Don’t believe the propaganda in Sweden

Someone made a tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/Fleur_Ru1...20804010225665

“ People keep comparing Sweden to their neighboring countries. But what if we compare their deaths to the deaths they had in the same period in previous years?”

Please **DO NOT** drink the kool-aid.

1. Per Worldometer, most of the deaths occurred in March & April

https://www.worldometers.info/corona...ountry/sweden/

So looking at July numbers is simply bait and switch

2. You look at expectations

Image if you bought car insurance; each year that you didn’t have an accident, the insurance premium paid would be a waste of money. Then one day, due to no fault of your own, some nutcase who couldn’t drive rear ends your car. Now, that’s when insurance has value (you need insurance in place for it to have value).

Same thing with Wuhan Virus in Sweden, July numbers is just calm before the potential October storm. People naively believe in unimodal distribution (e.g. there’s *only* one peak in the distribution); there’s no rule saying the distribution couldn’t be bimodal (two peaks), etc.

Look at a place like Montana where it has a bimodal distribution and the current peak clearly dwarfs the earlier peak. So looking at the first peak gave you a false sense of security.

3. You need to look at relative numbers as well. Sweden at 573 deaths per million make it 13th on the list; not something to be proud of.

On Wall Street, we had a saying: “Some people invest by looking in the rear mirror.” When you are driving to a new destination, you want to look forward, not based on the rear mirror.

Addendum:

1. When your sickest population dies first, you are left with the more robust or resilient population; these resilient people are less likely to die. This is known in statistics as survivorship bias.

2. You don’t have an apples to apples comparison: Sweden medical professionals were inexperienced in March / April dealing with Wuhan Virus such that by July these medical people had a ton of experience to better treat the victims and thus have lower death rates.

Another addendum

1) the graphs are Year to Date Numbers, e.g. from Jan to July of each year so you had to be smart and pick up the bait and switch: they were little or no Wuhan Virus deaths in Jan & Feb of this year so the YTD serves as a smoothing function.

Like I stated earlier, the Swedish gov’t needs to show the months of March & April separately OR stop the lies and just show YTD from March to July for those years and omit the 2 months (Jan & Feb) where Wuhan Virus was not a factor in 2020.

It’s amazing how the Swedish gov’t would lie and try to hide the facts. You want an apples to apples comparison.

2) Taiwan had no lockdowns and deaths per million was 0.3. Sweden clocking in at 573 deaths per million is an embarrassment to the Sweden people.

The main difference is Taiwan learned from SARS 20 years ago and mandated masks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ex-AP

Another addendum

1) the graphs are Year to Date Numbers, e.g. from Jan to July of each year so you had to be smart and pick up the bait and switch: they were little or no Wuhan Virus deaths in Jan & Feb of this year so the YTD serves as a smoothing function.

Like I stated earlier, the Swedish gov’t needs to show the months of March & April separately OR stop the lies and just show YTD from March to July for those years and omit the 2 months (Jan & Feb) where Wuhan Virus was not a factor in 2020.

It’s amazing how the Swedish gov’t would lie and try to hide the facts. You want an apples to apples comparison.

2) Taiwan had no lockdowns and deaths per million was 0.3. Sweden clocking in at 573 deaths per million is an embarrassment to the Sweden people.

The main difference is Taiwan learned from SARS 20 years ago and mandated masks.

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Add to Taiwan...it was more than mandating masks...

They shut down flights from Wuhan to Taiwan on Dec. 29 and reported what they were seeing to the WHO, to no effect ( WHO does not recognize Taiwan). When you arrived by air or boat in Taiwan you are automatically quarantined for 14 days. They have a special Uber just for that purpose- airport straight to your house stay. They give you a location app on your phone to track that you are in your quarantine location. Someone checks on you each day, all 14 days. If you not there.... $10,000 fine. Also, it helps that Taiwan is an island, so they were able to control the ins and outs. Yes, they learned big time 18 years ago. When you arrive to passport control at the international airport, there’s a nursing temperature station check for all passengers. If you light up you don’t get to passport control. I’ve passed the temperature check many times.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jpfromla

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ex-AP

Another addendum

1) the graphs are Year to Date Numbers, e.g. from Jan to July of each year so you had to be smart and pick up the bait and switch: they were little or no Wuhan Virus deaths in Jan & Feb of this year so the YTD serves as a smoothing function.

Like I stated earlier, the Swedish gov’t needs to show the months of March & April separately OR stop the lies and just show YTD from March to July for those years and omit the 2 months (Jan & Feb) where Wuhan Virus was not a factor in 2020.

It’s amazing how the Swedish gov’t would lie and try to hide the facts. You want an apples to apples comparison.

2) Taiwan had no lockdowns and deaths per million was 0.3. Sweden clocking in at 573 deaths per million is an embarrassment to the Sweden people.

The main difference is Taiwan learned from SARS 20 years ago and mandated masks.

---

Add to Taiwan...it was more than mandating masks...

They shut down flights from Wuhan to Taiwan on Dec. 29 and reported what they were seeing to the WHO, to no effect ( WHO does not recognize Taiwan). When you arrived by air or boat in Taiwan you are automatically quarantined for 14 days. They have a special Uber just for that purpose- airport straight to your house stay. They give you a location app on your phone to track that you are in your quarantine location. Someone checks on you each day, all 14 days. If you not there.... $10,000 fine. Also, it helps that Taiwan is an island, so they were able to control the ins and outs. Yes, they learned big time 18 years ago. When you arrive to passport control at the international airport, there’s a nursing temperature station check for all passengers. If you light up you don’t get to passport control. I’ve passed the temperature check many times.

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Interesting post. Thanks

Sweden did not lock down. They made a mistake in putting covid patients in nursing homes which caused a big spike in deaths. Their per capita death rate has been about the same as the U.S. But in September they are averaging just 1 death per day.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jpfromla

Add to Taiwan...it was more than mandating masks...

They shut down flights from Wuhan to Taiwan on Dec. 29 and reported what they were seeing to the WHO, to no effect ( WHO does not recognize Taiwan). When you arrived by air or boat in Taiwan you are automatically quarantined for 14 days. They have a special Uber just for that purpose- airport straight to your house stay. They give you a location app on your phone to track that you are in your quarantine location. Someone checks on you each day, all 14 days. If you not there.... $10,000 fine. Also, it helps that Taiwan is an island, so they were able to control the ins and outs. Yes, they learned big time 18 years ago. When you arrive to passport control at the international airport, there’s a nursing temperature station check for all passengers. If you light up you don’t get to passport control. I’ve passed the temperature check many times.

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I agree with your comments except for the “island / moat” argument. New Zealand got reoccurring cases due to international travel / trade, etc. so the island argument is no longer valid.

But my argument still stands about comparing actual results to expectations: When you drive a car, you have expectations of an accident and you cannot escape these expectations. So we compare those with zero accidents over 60,000 miles in a past 5 years against the other end with those who have 10 accidents over the same 60,000 miles in 5 years. Clearly, those with zero accidents are “safer” drivers, other things being equal.

So we compare expectations for both Sweden & Taiwan.
Which country is closer to Wuhun, mainland China? It’s Taiwan
Which country had direct / non-stop flights to Wuhan? It’s Taiwan
Which country has a higher population density per square mile? It’s Taiwan.

Taiwan has 673 people per square kilometer vs Sweden at 25 per squared kilometer. Population density is important due to mass infection rates experienced in New York City, cities in northern Italy, etc

I could go on and on about what factors / questions that highlight expectations.

The bottomline is based on expectations, Taiwan was supposed to perform a lot worse than Sweden. Instead, Taiwan easily beat expectations while Sweden did horribly versus expectations. You need to judge actual results against expectations. This is a fundamental rule in statistical analysis.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ex-AP

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jpfromla

Add to Taiwan...it was more than mandating masks...

They shut down flights from Wuhan to Taiwan on Dec. 29 and reported what they were seeing to the WHO, to no effect ( WHO does not recognize Taiwan). When you arrived by air or boat in Taiwan you are automatically quarantined for 14 days. They have a special Uber just for that purpose- airport straight to your house stay. They give you a location app on your phone to track that you are in your quarantine location. Someone checks on you each day, all 14 days. If you not there.... $10,000 fine. Also, it helps that Taiwan is an island, so they were able to control the ins and outs. Yes, they learned big time 18 years ago. When you arrive to passport control at the international airport, there’s a nursing temperature station check for all passengers. If you light up you don’t get to passport control. I’ve passed the temperature check many times.

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I agree with your comments except for the “island / moat” argument. New Zealand got reoccurring cases due to international travel / trade, etc. so the island argument is no longer valid.

But my argument still stands about comparing actual results to expectations: When you drive a car, you have expectations of an accident and you cannot escape these expectations. So we compare those with zero accidents over 60,000 miles in a past 5 years against the other end with those who have 10 accidents over the same 60,000 miles in 5 years. Clearly, those with zero accidents are “safer” drivers, other things being equal.

So we compare expectations for both Sweden & Taiwan.
Which country is closer to Wuhun, mainland China? It’s Taiwan
Which country had direct / non-stop flights to Wuhan? It’s Taiwan
Which country has a higher population density per square mile? It’s Taiwan.

Taiwan has 673 people per square kilometer vs Sweden at 25 per squared kilometer. Population density is important due to mass infection rates experienced in New York City, cities in northern Italy, etc

I could go on and on about what factors / questions that highlight expectations.

The bottomline is based on expectations, Taiwan was supposed to perform a lot worse than Sweden. Instead, Taiwan easily beat expectations while Sweden did horribly versus expectations. You need to judge actual results against expectations. This is a fundamental rule in statistical analysis.

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Agreed...with one addendum...this was Taiwan’s second go at it. Taiwan learned from their experience 17 year’s ago, vs. Sweden, US et al. who are going thru the first time. I expect the team that has played the game before Will do better than the team that has never played the game.