Sweden is a horrible test case for many reasons.
It’s also showing a 8% mortality rate. Has a much steeper curve than the US.
The best example of herd immunity strategy as would apply to the US, is the UK.
They attempted herd immunity... then went social distancing when everything started to get out of control.
How’s the U.K. doing? With very limited testing, they are certainly vastly under counting their death rate. But so far, they are losing 91 out of every million people. (Not every million infected people,out of total population). That number will continue to rise. They are fairly early in their curve.
Despite a much smaller population than the US, their deaths will likely hit a higher peak than the US.
How did herd immunity go in Italy?
I just wish that the mods would allow me to post my graphs so I can show that the Swedish curve is virtually the same as the US. But take it from me, there isn't much difference. The Swedish curve is also following UK closely.
On the UK figures, the deaths figures are accurate, and not really affected by numbers tested - comparing deaths from country to country is reasonably consistent, and not many deaths aren't being tested in the UK. You are correct that testing isn't as widespread here in the UK, but that won't really affect the death statistics.
Plus the UK strategy wasn't just based on herd immunity at the start (I know that for a fact due to other briefings I get through my work, and one of my colleagues is involved with the response to this). The strategy was always to isolate on the sign of symptoms, but that would have the effect of building up herd immunity. Sweden's measures are not too different to that strategy, which is why it is really interesting to see what is happening there, like I said. My stats show that the curve in UK is starting to peak - I put our peak about 1 week away.
Finally, whilst everybody keeps going on about Italy, the worst country when you normalise for population size, is actually Spain.
Mods, please can I have permission to post my graph? Debating about when the parks might open is proving very difficult unless we can debate about when peaks might occur, and my graphs would help. Whilst I am confident that the USA as a whole will have peaked early enough to make a 1st June date realistic, I don't think Florida will have peaked early enough to be open by then. Mid June at the earliest for Florida, and more realistically July is my guess. But at the moment we are all just guessing, because whilst the models should now be able to be validated on the upwards part of the curve, we are all still relying on pure models for the downward part of the curve. We need to wait for more info on what happens with Italy and Spain to know how that might look. It is no good looking at China or S Korea - their curves have been very different (and they are susceptible to a large 2nd peak as a result).
my guess is that is why they are not wearing masks. (not looking to argue stats, just saying we can only guess based on that)
