Why are about half the Swedes I talk to on the Internet convinced their government's handling COVID-19 well, despite having more deaths per million than each of Sweden's neighbors *and* the United States?!?!
@freemo Interesting take.
I'd say Sweden's neighbors have handled COVID well, the US mostly badly except in some states, and Sweden horribly.
@freemo New York State overall is doing well, but that's because we reopened slowly and based on science. Other states outside of the northeast are not doing well at all at the moment, especially in the south and the west.
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@mathlover Here is the death toll in the USA, as you can see there is no relapse of any kind.
I looked at a few southern states just to check, none of them show any increases in the death toll. At least not in any of the ones I pulled up.
Only way you can see the south or the usa as "not doing well right now" is if you look at misleading data that is less relevant than the death toll.
@freemo The main issue with the South is an explosion of new cases among young people. The deaths aren't expected to increase until later.
@mathlover I highly doubt we will see an increase at all. There is a significant amount of immunity, much of which partial.
with such a huge portion of the population immune now, many of whom never realized they had it, you will likely continue to see death tolls trending towards 0 even with increases in new cases
@freemo I hope you are right. My parents are medical doctors and they are not optimistic about this.
@mathlover I am a data scientist who has worked a good deal in the past with disease models. so far the data seems to be headed that way. The up tick in new cases should have already caused a surge in the death toll if that was going to happen.
Only time will tell but I'd say its mostly behind us at this point.
@freemo You might be. People younger than 60 years are unlikely to die of COVID if they get it. They still can get really damn sick and have "lovely" after-effects like fibrosis...
On the other hand, my father has a patient with COVID who probably won't survive.
@mathlover yea a lot of people wont die or even know they are sick. Most people who get COVID would never even know they had it. A few unlucky people can die from it. Its weird like that.
What were seeing is such a huge portion of people had it an never knew it that there is a much larger portion of the population with immunity than we might think. Many have partial immunity where they can get it again but it is even more likely to be mild or without symptoms the second time around.
thats why the death toll has been going to 0 despite an increase in cases. People are still getting it but few and fewer people are showing symptoms when they do.
@mathlover By the way I double checked on sweden, they are in deed handling it particularly poorly..
@mathlover The USa and all of swedends neighbors have all handled COVID-19 relatively well. They all show consistent decreasing in death tolls since the initial outbreak and the time series on COVID deaths doesnt show any relapse yet for most EU countries or the USa. I'd say most countries including Sweden and the US have handled COVID fairly well.