[Beren]

Do not despair !
As long as Viktor Urban is in charge of your country, you will be fine !

Because he has no shame?

In case you're interested he actually meant to belittle Covid-19 and wanted to keep his anti-migrant agenda his priority, plus he couldn't care less about the elderly anyway, as pensioners have been getting poorer and poorer compared to the rest of society due to his pension-raising policy while the government is very keen on undermining and saving money on the healthcare system and social security under his tenure. He's a socially insensitive bastard that has become a €-billionaire in power, but he's really good at posing as a real antipode to Soros and Brussels, so it must be better than Sweden indeed. However, even Bangladesh is, not to mention Thailand.

[Ter]

In case you're interested he actually meant to belittle Covid-19 and wanted to keep his anti-migrant agenda his priority, plus he couldn't care less about the elderly anyway, as pensioners have been getting poorer and poorer compared to the rest of society due to his pension-raising policy while the government is very keen on undermining and saving money on the healthcare system and social security under his tenure. He's a socially insensitive bastard that has become a €-billionaire in power, but he's really good at posing as a real antipode to Soros and Brussels, so it must be better than Sweden indeed.

I am not aware of the economic policies in Hungary recently but on the COVID-19 front you guys seem to be doing pretty good. I am as you know pro-Orban for his anti-immigrant and anti-EU policies.

[Beren]

I am not aware of the economic policies in Hungary recently but on the COVID-19 front you guys seem to be doing pretty good. I am as you know pro-Orban for his anti-immigrant and anti-EU policies.

Although we guys seem doing very good on all fronts, Hungarian stats on Covid-19 ain't worth shit especially. We managed to avoid getting hit hard by coronavirus due to being peripheral, I guess, otherwise the healthcare system would collapse under real pressure, I suppose.

[wat0n]

I erroneously quoted the Belgian figure from an Aussie paper that did not use per million like other newspapers. Sweden had 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants per day on a rolling seven-day average between May 13 and May 20, which is above the UK, Belgium and the US, which had 5.57, 4.28 and 4.11, respectively. But Sweden's death rate in the entire course of the pandemic is still below most Southern European countries. It seems that the spread of Covid-19 is accelerating in Sweden and Russia when other EU countries are reopening their economies as it gets warmer to prevent the spread. The top temperature in Sweden today is 10 degrees below that of Spain and Sweden is literally left out in the cold.

No worries @ThirdTerm, mistakes can happen.

As far as Sweden goes, the median time to death is around 11 days, so the deaths we are seeing now correspond to the last 1-2 weeks. IIRC the number of new cases has been trending down there, so there may be a decrease in new deaths in a similar timeframe.

[Rugoz]

There are so many issues when it comes to country comparisons, such that we probably shouldn't make them at all. E.g.
- Unreliable case numbers, depends on testing and its reliability of course.
- Unreliable death numbers, depends on whether you test every dead person and attribute the death to the virus regardless of other health issues, some countries do that, others not.
- Different regions are affected differently. Sweden looks pretty bad compared to its neighbors for example.
- Cultural differences. In some countries a social distancing recommendation by the government is sufficient for people to change their behavior, without having to enforce it by shutting down etc.. I think Sweden is such a case. In contrast, in other countries the government might not even be able to enforce it effectively.

I'm sure I forgot some.

[wat0n]

IIRC 30% of the Swedish population lives alone as well. They aren't as social as people in other countries, although this should hold for the other Nordics.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

There are so many issues when it comes to country comparisons, such that we probably shouldn't make them at all. E.g.
- Unreliable case numbers, depends on testing and its reliability of course.
- Unreliable death numbers, depends on whether you test every dead person and attribute the death to the virus regardless of other health issues, some countries do that, others not.
- Different regions are affected differently. Sweden looks pretty bad compared to its neighbors for example.
- Cultural differences. In some countries a social distancing recommendation by the government is sufficient for people to change their behavior, without having to enforce it by shutting down etc.. I think Sweden is such a case. In contrast, in other countries the government might not even be able to enforce it effectively.

I'm sure I forgot some.

True, but couldn't something like this be said for a lot of international comparisons and especially those dealing with health? I'm reminded of a comparison of healthcare systems which was reported widely where the NHS came out on top, but once you looked into what data they actually used, it turned out that the actual health outcomes are so difficult to compare that it mostly involved administration, costs, etc. rather than what people would expect and care about like, say, survival rates for cancer.

While not perfect, hospitalisation data is probably the best way to get around the testing/reporting differences and it's the best indicator for fatality trends. The latest for Scandinavia looks like this:

[QatzelOk]

...I'm reminded of a comparison of healthcare systems which was reported widely where the NHS came out on top, but once you looked into what data they actually used, it turned out that the actual health outcomes are so difficult to compare that it mostly involved administration, costs, etc. rather than what people would expect and care about like, say, survival rates for cancer.

And then, after admitting that medical stats (or any other stats) can be doctored to give any desired result, you provide some charts with no background information as to what information might be lacking. Like all the relevant information.

Propaganda is built by mis-interpreting true phenomena, and the medical practice - and its private funding and for-profit pursuits - is full of data that can be exploited for gain.

If you can't trust the government or corporations, then you can't trust the medical government or the medical corporations that are more and more in charge of it.

We are all used to manipulated data because...um... advertising has been using this for centuries to sell products like medicines.