OT: Sweden’s economy grows in first quarter
There have been many controversial threads about Sweden’s policy of “lite lockdown” and the excess of death they have had compared to their Scandinavian neighbors.
Despite predictions that Sweden’s economy would suffer just the same, that actually did not transpire this far
Sweden’s economy actually grew 0.1% in the first quarter
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/29/coronavirus-swedens-gdp-actually-grew-in-the-first-quarter.html
By comparison, Norway’s economy contracted by 1.9% in Q1
Finland contracted 0.9%
https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/statistics_finland_economy_is_officially_in_recession/11375177
Denmark contracted 1.9%
Obviously, still way too early in the game to draw long term conclusions, but found it interesting given that many US states are about to go the route of Sweden whether they admit it or not.
The first quarter is January-February-March, so they were only on lockdown for the last couple of weeks of it.
Second quarter numbers are going to be rough in a lot of places.
Yeah, good point. That makes sense.
No, our restaurants and schools weren't open (like Sweden),
Sweden did close down its high schools and universities, just not elementary schools.
The first CV-19 death in Sweden occurred on 3/11 and that in Norway was on 2/26. That two week lag could account for the difference. The US saw its first death on February 6th.
Not enough data to draw any conclusions.
I think a bit too much has been made of Sweden’s “strategy” and the short-term results due to the political divide and debate in the US. At the end of the day (and I’ve seen quotes from officials in Sweden saying as much) they failed the same way Michigan and NY failed to protect the most vulnerable populations in nursing homes. That’s a huge contributor to differences in per capita death tolls.
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ABC News looked at 21 states that eased restrictions May 4 or earlier & found no major increase in hospitalizations, deaths or % of people testing positive in any of them.
Do you happen to have a link or reference to that? I’m interested in taking a closer look at that. I’ve been monitoring the estimated Rt at this site, and while maybe there are some general ranking trends, it also isn’t apparent that there are ‘huge spikes‘ in states that opened like I see claimed in recent headlines.
The problem is everyone is using some different data has there's no consistency with parameters or standards that you can pretty much argue either side with the information you gather.
that's the same argument with the whole fact-checker thing and Trump yesterday is the bottom line is you give somebody time they can pull up some kind of number or article that supports or criticizes one statement or even study for that matter.
Welcome to the internet 2020 where information can go any direction
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
You can scroll up to Sweden and scroll down through the states. The have social distancing rules and schedule and interpretive calculated social distancing metrics.
Johns Hopkins has decent total cases data.
Def fake news in the actual sense.
Floida with the higest number of new cases since back in mid-April.
https://twitter.com/DWUhlfelderLaw/status/1266440117906034688
It doesn't say highest number of cases. It says percentage of those testing positive. So, you misunderstood.
Ericmstrauss on Twitter (ABC News guy) posted that info but without a link to the ABC charts.
This suggests some increases in % of people testing positive
I'm not sure Sweden is the best barometer for how the US should be handling its COVID business.....
But hey, everyone keeps saying "Well Sweden is doing this/that" so what the fuck do I know?
Just because you don’t think the US should be doing it doesn’t mean they’re not actually doing it as we speak...
Your position (not necessarily unreasonable) on how COVID-19 has been handled in most of the U.S. has been obvious for a long time. Why not just state it and provide supporting evidence? Why be oblique with these incessant posts on Sweden?
Ah so the death was worth it!!!! 0.1% growth!!!! It's easy street for Sweden now!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So many people don't know this, but the US government has a figure they use to calculate the value of a life so they can measure the benefit of preventing death (for a proposed regulation, for example). That value is $10 million/life.
Google tells me the Swedish GDP is $556.1 billion in USD. 0.1% growth on that (assuming annualized numbers) is about $600 million. As another commenter mentioned, Sweden has had about 4,000 extra deaths compared to their neighbors. That's $40 billion in lost human life.
So congrats to Sweden for trading $600 million for $40 billion I guess?
If we’re going down this road, I think the comparison needs to be what would the gdp had been to prevent the deaths. So if we say Sweden had roughly 4K deaths more than their neighbors, but their neighbors had gdp of -1.9% (as an example) then the incremental gdp of their strategy choice was +2%. Using your numbers: 2% x $556G = $11 billion. So still short of the 40 billion cost you propose, but not incredibly so. Furthermore, there has been criticism of the US death value for not taking age (or other demographic factors) into account due to political sensitivities - there was a good recent NPR Planet Money podcast on this.
But that also presumes that all of the difference is due to Covid. Since there are other recent quarters with significant differences that seems like a big stretch.
Sweden had positive growth rates in q1, q2 and q3 of 2019.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/529929/sweden-quarterly-gross-domestic-product-gdp-growth-rate/
Norway on the other hand had negative growth rates in all three of those quarters.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/686116/quarterly-gdp-growth-rate-in-norway/
Maybe Covid isn’t the only thing that explains the diference?
Ya, I did listen to the Planet Money episode, although I've worked on analyzing EPA policy, so I had already been exposed to the "life value" calculation.
I don't agree with the criticism. The moral and ethical issues once you start parsing are way too big, even if you try to just stick to age. Then again, I also take issue with people saying that COVID is mostly killing the elderly and therefore the impact is lower. The life expectancy for an 80 year old is almost 9 years. That's a long time!
$10,000,000 is the value at the high end of the earner spectrum, not the average. An 80 year old nursing home resident wouldn't get the $10,000,000 value but a CEO of a major company in his late 40's to early 50's would. Not many of those types died.
I wasn’t gonna be the one to say it, but...yea.
nursing home residents do have economic value for sure, particularly in the health care industry.
but nowhere near that of say, a 7 year old child with a lifetime of education and career ahead (plus the economic value they will have as a future nursing home resident themself)
That's an angle I had not considered...they value they represent TO the nursing homes. I was thinking more along the lines of individual earnings value where 80 year olds don't work so from a "wrongful death" suit value, they are on the low end of the spectrum.
The value figure is based on risk premiums, i.e. the dollar value that people require to take on risk in their jobs. It is not a purely economic number. If you make $50K a year for a 40 year career, you would only make $2 million in your lifetime, but you also provide value to your community, your family, and your friends.
It's honestly a bit shocking how many comments on here are talking about pure economic value. There is an inherent value to human life that the number is meant to capture.
O.k., so how much is a 5 star defensive end's life worth? What if he commits to Michigan? Value up? Or down?
Value up....how high depends on if we beat OSU!
The US government does not differentiate between between people based on age/working status/career, etc. for obvious ethical/moral reasons. A life is $10 million, no matter who it is. If you're comfortable making distinctions that different lives are worth different amounts, that's fine I guess. But I am not.
First of all, "4,000 deaths" is not normalized for population. Sweden is about twice as populous as Norway. Sweden has had 431 deaths per million and Norway has had 44. If Sweden had 44, it'd be 455 deaths instead of 3,831.
So 3,376 "extra" deaths. But they didn't do that for $600 million. Norway contracted by 1.9%. That plus the $600 million is $11 billion, had Sweden also contracted by 1.9%.
So about $34 billion for $11 billion, not $40 billion for $600 million.
For now. Another quarter of data and the numbers likely move closer.
And that's assuming Sweden and Norway count deaths the same - a shaky assumption. It's also assuming Sweden - a more diverse and more globally connected country than Norway - would've had the same death rate as Norway by taking the exact same measures (which is unlikely.)
To hell with Sweden.
Fuck Ikea too. Their shit is way too expensive for the quality.
To say nothing about Volvos...
I think Volvo is a Chinese company now.
Double fuck'em.
Indeed, owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. They also own Lotus I believe.
Stop ... the madness all ready. For the love of all that is loving .... no more.
I've been silent on these posts all week but decided to jump into the fray this time. By looks of things, people have their minds made up either pro or con and no additional posts will change them. (I stayed out Kinnick stadium opening up post and comments)
Comparing Sweden to the US is only useful when you are trying to sell socialist policies. Don’t you know that by now.
Can we move on from Sweden? Can we instead have posts every couple days on how South Korea, or Australia, or Hong Kong, or Norway etc managed to get about 1/10 to 1/100 the number of deaths per capita than the US but with no worse affect on their economy compared to the US (in fact, they are doing better, because they can open up faster: once you have safety, you can have economic activity)?
This constant discussion with Sweden, a country that has done markedly worse than its neighbors with no real progress towards herd immunity is crazy (only 7% of Stockholm had antibodies at the end of April; you need to get to at least 60%). They had 46 deaths today; Norway had 1.
Sweden is in danger of being excluded from the economy of other countries b/c their neighbors don't think it is safe. That's what happens when you're perceived as unsafe--you get less growth with the bonus of having more deaths.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/swedens-no-lockdown-could-mean-its-excluded-from-nordics-reopening.html
Despite predictions that Sweden’s economy would suffer just the same, that actually did not transpire this far
Come on, this is a straw man. The prediction was that in the long run their economy wouldn't be better off. Obviously it would be better off in the short term. A business that is open will make more money than a business that is closed, that's not too complicated.
I see the usual pussies have negged you for reporting the truth. If it doesn't fit their agenda, they have to shut it down
Surprised it hasn't been moderated into exile yet
Another thread to bring to pros and cons out of the weeds. A limited shut down in the U.S was appropriate. The continued stay at home orders in effect over many states are doing much more harm than good.
Now we are hearing from the CDC about masks not being needed, or, transmission of the virus is almost nil outdoors, mask or not. Go figure.
Where are all of these states with continued stay at home orders in effect over many states?
Many states are fully open. Some states are partially opened and only a very few are fully closed. Why are there so many negative Nancy’s on this board who don’t want to celebrate the good news that our economy is opening back up.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-map-stay-at-home-orders-lockdowns-2020-3
"Norway and Denmark say they will open up tourism between their two countries from 15 June but will maintain restrictions for Swedes.
Ten thousand Swedes ran through the weeds,
chased by one Norwegian.
Ten thousand more ran to the shore
in the Battle of Copenhagen.
Honestly, Norway and Denmark have been waiting 400 years for this excuse. Hey Gustavus, who's the greatest now?!!!
Obviously, people just can’t get enough of those meatballs.
Q1 was mostly pre-COVID, so this growth doesn't mean much IMO. Let's see what it's like in Q2.
Not so fast.
" Confinement measures were brought in toward the end of the first quarter. As a result, economists expect countries to report an even sharper contraction over the next three months of the year. "
Sweden had to revise its policy after other countries had decided to close their economies. We just don't have enough data to draw any conclusions.