Talk:COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Blådjur (talk | contribs) at 21:42, 27 June 2020 (→‎Why infections started to decline in march/april?). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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statistics

in the right bottom corner of the big table, we have composition percentage for death counts, and ICU counts. I would suggest change to death rate(death/infected) and ICU rate(ICU/infected). any support or objection? Jackzhp (talk) 07:02, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Like this? and we need a abbr for percent and rate with a bit more explanation about what it represents

In at least two places (the summary at top right, and the charts at the bottom - search for "hospitali"), this page conflates "hospitalized" with "ICU". This is wrong: many (most?) patients who are hospitalized never enter ICU. Eg, right now the summary at the top right says "Hospitalized cases: 1,158", when the linked source (in Swedish) lists 1,158 as the ICU number. I suggest changing the wording from "Hospitalized cases" to "ICU cases", and "Hospitalisations" in the charts to "ICU hospitalisations". Unless someone knows a good source for the number hospitalized (not just in ICU) - I don't.

Who is counting the victims of lockdown in order to present the fair comparison of approaches? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.195.216.206 (talk) 11:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Corona in Sweden" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Corona in Sweden. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. -- Tavix (talk) 13:27, 24 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Invitation to edit

You are cordially invited to edit Draft:Mismanagement of the 2019-20 COVID-19 pandemic. Calmecac5 (talk) 20:24, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Numbers manipulation

What's the point of everyday changing the old numbers? To hide the fact that the situation is not improving? Wikipedia should not serve as a propaganda machine to political parties. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.52.24.15 (talk) 09:45, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

German Wikipedia shows two daily death charts (de:COVID-19-Pandemie in Schweden#Todesfälle), which makes it a little more clear what is going on. The thing is, one has to distinguish the death occurrence date from death report date (the terms chosen by me; the terminology may vary), the latter being generally later, accounting for a delay. As a result, when new deaths are reported on a day, that impacts the graph columns of past days of the graph that shows death occurrence dates. Either way, the two graphs in the linked German Wikipedia section both shows that, on a per day basis, the situation of the deaths is improving with daily deaths going down, and that is apparent on both graphs. Daily new cases are not improving but they are approximately constant, and therefore, the cumulative case growth is linear, and that is manageable, and is rather fine.
The English Wikipedia only shows the death occurrence date graphs, which looks smoother (no regular spikes and gaps), but has the last several columns updated as new data arrives; no fraud going on here. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:59, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That said, arguably, the smooth graph has a slightly deceptive effect: because of the registration delay, the rightmost columns are always incomplete while the older columns are complete, and therefore, the right end of the smooth graph is artificially going down a little compared to reality. Ideally, the last columns should have a different color suggesting lack of completeness, or there should be other means in the graph to warn of the problem. Another option is to do the same thing as the German Wikipedia: show two graphs of daily deaths. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Why are the numbers here so completely different from those at https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajectory-per-million?yScale=linear&country=SWE Skeptical Realist (talk) 05:56, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The ourworldindata.org link above shows daily deaths per million (not absolute count), and furthermore, it shows 7-day rolling average (moving average), so their curve is smooth but not because it is death occurrence date but rather because it is death report date curve that was smoothed via moving average (Worldometers started to show moving-average curves as well). The last 5 data points from the ourworldindata.org page: May 1, 2020: 7.992; May 2, 2020: 7.08671; May 3, 2020: 6.74714; May 4, 2020: 6.86029; May 5, 2020: 7.00186. If we reckon 10.23 million pop for Sweden, 7 daily deaths per million corresponds to 71.61 absolute daily deaths. That is quite a bit more than what the current Wikipedia graph shows, which is in part caused by the fact that the rightmost columns in death occurrence date graph are by necessity incomplete: it is the slightly deceptive effect of this graph I mentioned above, and in part by the time lag introduced by the moving average, where the higher old values drag the last value up via the averaging. The nice thing about the ourworldindata.org moving average graph is that it does not seem to have this deceptive effect. On the other hand, moving averages introduce a time lag into the smoothed value so any real improvement is slowed down by them. Maybe the English Wikipedia should have two graphs like the German Wikipedia (de:COVID-19-Pandemie in Schweden#Todesfälle) does, the 2nd graph using the death report date. Either way, Swedish deaths per ourworldindata.org show an optimistic trend as well. The ourworldindata.org number scale is corroborated if we use the jaggy graph from German Wikipedia and for May 4 we calculate the moving average: (85+90+10+16+67+124+107)/7.0 = 71.3, which approximately fits the previously calculated 71.61 absolute daily deaths. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:59, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
One thing has to be granted: the current WP daily death graph is highly misleading for the readers since it shows an unrealistic downward sloping trend at the end. Replacing it with the other type of graph or at least adding the other type of graph would seem imperative. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:12, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I took the data from de WP and calculated a 7-day moving average:

--Dan Polansky (talk) 08:04, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, the 7-day moving average graph above suffers from double delay: 1) the day of report is delayed compared to day of occurence; 2) the moving average causes further delay.

Let us make a graph of daily deaths by date of occurrence, ignoring last 7 days to prevent the deceptive effect of registration delay:

The above has no deceptive end (we dropped last 7 days) and it peaks earlier than the 7-day moving average of deaths by day of report.

The above suggests to me that providing both graphs would be preferable, and it would be nice to indicate in one of the graphs that, say, last 7 values are very unreliable.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 12:38, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Let us make the above graph with fresh data from Folkhalsomyndigheten_Covid19-2.xlsx, arcgis.com, tab "Antal avlidna per dag", this time dropping last 9 days rather than last 7 days (when I dropped 7 days, I saw at the end something that looked like an artifact of late registration, and such is seen in the previous graph above as well):

--Dan Polansky (talk) 06:39, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Update from the same source[1], dropping last 9 days:

--Dan Polansky (talk) 11:43, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Recoveries

Just out of curiosity, why is the number of recoveries not included in the information box and the charts for the pandemic, unlike in the case of other countries? Is it because accurate data is lacking (due to what constitutes a "recovery" being difficult to define)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.43.30.163 (talk) 20:45, 2 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The official Swedish data source FOHM COVID-19, arcgis.com, does not seem to provide recoveries: the main data tabs are Sjudkdomsfall/dag, Sjudkdomsfall/dag kumulativt, Intensivårdade and Avlidna/dag, none of which is recoveries. By contrast, Worldometers does provide recoveries for Sweden, but it is unclear what their data source is.
As to why the Swedish data source does not provide recoveries, I don't know. I for one think that putting the number of recoveries next to number of deaths as Worldometers does at the top is grossly misleading, and without proper interpretation will cause the wrong picture in the mind of the unsuspecting non-expert reader. In general, recoveries seem to be harder to track and detect clearly, and compared to deaths they would suffer from a considerable time lag. I think the lay reader is better off ignoring recoveries altogether and only focusing on the shape of the curve of the new cases per day and the shape of the curve of new deaths per day. An article supporting the recovery-tracking difficulty: Most people recover from Covid-19. Here's why it's hard to pinpoint exactly how many, Apr 5, cnn.com. --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:40, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am the same user who posed the question! Many thanks for responding, great explanation and I agree with your reasoning! Stay safe & healthy and I hope that things everywhere will get better soon!

You're more than welcome. Note that Worldometers:Sweden now has a spike of recoveries on May 4, over 3000 recoveries on May 4. That data is more noise than signal to me. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:53, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent point, I wish a miraculous spike in recoveries like that could really happen, but such numbers should always be viewed through the proper prism! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.43.30.163 (talk) 20:35, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

New cases

No new cases since May, 1st? Is Covid-19 finished in Sweden? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.209.18.63 (talk) 16:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

25-30,000 cases so far as of May 10th in Sweden. In a country of 10.3 million people, Swedish health officials assumed 1.3 million were exposed to Covid-19 so far, plus a quarter of Stockholm County (over 600k out of 2.4 million). And 3,000 plus deaths, although unfortunate, Swedish society believes drug treatments, antiviral research and in the future, a vaccine, showed they have a huge trust in science to manage a pandemic without lockdowns they feel are disruptive to society, the economy and human evolution to be immune to a new disease if it doesn't disappear from the earth (but SARS-1 did vanish in 2004 and MERS had 3 small outbreaks in the 2010s). 2605:E000:100D:C571:7D82:A683:E434:DB3D (talk) 06:22, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Swedish Ministry of Health announced even without a national or regional lockdown, the number of daily cases are in decline and the rate of hospitalizations plateaued. International criticism said Sweden is trying the "herd immunity" approach when it involves young and healthy people getting exposed to a coronavirus similar to the flu and common cold, but the cooperative public knows to control themselves with social distancing (although seen as an option best suited in certain situations) and other measures to not left Covid-19 spread out of control to cause more deaths and overwhelm hospitals with too many patients for their limited numbers of ICUs. An odd but apparently working situation, the WHO (World Health Organization) recently praised Sweden's no-lockdown approach to end the wave. 2605:E000:100D:C571:7D82:A683:E434:DB3D (talk) 06:19, 10 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a reason that the new cases by county chart stops on May 7th? It doesn't look as if somebody has been updating this by hand, but Folkhälsomyndigheten has continued to produce statistics by region, here for instance https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa Just checking to see if some screen-scraping script is not working as intended, since I wasn't able to figure out how the spreadsheet was being populated. Seems to be fixed now. Lacreighton (talk) 00:12, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Let us plot fresh daily cases from Folkhalsomyndigheten_Covid19-2.xlsx, arcgis.com, tab "Antal per dag region":

Let us also plot data for Stockholm area, from the same source:

--Dan Polansky (talk) 07:13, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It all over the place.Slatersteven (talk) 16:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A note on interpretation of the above, although it is stating the obvious: the epidemic is receding in Stockholm area, but since it is raising in some other parts of Sweden, it is on a plateau in Sweden overall. Graphs with similar information for other parts of Sweden, albeit using bar charts, can be found in the FHOM weekly report[2] by searching for "Antal laboratoriebekräftade fall av covid-19 per region". --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:50, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relevant research by the Public Health Agency of Sweden

According to mathematical models by the Public Health Agency of Sweden, 26% of the population of Stockholm county (0.26 x 2.344 million = 609440 people) had been infected at some point on May 1 2020. I think that this seems very relevant to include in the page.

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publikationsarkiv/e/estimates-of-the-peak-day-and-the-number-of-infected-individuals-during-the-covid-19-outbreak-in-the-stockholm-region-sweden-february--april-2020/ David A (talk) 19:16, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Blådjur would you be interested in adding this information and reference to the page where it is appropriate? David A (talk) 08:23, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@David A: Where's appropriate.. I tried looking at some other "COVID-19 pandemic in..." articles but couldn't find much. I propose a new section for Monitoring and modeling. There's some stuff in the Response from the health-care sector section about studies on infection spread and it's out of place there anyway. What do you think? bladjur (talk) 10:25, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That seems fine to me. Thanks for helping out. David A (talk) 11:43, 19 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is anybody here willing to add a reference to this study to the page? It seems very relevant to me. David A (talk) 11:45, 21 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The study[3] (and pdf[4]) was published on 30 April 2020 and uses one of those epidemiological models that are too likely to lead to wrong results. I vaguely remember there are now better studies, based on testing for antibodies. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:26, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There may be a problem with using testing for antibodies to find out how many people have been infected. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.092619v2 indicates -- though beware of small sample size, again -- that people with mild covid-19 infections clear the infection without producing much in the way of antibodies. Thus the number of people who were infected, recovered, and still test negative in a serum test may be a whole lot higher than expected. I am waiting to see what happens to this paper after the peer review. Lacreighton (talk) 16:29, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting; thank you. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:33, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright of Swedish all-cause death graph by FHOM

There is a vitally important graph in Week 19's report by FHOM, folkhalsomyndigheten.se, Figur 10. The graph shows weekly all-cause deaths in Sweden. Does anyone know whether there is something in the Swedish copyright law that would put the graph into public domain, or whether there is another copyright-law-based justification for including the graph in Wikipedia, after uploading it to Commons? Like, could it be that all publications by a state agency such as FHOM are in public domain? --Dan Polansky (talk) 06:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Does Commons:Template:PD-Sweden-URL9 apply? The template says "This document is in the public domain in Sweden because it is a reproduction of a law, decision, or report issued by a Swedish public authority (svensk myndighet) or an official translation of such a text. Lag (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk 9 §. This does not include maps, visual art, musical works, or poetic works."

FHOM seems to be a public authority by its name (it is a "svensk myndighet"); the graph is an element taken from a report and the graph is neither a map, nor visual art, nor musical work nor poetic work. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:13, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I am aware, it is probably legally fine to use the image. In the remote chance that it is not, the agency can easily just ask us to remove it again. David A (talk) 11:09, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Dan Polansky: There's no need really as the data is easily accessible: Number of deaths per day 2015-2020, Number of Covid deaths per day, Excess mortality in Sweden.bladjur (talk) 11:24, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both. Euromomo shows z-score for Sweden while the FHOM report shows absolute death numbers, much better for the lay reader, I think. And Euromomo graphs are not in public domain (or are they?), while it seems the FHOM report is in public domain, and could therefore be used in Wikipedia. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:57, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Dan Polansky:
Line chart vs non-stacked area chart showing weekly deaths in 2020 and 2015-2019 average. Weekly numbers can be replaced with daily numbers, and each year can have a line of its own
Perhaps a line chart showing 1 Jan to today for 2015-2020 and the average, with more weight (thickness, color) to the average and 2020 line?
Line chart vs non-stacked area chart showing the number of reported deaths vs excess mortality. This might be interesting as well. Haven't checked yet, but it might be possible to split reported deaths into confirmed and non-confirmed.
Note that this was quickly done using the simplest template, so I haven't double-checked the numbers or given much thought into the design or the esthetics (I simply wrote the names of some colors). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kittens n thugs (talk • contribs) 13:38, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here we go:

It would be good to be able to plot this ourselves, where 1) the y-axis should start at zero and 2) the data should go many years back if possible, ideally back to the 1968 Asian flu, but any more years back would be good. Furthermore, 3) plotting the actual deaths without any expected deaths and standard deviation lines would suffice and could be even preferable: the raw data speaks clearly enough on its own. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:00, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Dropping last 9 days in the daily death graph

I somewhat boldly dropped the last 9 days in the daily death graph, to avoid the deceptive downward slope at the end. I propose to keep this practice. Data source: Folkhalsomyndigheten_Covid19-2.xlsx, arcgis.com, tab "Antal avlidna per dag". --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:47, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Dropping 7 days seemed not enough, by my impression; maybe we should round it up, and drop last 10 days. I quote Anders Tegnell from Coronavirus: Anders Tegnell, State Epidemiologist of Sweden, on herd immunity - BBC HARDtalk, youtube.com, at around 1:46: "[...] And we do it in that way that we don't look too much at the last 10 days because we know they are very unsure [...]" --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:43, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it should be changed without consensus as there's a consensus on doing it the way it was before, with numerous users doing the updates. And it's also consistent with how it's done on other articles about the pandemic in different countries. bladjur (talk) 07:23, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
People opposing this need to come up with substantive objections, not just "consensus". Other countries use different death day reporting methods; their daily death graphs did not suffer from the deceptive downward slope at the end. The problem with things being misleading urgently needs to be addressed, and dropping the last 9 days addresses the problem. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Let me add that dropping last 9 items from a series is very easy for any editor to do; there is no fancy statistical correction involved. Furthermore, File:All-cause weekly deaths - Sweden.png shows how FHOM week 19 report has graph ending in week 17, meaning they drop 2 weeks of data in the report, further confirming that FHOM themselves are aware of the problem. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:28, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The reason for the delay is more likely that excess mortality numbers aren't immediately available for the agency. They actually have a policy to share all data immediately, even when it's preliminary. bladjur (talk) 11:20, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. When a death occurs, on, say May 21, the record may reach the agency on, say, May 25. That record is kept in the graph on the May 21 date. As a result, say, May 24 column is underrepresented on May 25 since the records of May 24 deaths are going to arrive on May 25, or May 26, or May 27, etc. Therefore, there is a systematic effect that makes the rightmost part of the chart misleading: the appearance is that the deaths are going down much faster than they really are. When I first saw the chart, I was really confused by this, and I know other people were; it is being discussed in the media. Fortunately, this misleading effect can be removed by dropping last 9 items. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You should not drop the chart entirely if it continues a data set, as the new data gets added that graph will modify (or not, we don't know, until the data is in). As it stands now, this is a chart conveying officially reported data from the source website. --Balance66 (talk) 16:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Why should I not? We report the data accurately per the source, but we post-process the source by dropping last 9 items. That is both accurate and non-misleading, which is good. Another solution would be to modify the chart to containing a warning or disclaiming element, but that is what no-one did ever since discussion of this problem started at #Numbers manipulation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
May I ask a newbie question then, is this standard practice for all time series charts? -- Balance66 (talk) 16:52, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It is a practice that can be seen in the FOHM report in that their report for week 19 has a chart ending in week 17; they dropped two weeks of data to plot their chart. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:54, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I mean chart File:All-cause_weekly_deaths_-_Sweden.png, which is from this report[5]. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:57, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think you could make the case that removing the last 9 days data of the daily deaths, while leaving the chart right above it, with the accumulated deaths runs the risk of misinforming the readers. You should back off the last 9 days of both charts so that both seen together convey an accurate picture of the same measurements. --Balance66 (talk) 16:57, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Or we could drop the accumulated death graph entirely as not so interesting as the daily death graph. But having the daily death graph non-misleading is a very good thing on its own. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:59, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As for the raised point: these are two separate graphs, ending on different dates. I guess the last 9 items should better be dropped from the accumulated death graph as well; I do not object to that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:09, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Either way would be better. The total accumulated deaths doesn't really convey any useful information as much as the daily rate, the rate of change or the rate per 100k --Balance66 (talk) 17:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I also think that it is a more honest statistical presentation to include the recently diminishing death numbers. David A (talk) 17:20, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead and dropped the last 9 items from the accumulated deaths as well.
Why is it more honest given these final columns do not reflect reality? What is dishonest about dropping last items to prevent misleading effect? Is FOHM dishonest by ending their chart with week 17 in a report from week 19? -Dan Polansky (talk) 17:24, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Did you notice that EuroMOMO uses correction techniques at the rightmost parts of their graphs to address exactly this problem, and that they use yellow marking for regions affected by the problems even after they used the correction techniques? --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:26, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It seems intellectually/scientifically dishonest to me to only include the statistics for the period when the death rate was increasing, but stop when it began to decrease. Omission of the full context easily gives a misleading impression. David A (talk) 18:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
But the criterion is not "drop when it starts to decrease" but rather "drop when the registration-delay-caused distortion becomes too big". And in fact, even when the 9 points are dropped, there is a mild downward sloping trend, contrary to "[...] only include the statistics for the period when the death rate was increasing [...]". What is your response to my FOHM and EuroMOMO points, both professional data processors? --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:54, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
There is a much more clearly displayed downward slope displayed if we include the last 9 days, and, as far as I have understood, including all available statistical data is the practice that Wikipedia uses for other articles about this pandemic regarding other countries. It is important to not hide this information from the readers for Sweden alone, especially given the widespread mainstream media criticism towards how the Swedish government has handled the crisis. Wikipedia should be neutral when it comes to presenting matter-of-fact information, period. David A (talk) 12:01, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't misleading as it's clearly explained in the note right below the chart. And the note serves as the "warning or disclaimer" you suggest. bladjur (talk) 19:01, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Removing 9 days won't make it accurate either, as reports might be delayed for up to 30 days (further, if you want to be really strict about having the true number of people who died of Covid in Sweden, this chart won't be accurate even 30 years from now, see note). But for "real-time" data, this is the best option, and this is most likely how it's done in most (or all) Wikipedia articles about the pandemic in different locations. bladjur (talk) 19:06, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Come on. 1) It is misleading or else it would not need a note. 2) It is misleading since people have been mislead and report confusion. It is on record. 3) Many readers do not read notes and only glance at a chart. You may think they should read the notes, but that's how things are; many don't. 4) Removing 9 days removes the worst effect. We must not remove the worst effect since some small effect still remains? Makes no sense. 5) Removing last items is consistent with what professional processor FOHM does. 6) Other charts for other countries do not suffer from this since they use different dating technique. And 7) don't show me distortions of reality accompanied by disclaimers; show me a reasonably accurate picture of reality instead, and then I don't need your disclaimers (I don't really mean your in particular; I mean general "your"). 8) If you absolutely must show the most recent data, act like professional data processor EuroMOMO and correct the data for registration delay using some statistical technique. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:25, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We could always wait until there is a final total, but what we should have is consistency. So either remove all but the 100% conformed figures or lets have a daily update.Slatersteven (talk) 12:07, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support the daily update option. David A (talk) 12:12, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That is the kind of foolish consistency that makes no sense. Should FOHM reports remove all deaths from their excess death charts that are not 100% free from registration delay? They only drop 2 weeks, and no more, and yet there are some small registration delay effects even for a month. What is the basis for the above proposal? Like, what is the publication that makes the proposal, or what is the publisher that uses that proposal? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:47, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Even I would say over a week is a bit long, why has there been no update?Slatersteven (talk) 18:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My points above have been left without response, especially about FOHM and EuroMOMO. If you can address my points, please go ahead and do so. What qualifications do the above editors have to override publication practices of FOHM and EuroMOMO, and dump misleading raw data on the unsuspecting reader instead? What kind of encyclopedic content is that?
Let us make it a bit more vivid how the registration effect looks like. It is like taking the underlying death counts and multiplying the series by (1, 1, 1, ..., 1, 1, 1, 0.9, 0.8, 0.7, 0.6, 0.5, 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.1). The numbers I gave are very approximate, but give the first idea. In fact, the effect goes much further back in time, but the fundamental principle is correct: the several last days are massively affected, and the more you go back in time, the less significant the registration delay effect is. What I just said can be verified by looking at the histories of the data, e.g. in Wikipedia page history, and see how the upward corrections looked like. It is right there to see for anyone who is more insterested in facts than opinions.
People really misunderstand the graph, as witnessed by another editor's statement "You don't actually know that the slope will change"; if he understood the mechanism, he would not say that. Most lay readers do not have the skill and experience to read the notes, understand what they mean, and apply them to what is visually presented to them, a graph. Graphs must not be misleading. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:32, 30 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) Let me show you something else: I will take the full 2020 data from SCB[6], no dropping of last 9 days, and plot it together with 2019 data:

You can see how the final part of the all-cause daily deaths heavily drops underneath the 2019 numbers; that is the effect of registration delay. (Something seems wrong with the x-axis rendering, though.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:31, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, how many days are worst impacted by registration delay is seen in a chart from SCB[7], Tabell 8, where you can see different states of statistics in different colors. It suggests that while dropping last 5 days would remove the very worst effect in some weeks, the yellow/orange line suggests better remove 9 days and so does the blue line. For this purpose, this is an excellent kind of chart they made. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:55, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

All-cause daily deaths from SCB

Thanks to a link posted above, we can plot daily all-cause deaths, from which daily excess death is apparent.

The source of data and the idea for the graph: Number of deaths per day 2015-2020, scb.se, Tabell 1.

I removed Feb 29 from the source data to remove a glitch in the average series: there is no value on Feb 29 for multiple years. And I cut the data after May 7 to remove registration delay effect; 8 values were removed from the 2020 series.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 10:53, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Using the same data, we can also plot individual years rather than the average:

And here the total deaths from Jan 1 to May 7 (including) excluding Feb 29, calculated from the same source:

--Dan Polansky (talk) 07:22, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Dan Polansky: This is really nice work! bladjur (talk) 07:23, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for discovering and providing the link to the data; without the link we would not have this. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:57, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Let us redo one of the graphs by smoothing it via exponential moving average with factor 0.8:

The above seems to have better cognitive value because of the removed high-frequency noise; on the other hand, some people may prefer to see raw data, especially when they fear that the data processing (smoothing, etc.) technique is dubious. Moving averages are a standard smoothing tool, used e.g. by Google Ngram Viewer. I wonder whether readers would be more comfortable with the plain multi-day arithmetic average (say 7-day average) rather than the exponential moving average. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:07, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. What do you think about showing the number of deaths in dependence to the age, like I found it in de.wiki here to Switzerland. Like this:

|caption=Mortality displacement age 65 years and above (orange, up) and up to 64 years (orange, down) compared to expected (blue)[1] |width=500}}

With best greetings from Germany. Heavytrader-Gunnar (talk) 12:29, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ Bundesamt für Statistik (2020-05-19). "Wöchentliche Todesfälle, 2020 | Diagramm".

@Heavytrader-Gunnar: Using Number of deaths per day 2015-2020, scb.se, Tabell 2, we can plot the graph you requested.

Daily death count in Sweden in 2020, split into age groups, smoothed via exponencial moving average (0.8):

We can also plot the 0-64y age group separately to see the minor changes more pronounced:

--Dan Polansky (talk) 11:16, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Dan Polansky!
It turns out as expected: the mortality is hardly worth mentioning for people under 65. Heavytrader-Gunnar (talk) 18:12, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Picture

I fail to see how painting it red is designed to scare people (after all it kills peoples, which is rather more scary than the colour red).Slatersteven (talk) 14:39, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We are talking about File:2019-nCoV-CDC-23312 without background.png. Red is scary, it is obvious. Anecdotally, this particular image looks super scary to me. The red in the image does not serve to represent anything; it does not talk to the high-level congitive capacity of the viewer but rather to the low-level vulnerabilities. Furthermore, this article is not about the virus but rather about the epidemic, and therefore, the image does not even properly belong there. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:47, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It serves to highlight what is different areas look like, it is done all the time where the objective is to give an easy to interpret visual representation.Slatersteven (talk) 14:51, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Color can be used to highlight different parts of an object, but it does not need to be the scary color. It is obvious that mass media chose the red color in their visuals to create maximum scare effect; Wikipedia should do all that it can to abstain from that kind of tabloid behavior, and maintain its status as a NPOV encyclopedia. I recently saw some media make rectifications in that area, and that is good news.
And the shape of the virus is not even relevant to the spread of the epidemic; it is completely ancillary information. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:54, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Who said they did, this is just your opinion. Lets ask others, is "RED!" scary, so scary using it violates NPOV?Slatersteven (talk) 14:57, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Me and you obviously disagree on the scary effect; please respond to the point that the virus image, even if toned down, does not properly belong to an article on the epidemic, that is, the spread and demographic effects of the virus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:59, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have asked others to chime in. I will wait until others respond as the key issue is NPOV, not undue.Slatersteven (talk) 15:04, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have raised a separate point (img off topic in an epidemic article), and I got an evasive non-answer. I raise both issues: 1) too scary and tabloid and therefore not NPOV, and 2) not fit per article topic. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:06, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have no view on this one way or the other. I do not see why we need it, I do not see why we cannot have it.Slatersteven (talk) 15:10, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, in Bill Maher was 'absolutely bang on' when he derided COVID-19 media hysteria, youtube.com, Bill Maher says "stop showing us this; you know everything looks scary when you magnify it thousand times" in relation to a picture that looks very similar to what we are discussing here. Now I am not passing Bill Maher as a reliable resource for Wikipedia purposes, but at least one another person agrees with me that the picture looks scary. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:51, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we can just solve this by painting it in a different color. bladjur (talk) 07:23, 24 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

All-cause death totals chart

The following chart I added was removed at some point:

The total deaths from Jan 1 to May 7 (including) excluding Feb 29, calculated from SCB:

I believe it has its value and is not visually redundant. It shows the areas under the curves of the other graph, and these are valuable provided the readers cannot do reliable visual integration (in the mathematical sense) themselves: I for one can't. --Dan Polansky (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I was the one who removed that graph (and the out-of-date excess deaths table which also showed the same thing).
I believe the average reader will get a picture after reading that "from late-March and onwards, there was en excess mortality in Sweden" in the prose, accompanied by the nice graph you made. While the graph might be complicated to some, it's easy to see that there's a blue line suddenly jumping and leaving all the green lines below. And isn't this all we want to explain?
If you think more information is needed, adding a third chart isn't the way to go. Rather improve the first chart. But I think it's perfect, a line going up is the simplest chart there is. Also, I don't really see the purpose of showing the total number of all-cause deaths since 1 January for 2015-2020 in the context of the pandemic as it didn't start to affect Swedish death statistics before late March. And as the prose also says something like "there has been 3500 excess deaths in Sweden during the pandemic", I think that is pretty self-explanatory. bladjur (talk) 11:06, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I moved the all-case deaths chart to provide context with the prose. I also put it a frame together with the source and the headline (above the chart) for context together with the prose, consistency within the article, and to avoid confusion for the readers. However I think the sentence "smoothed by applying exponential moving average with factor 0.8" needs clarification, or at least links to other articles. bladjur (talk) 12:15, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am not entirely happy with the edits, but they are essentially acceptable as long as the charts are still somewhere on the page. The frames around charts are not a standard publication practice in the publications I am acquainted with, and do not present an improvement, in my view, but they are tolerable.
As for "there has been 3500 excess deaths in Sweden during the pandemic", you will note that the discussed chart shows that, in Jan 1 to May 7, there were about 800 deaths more in 2020 than in 2018; that is information that the 3500 excess death figure does not and cannot capture. And the visuals are super important to show relations of quantities; text does not serve that purpose so well.
As for "exponential moving average", it can be linked to W:exponential moving average if required; on the other hand, the kind reader can use search box as well. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. I edited the text to clarify that the published 3500 (now 4000) number concern the pandemic period March–May. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blådjur (talk • contribs) 21:29, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

China-Virus vanished?

No new cases since 2020-05-20? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.75.198.237 (talk) 12:08, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What has this to do with Sweden?Slatersteven (talk) 12:10, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The question was. Has the China-Virus vanished in Sweden, because there are no new figures for end of May. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.109.68.88 (talk) 09:53, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This article is not about anything called the China-Virus.Slatersteven (talk) 18:56, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If you have nothing productive to say, just ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.109.66.208 (talk) 08:23, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

All-cause daily deaths in Stockholm county per SCB

From SCB[8], Tabell 3, we can plot the following.

All-cause daily deaths in Stockholm county per SCB:

No smoothing this time; I am too tired. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:17, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Updated. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:30, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And here are the total deaths for Stockholm county from Jan 1 to Jun 3 excluding Feb 29:

--Dan Polansky (talk) 18:39, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That should be updated, if new data is available. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.209.196.140 (talk) 07:33, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Updated. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:30, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sweden's strategy failed: Much higher death rate than in Norway or Denmark, per capita

<<<Sweden never locked down during the coronavirus pandemic>>> 

An editor who has worked on this article should update it. (With some clear-cut information instead of statistical jargon.) Some articles from the past week:

Scientist admits Sweden could have battled virus better |The country's former state epidemiologist, Annika Linde, said that in retrospect she believes an early lockdown could have saved lives   

Mortality rate: 8th highest number of coronavirus-related deaths per capita in the world ... four times more than neighbouring Denmark and 10 times higher than Norway

Their plan was based on Herd Immunity:  BUT  fewer Swedes have developed immunity to the disease than had been hoped  

Sources: https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/sweden-didn-t-lock-down-but-economy-to-plunge-anyway-1.4973195 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/scientist-admits-sweden-could-have-battled-virus-better-1.4967014 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/11/sweden-coronavirus-312838 Peter K Burian (talk) 13:47, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Did the strategy save their economy? No
Sweden Has Avoided a Coronavirus Lockdown. Its Economy Is Hurting Anyway. (Wall Street Journal)   https://www.wsj.com/articles/sweden-has-avoided-a-coronavirus-lockdown-its-economy-is-hurting-anyway-11588870062
Sweden Says Covid Strategy Was Never About Shielding the Economy Sweden’s softer lockdown has resulted in one of the world’s highest death rates, relative to the population. At the same time, Andersson said in May that her country was facing a “very deep economic crisis,” with GDP set to sink about about 7%, despite the softer lockdown. ... Sweden’s recession is likely to be roughly as bad as that in the European Union https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/sweden-says-covid-strategy-was-never-about-shielding-the-economy Peter K Burian (talk) 13:55, 14 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Peter K Burian: Regarding the economy and recession, See Finance and the economy. Also see sixth paragraph in Strategy. Btw I looked at your links, it left me curious how they think "soft" or "hard" lockdown could matter much to an economy which relies on exports, or when people stayed at home without someone physically forcing them to do so. But I was also reminded that the narrative in the US is very different. Regarding "plan based on herd immunity", see sixth paragraph in Strategy and also Media coverage. Regarding immunity, I agree Monitoring and modeling needs to be updated. But it would probably be a waste of time to do it before Thursday. Regarding mortality, I'm not sure what you're after? The introduction informs the reader that "the number of deaths with confirmed COVID-19 has been significantly higher in Sweden compared to most of Europe, including other Scandinavian countries". Sourcing "8th highest" is likely to be impossible. Regarding Linde, although she received much coverage with her comments on the strategy, so did a lot of others. The Debate and criticism section exists for a reason, but WP:WEIGHT makes it quite a challenge to edit. However I think WP:BOLD is a good way of tackling it. bladjur (talk) 21:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC) (feedback welcome)[reply]
Just a comment about the economy: It was already in quite bad shape compared to the rest of Europe before this crisis hit, and our experts issued warnings that we would hit between 20% and 40% unemployment if we had a widespread shutdown for several months, so although the country is still hit hard, it would have been hit much harder otherwise. David A (talk) 12:57, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Can you add this to the article? bladjur (talk) 10:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am not good at figuring out how to properly incorporate new information into preexisting articles, but here are two references, so you might be able to handle it yourself instead: [9] [10] David A (talk) 22:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Here is more information about that Sweden was already in a quite bad position financially before the pandemic hit: [11] [12] David A (talk) 22:11, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Is somebody willing to incorporate this into the article? David A (talk) 09:04, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That updated table must be wrong, a jump of 10,000 in 10 days?Slatersteven (talk) 13:05, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Testing numbers was made into politics a couple of weeks ago. As a result, Sweden went from only testing those with severe illness and healthcare workers to "free antibody tests for everyone" bladjur (talk) 22:21, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The title of this section is not an accurate reflection of facts, to say the least. The Swedish strategy was a mitigation strategy, that is, one aiming at preventing healthcare overload. The strategy met its key objective of preventing healthcare overload well, and is therefore at least a moderate success. Excess death charts and related charts on this very talk page show that the health outcomes in Sweden, while unfortunate, are nowhere near the catastrophic forecasts made by some pseudo-experts. In retrospect, some elements of the strategy appear worthy of improvement: Sweden could have banned visits to nursing homes earlier and it could have been much more aggressive in nursing home protection.
There appears nothing analytically honest about comparing Sweden only to Scandinavian countries; if you want to assess the efficacy of a certain kind of strategy, you must not cherry pick items to include into your analysis, and you must include both poor-outcome heavy lockdowners and good-outcome non-lockdowners. We might hope that a proper peer-reviewed scientific article would do a better job of causal analysis than the articles linked above. As for economic impact, let us recall that the purpose of financial forecasting is to make astrology look respectable; let's wait and see what the actual outcomes are going to be. It would not be surprising to learn that e.g. the level of additional debt that Sweden has to incur would be much lower since the losses of small businesses would be lower. Furthermore, the proper economic assessment of the Swedish strategy would have to ask how that strategy would perform if significant number of European countries adopted the strategy: from the point of view of that strategy, other European countries defected in the prisoner's dilemma in which they found themselves. If the Swedish strategy were adopted across Europe, its true economic performance could be seen. Let us also note that economic performance cannot be divorced from mid-term health outcomes. The adverse health consequences of the economic impact of the lockdown policies are likely to be felt especially in the 3rd world. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:00, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is a display of bad faith. But we are on Wikipedia, so keep your propaganda for your friends. Give us primary or secondary sources, or don't spam here. Alcyon007 (talk) 17:00, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Let's discuss substance and subject matter. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
One could say that if the method of preventing healthcare overload is not to give healtcare then it is not success. Ie. one can prevent the healtcare overload just by limiting the access to the health care and increasing the capasity of undertakers which was something what we saw in sweden. --Zache (talk) 19:52, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I know, there was no healthcare overload in Sweden, but I may be wrong. This Wikipedia article does not have the word "overload". Does anyone have any sources indicating that Sweden had healthcare overload during the covid pandemic? Let's look e.g. at Stockholm shuts field hospital as pandemic slowly eases grip on capital, June 4, reutes.com, which indicates about a field hospital built in Sweden to support Stockholm healthcare the following: "Eriksson said the field hospital had not needed to take in patients since the region’s regular hospitals had been able to increase capacity more than healthcare officials had initially thought feasible".
My reason for posting here is the belief that "Sweden's strategy failed" is not a factually correct statement belonging in an encyclopedia (it could be okay for a polemic journalistic article, but even that is not very clear), and that comparing Sweden only to select few countries while controlling for no confounding factors is not a sound scientific practice. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I will be more clear. In example, they had room in hospitals because were not taking eldery patients from care homes. In care homes however, there was no resources or methods or legal right to give care needed. With care i mean things like supplementary oxygen. (Bioedge is not good enough to be used as reference but it is good summary and there is link to paywalled WSJ article: [13]) Second example is that they had official protocol to transfer patients with likely covid-19 infections from hospitals to care homes without testing. This also helped to keep the hospital load lower, but spreaded the infections in care homes.[14]. Technically this can be on paper that there was no overload in hospitals, but at same time it leaded to dead people. Zache (talk) 10:41, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Could you point at where it says that denying care for nursing home patients was the reason that hospitals didn't run out of beds? Because I couldn't find anything in in your source that supports your claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blådjur (talk • contribs) 21:22, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Little bit longer quote from WSJ The triage recommendations were intended to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed by a surge of sick people and to focus medical resources on those most likely to benefit from them. Many Western countries have similar guidelines, but they have only been implemented on a large scale in northern Italy when the regions ran out of hospital beds in March. ... In Sweden, critics say, these guidelines have too often resulted in older patients being denied treatment, even when hospitals were operating below capacity. Occupancy in the country’s intensive-care units, for instance, has yet to exceed 80%, according to government officials.. --Zache (talk) 05:15, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. The bioedge.org[15] article is interesting and disturbing, e.g. 'A consistent theme [in complaints] is that nursing home residents with suspected Covid-19 were immediately placed on palliative care and given morphine and denied supplementary oxygen and intravenous fluids and nutrition. For many this was effectively a death sentence' and '“Older people [in nursing homes] are routinely being given morphine and midazolam, which are respiratory-inhibiting,” [...]'. If this is true, some of the people are likely to have been killed by the intervention, i.e. the respiratory inhibitants, rather than the covid alone. Nonetheless, I still maintain that moderate success is a fair description for the Swedish strategy as a whole, and it is a pity some elements of the strategy contributed to far too many excess deaths and prevented the strategy from being a complete success. Either way, it does not seem proper for an encyclopedia article to declare the strategy a failure or success at this stage; rather, let the article report facts closer to raw observation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think that Dan seems to make sense. David A (talk) 11:45, 21 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm said today (because they didn't have enough staff, equipment etc) : Vi har upprepade gånger tvingats säga nej till patienter vi normalt skulle ha accepterat, säger Michael Broomé till Dagens Nyheter ie We have repeatedly been forced to say no to patients we would normally have accepted, says Michael Broomé to Dagens Nyheter [16] --Zache (talk) 10:31, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
And just to be clear, I totally agree with this: Either way, it does not seem proper for an encyclopedia article to declare the strategy a failure or success at this stage; rather, let the article report facts closer to raw observation --Zache (talk) 10:36, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Latest numbers after June 18?

Are there no more updates of daily numbers after 18. June 2020? Folkhälsomyndigheten arcgis does not show anything new. --Traut (talk) 10:04, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Traut, the Swedish authorities have decided to stop reporting data on the weekends. The numbers have just been updated here. Deaths: 5,122; Infected: 58,932; ICU: 2,354. No data on recoveries. Do you understand Swedish? I'm hoping to find a breakdown of cases and deaths per day of the weekend before we update the tables. --Spaastm (talk) 15:08, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Current COVID template addition

I was able to add {{Current COVID}} in top of the page to reflect this situation of ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic per country or region, such as COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. 2A02:2F01:6504:6200:1F6:9D55:4D4:C5D5 (talk) 19:39, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why infections started to decline in march/april?

Is there any good analysis what would try to explain why infections started to decline? Initial explanation was that there started to be enough people with immunity, but it doesn't seem to be case based on serology testing. Another explanation could be that the impact from social distancing and voluntary rules would be enough to turn the tide or there would be a crossimmunity or there is seasonal change how easily it will infect people, but is somebody tried to validate the explanations? --Zache (talk) 09:58, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I read somewhere that the virus is gradually mutating to turn less deadly over time, since killing the host bodies makes it less efficient at transmitting to new ones. Hence, despite more people getting infected, the death rate continues to go down. David A (talk) 11:57, 26 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@David A: We are talking infections, not deaths, as per the title of the thread.
@Zache: What are the results of serology testing that pertain to reduced rate of infections? What article, and what numbers? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:07, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Zache Same as in every European country. Self-isolating if you have any symptoms, improved hand hygiene, social distancing. And common sense really. There's never been any voluntary rules, everyone is expected to follow the advice from the agencies (see note 2). Besides, there's been several new laws. Regarding the decline, according to the Health Agency the decline began in April. Your second explanation is the same as theirs, see the weekly reports here. bladjur (talk) 21:41, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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