COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Good Habit]

Yeah, I realize Spain changed their recording method and that is largely why the numbers are so low.
Do you know where I can find the weekly update?  It doesn’t seem like worldometers is reporting this.

unfortunately, likely nowhere... The "weekly update" hasn't been published for about 3 weeks now... And the healt ministries homepage still links to an overwiev page that has about 800 deaths more than their daily update, but says "last update - may 21th..." It's also stating that the deats numbers are in "revision", and that (as I read it) the historical weekly updates will be corrected - not that there will be an update every week - and no goalpost until when this revision will be completed...

[Good Habit]

Does anyone have an explanation for what is going in on Sweden right now?

They never really saw any reduction in their cases, and in fact cases have been rising steadily for about five weeks now (from about 600/day on average to 1000/day).

Yet deaths have been declining consistently for over three months, from a 7-day average of almost 100/day, to an average yesterday of six.

FAKE NEWS!! (I suppose you use Worldometer Data...) Usually, in most countries, Tests and Deaths are reported with a backlog of several days (in some countries even weeks).

For most countries, WM just reports the difference betweens yesterdays cumulative data and todays cumulative data as "Todays cases", although most of them would have happened earlier (or as many governements clearly communicate, are at least 24 hours old at the time of reporting).

About 3 weeks ago, the official Swedish government site started to add more transparency as to "when" the cases actually happened - (as do some other government sites) - but differently to most other countries, Worldometer decided - in the case of Sweden - to adjust the data retroactively. That means if there are 1000 additional cases reported today, they are not put in the field (new cases) - but the data for the previous days are adjusted, so WM shows (e.g) 50 new cases, but changes yesterdays number to + 600, the day before yesterday + 300, and even older days +50).

This is of course very missleading, because "Todays" numbers only include new reports until about 10 am local time... So - may be - WM is biased to support Swedens narrative...?

This adjustment is also likely the main reason WM started to include new Swedish data relatively late in the day, usually many hours after the John Hopkins Dashbord... - because WM is changing the data of previous days (but usually just in case of Sweden...)

As to deaths, they are probably often reported even later than new cases...


The total in reported deaths went from 5333 on June 30 to 5370 (+37) on July 1th, and to 5411 (+41) on July 2th... - so nowhere your very low numbers...

[Good Habit]

And this isn’t how Europe deals with general unemployment, right?  Is it a completely new set of  programs that multiple countries managed to efficiently assemble regardless of ideology of the government or opposition?

No, it's not how we deal with general umemployment, and it's NOT a completely new set of programms.. (some where really new, but the points mentioned in the above debate mainly is about what we in German call "Kurzarbeit". A programm that exists since many recession cicles, and allows employers to get compensation payments (subsidies) for the wages they still pay although workers have been idle because of crashing demand... The concept is to cushion a temporary shock, in the expectation that demand will soon recover. So that teams remain intact, know how isn't lost, etc,etc. There usually is a time limit how long you can get this compensation, and - if demand / workload doesn't recover, you will still have to adjust the size of your labor force - but it avoids that everyone is just laid off at once. (Of course, most European work contracts also don't allow employers to lay off workers without sufficient notice - depending on country, contract and seniority of the worker, this would be months or - sometimes - years until you get them of the payroll. But if companies have to pay a lot of idle workers, they will just go bankrupt faster...

As this system was already in place in most countries, during the lockdown, governments just had to activate those programs, setting the bar for claims lower than usual, and extending the time you could get compensation for...