Posted on 09/29/2020 8:31:12 PM PDT by karpov
STOCKHOLM — The scene at Norrsken House Stockholm, a co-working space, oozed with radical normalcy: Young, turtleneck-wearing hipsters schmoozed in the coffee corner. Others chatted freely away, at times quite near each other, in cozy conference rooms. Face masks were nowhere to be seen.
It seemed very last January, before the spread of Covid-19 in Europe, but it was actually last week, as many European nations were tightening restrictions amid a surge of new coronavirus cases. In Sweden, new infections, if tipping upward slightly, still remained surprisingly low.
“I have potentially hundreds of tiny interactions when working here,” said Thom Feeney, a Briton who manages the co-working space. “Our work lives should not be reduced to just the screen in front of us,” he said. “Ultimately, we are social animals.”
Normalcy has never been more contentious than in Sweden. Almost alone in the Western world, the Swedes refused to impose a coronavirus lockdown last spring, as the country’s leading health officials argued that limited restrictions were sufficient and would better protect against economic collapse.
It was an approach that transformed Sweden into an unlikely ideological lightning rod. Many scientists blamed it for a spike in deaths, even as many libertarians critical of lockdowns portrayed Sweden as a model. During a recent Senate hearing in Washington, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious disease specialist, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, angrily clashed over Sweden.
For their part, the Swedes admit to making some mistakes, particularly in nursing homes, where the death toll was staggering. Indeed, comparative analyses show that Sweden’s death rate at the height of the pandemic in the spring far surpassed the rates in neighboring countries and was more protracted. (Others point out that Sweden’s overall death rate is comparable to that of the United States.)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My favorable opinion has changed since her initial handling of C19.
l8r
This was the issue when the press was shrieking about Sweden in the spring. The effectiveness of Sweden’s strategy would be seen over time. They did a bad job with long-term care facilities, as they admit. Otherwise, it seems they had the right approach.
You can’t hide from a virus!
Yup, I've been saying the same thing since May - or at least when I first found out that they didn't fall for this shutdown hysteria (or nonsense, or fraud, or idiocy...).
Those damn socialists got this big one right. Good for them. And not so good for us...
So basically they let the virus cull the herd up front, rather than dragging it out.
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