UKH

As we all know, Sweden has not imposed a hard lockdown. From what I understand, whilst Sweden is indeed experiencing more deaths than Norway or Denmark, who have enforced hard lockdowns, Sweden has not gone on to be ravaged by Covid-19 in the ways that were predicted by countries who, trying to avoid such a scenario, imposed hard lock-downs.

Why? And what (if anything) can we learn from their example?

p.s. this post partly prompted by a friend who lives in Stockholm and keeps sending me updates about all the projects he's ticked these past few weeks. The little t***.

Larger country with smaller population. They’re already socially distanced. 

10million population  

25 people per sq mile verses our 727. 
 

Comparing countries is pointless. 

I think it’s much more complex, loads of bullshit sensationalist articles, But supposedly lots of people are basically locked down.

I am in Massachusetts and we’re not in lockdown but are aggressively social distancing and have closed schools and non essential businesses.

countrues like the U.K. were caught exposed and unprepared so had to take more aggressive stances to stop the health infrastructure collapsing. After this wave things can be relaxed but this is now life for a long time, at least until we get treatment.

Many swedes have taken matters into their own hands and locked themselves down to some extent. They are being ravaged somewhat in comparison to their neighbouring countries with similar populations and levels of urbanisation.

The problem Sweden might face is that things get worse and they have to lockdown. Norway lockded down early and is already relaxing after having very few deaths. A short, sharp lockdown early on looks like it might be the best option all round in terms of saving lives and the economy, at least judging by norway vs sweden. 

On top of this, we are still in the early stages of the pandemic. When the lockdown is eased in the UK people might rush out thinking that it is all over but sadly not, it will be more like the end of the beginning phase. I suspect we will be release, unless we are really lucky with herd immunity occurring faster than we thought, and infection giving long term immunity. 

Thanks all - that helps!

Finland thinks it is getting infections from over the northern border with Sweden. https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/first_covid-19_death_reported_in_kemi_he... When that article was written a couple of days back, Sweden with about twice the population of Finland had over 15x the number of fatalities from covid19.

People are still going climbing, bouldering, camping etc in Finland BTW.

edit: today's figures - deaths per million: SWE 192, FIN 27 (to compare UK 267, FRA 319). Caveats - many countries are only starting to include nursing home deaths, Finland's total deaths went up nearly 50% yesterday when they added 41 deaths in the capital region's care homes. Not sure if Sweden has included their care home deaths yet.

They have selectively shut down a lot of things many of them prior to countries which are currently hard lockdown. For example they banned large gatherings early and have shut the older kids schools.

2 main reasons as I have seen it reported.

Firstly when the Swedish government said "do social distancing" their population did a lot better than the UK did who all went down the park together

Secondly the population density in sweden is massively lower than us and most other countries.

Finally, I understand they are now have a bit of an "oh shit" moment following their most recent numbers

It,s actually 25 per square km. As a comparison Scotland has 65

Hmmm this 'per square km' figure by itself isn't that helpful - there are vast bits of Sweden where almost nobody lives, with much higher concentrations in and around e.g. Stockholm and Malmao - which will be comparable to e.g. cities in the north of England (I would imagine).

but a lot live in Stockholm, and that has a higher population density than London.

In my view Sweden is doing fine. The main goal is not to overwhelm the hospitals and they are managing that. They have more deaths than Norway, but also less severe restriction on life. That's ok.

Possibly that Norway reacted faster to the transmission out of Austria as well, they were the first to start tracking contacts as far as I know (after Iceland) and a week or two before Sweden.

In interesting angle - https://uk.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-sweden-stockholm-herd-immunity-144733...

I have a lot of colleagues in Sweden, and they have been working from home as long as we have (2+ weeks before the UK lockdown). 
The Scandinavian countries in general have a long history of open consensus government and personal responsibility, rather than secretive top down government and doing what you’re told so there was more trust that the population would act responsibly. Even so, it’s clear that currently they have been hit harder than their neighbours. 
Also their health service was better prepared, and they contact traced hard at the start. They had empty isolation wards ready and waiting a month in advance, which should result in better outcomes. 

Does the population have better diet / less base health problems ? Is air quality better in urban environments ? I bet it's averagly more windy in those northern countries - which would help clear the air  

Agree it's hard to compare countries but you're wrong about them being "already socially distances" 

Whilst Sweden does have a low overall population density , most of its inhabitants are concentrated in cities.

A higher percentage of Swedish people live in cities than the UK .Sweden has a urban population percentage of 85 and UK is only 83. 

London has more people than the entire Swedish population. 

So what ? 

Surely we can only compare countries by infections per million people, not total ? 

Last I checked Sweden was around 4 times lower . 

Edit: sorry im wrong there, right now in deaths per million uk is 262 and sweden 173

Agree with what others have said but also Sweden didn't let it get out of control the same as we did. After they had banned gatherings of more than 500 we had big footie games, huge concerts and the Cheltnam festival go ahead.

If our government had reacted faster we might also be having a lesser lockdown, and fewer deaths. Hey ho.

A lot of that is done to having a naturally compliant society. 
 

We don’t have that in the UK. Imagine banning football matches when the majority of your population is still saying “it’s only the flu” and “It’s only old people who are affected”.  

Is population density Sweden/other vs UK  very relevant? If you go shopping or to work you get within x metres of y people and their are z people in your household whether you are in the city or the countryside. Plus most developed countries have mostly urban populations.

You can only compare their R0 numbers with no lockdown. Ours was doubling every 3 days. What was theirs doing? 

Two pages down in this link - there is an air quality map for the whole of europe - for particulate matter PM2.5 . The evident correlation for Scandinavia to have lower infection is impressive !

https://airqualitynews.com/2020/04/09/why-air-pollution-is-linked-to-a-fast...

There's always a presumption that other countries are somehow doing things so much better than the UK does - but we had the Cheltenham Festival, Sweden had Melodifestivalen with thousands of people gathered for finals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodifestivalen_2020#Coronavirus_considerati...

Sweden's deaths per million aren't that far behind UK levels, and are worse than the US's, much worse than Germany's etc. I really hope their approach works out in the long term, because in the shorter term they seem to be doing worse than most of the other small to medium sized European countries.

People tend to make the most favourable comparisons that suit their arguments. Ask yourself why with a more lax approach to lockdown we would be like Sweden as opposed to, say, the East Coast of the US.

Sweden, on the other hand, are more likely to be making comparisons with their immediate neighbours - Denmark, Norway and Finland. Comparisons that do not make their strategy look particularly wise.

Yes, I think the reason why the virus has not spread here in Norway to the same extent as other European countries is because it was largely brought here by people returning from skiing holidays in Italy and Austria. These are relatively wealthy people who aren't forced to live in proximity to others and don't use public transport. The result was a slow spread and more time for the authorities to react. 

After four weeks working from home, I am back in the office this week. Cycling home today there was not much evidence of social distancing going on, especially among younger people - it was 20 degrees in the shade this afternoon and people were making the most of it. What is preventing disaster is that there aren't too many infected people out there.

It will be interesting to see what happens as focus on prevention is lost.

When it comes to personal responsibility, don't be fooled by the hype - as in the UK, 15% of the population here are idiots who don't think the Covid crisis applies to them.

Have you checked the dates? That was on the 7th March, and things were moving pretty fast. Chelthnam was a week later.  I'm not presuming anything and I answered the OP factually.

Well quite.  I'm not really seeing the rosy picture of Sweden painted by the majority. They have somewhat spikey reporting for whatever reason, but to me their day on day cases and deaths seem to be increasing still. Whereas at least ours appear to be levelling off.

I appreciate its difficult to tell, but I'm not convinced they're doing that well really.

(Based on their worldometers numbers)

They're not no, but the OP was asking why with their lesser lockdown they aren't suffering as badly as the UK. Yours and Toby's point is valid in answering that question (they are suffering quite badly), as is mine...... they did introduce measures earlier, timing is crucial.

Actually, my question was why with lesser lockdown they aren’t in the Armageddon scenario that was assumes by most govts as the reason hard lockdowns were needed. That they are better or worse than the UK isn’t really the point I am interested in. 

Although a similar proportion live in cities, a majority of Swedish people live by themselves, whereas it's 11% here, so they are naturally more distanced than us

Spreading within household clusters is a significant source of spread. In virtually all people I've spoken to with suspected covid over the past few weeks, someone brings it home, then the entire household is unwell within a week.  Obviously this kind of spreading will occur much less in Sweden.

Yes, but they brought the ban in in stages, 12th March - gatherings of more than 500. And only on 29th of March did the lower it to 50 or more. My understanding is it is still ok to have gatherings of 49 people.

Fine, but the answers you've been given still apply.

As for 'Armageddon'... there's a place for exaggeration but I don't think it's now. We are trying to avoid overwhelming healthcare services, excessive deaths among the vulnerable and healthcare workers. 

And the reply button worked last time I used it.

Edit: Sweden has brought in significant measures, some relatively early, which would have a big  impact given the exponential rise in cases. That was my point.

Yes, and I was talking about events where 60000 plus people were present, not 50 or 500.

I’ve had a long day and I’m not in a good mood, so just sod off thank you very much. “Last time I checked the reply button still works”. Last time I checked you never, ever made a mistake in your life. Lucky you. You must be wonderful.

Christ. 

I've also had a shitty day and I made a mistake too. Sorry.

It's a difficult time for everyone and your post touched a nerve.

Yeah sorry - wasn’t intended to. I wrote it in a rush between sets on the hangboard!

This doesn't make as much difference as you might think it would.  That's why the UK didn't have an interim stage like that, I'm told by someone I know who works for PHE.  Things like gigs and festivals with standing do, but at a football match you come into contact with relatively few people even if loads are there.

The spread from the Liverpool match will have happened in the pubs before and after the match.

1,937 deaths compared to 187 is OK?

Interestingly my Norwegian, and Norwegian-resident friends all seem to have continued happily ski mountaineering over Easter. So I'm sure Norway has brought in many measures but they don't appear to be as strict as here in the UK.

Certainly true if you compare Malmo with Leeds for example. However, I do wonder about the cities, 2nd home ownership is much, much higher in Sweden than the U.K, I wonder how many Swedish city dwellers have isolated themselves in their cabins!

Something to consider is that care home deaths, tested or suspected covid19 have also been included for around a week or so. 

Isn't ski mountaineering in Norway the same level of right to daily excercise as going for a walk in the park in the UK?

Hmm, maybe to some extent. Many people are working from home (though some of my colleagues have been getting bored and returning to the office). But there are still big groups congregating. The weather this week has been really warm, and I've seen plenty of large groups (young and old) out in the parks having BBQs, picnics, playing frisbee, etc. And whilst some people keep their distance at the supermarkets there are still loads of people who clearly don't care.

It's always hard to compare small numbers of countries, since there are so many differences between them.  But your point is a fair one: the degree of social distancing in Sweden has been sufficient to prevent exponential growth.

This has already been discussed somewhat Paul:- https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/sweden-717940

I read only 10% as it was actively discouraged and the Swedes are a compliant bunch.

Sweden is the largest country in Northern Europe and the fifth largest in Europe. It contains thousands of lakes and islands. Politically, the Kingdom of Sweden is thought to have been formed by the merging of Svealand and Gotaland under the rule of Eric the Victorious. However, this is far from certain. Modern Sweden is considered to have been formed on sixth June 1523 under the kingship of Gustav Vasa. Sweden expanded its empire during the mid-17th century through conquests including the Thirty Years War, however, like many countries this was halted through defeat in Russia and plague. The expansionism ended with defeat by Norway in 1721. Officially neutral through both world wars Sweden now has a high knowledge export based economy with low income inequality.

Happy to help.

Very droll!

That's what the Norwegians thought too, right up to the point when the government dispatched the Home Guard to bring them down from the mountains

Edited for apostrophe crime!

Wan't it Stockholm that reported an explosion in infections detected in donated blood (an unrepresentative sample) this week? I forget the exact numbers but they were startling, something like an increase from 5% of samples to 20% week on week (fits with the early pre-control growth rate we saw here and elsewhere of ~3 days to double). I'm not sure their policy is really paying off even if Swedes have been taking matters into their own hands ahead of government impositions, their growing problem may just have been hidden in the young urban poor. They may well have just delayed putting themselves in Britain's unenviable position with a wildfire to extinguish. Hopefully not.

jk

People going to their summer cottages was one of the main reasons given in Finland for shutting off Uusimaa (the region that includes Helsinki and its suburbs, Vantaa and Espoo which count as the second and fourth biggest cities in the country) from the rest of the country, using the defence forces to back up the police. The govt. has now reopened Uusimaa saying that the virus is present in all other regions of the country anyway - so it doesn't seemed to have helped very much.

I haven't heard that one. But I don't think they have a lot of uncontrolled spread at the moment. The following link shows FT research data of the amount of people in hospitals in Stockholm. The daily number of new cases has been decreasing for a couple of weeks and the total number is now decreasing as well.

Stockholm: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1253078993399676928

Compare UK: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1253078890119139334

Yeah. There is loads of travel to stugas, obviously radiating out the biggest cities. The advice is to stay local, but stockholmers know best. 

The folk in Visby have been asking for a ban on tourist traffic on the Gotland ferry for weeks. 

Best thing would be a few weeks of rain to keep them holed up at home. 

I can't find the piece I remember seeing, this is the closest I could find but it's just a single point snapshot, the one I saw referenced tests done a week apart with a strikingly high fraction of positives in the second set of tests. There wasn't anything about the methodology so it could have been blood taken from one district with a CV problem.

https://europost.eu/en/a/view/at-least-11-out-of-100-stockholm-s-residents-...

As I said, if Stockholm has a problem (as their donated blood tests hint at) it may still be hidden in the young so not reflected in hospital admissions. Seems reasonably unlikely to me, more likely too much is being made of odd anomalous data points in order to sell stories or forward particular agendas.

jk

They've been testing blood donations. 3 weeks was 4%, 2 weeks it was up to 11%. 

So some are then drawing wild conclusions on spread of covid19. But the problem is blood donations are usually from a given age range, generally healthy and even less likely to be migrants etc. So it's hard to draw precise conclusions.  

Stockholm is the hotspot. Stemming from a music event at the beginning of March before they were banned. 

It baffles me that more people aren't doing more testing of random samples of the population. 

Cheers. Is that '3 weeks ago' and '2 weeks ago' or 'for 3 weeks' then 'for 2 weeks'? I guess those were the numbers I saw and misremembered!

Yeah, clearly not a representative sample and without understanding the methodology there is loads of scope for jumping to misleading conclusions.

jk

Yes. Weeks ago. I've not seen anything this last week or so. I expect they have them, but aren't releasing them due to the media jumping on the wrong bandwagon. 

What we need is a competent global health body. 

They could direct the test, standardised samples etc. across many cities, across Europe or the world, on the same date. Then perhaps repeat weekly. 

It can't really be that hard. It's just coordinating existing individual nations practices. 

I'm trying to work out if you're being sarcastic here! On the off chance that you're not then yes it really is that hard! Take possible Taiwanese membership the WHO as an example!

I would be wary of reading too much into such early research. 

For example, if they are detecting antibodies against a viral protein that isn't specific to just Covid-19 then they may pick up lots of positives from people exposed to similar virus strains that also produce that same protein. This may give the false impression that people have some immunity to Covid-19.

Fair point and I'm more than a little wary of reading much into these stories but the trend over time assuming the sampling methodology remained constant would still imply something noteworthy was happening, no? Unless there's a simultaneous unnoticed flareup of a similar virus.

jk

As you've said, they could be catching people producing antibodies against a similar viral protein or virus that's increasingly prevalent. 

Also, they would need a number of timepoints showing increases to show significance. for example an increase across 2 timepoints isn't robust as it could be down to chance having pulled from 2 groups of blood donors (or chance due to false negatives in the first round of testing).

I'm not saying it's wrong or won't turn out to be the case however, it's too early to say definitively.

me too. NY have managed to do something (dubious sampling/testing tho):

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8250385/A-FIFTH-New-York-City-resi...

What do people think of the longer term viability of Sweden’s strategy? 
To me it seems that it’s a more mature view to accept that people will die and that we can’t protect everyone till a vaccine is (maybe) produced. 
Realistically we can’t stay in lockdown for however long a vaccine will take to be produced so will have to remove restrictions, at which point case and death rates may rise again. 

The only european country which has not given in to populism, but is following the science

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/25/sweden-succeeds-lockdownswill-h...

"If Sweden succeeds, (other european) lockdowns will all have been for nothing"

It really doesn't look like Sweden is succeeding sadly. Look at their number of deaths compared to Norway, a country with similar demographics, population density and urbanisation. 

Also this fairly pointless article in the Sunday Times (pay-walled?)

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/sweden-the-young-dance-at-a-distan...

Could be fake news - the clothing worn by the people in the photos doesn't seem to reflect the current warm temperatures - they all look bl**dy frozen! 

It is succeeding, it has stopped the exponential expansion (which is what everyone initially feared), and has done so with vastly less damage to its economy. 

If the death rates are different from Norway, well there are always lots of differences between countries (including possible chance effects such as a couple of early super-spreaders), so one should not over-interpret data comparing countries.

We'll see in the end, but overall I suspect that the Swedish strategy will come out looking fairly good.

However, countries like Norway, Denmark and Austria who locked down before the virus really took hold are now relaxing a bit so their economies can get going again whereas with Sweden they might have to be in a state of semi-lockdown for some time. So these countries may have saved lives and protected the economy (and saved more lives from economic recession).

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

So positives reflect good choices and negatives are simply bad luck?

Quotes from the telegraph article above:

True, Sweden has had more deaths, proportionately, than its Nordic neighbours (though fewer than Spain, France or Britain. This is partly because the virus tragically found its way into care homes. But it is worth bearing in mind that the Swedish strategy always allowed for the possibility of a higher initial death rate.

and

If having had the disease leaves a measure of immunity, Sweden will emerge from the crisis much earlier than the countries that are dragging things out.

But if you don't lock down then it's more likely that the virus will find it's way into care homes! It's like saying that I went climbing without a rope, and fell off, but I was only injured because I was unlucky enough to hit a boulder rather than a nice bit of grass! Like somebody posted just above, are good outcomes due to the plan and bad outcomes due to bad luck?

And the point about immunity is still not known! Bit of a gamble. 

maybe maybe not. The question would be would it have been better to target and protect those care homes rather than do a broad lock down and hope they are protected by that.

exactly, it's time to move on - selective confinement, selective protection - with testing; blanket lockdown is dead - or soon will be

I agree by the way, I'd rather we had done mass testing, tracing and isolation months ago so we didn't need this lockdown now. We did sod-all for weeks as the situation became increasingly grim in other countries and now we are paying the price.

Well we'll see over the long term.  

And it really does depend on what the denouement is.  If a vaccine is so far off that, in practice, herd immunity cuts in faster, then they won't have saved lives. 

This quote gives some indication of relative damage to economies at the moment: "Personal spending, measured by bank card transactions, is down 30 per cent [in Sweden] – though, by comparison, the fall in Norway is 66 per cent and in Finland 70 per cent."

Nope, not what I said.   But I don't think that different death rates in different countries are all down to one factor such as degree of lockdown. 

Just for example, a Swedish expert has explained that Sweden tends to have fewer, larger care homes, whereas Norway has more but smaller care homes.   That could easily affect spread at this stage. 

You need to factor in sweden counts care home deaths..  most neighbouring countries, in fact most of Europe apart from Belgium haven't. So direct comparison are likely full of errors.

France now includes deaths in care homes in its figures (can't remember when they started to include them, maybe 2 weeks ago ?)

I suspect its pretty close to the European norm on the ground, populous leading the government so no need for stricter rules until that changes or starts to be inadequate. 

The rise in cases can only be to a threshold we can cope with, whether that's treating the sick or burying the dead then we have to pause again which is very costly. The rise from a handful of cases to that point with partial restrictions in place and behaviour modified could take months, from here to that point maybe only days but we don't know because we aren't testing widely enough yet.

Also we simply can't shield the vulnerable if it's rife and domestic economic normality isn't much use with the rest of the world taking things slower, normal isn't possible. 

Jk

or the government trusting the people to do the right thing- unlike our country..

Finland has, or at least for probably most care home deaths, it increased their total about 50 % earlier this week, but they are still under 200 (183 I think), compared to Sweden's 2,192 +.

Finland and Sweden are very similar in many ways, and Finland's lockdown isn't particularly strict - less so than here in the UK. Friends in Finland were telling me the other day all the bouldering centres and climbing walls have stayed open for example, and my brother in law yesterday was saying people drive around to do their exercise, or him it dog walking and training, and hobbies seem to be carrying on. So it's interesting that they have more than 10 times less the number of fatalities, on a population which is bit more than half Sweden's.

Yes however it’s possible that Sweden have a majority of fatalities early on where as in other countries it builds up over time with the result being the same. 

With the huge disconnect between what the guidance says and what the law actually permits I'd say our government is massively relying on people doing the right thing. The majority are. 

There are a significant minority who are not, and in my experience the majority of them are generally the people that we deal with on a regular basis anyway.

Agreed it’s depends on the population mindset and willingness to comply to a great degree. However you get the impression some countries are far better at having a mature conversation with the people. 
 
I don’t think anyone’s asking for economic normality but just to a level where the poorest can function with some degree of dignity. As you can be sure if this economic carnage goes on for a long time they’ll be the ones paying for it in the long term. 

Those figures are based on completely different definitions.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rural-urban-classification (urban minimum 10000 population)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_in_Sweden (urban minimum 200 population)

By UK standards (or similar countries), Sweden is sparsely populated. Their largest city is about the same as one of the UK regional cities, but Stockholm is very well geographically isolated compared to those.

Like you say it is hard to compare countries.

I think what's happening in Sweden could be a useful 'experiment' for the global community, and I do hope their approach gives some positive news and direction. However, I don't think larger, more densely populated countries can take anything from their experience yet.

The way to prevent poor people being disproportionately hit economically in the long term surely should be by fairly sharing the economic impact, not by letting poor people unnecessarily and disproportionately die from the virus.

They’ll be nothing fair about it. If a recession hits then poor people will feel the biggest strain, the middle and upper classes will cope as they have a larger pot to draw from.

Could it be that those residents of the Scandinavian countries prefer to exercise by walking and paddling in the wide open spaces which lend themselves to a form of social distancing whereas the majority of Brits see exercise as an opportunity to stand in a queue at a supermarket or diy store and buy things, (usually alcohol and bbq food in the good weather, paint and wallpaper in bad). 

I have noticed around where I live large numbers of locals walking the paths around our village and perhaps across the odd field path but once you get say a mile into the countryside, the numbers dwindle to almost non.  

We as a group on this forum of generally outdoor orientated folk, sometimes forget that the majority of Brits see outdoor exercise as a game of footie in the park, to them the thought of heading into the ‘wild’ to camp or climb is alien. This doesn’t apply to the honeypots of Snowdonia and the lakes where you will always find a few? Numpty folk thinking they can walk up a big hill in flip flops. 

With the current government, unfortunately that much is pretty much guaranteed.

We should not underestimate the impact of virus mortality on poorer people. Zones of greatest impact for virus transmission are urban, and within those the extreme example would be tower blocks. Try to imagine lockdown conditions for such people - confinement in concrete - eating poorer diets (there is a trend of refusing fresh food during the crisis because it may be  contaminated), unable to travel and exercise as us cheaters in the country - and subject to the same stressful news we have - but no outlet to express.

Take the known issues of disease in factory farming as a yardstick. Urban living is most akin to such conditions. In respect of both proximity (for disease vectoring) and poorer health, these concentrations of humanity will be the most vulnerable to the virus when lockdown is eased / lifted. I'm not talking 'discomfort' here. REAL impact on immune defence.

And don't discount immune defence ! At present globally approx 98% of people show immune strength necessary to fight the virus. Some never get symptoms, some get them and shake it off. Why is there still no political voice pushing this  - what can we do to boost natural immunity ? This is what can slow the spread AND mortality - amongst all classes. Don't wait for the vaccine, it might never come! It might never work !

comparing capital cities would more informative? (major transport hubs, ahead of curve and similar population densities) where it seems Stockholm has had more cases/million than London (but less than Oslo and Helsinki -hmm)

Talking of Finland - not really. There is more space in Finland when you leave the cities, but the national parks with marked trails and campfire facilities are massive honeypots just like here. I had a very quick google and I'm sure you can pull apart definitions, but according to one stats aggregator site Finland's population is 2 percent more urban than the UK's 85 vs 83 percent. I'm not certain, but my impression is more people in Finland live in flats than in the UK.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/explain_sweden-718528?v=1#x9188...

https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#5/54.406/14.238

I'm not sure how true this is. I've been living in Sweden for three years now. When I arrived here I was under the impression that the Swedes were an outdoorsy people. The first summer I spent walking sections of the Upplandsleden (a long-distance trail). Sometimes I could be out all day and not meet anyone. I went up north to the mountains and stayed at probably the busiest trail head in Sweden. It was really busy, yet as soon as I left the marked trail and headed off somewhere else there was no one there.

After a few years my conclusion is that the Swedes like being outside, but are not necessarily outdoorsy. They're happy in the parks and gardens BBQing, playing frisbee, having picnics, etc. A lot of them will venture into the nature reserves near the town, but very few venture out further, and they like to stick to the marked trails and 'obvious' spots.

This more or less matches my observations (Swedish wife and in-laws) - but it does mean that a lot spend more time outside, at least.

Probably a bigger effect is the Swedish approach to socialising, which does tend to be a bit lower density.

This made me chuckle:

https://twitter.com/mrfrej/status/1243436664770433024?s=19

I wasn't talking about overall population density, it's incredibly low. Finland's population is the size of Scotland's but the entire UK is only about 2/3rds of the size of Finland, and think how much space there is Scotland with the population mainly being in the central belt. And in England and Wales and NI with no people in it and you get the idea.

But that wasn't my point. The Finnish countryside has suffered a massive depopulation since WWII. The vast majority of Finns are urban now, and most of them are in the cities and few bigger towns.

Whenever I'm in Sweden which has been a good number of times over the last 25 years, I often wonder what is about Swedes doing bloomin' mass activities in parks and on beaches and the like? My wife says I'm being unfair (probably because Finns have a bit of tendency that way too) but I can't but help think of Nazi propaganda films in the 30s. I suppose if they are 2 mtrs apart they can keep going with their mass yoga, or mass aerobics (to cheesy 80s hits), or mass sing alongs (to cheesy 80s Swedish hits!).

I posted this

https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#5/54.406/14.238

as I do think it's useful in visualising what is relevant in this discussion.

People like civilisation and they’re lazy. Getting in a car to go somewhere to exercise. That’s just weird. My gym has people who park in the disabled spaces and go ride on stationary bikes for an hour. 
 

On my 10mile run today I saw 2 people. They were both within a few hundred yards of the village. 
 

Go to Snowdonia, they’re all parked in the big car parks and following the big paths up Snowdon. 
 

Very few of us actively seek out isolation. 
 

Sweden are isolating and locking down. Just not in the same way as we are. Once they started to seeing large numbers of deaths in care homes, they made changes. 

I didn't say anything about Sweden. I was writing about Finland, which is why I wrote "Finland" repeatedly. I've never lived in Sweden, I have lived in Finland, for over 15 years.

That's what I replied to Toby, the '85 vs 83 percent' part. If you are not referring to this meaningless Sweden stat mentioned several times in the thread, what do you mean?

And as this useful visual shows, Finland is nowhere near as urban as the UK

https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#5/54.406/14.238

The population densities where people live looks similar as they're the same colours (mostly light/dark blue) in UK and Finland.

The UK peak densities don't show up unless you zoom in so a bar chart showing population in different population densities would be much more useful.

I'm really confused as to why on earth you think I was talking about Sweden when I wrote "Finland's population is 2 percent more urban than the UK's 85 vs 83". I kept writing Finland again and again. Why do you think I'm talking about Sweden?

Just to make it clear: Finland and Sweden are two different countries.

My favourite is when the new students arrive in town. You see them in big groups doing organised fun, and a lot of them look very miserable! And let's not forget their big gatherings to play kubb in the park...

Let me add a colon to what I originally wrote - "I had a very quick google and I'm sure you can pull apart definitions, but according to one stats aggregator site Finland's population is 2 percent more urban than the UK's: 85 vs 83 percent."  Does that help? Did you read the rest of the sentence and indeed paragraph?

So one stats aggregator site says 83 percent of UK residents live in urban areas whilst the figure for Finland is 85 percent. As I noted in that original post I didn't actually look to see how similar the definition is for urban between the UK office for national statistics and the Finnish equivalent - but the point I was trying to make to didntcomelast was that his impression of how people in the Nordics spend their free time wasn't really correct, for Finland at least. The vast majority of people in Finland live in the cities and bigger towns so there are same issues of "honeypotting" in the city parks and national parks - particularly those closer to the cities. See here for example https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/uusimaa_braces_for_easter_weekend_rush_o...

What is "kubb"? I wonder if its similar to mölkky?

It's a very simple answer. 85% of Finland's population lives in urban environments:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/455824/urbanization-in-finland/

83% of the UK's population lives in lives in urban environments:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/270369/urbanization-in-the-united-kingd...

So, as TobyA said, Finland's population is sightly more urbanised then the UK's population. His punctuation, or lack thereof, may have caused some confusion. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubb

Both throwing games, but looks like mölkky is a little more sophisticated.

Thank you and, may I add, I greatly respect your use of paired bracketing commas there!  

And, as I said in the original post, I accept that "urban" may be classified differently in different countries, but still - yes - most Finns live in towns and cities, not in the countryside. There have been a lot of posts in my FB feed from a foreigners in Finland group I still belong to of people upset by people not socially distancing in busy Helsinki parks, for example. Some of the post have been from Italians and Spaniards who, I suspect, are very aware of the situation for their families 'back home' and don't think the Finns have got the seriousness of the situation. But at same time Finland seems to be "flattening the curve" (hospital admissions dropping off etc.) with still currently less than 200 fatalities, including some but probably not all yet, nursing home deaths. If they carry on at this trajectory they are going to have much smaller health impacts than Sweden - although relative impacts on the economy will have to be assessed later I guess.

Yes, so Finland has the same 'urban percentage' as Sweden. It also uses the same definition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_areas_in_Finland

So a village of 200 people is classed as an Urban area. That is completely different to the UKs definition

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rural-urban-classification (min 10000)

Which Toby could have given some time ago once I explained why I thought he was referring to the 85 vs 83 stat given several times on this thread. 

I would have thought the post that started this might have peaked interest in how these stats are defined....  given how this thread has gone off on fallacious tangent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_areas_in_the_Nordic_countries

My original post that you misread said exactly that. You saw a figure and presumed it referred to Sweden because you didn't actually read what I had written.

Wikipedia is out of date, Finland now classifies rural urban on this basis https://www.ymparisto.fi/en-US/Living_environment_and_planning/Community_st...

Which is all very interesting to human geographers but has nothing much to do with my original point.

Have you been to Finland? Or Sweden?

Finland national stats site, 2019 document

http://www.stat.fi/til/vaerak/2019/vaerak_2019_2020-03-24_laa_001_en.html

"An urban settlement is a cluster of dwellings with at least 200 inhabitants. The delimitation is based on the population information at the end of the previous year. Urban settlements are defined and delimited in co-operation with the Finnish Environment Institute using geographic information methods that utilise the building and population data of Statistics Finland’s 250 m x 250 m grid data. The population size of grids containing buildings and their neighbouring grids, as well as the number of buildings and their floor area, are reviewed in the definition. From the uniform clusters of dwellings generated in the defining stage, the ones with at least 200 inhabitants are selected."

I'm pretty sure that is what your 85% is based on.

If it's that Finland is more urban than the UK it is very relevant. 

You seem very interested in winning here, I'm just not really sure what you think you have won?

didntcome last wrote

And I replied

Do you disagree? I admit that my perspective on the leisure activities of Finns is only based on having lived there for 15 or 16 years, I have not studied it formally. Perhaps you have? 

I then wrote to illustrate this:

My point being that although there is a lot of uninhabited space in Finland where it would be _very_ easy to be socially distanced, most Finns live in cities and towns which means those wilderness areas can be a very long way away. This means many have to rely city parks or areas, particularly national parks and outdoor recreation areas, near the cities. 

I was thinking the very same thing about you. As I said this thread has gone off on a fallacious tangent, I just wanted to correct that.... and was a little irked by your apparent indifference to fact.

Unless Scandanavian governments are involved in some huge cover up over the size of their towns and cities, it's quite clear that Scandanavian levels of urbanisation are not at the same scale as places like England, the US Eastern Seaboard, the Low countries and northwest Germany ect. Those are the places that stand out on population density maps, and those are the places were it would be difficult to regain control of a pandemic that had got out of control.

Sweden and Finland have one mid sized city, in relatively large land areas, and the borders are effectively shut now. They're not comparable to the urban places listed above.

I bow to you superior knowledge of Finnish recreational habits.

I've never claimed this - it seems to be your misreading of what I wrote again. I wrote "according to one stats aggregator site Finland's population is 2 percent more urban than the UK's 85 vs 83 percent." The population is more urban, not that more of the land mass is covered in urban areas - which is obviously ridiculous from what I said about total population and size in km2. And please note that I also said the definitions could probably be pulled apart, but my point was Finns mainly live in towns, not in log cabins out in the woods.

In the document you link, I think you have misread that also, because you only quote what it defines as "urban settlements". If you look far above that in the notes it explains that population is registered by municipality. This is who takes a proportion of your taxes each month for example. Then slightly above your extract is explains the classification of population is on whether they live in Urban municipalities, Semi-urban municipalities or Rural municipalities. They use "urban areas" as part of the classification, but not solely. My old municipality, Vantaa, is the fourth biggest city in Finland (it's really suburb, or perhaps an exurb of Helsinki, but whatever) has some areas of forest and farmland, but if you live in those parts, presumably you are listed as living in an urban municipality.  As it then goes on to explain:

"Urban municipalities include those municipalities in which at least 90 per cent of the population lives in urban settlements or in which the population of the largest urban settlement is at least 15,000.

And so on with the other classes of municipality.

But you didn't correct anything. You thought I was talking about Sweden when I said Finland! Your unwillingness or inability to see that seems to be what has pulled this thread off into population statistics in the Nordic states! 

https://www.stat.fi/meta/kas/taajama_en.html#tab2

It's the only thing that makes quantitative sense. For Finland or Sweden to be '2% more urban than the UK', their cities and large towns would need higher populations than they have.

I do admit I could have made more of an effort to clear this up yesterday, but I'll also say you've been pretty shitty towards me throughout the thread and going back to last week. You've seemed to want to pick an argument... then keep picking it. I don't care to continue.

Fine. I take it you read the definitions about classifications of municipalities at least. Anyway, are you happy with the statement that most Finns live cities and towns? I'm not sure if you actually disagreed with what I was saying yesterday - that as most people live in cities and towns, there are the similar issues around social distancing for Finns (and I suppose Swedes) that people living in cities here have. It's no particular surprise that Stockholm and Helsinki both stand out as the epicentres of corona virus infections in those two countries.

What I'm actually interested in is why Finland seems to be doing, relatively speaking, so well when the measures the government there have instigated don't seem particularly strict compared to here in the UK (although definitely stricter than Sweden has imposed).

Here's a meaningful comparison of urbanisation in different countries, as the same definition (or metric), is applied to each country.

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/reg_glance-2013-6-en.pdf?expires=15...

UK: 74 %

Sweden: 53%

Finland :52%

It's not necessarily more meaningful because it's just a different way of defining it. "Among the 1 179 OECD functional urban areas, 77 have more than 1.5 million people, 198 between 500 000 and1.5 million people, 406 between 200 000 and 500 000 people,and 498 are small functional urban areas with a population below 200 000 and above 50 000 people."

So anyone living in (or commuting to from the surrounding "hinterland") a town below 50, 000 people is counted as not being urban. Fine for the OECD looking at levels of economic activity but not particularly helpful in thinking about the relative spread of corona virus. According to a handy Wikipedia list there are only 13 towns in Finland with a population over 50,000 but if you've been to Kouvola (pop. 49,813) the idea that it's not urban from the point of view of people living there in blocks of flats and working in factories and mills seems a bit silly.

Again - what point are you trying to make here? Let's take the OECD definition of urban areas - what does that show us about Sweden's approach to containing CV or indeed Finland's?

I suspect the number of "risky" interactions between people is pretty similar in Italy/Spain or Sweden or the UK irrespective of the hard or soft lockdowns.  If those who can are working at home, that leaves those who have to work and have to travel there out and about and on public transport, with healthcare workers probably the most exposed.  More or less every household has to have someone go to  the supermarket at some point. 

Those feel like the risky things to me with little difference between going out for walks / exercise pretty much without restriction or only being able to go 200 m from your home, presuming social distancing is observed for these outings.

Yes, it does seem to follow quite predictable patterns in different countries. In Finland the Somali population seem to have been disproportionately affected. Multigenerational households and lots of people with lower status jobs in things like transport, cleaning and care sectors where you can't work from home, and going to work quite often means by bus or metro.

Two acknowledged errors in early March in Sweden. They tracked and traced two skiers return to Stockholm from Italy, but forgot the migrant taxi driver. They didn't print and broadcast the guidelines and virus information in enough languages early on. A few mini clusters in Stockholm centre around the wailing singing happy clappers Christian churches that some migrant groups use quite heavily.  

Ok, try this dataset, which does include Kouvola as several cells of urban cluster  defined  as '1 sq km with a density of at least 300 inhabitants per sq km and a minimum total population of 5 000.'

https://ghsl.jrc.ec.europa.eu/CFS.php 

you will have to specify the country to check my figures.

For population living in urban centres or urban clusters we get

UK: 84%

Sweden: 64%

Finland 59%

First point- you and other posters made a claim that 2 Scandanavian countries are more 'urban' than the UK, based on a very flawed stats. I've corrected that. If it was worth making that claim (and I didn't bring it up), then it's worth correcting it.

Second point- As I basically said yesterday, populace, densely populated countries, with high levels of urbanisation will have more problems dealing with this pandemic (eg UK, the Low Counties, US eastern seaboard*). So, comparisons with Scandanavian countries won't be very helpful. However, it might be valid to compare Ireland and Sweden, as is terms of population and pop. distribution, they are similar... and each have quite different Covid 19 strategies.

* I think it's sensible to break up the US for this purpose, given its size and regional variations.

I didn't actually make that claim and for quite a number of post yesterday you wrongly thought I was talking about Sweden, because it seemed like you jumped on a percentage you saw without actually reading what I had written.

I wrote: "I had a very quick google and I'm sure you can pull apart definitions, but according to one stats aggregator site Finland's population is 2 percent more urban than the UK's 85 vs 83 percent. I'm not certain, but my impression is more people in Finland live in flats than in the UK."

So I noted that there are obviously different ways of defining "urban" (see the methodology note at the bottom of https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/finland/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS the page that gives the 85% figure). I was trying to explain to someone that for Finland his suggestion that Scandinavians (and yes, I know that technically Finland isn't part of Scandinavia) might "prefer to exercise by walking and paddling in the wide open spaces which lend themselves to a form of social distancing" compared to Brits who stand in queues at DIY stores, probably isn't the case because most Finns live in towns and cities and go to parks and hiking/skiing trails with all the other people from their town/city. The original discussion was about the different levels of lockdown in relation to how different countries were doing in their efforts to control the virus. So I wasn't comparing Finland to the UK; I had in my, discussion with summo who lives in Sweden, been comparing the relative lockdowns of Finland and Sweden. 

It feels like you've spent a lot time googling about urban versus rural statistics to try and show you are right about some tangential point; tangential because I pointed towards some disputable figures (although prepared by a UN agency) to help explain an unconnected point! You pounced on those figures but got mixed up over which country was being discussed. I guess we've all now read a lot about different ways of classifying urban and rural populations haven't we? So there's that... It's been interesting fiddling around with your new EC dataset, but I quite like looking at maps of Finland - I did write a PhD on the bloody country! But you seem to have given up on yesterday's OECD dataset because it didn't quite prove your point, I'm just sort of confused as to what that point was though beyond https://xkcd.com/386/ I take it you're bored and stuck at home also?  

During your googling did you happen to come across any figures about people living in apartments versus people in houses? I'm genuinely not sure about that: living in a flat is very normal in Helsinki, but then maybe it is equally normal for London. There will be a lot of very interesting human geography to be done in future years on CV's spread which I guess will have to look at dozens of variables like that. Why was Bergamo hit so badly whilst Milan, quite close to it, less so? - etc. 

No it hasn't.  The doubling rate has slowed, but it's still exponential - the line on the log scale graph is straight, just not as steep as it was.

There was a communication breakdown I was partially responsible for... but the same issue applied to your Finland stat. If you had read what I posted you would have know that as it was referred to as a Nordic definition. Other links I posted also pointed to some error in yours and other people posts.

Fine, but when I did 'pull it apart', you were adamant I was wrong, when I obviously wasn't. That is what unnecessarily prolonged this.

The same point applies to each county. If you weren't generally so shirrty with me that could have been easily explained.

I was generally interested in how these things could be compared so it was a nice distraction over a tea break.

I have to say this again, from my perspective it is your desire to be 'right' that has stretched this out. I'm both working at home and sometimes going into a mostly empty building. I've actually been busy.... I was rushing posts on monday and that didn't help.

I don't think that information will be available for years. There are many flats in the UK now, huge surge in Manchester over the last 20 years. My point about the UK (and similar) is, there are several other Manchester sized cities withing easy reach of here, and one much bigger city 2 hours away. Now borders are shut I just can't see Scandi counties will that interconnectedness between big urban centres. And from where I'm sitting today* (over looking a goods in) I can see there is still lots of traffic moving between those big urban centres.

Regarding Milan, maybe they did lockdown in time. There was talk of should all of Italy be in lockdow, going back now nearly 2 months. I assume unrban interconnections came into that decision too.

* 3 of us in a building for 50, keeping thinks ticking over when required.

It doesn't look that way to me.  The "cases" graph looks linear (rather than exponential), and anyway the "cases" data will be affected by increases in testing.

The deaths seems to be past their peak (as far as one can tell, there are big weekly effects in the Swedish data). They are certainly not rising exponentially. 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

I was using the graphs on Mark Hadley's site http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#rates-nordic

The line has been pretty straight for the past 14 days give or take the usual 'wobbling' of the raw data.  You are right on the deaths, and that's interesting because everywhere else seems to have the 'death curve' lagging the 'infection curve' (as you'd expect).  I wonder if Sweden had a glut of carehome outbreaks early on which resulted in a higher 'death per infection case' rate, and now the infections are in the younger, wider population who aren't dying?

One thing to bear in mind is that most countries have massively ramped up testing, so that "positive tests" will increase even if the actual rate of spread is steady.

I think its important to note that Sweden hasn't closed its borders to people coming from other EU states, EEA states and the UK. So you could fly to Sweden tomorrow and there is no expectation of quarantine when you arrive unless you are exhibiting symptoms. They are following the EU/Schengen restriction on people coming from outside the EU/EEA although there is even exemptions on that beyond returning citizens.

Compare that to Finland which has closed it borders even to Schengen traffic, and has a non-enforced policy of 14 days quarantine for those citizens and perm-residents arriving back. The government has banned those arriving from using public transport to get to their residences from the airport but has been paying for taxis for those who don't have other ways of getting home. This has included people getting a taxi to Rovaniemi which, and I checked!, is pretty much the same as going from Gatwick to Inverness in time and distance! Unfortunately the haven't actually provided any PPE to taxi drivers who are potentially spending many many hours driving infected people.

Sure, good point. I thought about that and assumed they would have ended up with effectively shut borders with the rest of the EU... as all other countries are in stricter lockdown. So although from a Swedish perspective you can enter, is it practical for anyone from another EU country to get there? I assumed not but it was an assumption.

It sounds like our own Hackney Carriages would be useful with the driver passenger separation!

Plenty danes freely travelling around sweden, they aren't as lock down as they portray there. I know of folk who have come back from Asia and been told to quarantine for 2 weeks.

Just noticed the stats on Worldometers tonight - Sweden and Ireland have about the same number of cases yesterday:-

Sweden 20,302 cases 2462 deaths*, Ireland 20,253 cases 1190 deaths*.  It'll be interesting to see how those counts change.

*Mark Hadley says both Sweden and Ireland count care home deaths, so the death rate is comparable.  Both nations reckon care home deaths are running at ~40% of the totals.

If anyone wants an inside picture from today. It's Valborg (Walpurgis Night). One of the biggest days in the Swedish calender. In Uppsala there's normally a student raft race, followed by lots of parties and public drinking (it's a very un-Swedish sort of day). The raft race was cancelled and the parks where the students drink were empty at mid afternoon:

https://twitter.com/MikePeacock86/status/1255944212815757312/photo/1

There were a few people wandering around drinking beer, but it's definitely not a normal Valborg.

Interesting in the light of the difference in overall populations - Ireland’s being less than half Sweden’s.

in terms of deaths that makes the outcome similar for both countries so far.

Vappu is probably the biggest celebration of the year in Finland too, downtown Helsinki can look a bit like a war zone by the early hours of the morning, broken glass and trash everywhere and various "casualties" stumbling around or sleeping it off in bus stops of shop doorways!

But this year it is all going to be virtual https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finland_prepares_for_a_virtual_vappu/113... (which sounds a bit sad to be honest) and the police will be out to stop anyone who does go out https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/police_to_patrol_may_day_in_helsinki/113...