I was not responding to your lifestyle. I was responding to finley’s breezy assertion of absence, which is demonstrably untrue, unless you wish to object to the findings presented by the people at Uppsala.
Guy
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Those results were self-reported, correct?
The findings in the article I cited were compiled by “researchers at Uppsala University, Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet.”
If you object to their methodology, perhaps you could present your critique.
Guy
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Loss of sense of taste and smell can’t be much of an issue with Swedes anyway. I suppose they’ll miss out on that fermented fish thing they eat.
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Yes, plus fatigue and respiratory problems. You know, things that Swedes are famous for.
Guy
I usually wait for studies from their rival university: Downnsala
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I don’t have much of an opinion about long COVID - it seems like a complicated field. The subjective reporting is an issue though, as @TaipAmy noted (and also the authors themselves - “Limitations of the study include the possibility of recall bias and the subjective rating of symptoms.”).
There was an NIH study published last month looking for biochemical/immunological markers of long COVID, which essentially found nothing despite their best efforts. The study is summarized in this blog post:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/search-long-covid
If there is a physiological/biochemical/immunological cause for “long Covid”, we have not seen it yet. This was a very thorough search, but it turned up nothing in those categories. . .
Follow-up post here:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/long-covid-long-other-things
I have gone back and forth on these issues myself, and I know I’m not alone in that. That Nature Medicine review linked to in the last paragraph notes, as have many other observers, that the general symptoms of post-infection syndromes tend to be similar, and similar to others that have been grouped under the headings of chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and others. These are reported not only after Lyme disease, but after dengue, West Nile, Ebola, giardia, and more, and the common symptoms include fatigue (and difficulty with exertion), unrestorative sleep, difficulty concentrating, musculoskeletal pain, and general flu-like symptoms that come and go in severity. This commonality leads to two broad schools of thought: “this is a disease with a similar etiology brought on by immune response”, and “this is not a disease”. If you look at the side effects most commonly reported in clinical trials - and particularly the side effects reported in the placebo groups - you can come across fairly similar lists. It is very, very hard to pin this stuff down.
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Good post. Thank you.
Guy
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I think most cases are psychosomatic brought about by the fear mongering of governments and natural neurosis. That double whammy = long Covid.
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I only skimmed the paper, but it seems that it would be interesting to know how people who didn’t know they were infected (i.e., asymptomatic ones who tested seropositive later in the study) reported any lingering symptoms, when presented with the same questions without knowledge of their infection.
It doesn’t seem to mention in the paper whether the individuals knew of their infection status, but as healthcare workers who presumably needed to take tests and report symptoms it seems likely they generally did. (The study notes that “404 seronegative participants who seroconverted were excluded” - I guess this is people who caught it during the study.)
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This is Swedish specific? Or are you just pointing out things that are reported everywhere to attack Sweden’s Covid response?
It’s not like Swedes live on top of each other.
You could be onto something. Well spotted!
According to the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, tobacco smoking causes about 100 000 cases of smoking-related diseases and 12 000 deaths per year.
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Indeed. Population density is our fall. But at least we do not have the issues from heavier viral load as in the West.
Again, compared to the old country, with one fifth of the population infected, we have 10%. As to deaths, officially, we have 4 times over the number of deaths in Taiwan…with barely the population of Taipei spread over twice the size of land.
Overweight is an issue as well as chronic diseases, which is a new trend in developing countries.
Taiwan is weird in that sense. I recently went to my cardiology checkup. I am by far the heaviest in the room, including old folk in wheelchairs. But mostly we have young men who I suspect have heart genetic conditions.
As to diabetes and folks on dialysis, the success in keeping them alive longer is biting now that they are the highest at risk.
I also wonder if the often mentioned nerve issues as a condition in recent young folk deaths due to COVID-19 refers to cerebral palsy or genetic nerve diseases.
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The situation needs to be looked at as a whole. In Finland there discussion on how Sweden was right. For example we have a kids and teens that did year and a half of online school. This means less social interactions and much worse learning results.
Also a lot of medical appointments and general care was pushed back. Including mental health care. This is all showing now with issues all around.
I am sure in a few years will get proper research on what the best approach would have been but its definitely not as simple as just looking at the amount of reported Covid deaths. Sweden did really screw up in the beginning with the elderly.
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So we need some stats to show that Sweden outperformed the Finns and the Danes and Norweigians in these regards to offset their awful performance—really the worst among advanced economics except the US and the UK—in preventing infections and deaths. I’d be happy to see papers on that topic if you have access to them.
Guy
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Absence of what?
Nothing I post (in contrast to your blase, content-free dismissals of anything slightly nuanced as “nonsense”) has ever been “breezy”. My posts are so dense and verbose that nobody even reads them.
What I was pointing out is that Sweden does not appear to have that rather pronounced increase in all-cause mortality during 2021/2022 that has been remarked upon by various statisticians (and completely ignored by the press or dismissed by “fact checkers”). 2021’s raw death rate was pretty much the same as 2019, and 2022 is shaping up to be similar. In other words, public health in most countries that had a “robust” pandemic response has sustained long-term damage.
EDIT: I see @FairComment has filled in some of the most likely reasons for the aforementioned decline in public health.
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There’s already plenty of studies that have detailed the deleterious effects of unnecessary pandemic measure. The data clearly indicate that the costs have far outweighed the so-called benefits.
Taxpayers to pay, of course 
In the US, in just the first 4 months of 2020, it was estimated that as a result of COVID-19 measures, screenings for cancers of the breast, colon, and cervix have dropped by 94%, 86%, and 94%, respectively.
Pollution:
- Eight billion vaccine doses have generated an additional 144,000 tonnes of waste.
Meanwhile…
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No you wouldn’t, because any papers on the topic that impact the belief system you have bought into would upset you. You’d either ignore them or try to find fault in them.
Apart from the early errors in not protecting care homes Sweden had a far from awful performance. I think it was outstanding. But, you don’t want to hear that
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You are entitled to your opinions.
I’m waiting from @Twnfinn to see any stats or studies explaining why Sweden’s path was better than its Nordic neighbours. We’ll leave aside for now the anglosaxon nations and their atrocious mismanagement of the crisis (though who knows maybe you would also rate their responses as “outstanding” too).
Guy