Now this is how you play with statistics:
First some background, from one of my previous posts:
William said:There is often low survival rates for covid patients that are put on ventilator, but now an early study at Karolinska University Hospital, Solna, Stockholm shows 80% survival rate.
Of 62 cases with an outcome, 48 survived and 14 died.
"The largest study to date, conducted in the UK on 3,883 patients, showed that half of the patients survived the treatment. A smaller study from Washington in the US also showed that the chance of survival was around 50 percent."
"- We don't know today, but there could be possible explanations. We look closely to see if you have "reasonable prospects for coping with intensive care and recovery. If we make the assessment that the patient cannot benefit from care we can refrain from offering it. Another is that we work closely with infectious doctors and that we do not delay in setting this treatment so that patients receive care before the disease has progressed too far.
According to the British study, the risk of dying increases the longer a patient is connected to a respirator. Here, too, the early figures from Karolinska show hopeful results: on average, a patient is on intensive care for just over a week.
- It's shorter than we've heard from other parts of the world, says David Konrad.
But it is too early to draw any certain conclusions from the results that are based on a small basis."
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyh... (In Swedish)
This is portrayed as hopeful in Swedish news, but obviously it is also an admission that an unknown quantity of patients are never offered ICU care. I guess this is the case in most countries (judging from the amount of deaths in nursing homes in many countries) but some sort of standard would have been most helpful for this kind of comparison. They say it will be at least a month, before they can be sure of any conclusions.
A follow up and it appears that it may very well be like I thought, not a success at all:
"Karolinska Hospital's ICU is examined following allegations that the hospital didn't prioritize to treat patients with kidney disease.
Now Expressen can reveal that Karolinska has also received a significantly smaller proportion of older coronary-infected patients than other hospitals.
Critics internally believe it may be an explanation for the hospital's positive message about high survival rates.
- Everyone who works in ICU knows that such a high survival rate does not have to be a success, says a doctor."
"In ICU's in all regions of the country, so far 22.9 percent of covid 19 patients have been 70 years or older. The corresponding figure for Karolinska in Solna and Huddinge lands at 9.3 percent. It is also significantly lower than for all ICU's in Stockholm's health care region, where 17.3 per cent are 70 years or older."
https://www.expressen.se/nyhet... (in Swedish)
This is especially sad as Karolinska was supposed to take especially large responsibility for covid patients in Stockholm.
Obviously, something, somewhere may have gone very wrong there. Still, and for a bit of perspective, there are of course many heroic health care workers at that Hospital, for instance the nurse Marielle, who only got to be 39 years old. She was treating covid patients, tested positive and was later found dead in her home. The exact cause of death is not (yet) known.
"Marielle DeBruhl's husband, Chad, is temporarily in the United States, where he comes from. He should have been back in Sweden a long time ago, but the entry and exit restrictions have meant that he was unable to go.
- That's so much I want to tell you about her, right now I need some time. She did so much good. She sacrificed her life to save others, says Chad"
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyh... Swedish)
Can't help to wonder if she would still be alive if her American husband had been allowed to travel back to her. At least she probably wouldn't have had to to die alone in her home.
