Posted on 05/07/2020 4:43:30 AM PDT by Kaslin
Sweden, unlike its Scandinavian neighbors, made different decisions to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. It issued no mandatory orders. It did not require its citizens to shelter at home. True, as of May 4, more Swedes had contracted and died from the coronavirus (2,679 total deaths, a rate of 263.08 per 1 million people) than people in Norway (211, rate of 39.7) and Denmark (484, rate of 83.49), but fewer when adjusted for its population size compared with the U.K. (28,446 deaths, a rate of 427.83), Spain (25,264, rate of 540.71), France (24,864, rate of 371.18) and Italy (28,884, rate of 477.96).
It also remains to be seen whether, in the long run, the actions taken by other Scandinavian countries will result in fewer lives lost. This is because Sweden appears to be achieving "herd immunity" faster than other countries and because experts expect another spike in cases when lockdowns are lifted. Furthermore, the rationale for the lockdowns is to prevent a country's health care system from being overburdened. If that is goal, Sweden has achieved it. Its hospitals, intensive care units and emergency rooms have not been overburdened, and the country has had no shortage of medical equipment.
Dr. Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden, in early April said, "I'm not sure that there is a scientific consensus on, really, about anything when it comes to this new coronavirus, basically because we don't have much evidence for any kind of measures we are taking." Tegnell later explained: "We can install limited quarantine measures, but it is not legally feasible to lock down cities or regions -- let alone the entire country. ... All (European) countries already have the virus, so why close the borders now? We are more concerned about the mobility within Sweden."
Instead, Tegnell urged "personal responsibility" while admitting there is still a lot that he and other experts just do not know about the virus. "I'm not convinced at all. We are constantly thinking about this. ... What can we do better and what else can we add on?" said Tengell. "I think the most important thing all the time is to try to do it as well as you can, with the knowledge we have and the tools you have in place. And to be humble all the time because you may have to change."
Sweden advised its people of the seriousness of the pandemic, recommended staying at home unless travel is necessary and advocated mitigation measures like social distancing and wearing masks.
They listened. As Swedish writer Johan Norberg, with the libertarian Cato Institute, writes: "Swedes have reduced their mobility substantially, even without police enforcement. For example, cell phone data shows that the inhabitants of Stockholm reduced their trips to the most popular Swedish holiday destinations during Easter by around 90 percent.
"This means that our economy still hurts...We are not going to shops and restaurants like we used to. But losing two-thirds of your revenue rather than 100 percent might mean the difference between life and death for many entrepreneurs."
It helps that Swedes have far greater trust in their government than do citizens in many in other countries. The U.K.'s Independent noted, "The voluntary measures may have also been more effective due to high levels of trust in government among the Swedish population -- with 72 per cent trusting their government, compared to an EU average of 40 per cent." Expect years of analyses of how different countries are addressing this pandemic. But about Sweden, Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization's Emergencies Program, said: "I think if we are to reach a new normal, I think in many ways Sweden represents a future model -- if we wish to get back to a society in which we don't have lockdowns."
Is this because, unlike America, Sweden has a centralized government that spoke with one voice? No, said Tegnell, who explained that the federal government offered guidelines, but the final responsibility rested with local authorities and individuals themselves.
When it comes to battling the coronavirus, Nirvana is not an option. This is about trade-offs. As economist Thomas Sowell said: "In the unconstrained vision, there are no intractable reasons for social evils and therefore no reason why they cannot be solved, with sufficient moral commitment. But in the constrained vision, whatever artifices or strategies restrain or ameliorate inherent human evils will themselves have costs, some in the form of other social ills created by these civilizing institutions, so that all that is possible is a prudent trade-off."
Bottom line, Sweden accepts the concept of "trade-offs," something that many who attack President Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus do not seem to understand. Every year, more than 30,000 Americans die in traffic accidents. It is quite possible to build a vehicle in which no one gets killed. It would look like armadillo on wheels, and maybe go a gas-guzzling five miles per hour.
But nobody would die.
Well the swedes really obeyed voluntary rules in large numbers. But still if they got one third of the traffic they used to have, businesses did a lot better than ours
They have a genetic tweak that may have helped many of them. Ccr5 delta 32. It helps protect against hiv
Belarus also has people with this genetic tweak.
All of life is but a series of trade-offs.
You pays your money and you takes your choice. How did we ever come to have so many dumbed-down nitwits who do not realize this?
“No! Impossible!!!! Applesauce and Oranges!!! Aaarfh!! “
—cowards hiding, somewhere
“How did we ever come to have so many dumbed-down nitwits who do not realize this?”
I don’t know. But it’s disgusting. And disheartening.
One question: If this lockdown happened under Obama, would we deplorables have obeyed like this?
That’s what comes when you effectively let bureaucrat doctors, on big government pay, with no idea of how the economy works, run the country.
Life has always been about opportunity costs. There is never absolutes.
You could wipe out road accidents for example if you reduced speed limits to 25 miles per hour on the highways. I don’t see anyone suggesting that.
Interesting thing to know as I am 1/2 Swedish.
Trade-offs have always been accepted by intelligent and virtuous people. In the 1700’s, colonial America had a succession of epidemics of smallpox, a truly barbaric disease. People in those days knew they got diseases by being around people who had them, even if they did not know about germs. If anyone had proposed quarantining EVERYONE to stop the epidemics, he would have been tarred and feathered
I don’t know what half swedish will get you with this Delta32 but you should check more into it.
Maybe one trait might slow HIV down but two of them gives you better protection..but dont really remember
one study came out that said you would might die before 76 with two but I think it got retracted
The “experts” that advocated the lock downs are to arrogant to have concerned themselves, even morally, about the costs of the lock downs, in human terms, much less economic terms.
When you advocate for the economy, the Left reads that as though you are advocating for Wall Street, the banks and the corporations. THAT is how they see the economy, because the economy is not theirs, not a centralized government program.
But the economy is not grounded in Wall Street, the banks and the corporations. They may appear to be at the pinnacle of the economy, but the ground they are built on is from the bottom up. The economy is the people in their daily local financial intercourse, the people in their jobs and what they choose to do and must do with their earnings, the people with how they save and invest, and they spend and why they spend, and where they spend. The economy trickles from that ground up into the and through the banks, into investments, into Wall Street. A most accurate image of the economy would look like an upside down pyramid, with the ground floor on top - the people and their activity - trickling down through the layers to where gravity feeds the places where savings and investments get what finally does not have to be spent, and the agents of that kind of activity, corporations, banks, Wall Street try to allocate that excess for the future.
By mandating all the “little people” quit working, the Left would have it that it is only Wall Street, the bankers and the corporations that are out of luck, when the reality is they are the least hurt compared to the tens of millions that have been forced out of their livelihoods, which some are never getting back.
And it was all unnecessary.
Declaring everyone, universally, at all times when together mask up would have been as safe as need be without closing anything down. That alone would have “flattened the curve enough”.
But, apparently, in my mind, someone wanted the economy destroyed.
Now just look at what kind of economy is being built as we speak on the ashes of the economic shut down, and who is benefiting from it. Apparently, we the people were not joining the technological society fast enough. The old economy had to be destroyed in order to build a new one, driven by and held in the charge of the technologists.
“There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Thomas Sowell
How true that is.
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