I’m not seeing any significant or sustained improvements in numbers of new cases or deaths. Sure, the growth rates are lower, but that’s only due to the denominator getting larger. And while the infection rates in the more saturated areas have improved, this is by no means consistent across the country. We’re still averaging over 25,000 new cases and 2,000 new deaths per day. And with the President’s laissez-faire mindset leading to inconsistent, ambiguous and unenforceable guidelines, desperate state governments are being pressured to open up sooner than many would like. With all the social distancing measures being lifted gradually, are we setting ourselves up for a horrific outcome? Would we be even be able to get people to go back on lockdown again? I feel like we had one shot, and once that genie is out of the bottle, it will be impossible to get it back in. It seems like, after 6 weeks, we’ve given up on the shared sacrifice and it’s back to old fashioned “every man, woman and child for themselves”. Sure, the economic impact of the lockdown is devastating. But I fear that we could have crippled our economy with no ultimate reduction in total deaths, pain and suffering.
I don’t think the Swedish model is achievable for the US. It relies too much on social trust and respecting the officials strong advice.
The US federal model has done a lot of good for it in other settings but it may not be well suited for this issue. Especially with the current leadership. That may be exacerbated by the economic model where large numbers of people have problems dealing with even a days sick leave or needing health care, and where those people often are the customer-facing front-line of the economy.
If the US slips up I think Italy, or a lot of localized Italies, is a much more probable result.
It would also kill more people. Sweden has had more deaths per capita. It’s one of the WORST countries in the world for COVID-19 fatalities, and its decisions around handing the pandemic have been disastrous.
It really does depend upon what you think the Swedish model is. And it comes in a number of parts.
The Swedes don’t like the idea of government mandated rules. The government isn’t even sure they have the constitutional authority to create them. But there is a very strong sense of community responsibility. Something that is lacking in most western nations. There really is mutual trust between government and populace. So voluntary guidelines are for the most part just as effective as government enforced rules. In that respect the effect of government guidelines in fighting Covid-19 is identical to government enforced rules in other countries. The Swedes don’t have a cohort of the populace protesting about infringement of civil liberties. They all have the liberties, and choose not to use them for the good of the community. So that is good.
But they do have an explicit policy of generating herd immunity. Protect the vulnerable, maintain enough medical capability to deal with the seriously ill, and hope that enough of the populace becomes infected, recover, and then when sufficient herd immunity is gained, be able to open up with the herd protecting the remaining vulnerable.
The down-side is that they have so far not managed to protect the vulnerable. Many deaths in aged care. This is a problem everywhere. When the vulnerable need care by others, it is very difficult to maintain the isolation needed to protect them. In this respect the Swedes have already failed.
Whether the Swedish experiment is a total failure is still an open question. IMHO it was a reckless thing to do. It might work out. For some metric of working out. But we still don’t know enough about the nature of the virus and its effects on people to be able to predict. The Swedes went into this strategy with little more than a few very broadly estimated parameters, and no real evidence it would work. Just the strong opinion of their chief epidemiologist.
It is likely that by default, a lot of places will go down the route to herd immunity, just in a much less well managed way, with lots more deaths. Protect the vulnerable is not trivial. Especially when you don’t always know who they are. If the medical system is overloaded, your medical workers are the next most vulnerable, and the system throws them under the bus in order to protect the economy just as assuredly as it does the elderly and the physically vulnerable.
They appear to be about six places above the US on Worldometer. With about 25 % more deaths per capita -and with a lot flatter curve. I suspect they are at a much later stage. And still with their hospital systems functional.
It is also worth noting that Swedens strategy is taking into account the possibility of second and third waves.I doubt the Swedish results will end up worse than the US unless things change significantly.
Relevant to the op of this thread, no the U.S. is not migrating to “the Swedish model”. (And Sweden did not quite execute the plan itself. They themselves recognize that they did not protect their vulnerable as well as the plan called for.) Not sure if the U.S. is migrating to some misconception held of what Sweden has been doing though.