The beaches around the Netherlands are great. The water is not so warm but you can walk for miles and miles on a nice wide beach. The problem is, it's also very busy. Getting to the beach in summer either means enduring long traffic jams, trying to find a parking spot and still have to walk for half an hour to get to the beach. Or endure being a Sardine in public transport to end up a little closer at Zandvoort.

My beach going is at Port Dover and Burlington nowadays in Ontario. I usually cycle there and back, quick swim in between. Fresh water beaches are a lot nicer than salty sea. The only problem with lakes is, the water level changes a lot. One year you have a big beach, the next a tiny strip. Lake Ontario is 85km wide, twice as wide as the Straight of Dover without all the ships. 244 meters deep, takes a while to warm up.

I actually think its impressive Sweden stuck to its minimal lockdown route, and came out better than some countries.

Like in the UK they have reported ~35,400 deaths, but their "excess mortality" for this time periode (covid19) is around ~60,000.
Meaning theres probably close to 60,000 deaths due to covid19.

Meanwhile Sweden has reported 3,831 deaths, which are about in line with their excess mortality rates.

You might say... well sweden is a small country, its population is much smaller than the UKs.
And you would be right, the UK has a population thats ~67m vs Swedens ~10m.

That still makes Sweden come out looking much better than the UK.

The worrisom ones:
Brazil, Its numbers just keeps going up.
Their president doesnt care "what can I do?" *shrugs shoulders*, their Health ministers keep quitting their jobs ect.

Russia worries me, high daily cases. However I suspect they will get it under controll at some point.
(they are likely under reporting deaths)

US worries me too, its still seeing 20,000+ daily cases and its now reopening even if Rt is still above 1 in some places there.
Seems like Trump is willing to take economy over lives.

Mexico:
They say mexico is under reporting numbers by like a factor of 10. (ei. closer to 50,000 deaths, than its reported 5000).
They have only tested 170k. They "lie" about numbers that they do find, and about cause of deaths (to down play the issue).


The irony is Sweden used to worry me too. I'm glad I was wrong, about how bad things would get there though.
Their idea of "just let it spread" and try protect the elderly instead, doesnt seem as bad (in terms of deaths) as some places were they had lockdowns (and didnt manage to protect their elderly).

It's taking forever indeed and the same patterns starts in every country that gets hit. Big growth until closures or lock downs. Countries that do little keep growing.

Only Europe is in decline atm (and Oceania has beat it)

Europe: 79.6% week over week, 0.968x daily, 21 days halving time
North America: 101.7% week over week, 1.002x daily, 288 days doubling time. (USA and Canada are still in slight decline)
Africa: 108.4% week over week, 1.012x daily, 60 days doubling time
Asia: 122.5% week over week, 1.029x daily, 24 days doubling time
South America: 156.3% week over week, 1.066x daily, 11 days doubling time

Brazil is doing very bad for 'dealing' with it since mid March, current averaging 160% week over week, 1.07x daily, 10.3 days doubling time.

Population density has a big influence. If you compare Sweden to Norway, Norway beat the virus with 234 deaths and is down to 10 new cases a day or less. Australia beat the virus with only 100 deaths. Sweden is still over 500 new cases daily (average from last week since their reporting is so irregular) and 63 deaths daily, on top of the 3,831 deaths so far.

But yep, compared to who is (or was) doing the worst in Europe, Sweden looks pretty good...

Now it all depends on whether the countries that got it down get a second big wave or if they can prevent / keep a second wave down.

Not sure how anyone could describe Sweden as good. Sweden is in the top 6 of Europe in deaths per capita. Yet they are in the bottom 4 in population density. That's quite an achievement. You really have to fuck up hard to get those kinds of numbers.

I wasn't referring to the daily trends. It was more of a statement to the Sweden apologists in here who for some reason think that Sweden did not do one of the worst jobs in the world at stopping their outbreak.

For deaths per million, there are 2 unfortunate tiny countries which aren't much more than one small city wedged in between the worst hit areas in Europe.

San Marino, 41 deaths, 1209 per million (less than 34K total population, 530 per sq km)
Andorra, 51 deaths, 660 per million (77.2K total population, 164 per sq km)

Then you have Belgium high up, but also a lot more honest in counting deaths including all nursing home deaths. (Belgium only has a small difference between excess deaths and covid19 deaths)
Belgium, 9,150 deaths, 790 per million (11.6 million population, 377 per sq km)

And lastly the 4 juggernauts, worst hit countries in Europe
Spain, 27.8K deaths, 594 per million (46.8 million population, 91.4 per sq km)
Italy, 32.2K deaths, 532 per million (60.5 million population, 201 per sq km)
UK, 35.3K deaths, 521 per million (67.8 million population, 259 per sq km)
France, 28.0K deaths, 429 per million (65.3 million population, 117 per sq km)

Then comes Sweden
Sweden, 3,831 deaths, 380 per million (10.1 million population, 24 per sq km)

If you divide deaths per million by population density

1. Sweden 15.83
2. Spain 6.499
3. Andorra 4.024
4. France 3.667
5. Italy 2.647
6. San Marino 2.281
7. Belgium 2.095
8. UK 2.012

UK, despite doing the worst in Europe for raw numbers, is actually doing a lot better than Sweden taking population density into account.

Not a measure to favor my country at 4 people per sq km lol. 157 deaths per million, 39.25 Canada tops Sweden when measured like that.
Canada isn't doing a great job either with Ontario and Quebec.
Ontario, 1919 deaths, 132 per million (14.6 million population, 14 per sq km) 9.429 per million / population density
Quebec, 3647 deaths,  430 per million (8.49 million population, 8 per sq km) 53.73 per million / population density

Of course both Quebec and Ontario (and the whole of Canada) has huge empty spaces. Sweden probably does as well.

I'm using worldometer and I'm intentionally omitting countries with less than 1m population, because they have very misleading per capita numbers. I disregard case numbers completely, because they don't mean anything if countries aren't testing, which Sweden most certainly does not. Sweden is currently arount 57th in tests per capita, which means case numbers mean absolutely nothing. And considering how little they're testing it's safe to assume that they are also not catching a lot of deaths.

If you take that all and combine it with a population density and geographical location that most countries wish they had right now then it's easy to see that Sweden is doing terribly on a global scale.

Sweden was not and is not trying to "stop their outbreak." They're aiming at protecting themselves against worse future outcomes by controlling the spread of the virus now, which may or may not prove to be a good strategy -- but your analysis will be better if you can at least try to understand their objectives. It won't really be possible fully to evaluate this approach until we know more.

(And please drop the juvenile and needlessly antagonistic "Sweden apologist" rhetoric. Rather than casting absolutely everything as "us versus them" team ball, consider that others may simply want someone to find the best way to deal with this unprecedented-in-the-modern-age problem, regardless of who, where, or "what team" they're supposedly on. I root for Sweden to succeed, because why on earth wouldn't I?)

I was assumeing the worst..... I thought sweden going for a soft herd immunity strat, was gonna have horrible outcomes.
So far, while not great, its not horrible either.