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Yeah, no more of this. (Not sure why—whether it's just all the people in Korea who read the Economist for their English, or because I read an article (rightly) railing at The Economist for being garbage, but I've been targeted by Economist tweets for a week and I'm done.)On twitter.com
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Especially since, you know, a lot of their promoted tweets are garbage praising Sweden's handling of COVID as exemplary. Screw off, The Economist: I live in South Korea, I know what exemplary handling of COVID *actually* looks like.Permalink On twitter.com
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A moment or two comparing the numbers of dead in Korea and Sweden—and the numbers of elderly, and the sizes of the population, is pretty worthwhile. As of a day or two ago: S. Korea: Total Population: ~50 million people Cases so far: 27,553 Deaths: 480Permalink On twitter.com
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Sweden: Total population: ~10 million people Cases so far: 146,461 Deaths: 6,022Permalink On twitter.com
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You saw that right. Sweden has 1/5th the population of South Korea... ... but 5x the number of confirmed COVID cases, and 12.5x the number of reported COVID deaths. That's the ABSOLUTE numbers. I'm no mathematician, but... that's pretty shocking.Permalink On twitter.com
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Even more so if you adjust for relative population size: if S. Korea had handled things as "well" as Sweden we'd have had ~30,100-odd deaths and ~690,000 cases.Permalink On twitter.com
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On 4 November alone, there were 4497 confirmed cases in Sweden. That's a little less than a fifth of the CUMULATIVE TOTAL number of confirmed cases in Korea. And everyone knows they've been testing more people here than most places, so... *shrug*Permalink On twitter.com
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"But the deaths were in old folks homes..." Does that make it better? (🥺) Elderly population (65+): South Korea: 15% of total population (7.6 million) Sweden: 20% of total population (~2million) Sweden does have relatively more elderly people than Korea—relatively. But...Permalink On twitter.com
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Korea's total elderly population is like 3/4 of the TOTAL population of Sweden; Sweden's is less than a third of Korea's elderly population. If elderly people being disproportionately vulnerable was the whole story, Korea would have had way more deaths in absolute terms, right?Permalink On twitter.com
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All this leaves one curious (not really) why Sweden is the country they choose to praise. Especially when multiple East Asian countries have done better in relative and absolute terms.Permalink On twitter.com
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Now, I'm open to detailed comparisons by people who know more (math? facts?) than I do. I'll admit Korea didn't take as many precautions about data privacy as it could (easily) have done. Maybe the fact more elderly people live with adult kids made a difference here. I dunno.Permalink On twitter.com
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But even so, The Economist promoting articles praising Sweden's handling of COVID to people in Korea looks embarrassingly dumb to me, in the way committed ideologues who ignore reality always look.Permalink On twitter.com
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Which by the way is the main point in that article I mentioned reading: currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thinks Not an endorsement of Current Affairs—which I can't remember much about, though I've read it a few times. But it's a good, apt trashing of the Economist.Permalink On twitter.com
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Also: I'm not dismissing the labor or commitment of health care workers in Sweden, who I'm sure are doing their best with a really rough situation. This is about deeply questionable policy being loudly and publicly praised.Permalink On twitter.com
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It's almost a year later. Now, Korea's got: 2,394 deaths and ~284,000 cases. Sweden, with 1/5th the population of S. Korea, has 1.14M cases and 14,775 cases.Permalink On twitter.com
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If Korea had handled things as "well" as the US, we'd be at almost 6 million confirmed cases and (roughly speaking) around 75,000 deaths. Just because Sweden's handling it better than the US, doesn't mean it's doing well.Permalink On twitter.com
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Not that I think Korea's been perfect re: COVID, but... I've been thinking about how lucky my family has been that we happened to be a place where the gov't and populace was strongly committed to not just letting the pandemic kill a bunch of people who didn't have to die.Permalink On twitter.com
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Wait, did I say "If Korea had handled things as well as the US"? I actually meant Sweden. ("I was distracted," says the frazzled parent.)Permalink On twitter.com
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If you calculate deaths by a proportion of population, Korea handling things as "well" as the USA would means ~106,200 deaths so far, as opposed to the 2,404 deaths we've actually had. i.e. The US COVID death rate is 44x worse overall than South Korea's.Permalink On twitter.com
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One could argue that there's a degree of apples and oranges: Koreans are more accepting of mild, necessary privacy intrusions (so track & trace was more practicable), it's "less cosmopolitan," fewer variants. But at the end of the say, mishandling is also obviously a factor.Permalink On twitter.com
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And since I'm Canadian: if Korea had handled COVID as "well" as Canada, we'd have a total of ~37,650 dead here instead of ~2,400. That's still ~15x the death rate, which is not what I'd call "good."Permalink On twitter.com
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(Not gonna even project how many confirmed cases there'd be here: it'd be a lot more than the ratio of confirmed cases in the US because w/o track & trace your confirmed cases number becomes far less reliable.)Permalink On twitter.com
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I should add: this is on my mind because this week is a major national holiday (i.e. "visit your family"). I suspect our national caseload might get worse after that. But it still probably won't hold a candle to a lot of places, so I'm still feeling fortunate.Permalink On twitter.com