dying per day now during the same week the previous years, 2015, 2016,. 2017. 2018 or 2019. I.e the years before the Corona virus existed.

    I thin this article is very misleading.
    Sincerely,
    Joakim

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