Posted on 05/02/2020 7:03:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In Sweden, bars and restaurants are open to the public, you can go get a haircut, and primary school is in session.
The coronavirus has arrived, but life goes on.
The country has taken a lighter-than-most approach to social distancing for COVID-19, relying on people to monitor themselves for symptoms, stay home when ill, practice good handwashing, and avoid crowds.
You see very few masks on people's faces in current photos from Stockholm and other Swedish cities.
It's a strategy that hasn't been employed in neighboring Finland or Norway, and it's one that some Swedish parents (keeping their kids out of school) as well as doctors and scientists (writing open letters of protest to the government) do not agree with at all.
The ruling concept relies on a bedrock of trust between the government and its people, an expectation of willing obedience and a mindset of safety first, coupled with a desire to keep people healthy, both physically, and mentally.
"What every country is trying to do is to keep people apart, using the measures we have and the traditions we have to implement those measures," the Swedish public health agency's chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, recently told Nature. "The citizen has the responsibility not to spread a disease."
If anyone can have success with such a low-enforcement disease-fighting strategy, it may be Sweden. A sparsely-populated country of people who generally agree to follow the rules is certainly a better candidate than most others for this public health experiment.
But even in Sweden, the reality is that COVID-19 is a tough disease to corral, and the relaxed disease-fighting plan doesn't seem to be going as well as some officials there might've hoped.
Sweden is a country of willfully compliant citizens, home of a so-called "consensus culture."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
“Couldn’t” “May not”. Live Free or Die Hard as Bruce Willis said.
One of my Prog-troll friends labeled a recent Michigan protest as borderline armed insurrection--armed citizens facing off with law enforcement in the statehouse. Oddly enough, I think that he is on to something. Governor "Half" Whitmer has managed to provoke her populace to this point.
Then why does the WHO appear to be embracing it?
Inquiring minds want to know.
And so our dear Fauci said...they might not really be protected at all.
Dr. Fauxcy, is that you?
RE: O.K., but did the Swedes wreck their economy? And do they face wide-spread civil unrest (beyond the now normal Muslim violence)?
No. As the article explains:
Sweden is a country of willfully compliant citizens, home of a so-called “consensus culture.” It’s a place that’s birthed some of the world’s safest cars, and most inoffensive furniture. Nearly everyone pays their taxes without prodding, despite the record high rates.
“People trust the government,” American archaeologist and Scandinavian art history professor Nancy Wicker, who’s traveled frequently back and forth between Sweden and the US for nearly four decades, told Business Insider. “It’s definitely part of the culture to follow the rules, or guidelines, and to not be too pushy about it.”
The Swedish prerogative asks citizens to act like adults, and then trusts that, left to their own devices, people will. The Swedish even have a word for this, folkvett. It translates, roughly, to “good manners,” but really means much more, expecting that Swedish people will act appropriately and do the right thing, without being told, or if not, face severe public shame and moral judgement.
In the US, the land of “liberty or death!” and vociferous coronavirus protests, where individualism and independence are prized above all else, it’s hard to imagine the same we’re-a-collective disease-fighting strategy working as well.
The Swedish coronavirus strategy is rooted in a practical, grown-up sense of being in this fight together, and for the long haul.
“People want to get along, and not draw attention to themselves, which is really different than most Americans,”
IN THE USA, IT IS THIS — GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH, or as they say in New Hampshire: LIVE FREE, OR DIE.
In Sweden, it is — Conform and Live ( maybe ).
Business Insider (FYI) has become a left of center (maybe further) in recent years... use to read now can’t sift through their bias...
Sweden has a population of about 10M with three or more large cities.
Why would Sweden be different than any middling sized state in the US?
Rest assured, it will not be the citizens who fire the first shots. It will me the police enforcing these orders.
Oh now we trust the WHO?
If the WHO is embracing Sweden’s model, then you better look at it long and hard before you embrace it.
The article referred to a 12.4% death rate percentage. That statistic is utterly meaningless as the overwhelming majority of cases are not diagnosed, and are probably involves people who are asymptomatic. The article even states that the nursing homes house only the oldest and most frail, making a high death rate there expected, even in the best of times.
Sweden’s death rate is middle of the pack, and most dying would have likely died of regular flu or pneumonia as they do every year.
While they may not yet have herd immunity, they are closer to it than anyone else. It is nonsense to shut down society for 18 months or more. Greater nonsense still to have it driven by government in the west.
It has worked for Sweden.
This article from the Financial Times, which looks at the overall death rates compared to recent years, shows Sweden with and “excess death rate” of 18% while most of the rest of Europe have excess death rates 30-70%:
https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c
By the way, don’t be fooled by the headline. The FT is a leftist rag and they did this analysis to “prove” there were lots of unreported coronavirus deaths that justified repressive government controls. Their nation-by-nation numbers prove exactly the opposite. Denmark and Austria are among the other winners and those nations had lockdowns in name only with rules that amounted to: “the shops are open if you need anything but we suggest you stay home if you can”
Rather than unreported coronavirus deaths, a much more logical explanation for the surge in deaths is the loneliness, stress, missed medical treatments, lack of exercise, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse caused by extended imprisonment of entire populations.
The science is settled and done by the leftists themselves. Sweden’s policy was correct. The medical fascists lied and people died.
Deep State Media source.
BI is worthless propaganda no better then CNN.
The most significant thing is that never in the history of humanity have healthy people been quarantined. You quarantine the sick; you sequester the vulnerable, the aged, the infirm until the risk passes. By then, the rest of us who weathered the virus have developed immunity and no longer represent a threat to them. "Quarantining" the strong and healthy is nothing short of house arrest, imprisonment; it's an exercise in excessive use of governmental powers. This needs to be fought on constitutional grounds, not merely on the basis of epidemiological strategy.
Wow, to read that article, you wouldn’t know their migrant/minority/Muslim population even existed, or that they have ghettos.
I no longer trust any media outlet.
I suspect everything that is written has a bias but since I can not know every sources bias I have decided not to believe anything that is written.
Thank you media for blurring the line between reporting and opinions. Hope you all fail.
Yes it would and Sweden will be fine.
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