“People were still allowed to live their lives.” — err.. people in Sweden spent most of the time indoors isolated. That was no different than in Denmark or Norway.
“People were allowed to keep their business open” — yes, that’s true, and many shut as they had far fewer customers as people stayed at home
The net result was that Sweden today has 4 times the deaths and the same economic downturn as Norway-Denmark (excl. Greenland)
So, it doesn’t matter what you do.
The four times as many deaths stat doesn’t wash with me because the number is still low and we don’t really know what killed all those people. Was it the virus, something else, ventilators, etc. Where I live, nobody even knows a person with symptoms, much less died of this.
And that includes my family in Kentucky, South Dakota (who didn’t lock down), Seattle and Phenix.
And yes, I’m appearing to move the goal posts, but it is actually what fueled my first response. And it looks like Sweden at least got to the herd immunity point faster than the others.
Here is another core, background belief I have. I rarely get sick and even treated my wife at home for four weeks while she had the flu two years ago and almost died - but I showed no symptoms.
And that may be because I rarely wash my hands and am an avid nail biter. I have the immune system of a turkey buzzard. :)
I personally think locking down makes it worse in the long run. The only reason for locking down was to flatten the curve. Well, mission accomplished. And it was flat enough in Sweden.
Now, let’s get back to living our lives.
The virus has already burned through Sweden and, with their immune systems properly exercised over the healthy warmer months, they will weather any possible resurgence in December much better than countries where people didn’t mix it up and are now compromised with little immunity, not just from wuflu, but from regular covid, the flu, bronchitis, strep...