Prediction: in 2 months Sweden will either: • have done some sort of "lockdown" (the kind WHO was previously insisting they do and is now praising them for not doing 🤨) • have >26k deaths (10× what they have now) Possibly both. P = 75% (I have lots of model uncertainty)
Prediction and follow-up on Sweden's no-lockdown approach
6 tweets · May 2020 · 10 likes · 1 retweets · read on Twitter
(It was hard to come up with a clear concrete figure for the deaths. I think there's a substantial chance it'll be much higher, but also tiny factors can affect things a lot. But based on looking at this site, Sweden looks a bit like New-York-a-month-ago, moving at half-speed.)
Update after 1 month: various news outlets are posting that Sweden's approach has utterly failed, though the deaths have still only been increasing (sub)linearly, which seems.... like things are sort of under control? R~=1 wired.co.uk/article/sweden…
Sweden only has 10M ppl, so yes, covid deaths/capita is very high, compared to neighbours... ...but 1700 covid deaths/mo since Apr means by Dec31 Sweden will only have its overall 2020 death rate increased by ~16% (15k on top of usual 90k) is 16% a lot? everyone dies eventually
I think the bigger issue is likely to be widespread health complications for younger & middle-aged people 🤔 imo, jury's still out about Sweden's coronavirus approach. Not saying I'd do the same thing. It also remains to be seen what cascading effects appear from econ shutdown
Of course, given globalized systems, Sweden may find itself profoundly affected by 2nd & 3rd order effects of economic shutdowns, even without shutting its own economy down. Sooo there's that.