I don’t understand anything about their economies at all, so I can’t comment on that. Considering how many more deaths and cases Sweden had, you’d hope for them to do dramatically better, I imagine.
Yes. It’s a little surprising really. But it should be noted, asahi was entirely incorrect to say that was the stated reason Sweden chose their approach. Their stated motivation was a sustainable approach to social distancing, not saving the economy. He shouldn’t just make up goals for them and declare they failed.
You’d hope. Unfortunately, they didn’t do better. Norway uses a different calendar, so it’s not a perfect apples to apples comparison, but the GDPs of Norway, Finland, and Denmark all appear to have taken less of a hit in Q2 than Sweden.
It would appear that Sweden Fucked Up.
What do you suggest – or, what does the paper suggest – Sweden could have done to less fuck their economy up?
The argument isn’t complicated. Sweden didn’t benefit economically, compared to its Nordic neighbors, from its more light touch approach to covid response. So, it should have been more proactive. Like its Nordic neighbors did.
It’s not complicated but it may be simplistic.
The concept behind the not so well executed Swedish approach is that most countries, their neighbors included, will end up with some fraction of their populations infected. Now or later. Their approach was predicated upon the idea that hitting it sooner in a manner that did not overwhelm healthcare systems (not overwhelmed but not sure if hit that fraction yet and initially failed to protect the elderly as well as the plan demanded), is less costly over the complete course (in lives and economically) than having to return to lockdowns over winter and risking Covid surges at the same time as influenza ones.
Will they be better off over winter? While I suspect so to at least some degree I don’t know. But neither does any one else. Especially those most sure that they do.
It’s not that their economic performance would have been better, it’s that their number of cases and fatalities would have been lower.
And what exactly is meant by “sustainable”? It’s beyond obvious that Sweden attempted to the presumed economic pain that a shutdown would entail. Is that the only reason they didn’t shut down? No, but it’s silly to think that wasn’t part of the calculus.
I think it means how long people will tolerate it. Maybe “how long can we afford to do it” was a consideration. Do you have some evidence of that?
I should note: you made a specific claim
“In terms of economics, which was their justification for not shutting down in the first place”
Now you’re saying it’s some kind of read between the lines thing?
I’m saying it’s common sense that economics is part of the decision to shut down or keep businesses open. I don’t think a cite is required for that.
Well, you did more than that but whatever.
I don’t think there is any doubt that it is that. Stockholm is dead over the summer. Pretty much all the people at my workplace left Stockholm to go to summer homes. Even since work has resumed some of my workmates have stayed in their summer homes and are working from there. Last week 2/3 of my team were in summer homes.
And now what we are seeing, with people coming back, is that the infection rate is going back up. Not massively, but it has started to trend upwards. It was in the papers today that the downward trend is now over and in about a week’s time we will have a better picture of how things are going to go.
Apologies for the Swedish link, but I don’t know if this has been reported in the English press.
This is from a Brits in Sweden Facebook group and it is just maddening.
What symptoms does the partner have?
It doesn’t matter, it is an example of people in Sweden continuing to pretend that asymptomatic infection doesn’t occur, despite all the evidence otherwise, and also ignores that once you are ill symptoms can change rapidly. Add to that things like coughing are involuntary things that may not even be cause dby illness. We all clear our throats now and again, don’t we?
As someone living in Sweden, I recognise these attitudes. I’ve seen it everywhere over the past few months.
Yeah that is bad.
Do they say how long they expect someone who has the virus to still test positive for it? I hear different things in different places. I wonder if there is some sort of worldwide standard for the tests they use, in terms of thresholds and such.
…to this point. That’s the thing about all this - it’s too early to count the score. It looks like current deaths/1M pop (Sweden 574 and US 533) is fairly close at this point (UK 609), in spite of the different approaches to lockdowns and other mitigation measures.
I think it all comes down to tolerance for deaths - it needs to be somewhere between zero but less than letting it fly. No one has come up with an acceptable number of deaths/1M yet.
For example, they are investigating in New Zealand whether a worker who tested positive recently had been infected by someone close to a month ago:
I’m just wondering how long they would expect people to stay out of work, or self-isolate, or whatever.