COVID-19 Map worldwide, with statistics
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Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
Jeeze, don't take this the wrong way, but you scared the hell out of me.
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afret
Gold $$ Contributor
Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
The chap who wrote that is an MD in Denver. He makes some fair points. It's easy, however, to give too much credit to a vast conspiracy. It's more like a whole lot of people jumping on a handy bandwagon as it came by. There were literally $Trillions onboard as an effective attractant.
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COVID-19 deaths per million population: U.S. 573, Sweden 576, Norway 49
COVID-19 case fatality rate: U.S. 3.0%, Sweden 6.9%, Norway 2.4%
Unemployment rate: U.S. 10.2%, Sweden 9.2%, Norway 8.2%
Per capita GDP: U.S. $62,800, Sweden $54,600, Norway $81,700
Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
Norway? I didn't mention Norway, nor did I mention economics. Sooo ...
Norway has a little more than half the population of Sweden, and in Western Europe only Ireland and Luxembourg are less populous. Imagine managing an epidemic in a country the size of Montana, with a population a little larger than Los Angeles proper, with almost 1/4 of the population in one city (Oslo) and the rest spread out across much smaller cities and towns, geographically isolated. I've driven and rode trains all over Norway. There's not a lot of people scurrying hither and yon as in other European countries. Norwegians tend to be homebodies. If someone had asked me in February "How do you think Norway will fare in the pandemic?" I'd have responded "I like their chances."
Economically, Norway are a little like Saudi Arabia. Their high per capita GDP may be summed up "North Sea Oil". The main government pension fund in Norway is commonly known as "The Oil Fund". It's the world's largest sovereign wealth fund.
Also, Norway has always had a very high (highest in the developed world) public employment rate of about 30%, and their unemployment rate has always run a little more than 1/3 the European average.
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Population density (per km^2):
Sweden: 22.5
Norway: 17.0
Denmark: 134.0
COVID-19 deaths per million:
Sweden: 576
Norway: 49
Denmark: 108
per capita GDP:
Sweden: $54,600
Norway: $81,700
Denmark: $61,350
Hmm. Population density doesn't seem to be the difference.
Sweden: 22.5
Norway: 17.0
Denmark: 134.0
COVID-19 deaths per million:
Sweden: 576
Norway: 49
Denmark: 108
per capita GDP:
Sweden: $54,600
Norway: $81,700
Denmark: $61,350
Hmm. Population density doesn't seem to be the difference.
Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
Just curious, what's the relevance of per capita GDP?
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Been to Norway, good assessment. Saw rampant illegal drug use in Oslo, but outside things were clean & orderly. My guess about the lower COVID19 death rate in Norway is that older folks are more healthy than most countries and have fewer health liabilities/ailments to add to COVID19 mortality. Most of the elderly or about my age were physically active, many with extensive sports backgrounds, and did not have destructive health habits. Booze costs about $55 per .75 liter, don't know about smokes but probably real expensive.
Do you prefer unemployment as a measure of economic strength and future prospects?
Sweden: 9.2%
Norway: 8.2%
Denmark: 5.2%
What were those figures in December 2019?
Are you really too lazy to Google?
Unemployment July 2019
Sweden 6%
Norway 3.8%
Denmark 3.7%
The point is that Sweden incurred the costs (5-10x the per capita COVID-19 deaths compared to its neighbors) without the commensurate economic benefits.
The reason is fairly obvious. Much -- perhaps most -- of the economic fallout isn't due to government-imposed lockdowns (which are virtually unenforced and unenforceable in the U.S., anyway, as we have seen). The cause is the virus itself. The average American has about a 1 in 200 chance of dying of COVID-19 if infected. On the order of 80% of Americans are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. Many people have decided to change their habits according to their perception of that risk. The 94% decline in air travel between April 2019 and April 2020 wasn't due to governments grounding commercial airlines -- it was due to a collapse in demand for what many people perceived as an unacceptably risky activity.
So what was the percentage increase in unemployment by country over this period?
This is very much the case in the UK, and remember we ran several weeks ahead of the US. Our government is now desperate to persuade people to ignore its earlier 'stay at home and save the NHS and lives message' and return to the office. Commuter train and London Underground network loadings are still c. 70% down on pre-Covid and relatively few of those able to home-work have returned. A major cause of rising unemployment - one that will become much greater towards the end of October as the UK government subsidised furlough scheme ends - is the near total collapse of the so-called 'office' economy. ie coffee shops, cafes, sandwich bars, dry cleaners etc that largely cater to office workers. Then of course, high street clothes and electrical goods shops whose business has gone online, the travel industry both domestic and holiday ..... On top of consumer behaviour changes, business investment has collapsed because of the uncertainties, especially of the effect of a possible winter 'second wave' (which has been talked up from 'possible' to 'absolute certainty').
Brians356
Gold $$ Contributor
Toby, you've been responding to my comparison of Sweden to US and Mexico WRT new Covid-19 deaths per million population - full stop. I've been wondering ever since why you've injected economic data into your replies. I still wonder.
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Want to trade arithmetic problems, eh? A year of human life in the U.S. is reckoned to be worth $100K-$200K by health economists. Read this if you want to know the details of how such estimates are made.
When the U.S. COVID-19 death toll hits 250,000 before the end of this year, it will have reduced life expectancy in the U.S. by 10 months. After calculating that cost, consider what the cost would have been if the U.S. had merely been an average country in COVID-19 per capita death rate, rather than the 11th highest (bumped out of the #10 spot by those crafty Swedes, but we're gaining on them!).
For extra credit, compare those numbers to the size of the COVID-19 relief bills in the U.S., and estimate the cost savings if the U.S. hadn't performed so abysmally in dealing with COVID-19.
Really? It's because the various COVID-19 mitigation strategies that national, regional, and local governments have implemented (or tried to implement) explicitly or implicitly trade off between limiting infection rate and growing the economy.
Remember this from April, the month that 59,000 Americans were killed by COVID-19?
This quote from that article says it all:
“The dollar value placed on life and how it is used has changed with the political tides.”
We obviously have a different view of this valuation equation. Ascribing a fixed value to people of all ages without taking into account underlying health, productivity and value to society, as well as other unmentionable aspects, is not the way I look at it.
For your extra credit just answer my original question even though doing so will put an end to your specious unemployment example.
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It's not the proportionate increase that matters -- it's the absolute delta.
By your reasoning, if I live in a town where the YOY murder rate doubled from 0.1 to 0.2 per 100,000 population I would be better off to move the adjacent city where the YOY murder rate "only" increases by 50% from 20 to 30 per 100,000.
Let’s put it into words:
Pre-pandemic Norway’s unemployment rate was less than half of Sweden’s. After shutting down their economy to deal with the pandemic Norway’s unemployment rate is almost equal to Sweden’s.
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