Stockholm — The number of deaths related to the coronavirus in Sweden has surpassed 1,000.
Anders Tegnell, of the country’s Public Health Agency, says there’s been 1,033 deaths. Tegnell says 114 deaths have been reported in the last day, up from a previous 20 deaths.
Wow. Tegnell is pretty bloody minded.
Thinning the herd, Nordic style.
Tegnell brushed off the criticism, saying the figures used by the experts were “erroneous.”
It’s not a dead body over there, Bernie’s just sleeping, that’s all. Give him the weekend and he’ll be fine.
Sweden needs to find an outlet for more body bags. My guess is that they are also short of masks and protective gear to go along with tiny brains.
I thought Sweden was pursing the herd immunity approach as Boris Johnson contemplated doing until confronted with the death numbers predicting hundreds of thousands deaths there and 2 million in US.
This was what dt reportedly asked Dr. Fauci about that required him to explain that people would die unnecessarily.
The really dumb thing about this is that it doesn’t even help the economy.
People are still social distancing. It’s just that the economy has dropped by 75% instead of 90%.
The 15% benefit is linear, but the 15% additional activity contributes to an exponential impact on the spread of the virus, which means that for the 15% of economic benefit, they are gonna hurt far more of the exonomy due to the exponentially spreading virus.
And that’s a purely economic analysis not factoring in that people are, you know, dying.
Hey does anybody know if Noem is a Swedish name? Oh wait her maiden name is Arnold, so was changed from a Swedish surname?
Based on years of hearing from relatives and friends in Sweden, it’s clear to me that the typical 'Murrican stereotype of Scandinavia as some sort of collection of socialist nanny states is way out of date. Beginning in the early 1990s, Sweden pretty much followed the “Washington Consensus” of laissez-faire and dismantling of the social safety net, along with a drastic flattening of its formerly steeply progressive income tax (partially replaced by the regressive VAT).
Its former cold war stance of armed neutrality also withered. Why is that relevant? It used to have huge numbers of trained reservists who could be mobilized in emergencies, and stockpiles of rations, logistical equipment, and medical supplies. That went away.
Volvo is now in the hands of the Chinese, SAAB no longer exists (Sweden can no longer build a new indigenous fighter aircraft). What is now the iconic Swedish brand? IKEA, which operates on the same ruthless principle of stamping out the competition as Walmart and Amazon. A few years ago, they engaged in a vicious campaign against unionization at a plant near Danville, VA. No wonder, IKEA’s founder was an admirer of Hitler.
Renowned Swedish Public Health Experts ABBA:
If you change your mind
I’m the first in line
Honey, I’m still free
Take a chance on me…
This is a very informative post. Two thumbs up, would read again.
Thank you for these insights. You’re right, I have always thought of Sweden as progressive.
Damn.
I remember reading this article and thinking it was foolhardy https://www.boston.com/news/world-news/2020/03/30/coronavirus-sweden
“Sweden is an outlier on the European scene, at least,” said Johan Giesecke, the country’s former chief epidemiologist and now adviser to the Swedish Health Agency, a government body. “And I think that’s good.”
There’s still some pretty awesome socialism. Free universal pre-school, which opens at 6am, for example. Very generous leave for new parents. Healthcare.
The exponential rise in immigration was a shock to the system, but that was cut back severely in about 2015, and the country is digesting the surge.
I don’t see Sweden as a nanny state, though. I see the government more of an expression of what the people of the country believe is Swedish and right.
There is a Swedish word that says a lot about the country. There isn’t a direct translation, but it is basically along the lines of “everybody gets what they need to be happy, but not everyone has the same need.”
Amsterdam is looking at something called “doughnut economics” that looks similar to that Swedish vision. In doughnut economics, what society provides to people starts at zero in the center of the doughnut. The hole is the region where the basic needs of people aren’t met. The outer rim of the doughnut is where people are consuming resources to a degree that it pushes others into the doughnut hole or it is not ecologically sustainable. The idea is to keep everyone in the doughnut. My apologies to Dr. Raworth, the developer of the concept, for what could be numerous errors in my description. I haven’t even read through her site yet – but you can beat me to it:
So much for herd immunity being a smart approach…
Sweden needs to find an outlet for more body bags.
Well, they are well stocked with ice rinks at least. (Sadly, that isn’t really a joke. There has been news stories about how they could be converted to temporary morgues).
Looking the Swedish situation from outside, but not very far, it really is something rather amazing in its way. I think at least part of is due to the famous “Consensus Culture”. Somehow at the early part of the crisis they got everybody (at least every major political party) to agree that their health officials know what they doing, even if the rest of the world would not agree. At first they had company, but by mid-March more or less every European nation west of Belarus changed course, except Sweden. There it seems everybody with power is so deeply involved with the current strategy that no opposition is demanding a change and no strong voices are heard accusing the government and health authorities basically running a giant human experiment on their people based on theory that is against the international view.
Volvo is now in the hands of the Chinese, SAAB no longer exists (Sweden can no longer build a new indigenous fighter aircraft).
This is not completely true. SAAB Aerospace still exists, as well as Swedish VOLVO company, that while makes no private autombiles anymore, is among other things one of the largest makers of trucks.
More relevant to the crisis, Mölnlycke is a leading manufacturer of medical protective gear and Gettinge a big manufacturer of things like ventilators. But while Mölnlycke has the actual production facilities abroad (and been in news when France Macron ordered the seize of the local storage facilities) the Gettinge factory builds four digit number of ventilators each month for export literary a few miles away from the largest hospital in Sweden (that has a shortage of them now). I’m sure they still had the basic industrial capacity, but the political leadership is AWOL at a time when it would be most needed.
True, but that’s my basic point. Sweden has a well-educated population and a great industrial tradition, but it is no longer in the front rank of car producers, and Volvo and SAAB are relative shadows of their former selves (like GE, after Welch turned it into a bank).
The Swedes have paper studies to build the Flygsystem 2020 as a follow-on fighter jet, but given the fact that they recently joined the British BAE Tempest project, that will almost certainly fall by the wayside, and they will lose indigenous design capability.
And they have mask-producing capability, as we do. But they still have a shortage of masks (as we do).
And, yes, as you correctly say, it is mainly a political problem.
While it isn’t quite apples-to-apples to compare a sovereign nation to a sub-national government, the population of Sweden is about the same as that of North Carolina (or Michigan, to use one with a more relevant industrial history). Asking that number of people to support the design and build of a modern stealth fighter jet is a big ask, especially with the apparent lack of an existential threat in military form. Russia is a menace, but, to put it in medical terms, it is shingles, not lung cancer.
