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The most infuriating thing about the Sweden situation to me is that Anders Tegnell has claimed that no country has managed to stop or slow down the spread of th
by vanderZwan 6y ago
The most infuriating thing about the Sweden situation to me is that Anders Tegnell has claimed that no country has managed to stop or slow down the spread of the virus. Even if you dismiss China's claims due to government meddling (fair enough), Tegnell was being ignorant of a number of other Asian countries at the time he said this.
I know that I'm somewhat jumping to conclusions, but this feels so much like typical Eurocentric ignorance of other parts of the world whenever the latter manages to handle something better than them that it makes my blood boil. Just swallow your pride and acknowledge the findings of others, dammit.
In general there are multiple Asian countries with recent experiences with these kinds of outbreaks - you know, SARS? Would it be so hard to look at their conclusions of which methods of handling past outbreaks worked and didn't work? To learn from their mistakes so we don't have to repeat them in our arrogance?
- puranjay 6y agoI don't know if Asian countries should be patting themselves on the backs yet. Here in India, it seemed like we had everything under control in the first 6 weeks of the lockdown. But now, our cases and deaths are rising fast, just as we're winding down the lockdowns. Bangalore avoided infections since much of the country was locked down. The real litmus test will be to see how the infection rate holds after the lockdowns end.
- intended 6y agoI think when they say Asia India is not included. I usually find that India/Bangladesh/Sri lanka/Pakistan etc are categorized as "the subcontinent" That said, infection rates in India have been weird.
- vanderZwan 6y agoOh I agree - nobody should pat themselves on the back until this is over, and even then I'm sure all countries involved could have handled the situation better. This is a separate issue from Tegnell ignoring a lot of knowledge that is out there in order to stick to his existing narrative.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoI don't know the actual situation on the ground, but here in Europe TV were showing massive crowds of people leaving cities, etc. when the lockdown started in India. Based on that it seemed unlikely that things were under control...
- wil421 6y agoI saw a similar thing about China in the beginning. When Wuhan went on lockdown something like a million people fled. Some of my Indian coworkers said their relatives said a mysterious flu was killing some people but they hadn’t made a link to Covid. This was months ago.
- qwerty1234599 6y agoDespite what they try to convey publicly, Swedes still live with a 19th century mindset. It doesn't even cross their minds that a southern European, yet alone Asian country could outperform them in any way possible because of a subconscious mindset of "Swedes are superior to others". Haven't seen any Swede question the fact that they gave the absolute power of handling the crisis to some unelected old white male boomer btw.