STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden’s government defended its response to the COVID-19 global pandemic on Tuesday despite the Scandinavian country now reporting one of the highest mortality rates in the world with 4,125 fatalities, or about 40 deaths per 100,000 people.
More than 76,000 people have been made redundant since the outbreak of the disease and unemployment, which now stands at 7.9%, is expected to climb higher.
But, but, but . . .
. . . it’s a long term strategy!
Dead people don’t work??
I’m curious why it’s the Foreign Minister providing these quotes
Sweden’s death count per 1,000,000 pop: 390
Norway’s death count per 1,000,000 pop: 43.8
Finland’s death count per 1,000,000 pop: 55.7
One of these things is not like the other.
Probably because of this:
Excluding Sweden from moves to open borders across the Nordic region as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic would be a political decision and not justifiable on health grounds, Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Tuesday.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-nordics/no-reason-to-keep-swedes-out-when-nordics-reopen-borders-swedish-minister-idUSKBN23221S
It’s harder to kill a Norwegian?
Yes, I’m Norwegian 
it will be interesting to watch Brazil after a couple of months.
Meanwhile, here in Texas we only did a partial shutdown and now everyone’s acting like it’s all over and we shut down for nothing. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I’ve been working in an office the whole time with coworkers who only talk about social distancing as a joke because the owner is a Trump Supporter who gets annoyed any time he hears about the virus which he’s certain is an overblown media hoax and definitely NOT a reason to let office people work from home.
Not only do we have sales guys and laborers go to people’s homes every day, we’ve been hiring people for weeks so every day we have strangers come in and our only way of screening for the virus is to ask them if they have a fever and nothing else. Some of the applicants wear facemasks, but take them off when they see none of us are wearing them. I invented working from home two decades ago and now I’m living in a nightmare of my own doing. Calgon, take me away!
Exactly. Sweden (as did Norway, Finland, etc) got infected later. The virus first came to German (via a business visitor to Munich from Wuhan, which is the center of the Chinese Auto Industry, part of why Detroit has been hit so hard) and France (via ski vacationers).
It was then quickly seeded to Northern Italy, via the Munich infection.
Desease was endemic in France, German, Italy, and Spain by mid-February.
Others in Europe, like the US, had a full month + to take control measures.
Others that did immediately (like Austria, the rest of the northern Europeans) ended up with very low rates infection.
Spain has 580/million deaths
England has 546/million deaths
Italy has 545/million deaths (england just passed them today into #2 of major countries)
France is 437/million
Sweden is 409/million
USA is 303/million
Canada is 176/million (with the vast bulk in Quebec)
Brazil (which is clearly vastly underreporting) is at 111/million
Germany is 101/million
Denmark (highest of the northern europeans) is 97/million
What we are seeing is that counties with a Hard Lock down, followed only by reopening (e.g. Germany) with sufficient testing and tracing, are doing a lot better than nations that tried a soft lockdown or an uneven lockdown (Sweden, UK, USA, Brazil) with those counties having vastly higher death rates given their later infections, when treatment protocals, testing, etc, should have given them a real advantage.
The Russian figures ( 26/million) are totally false, they have at least 10x that rate of death, but of the countries whose figures are semi-trustworthy, at the end of the day I think we will end up with
Brazil (but probably also Russia) #1, UK #2, Sweden #3, USA #4 in death rates.
And we may have an actual death rate higher than Sweden’s, but a lot of states (e.g. GA, FL) are fudging the data.
Summer is Here! Pretty, blond, affluent Swedes can repair to their healthy island summer homes, while the poors and darks can stew in their tower blocks in exurban Malmo, Gothenburg, and Stockholm.
“Defends” is the appropriate verb at this point.
As a reminder, I’ve been in Sweden with the family since last summer, for a year-long stay. That gives me personal experience, but not the deep understanding a native could offer (and I am too language-impaired to follow Swedish media).
The Swedish plan was not a bad one based on the knowledge available when it was conceived, but it is increasingly evident that the Public Health Agency has not been willing to err on the side of caution where data was scarce and has stubbornly resisted revisiting their assumptions as data has become more plentiful.
I think the number one problem with the Swedish approach was an assumption that asymptomatic transmission would be near zero. The early guidance from the health agency was to stay home if you had any symptoms of any severity. Because the Swedish public has relatively high compliance with government advisories, the agency was confident that the spread of covid would be severly hampered by such measures. As an extra step, the government announced that sick-leave would be paid starting the first day out. The normal policy is that the first day of an illness is an unpaid absence. Reliance on the asymptomatic-transmission assumption was devastating for the residents of nursing homes (who don’t appear to have fared very well in any country).
I have put off a couple of major purchases - $10K worth of AC, insulation, etc., and $$$ rebuilding a shower and toilet area from the joists up, because there is no way we are going to allow workmen to crawl around our home. Instead we bought another window unit and will hang on another year, at least, in a one-bathroom house.
My son is quitting his restaurant job next week when the dining room is scheduled to open. So is the chef, the assistant manager, and at least two other staff. That leaves three people currently on the payroll that he doesn’t know about, but judging by the fact that he’s been called in to cover for one of those twice in the last four days, I think the owner is going to be there by himself.
He’s willing to risk exposure to do clinicals for basic EMT (he’s on the waitlist), but not to give people vegan queso.
I have family and friends in Sweden, so I have been following the story. Given its relatively low population density (for Europe) and good health care, deaths per capita should have been about one-eighth of what they currently are.
But the government basically ceded complete authority to a permanent health care official, Anders Tegvall, who showed miserable judgment. You obviously can’t develop “herd immunity” (the overwhelming basis of his strategy) if you are facing a new and highly infectious virus to which the initial rates of immunity are very low compared to influenza, which has been around a long time. AND especially not if there is no vaccine that is even partially effective.
That is Immunology 101, and Tegvall flunked. Dead people paid the price.
India will be up there. Also China’s figures cannot be trusted.
We should be clear, unlike the US where about 40% of deaths have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, the percentage is considerably higher in Sweden. Sweden failed to protect the elderly well enough, and this is the bad result. My brother-in-law, who was born Finnish, but lives in Sweden, notes that the net behaviors aren’t that different at a personal level. Sweden, however, allowed gatherings of more than five people (up to 50!). That is a clear policy failure and the numbers are much worse, than say Switzerland. Any state considering allowing crowd sizes in excess of 5 will likely reap the whirlwind.
