I think there are a few things going on here: a) The spread of contagion before measures where imposed. Sweden was a few days later than the other Nordics in t

I think there are a few things going on here: a) The spread of contagion before measures where imposed. Sweden was a few days later than the other Nordics in taking action, and may have been in a further advanced state to begin with. b) Safety equipment. Sweden had no functioning central reserves for health care gear. c) Failure to protect the vulnerable. The nursing homes are a mix of private and public, but all are administered at the municipal level. Proper care was not taken to protect the elderly, largely due to lack of local know how and incompetent central response. I’ve been a staunch defender of the Swedish strategy, but it seems like there’s no avoiding the conclusion that the path taken by the other nordics may have been smarter in that it contained the spread until adequate supplies could be secured, good routines established and treatment options better understood. (To be fair to FHM that devised the strategy, b and c are certainly on other authorities.) Significantly, although all the nordics now have a climbing number of cases, none has seen a sharp rise in the number of deaths. Mean time from hospitilization to death is around 18 days, so the resurgence has been ongoing for long enough that it’d have been noticeable by now. It seems like the Swedish path may have two main benefits left: 1) Fewer vulnerable children were hurt by being sent home. Fewer women locked in with abusive partners. Nordic lock downs were less drastic, and may have avoided some of it, but at the global level it’s numbing to think of the suffering of children this year. 2) In terms of GDP growth, the indication is that Sweden didn’t do much better than the other nordics, but I think it’s still to early to gauge the long term economic benefits of a soft strategy. Maybe Sweden ended up taking on less debt per capita, for instance? I haven’t seen numbers on that, but school closings in particular are expensive, and so seems like reasonable speculation. Time will tell. The economic benefits are probably not going to turn out to be compelling enough to justify the potentially avoidable deaths. From a utilitarian perspective, I think the first point may be though. The deaths have largely been people towards the end of their life. I think the constructive way to view it is that we should consider all years of a humans life equal. Is it worth sacrifying an 80 year old to save a 10 year old from being beaten up at home? If it hurts that kid for life in a tangible way, then yeah, that grim calculus may just work out.