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If you compare it to its more sparsely populated immediate neighbors, sure, Sweden looks bad. If you compare it to UK, France, Spain, Italy, who all did a seve

If you compare it to its more sparsely populated immediate neighbors, sure, Sweden looks bad. If you compare it to UK, France, Spain, Italy, who all did a severe lockdown, Sweden does not look bad.

jeremysalwen 6y ago
Which is exactly the point: Why would you compare it to dramatically different countries instead of ones that mainly differed on the axis of interest, unless you had an axe to grind?
- aga98mtl 6y ago
  Stockholm is actually the only big, dense, international city in the Nordic countries. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populated_municipalities_in_the_Nordic_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populated_mun... The disease likes dense urban areas with a lot of poor immigrants working in big care homes. Comparing countries is not really "fair". In Canada, Montreal got hit hard. In the USA, NYC, Philadelphia and Boston got it hard. It's a urban centric disease. So yes it's fair to compare to Sweden to Germany, France, UK and Belgium.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Sweden has 11 million citizens, 2.5 millions in Stockholm metropolitan area. Norway has 5 million people, 1.8 millions living in Oslo metropolitan area. Finland has 5.5 million citizens, 1.7 millions living in Greater Helsinki. Lots of countryside elsewhere. The Nordic countries are quite comparable.
    - gridlockd 6y ago
      Perhaps we should also be looking at population density: Stockholm: 11,802/sqm Oslo: 4,268/sqm Helsinki: 3,670/sqm
      - HarryHirsch 6y ago
        Sure, but covid spreads during social events, it's schools, bars, concerts, churches, and you find more of that in urban aggregations than in the flat countryside.
      - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
        I do not where you got these numbers from. Wikipedia: Helsinki: 3,070.08/km2 (7,951.5/sq mi)
        gridlockd 6y ago
        I just picked the first google result, which happens to be metric, so I mixed that up.
        makomk 6y ago
        It looks like the first Google result is for the Capital Region (1.1 million people, 1418 per squqare km, 3670 per sq mile). The stat in the comment you're replying to is for Helsinki proper which only has 600,000 or so residents, and Greater Helsinki is less dense than any of these. No matter how you slice the figures, Stockholm seems to be a bigger denser city than Helsinki or Oslo.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Why compare Sweden to Norway and Finland? Because they're "nordic"? They do have quite different economies, different populations, different healthcare systems, etc. These comparisons can be made arbitrarily to make Sweden look either bad or good.
  - rendall 6y ago
    "They do have quite different economies, different populations, different healthcare systems, etc." Really? I guess your definition of "quite different" is different from the usual. Would you care to expand? Language and culture across Scandinavia is very similar, and Finland's culture is different only to a small degree if at all
    - gridlockd 6y ago
      I didn't mention culture at all. I'm not sure how you would define culture in this context and to what degree that is measurable. Instead, I would point out various socio-economic factors, such as Sweden having a higher rate of ethnic minorities (generally over-represented in COVID-19), Norway's GDP being far higher than the others (thanks to fossil fuel) and Sweden having a far greater population in elderly care institutions, compared to Finland. A great deal of the deaths in Sweden come from nursing homes, where you had the situation that caregivers would travel from one institution to the next, spreading the virus.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

If you compare it to its more sparsely populated immediate neighbors, sure, Sweden looks bad. If you compare it to UK, France, Spain, Italy, who all did a severe lockdown, Sweden does not look bad.

jeremysalwen 6y ago

Which is exactly the point: Why would you compare it to dramatically different countries instead of ones that mainly differed on the axis of interest, unless you had an axe to grind?

aga98mtl 6y ago
Stockholm is actually the only big, dense, international city in the Nordic countries. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populated_municipalities_in_the_Nordic_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populated_mun... The disease likes dense urban areas with a lot of poor immigrants working in big care homes. Comparing countries is not really "fair". In Canada, Montreal got hit hard. In the USA, NYC, Philadelphia and Boston got it hard. It's a urban centric disease. So yes it's fair to compare to Sweden to Germany, France, UK and Belgium.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Sweden has 11 million citizens, 2.5 millions in Stockholm metropolitan area. Norway has 5 million people, 1.8 millions living in Oslo metropolitan area. Finland has 5.5 million citizens, 1.7 millions living in Greater Helsinki. Lots of countryside elsewhere. The Nordic countries are quite comparable.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    Perhaps we should also be looking at population density: Stockholm: 11,802/sqm Oslo: 4,268/sqm Helsinki: 3,670/sqm
    - HarryHirsch 6y ago
      Sure, but covid spreads during social events, it's schools, bars, concerts, churches, and you find more of that in urban aggregations than in the flat countryside.
    - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
      I do not where you got these numbers from. Wikipedia: Helsinki: 3,070.08/km2 (7,951.5/sq mi)
      - gridlockd 6y ago
        I just picked the first google result, which happens to be metric, so I mixed that up.
        makomk 6y ago
        It looks like the first Google result is for the Capital Region (1.1 million people, 1418 per squqare km, 3670 per sq mile). The stat in the comment you're replying to is for Helsinki proper which only has 600,000 or so residents, and Greater Helsinki is less dense than any of these. No matter how you slice the figures, Stockholm seems to be a bigger denser city than Helsinki or Oslo.
gridlockd 6y ago
Why compare Sweden to Norway and Finland? Because they're "nordic"? They do have quite different economies, different populations, different healthcare systems, etc. These comparisons can be made arbitrarily to make Sweden look either bad or good.
- rendall 6y ago
  "They do have quite different economies, different populations, different healthcare systems, etc." Really? I guess your definition of "quite different" is different from the usual. Would you care to expand? Language and culture across Scandinavia is very similar, and Finland's culture is different only to a small degree if at all
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    I didn't mention culture at all. I'm not sure how you would define culture in this context and to what degree that is measurable. Instead, I would point out various socio-economic factors, such as Sweden having a higher rate of ethnic minorities (generally over-represented in COVID-19), Norway's GDP being far higher than the others (thanks to fossil fuel) and Sweden having a far greater population in elderly care institutions, compared to Finland. A great deal of the deaths in Sweden come from nursing homes, where you had the situation that caregivers would travel from one institution to the next, spreading the virus.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]