You can think whatever you want. You can have opinions. Just don’t confuse opinions with facts or evidence.
The reason that Sweden is wrong is because this is not the first time we’ve had a pandemic. Public health agencies the world over have developed and shared information about how to deal with pandemics at the local level. Unfortunately, coordinating responses on a global scale has proven difficult, but we already know how to slow the spread of a disease - we’ve known that for decades if not a century or even longer.
Sweden chose to ignore all of that, and it would seem that this decision was made largely out of sheer arrogance.
The best approach or not, the tactic of attempting to drive R naught to below one after the germ has spread by broad economic shut downs, major quarantines, and broad international travel restrictions is NOT the established play in past pandemics.
Yes, I’d love to know what other pandemics/pandemic responses @asahi could possibly be thinking about.
This is the weird thing some people have in their head: there’s some generalized best practice for any pandemic. At the absolute initial stages, sure, wide and immediate information sharing is job 1. But measures vary for the characteristics of a specific disease. Closing schools makes sense for a flu pandemic, not necessarily an Ebola outbreak. Contact tracing for AIDS is not the same as for covid.
To be clear, generally they aren’t closed down in a wide fashion. Usually some schools are closed due to a local big outbreak. It’s a good idea because younger children are susceptible to severe flu and spread the disease effectively.
Are children the only ones on school grounds when school is in session? Do kids just show up and teach themselves? Do they do the administrative and custodial work, too?
“Only 1% of people die anyway - and they’re mostly old.”
You can talk percentages all you want - seems to me that people like you and DSeid have been doing that all along. In case it hasn’t registered, low risk and small percentages of X are a moot point when you have a massively high number of infected people.
Why would I be embarrassed about literally anything I’ve posted on this thread? I posted early on - and consistently - that Sweden’s “plan” was a fucking disaster, and I was right. I was so right that Sweden’s government has basically agreed that it fucked up and plans to go in a different direction. So there’s that.
And in case you’re wondering, it’s not like I’m a genius; it’s that Sweden’s plan was so horribly dumb that it beggars belief. Sweden has only been outdone by a few countries (the United States being one of them) in terms of having a shit show response.
…nobody is claiming that “the tactic of attempting to drive R naught to below one after the germ has spread by broad economic shut downs, major quarantines, and broad international travel restrictions” is the established play in past pandemics.
And you are deliberately recontextualising what the “established plays” are. “Broad economic shut downs” aren’t an “established play.” But social distancing is an established play, and the share scope of Covid-19 has necessitated broad economic shut downs, major quarantines, and broad international travel restrictions. You don’t mention testing and contact tracing. Masks. We all had the same information in March. Sweden chose the path that they did.
Parts of the United States. And the national government for sure.
The takeaway is not that Sweden fucked up. The discussion in the early days was that the choice was between losing the economy (shutting down) or losing lives (not shutting down) with some making the argument that unemployment could cost more lives.
The test case of Sweden showed that this was a false choice - not shutting down cost both the economy and lives. Which is what a lot of people said from the start.
In other words, Sweden fucked up. That really was the takeaway after all. As I tried to point out earlier, contrary to what DSeid and others believe, we’re not in new territory. We have pretty substantial evidence that social distancing and shutdowns stop the spread of pandemics, and there is at least some evidence that they help the economy, too – and the data is 100 years old.
I might…might…give you that a bunch of Swedes killed a bunch of other Swedes and their country didn’t do anything to stop it, if that’s the way you want to look at it, but I think putting the ax in the hand of the nation itself goes a little too far, even for such sensationalist rhetoric.
…except that Sweden ACTIVELY made a specific choice which was pointed out to them by pretty much anyone in the healthcare field who was not Swedish, and some Swedish medics too. Sweden’s leaders actively made a decision in the face of precedents set by other nations and they did it because they arrogantly thought that the virus would somehow respond to the national responsible social behavior of its citizens and this outweighed the risks to the economy.
Sweden’s leaders did this in a bubble - completely neglecting the fact that it’s economy does not operate in a vacuum - that it’s main trading partners would lockdown anyway.
It amounted to a national act of self harm, there is no getting away from it, and it persisted because its policy had acquired its own momentum that required it to be proved correct.
As someone who is foreign born but lived in Stockholm for over two decades, a large part of it is hubris, Swedish exceptionalism, call it what you want. But the fact remains Sweden is a very arrogant country. They look down on everyone, love to remind you of the faults in your country (as a Brit, I’ve lost count of the amount of times Swedes have randomly decided to unload on me about the British Empire out of the blue) and have an absolute belief that of course what they are doing is the right way. Anything not Swedish is the wrong way , you wait, they’ll realise. They’ll turn around. They’ll come back to our way of thinking.
But COVID-19 hasn’t worked that way.And whilst I hate that so many of my countrymen have died (and yes, I may not have family but I am a person removed from people that have died), but there is a weird amount of satisfaction in seeing Swedes being so wrong and struggling to know how to deal with it. They don’t really know humility and doesn’t really know how to express it. Tegnell has been embarrassing in his rampant refusal to believe anything that any other country says about their situation (which is highly ironic considering how much he got wrong about Sweden’s situation), but I have noticed a bit of a change in the country now. Some restrictions that should have been in place months ago have finally been put in place (restaurants, I am looking at you) and my employer, after discussing what other companies in the same field have done, have announced that my working from home has been extended to the end of the year (although with this being Sweden, the office isn’t officially closed, you can come in but there are restrictions on numbers and who can work where. And you are not allowed to come in if you rely on public transport).
This is the maddening thing. It was obvious as day that they were not going to be following social distancing. This mythical rule abiding Swede doesn’t exist, this is a country where there is an organisation for helping people pay the fines for not having tickets on public transport (you pay a much smaller amount that the ticket costs to fund that is used to pay the fines) after all. And as soon as there was any sunny weather only an idiot wouldn’t think they were going to swarm all over that.
Part of it is that bloody meme about Swedes waiting for a bus. God knows how many times I have heard “but we naturally social distance, it is our culture”. It is a meme not a description of the national psyche. This is the country where the standard greeting is a hug, after all.
Bah, I just get so annoyed by it. Arrogant idiots in government that didn’t have the most basic understanding of how their citizens act.