jaymeister15 wrote:hankscorpioLA wrote:jaymeister15 wrote:
That would be fair to call a catastrophe. If Sweden's healthcare system is overrun and they have around 13k deaths by June 1st, I would agree their decision was bad and I was completely wrong.
On the other side, what would Sweden have to look like on June 1st for you to acknowledge that they might have it right?
Under 8,000 would be a big win. Over 13,000 would be a big loss. In between those two numbers it could get a little muddy.
But even then...it depends what lens you want to use. California, with 4X Sweden's population, has reported 500 fewer deaths, despite being one of the earliest locations of community spread. If California was on Sweden's trend, there would already be 10,000 dead and the IHME would be projecting 60,000 dead by August.
So do we look at the 5-10,000 lives that Sweden could have saved with a stricter lockdown or the 60,000 more that California could have lost with a looser one?
It’s now June 2nd. The projection you were using to predict doom for Sweden that suggested 13k deaths and an overrun hospital system by June 1st was completely off. Even the 8k number you said would be considered a big win was way too high.
Total number of deaths as of today is 4,468, with the vast majority being over the age of 70 and the overall majority being in long term care homes. I’m sure their government would agree that long term care homes were handled poorly, just like they were here.
133 people under the age of 60 have passed away with only 12 people under 50, almost all with underlying conditions. The hospital system has stayed below capacity.
Would it now be safe to say you might have been wrong about the consequences their decision to stay open would have?
Yes. I was wrong. I thought that we would see a much faster spread than we have. This is also true for states like Georgia and Florida that have not seen the kind of dramatic spikes that many predicted.
It appears there are several reasons for this.
The first is the determination that almost all transmission has been due to inhalation of droplets. Early on there was a lot of concern about indirect spread via surfaces and from particles remaining in the air for extended period of time. That has proven to be much less of a threat.
This appears to be due to other findings regarding viral load. Essentially, it appears that the severity of the infection is related to how many droplets are inhaled. This helps explain the significant variation in we see, from those who have no symptoms to those with very severe ones.
We also know that the period during which a person is contagious is fairly short. While the time from infection to full recovery (or death) is typically at least three weeks, and often significantly longer, a person is only highly contagious for about 5-6 days.
What all this means is that, by following a few key social distancing protocols, it should be possible to contain the spread of the virus to a level that does not exceed the capacity of the health care system.
So yes...I was wrong. But no, that doesn't mean it was wrong to shut down the economy and that doesn't mean Sweden was right. It just means they weren't as wrong as we thought they were.
