Sweden Continues to Prove Everyone Wrong

I have read the intro to this thread and I have read some of the comments following it. I am not going to read all of them and (at this point) I am not going to quote & respond to them just yet. I do want to say that I am from Sweden and I find the OP a gross exaggeration. True, we haven’t been on any lockdown but that doesn’t prove we have the situation under any sort of control. The only other thing I’d like to add is that the statement about us not willing to commit national suicide is a total falsehood. What we are doing with our immigration policies is killing us.

 

You have it under ten times more control than the US, and so I'd like to apply your nation's policies and then progressively adapt other policies as they may work.

 

Percentage of Swedish population that has died from COVID = 0.05%

Percentage of Norwegian population that has died from COVID = 0.005%

Difference between them = 0.05 - 0.005 = 0.045%

Fractions of a percent.

Naturally, alarmists want to focus on the relative percentage differences, since they make the problem appear far more severe than it actually is.

But I think the absolute percentage differences are more relevant to the average person and to policymakers.

Think of it this way: If one bum has a penny in his pocket and another bum has a dollar in his, the second bum is 100 times richer than the first bum. Yet they are both still dirt poor in absolute terms. See how relative differences do not tell the real story?

Similarly, the relative differences between Sweden and Norway do not tell the real story, which is that neither country experienced anything even remotely approaching the doomsday scenarios that were being projected by alarmist quacks like Neil Ferguson. Over 99% of Sweden's population managed to navigate the novel virus just fine. And last I checked, democracy was about representing the largest majority possible. Forcing an entire society to put ONE VIRUS at the center of their daily life when 99% of that society is at low risk is thoroughly irrational and antidemocratic, which is exactly why Sweden didn't go down that path.

 

Is there any politician in the US advocating we go and use the Swedish model? The argument seems to be in the degrees we execute the current plan. Who would be ballsy enough to say screw it, lets just fully open up and let the chips fall where they may and put their political career on the line? Even Trump criticized a governor for reopening too quickly. Maybe we need to import some of those ballsy Swedish politicians. Although I hear they have very socialist tenancies.

 

Over 99% of your population has managed to avoid dying from COVID. I'd say you have things under control, at least as far as the virus is concerned.

 

I think there a few libertarian-leaning Republicans like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie who are pushing back against the lockdowns, and Republican governors in southern and southwestern States have been moving more quickly towards opening their societies than other States, but other than that, I am not really aware of any real political effort to copy the Swedish model in the USA.

 

If your primary goal is to minimize deaths, then you're not doing nearly enough yourself. So by your own logic, your actions are also killing people.

 

Sweden had 31 new cases today and 11 deaths. Looks like they are very close to being done with COVID-19.

It won't be that long and the USA will put COVID behind us.

 

Pointing out the tragedy of the commons created by this approach isn’t me saying I support death. It’s asking you how to do you make sure everyone goes out to party. Otherwise you have the tragedy of the commons.

 

Well, we haven't really got any "policy". Our hospitals are closed to visitors because it is claimed that the ill and elderly are at the greatest risk of succumbing to the virus and dying. Our shops (etc.) advise people to keep their distance. That's it. We are not on lock-down but we are on lock-out. The day before yesterday Denmark opened their border to us only if we live here in Skåne (south of Sweden). I went yesterday to test it. The first stop across the bridge is Copenhagen airport. If we have a flight we can disembark at that stop and everyone at the airport has to wear face masks. If we are travelling further than the airport we have to prove that we are residents of Skåne. I had my passport with me but didn't think to bring proof of my place of residence. He let me in anyway. So, if we have a ticket we can get into the airport to make a flight. However, if the country of destination is allowing Swedish citizens access is another question. I met a fellow Swede who had a ticket for Croatia and he claimed he was cleared for entry but I don't know if he was actually allowed to enter Croatia or not. He also told me that certain cities in Germany are allowing Swedes but others not. I guess you could say that the only policies we have are those that are imposed upon us from abroad.

 

This is probably a questionable statistic. I admit that I do not follow the day to day reports. I am 73 and considered a "high risk" person and I can't bear to know all the details that will only make me paranoid. We are still dying in Sweden and extremely few countries are letting us visit them. My above post explains a bit more. I did see the news last night that Greece had said they would allow Suedes in on such-and-such a date but that they've had a change of heart and have pushed that date further along. I don't think your choice of word "control" is appropriate to tell you the truth. We have almost none at all.

 

That would mean 30,000 if adjusted for our population. That's better than keeping people in immunocompromise state by keeping them out of the sun and soil.

 

Seriously, 30,000 would be a huge improvement. I think that a relaxed/middle ground approach does work best and I do think these numbers are inflated by mass gatherings/public events/super spreaders.

 

First of all, you are making proclamations about death tolls a few months into an epidemic, while we are at most at a 15-20% infected scenario. It is also quite possible we are at a point that is much lower than that, but for now we'll accept the higher estimates as reality. Now assuming herd immunity is possible, we need to go from 15% to around 70%. If we extrapolate those numbers out to the 70% mark, we are looking at 653,333 deaths. That would make Covid-19 deadlier than any war in US history. But lets ignore that, talk about human beings as nothing more than fractions of a statistic, and just accept that catastrophe as the costs of doing business? Even assuming we get better at treating the virus over time, we're still looking at a catastrophe.

The biggest problem with all that is, we don't need to be facing a catastrophe. You are setting up a false choice between opening up like morons and staying closed forever. Those aren't the only real choices. There are better options. I agree that we need to reopen, that isn't the question. The question is, when do we open and under what conditions. Reopening with contact tracing policies, mandatory mask wearing, strong social distancing measures, greater testing capacities, strategic lockdowns, etc, in place is a far better idea than either of the choices you have provided. Unfortunately insane political leadership coming from the top in this country has undermined that possibility, which is very much now a reality in countries across the world.

 

Ya, that's not a thing. You really shouldn't believe everything you read in Facebook memes.

 

Is it just me or does it seem like this branch COVIDIANS are cheering for higher death tolls?

 

They cheer for what they are told to cheer for.

 

Have you even looked at the death numbers for Sweden? They have 556 deaths per million. You have 432. That means if Sweden was America you would already have 184,000 dead. You might get there yet, but Sweden will probably still be ahead of you. Perhaps your two nations will converge at some point. In any case, Sweden's economy has been as badly hit as its neighbours, who all suffered dramatically lower death rates.

I remain amazed that anyone thinks Sweden is an example of anything other than a policy failure. More proof that ideologues and idiots are functionally identical.

 

Per million is a really cute statisic, but unless 1 million people died it's totally pointless. It's counting hypothetical deaths that have yet to happen. As of now, Sweden doesn't have 100K dead like the USA does.

 

No, per million gives you a good idea of how many people have died relative to population. it is by far the BEST way to compare nations. How else can you compare deaths in a nation of 10 million to deaths in a nation of 331 million in a way that tells you anything? Sweden doesn't have 100,000 dead because it only has 10 million people.

Your post from beginning to end betrays a complete & utter lack of understanding of even the most basic statistical measures. Why would you even need a million dead to measure anything? You really shouldn't talk about things you don't understand.

 

Ooooh! This didn’t age well!
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

 

Ummmmm

where did you say you studied maths?

 

Trump University.

 

Try again.

 

1. The "epidemic" is over in Sweden. It's not even debatable at this point. None of the catastrophes that were supposed to happen there came to fruition.
2. Using antibodies as the sole proxy for immunity is clearly erroneous given the mounting evidence of T-cell immunity.
3. Before 2020, everyone, especially liberals, viewed questions of public policy through the rationalist lens of statistics and cost-benefit analysis. There is nothing wrong with such calculations.

What you describe is not "reopening". And Sweden never locked down their society in the first place. Yet none of the disasters you describe ever befell them. And to the extent they performed worse than their Scandinavian neighbors, that can be easily explained by Sweden's socialist rationing of basic healthcare. There is an investigation underway right now into the triage policies set by Swedish authorities. But to be fair to them, they were operating under the false impression, given to them by alarmist frauds like Neil Ferguson, that they would be facing wave upon wave of extremely sick COVID patients, so they planned for an apocalypse that never actually came. It's hard to fault them too much for that, although they certainly deserve blame for failing to adjust quickly to the facts on the ground. Still, there is extremely scant evidence that Sweden's relatively relaxed approach to the novel coronavirus was any better or any worse than the average European country.