Thanks Daniel! I hope I am wrong, but things are not very well in Sweden. One should expect from a welfare state with so high taxes a better performance.

Update June 14. IHME (https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden) forecasts 8534 fatalities by August 4th. In contrast, our model forecasts 6012. It will be a good model check. I will post updated picture just before I go on a break in July along with additional comments. The end result will depend on whether the distancing in Sweden is breaking (and producing more cases) or not (in which case all the extra new cases are due to increased testing)

Update June 11. I have updated the pictures, and added a fatalities curve and forecast which has proven to be the most stable of all the models I have worked with so far. It is obtained my fitting the R curve of a SIR model to the fatality cumulatives, as in the picture of the fatalities per million (I owe you all an explanation of why this works), and taking the derivative of that curve to obtain the forecast in the new picture. According to the state epidemiologist, the increased number of cases is due to increased testing, although not entirely. This does not affect the model for fatalities. But a new model needs to be derived for the infection cases when more data is available and the trend stops rising and stabilizes. The forecasts are made originally on 4 May.

Dear Daniel,

Four things:

1) Serological tests indicate that the levels of infection are comparable to that of other countries (7%), so no, they do not seem to be gaining in terms of acquiring herd immunity.

2) Sweden's economic crunch is just as bad as that of its neighboring countries. I am based in Finland. From the point of view of unemployment, it is actually worse.

3) Fatality per million rate. Sweden is fifth worst in the world, and various models (including mine) forecast that it will end up being second or third worst by the autumn.

4) The state epidemiologist now accepts fault to some degree. Not so the government. There is a huge debate in Sweden. Nevertheless, it is unlikely they will change their strategy at this point, that is, unless things get much worse. This week, the number of cases reported has increased dramatically. I have the pictures of a very neat true SIR model posted elsewhere in community which illustrate this. I attach them here along with the fatality PM forecasts. The pictures show in alpha order (

Attachments:

FatalitiesPM.png

SESIRmodel6April...png

seFatalityForecast.png

seForecastDailyTrends.png

I believe you are right. However, both the economical impact or the total mortality are things that we are far away from having an answer to yet. As far as I know there is no reliable data yet on number of infected in Sweden (or any of the Nordic countries), and as long as we don't have that it is very hard to to a realistic comparison. A couple of weeks ago Denmark and Sweden reported figures from small samples they taken. These indicated that Denmark had much fewer infected, but at the same time a higher fatality rate (especially among elderly). Both were very small studies, and both with obvious flaws, so drawing conclusions from these should be done carefully.

If we assume that the figure were right, then even if things like unemployment rate have followed similar patterns, it is quite likely that Denmark will have to keep harder measures for longer and therefore get bigger problems over time. On the other hand if they are wrong then it might be Sweden having bigger problems ahead. We just don't know.

For me one interesting thought is, if we we say that countries like Norway, which are below there average death rate, are doing the right thing, then why are they not doing this every year? If you are able to go below your average in the middle of a pandemic, and claim that you are doing the right thing, shouldn't the consequence be that you should do the same during every single influenza? Probably not, because you have to think long-term too: What's the long-term consequence if you have a, let's say, 2 week influenza lock-down every year? Or, what is the long-term consequence if we do a 3 months or months lock-down during pandemic years?

That's not straight-forward at all to answer.

(Btw, the last few days Sweden's death rate counted per 10 million inhabitants look like it will be very close, perhaps even below, average. )

I found these graphs to be quite interesting, and thought that others reading Christos' post might find it too. They show mortality rates (non-Covid specific) in several European countries (and regions) over time and by age groups. No analysis included, just data, but quite interesting.