11 ms·

Sweden tried this with catastrophic end results. It's practically impossible to shield the vulnerable population from a highly contagious disease that is rampan

Sweden tried this with catastrophic end results. It's practically impossible to shield the vulnerable population from a highly contagious disease that is rampant in the non-vulnerable population - someone after all needs to tend for the vulnerable. Swedish health system basically collapsed under the weight and after an order of magnitude more deaths than in comparable neighboring countries they are now taking to restrictions as well. I am sure no one takes joy in "destruction of civil liberties", but we have to balance here some fundamental rights, like the right to life, with other fundamental rights such as freedom of movement and economic rights. Also, I have to point out a glaring cognitive dissonance here. You basically just said: "let's put vulnerable people into unused hotels so we can safeguard civil liberties". Did you mean: "let's put vulnerable people into unused hotels so we can safeguard civil liberties of young people"?

jsnell 6y ago
> several orders of magnitude more deaths than in comparable neighboring countries One order of magnitude, not several.
- mahkeiro 6y ago
  And not really worst that the rest of Europe...
  - evgen 6y ago
    Just dramatically worse than their comparable neighbors who, unlike the rest of Europe, share the same cultural/demographic/socio-economic factors. Nothing screams denialist more than people trying to hand-wave the Swedish failure away by ignoring neighbors and comparing them to some other, bigger, EU covid clusterfuck.
    - roenxi 6y ago
      According to [0] Sweden has better deaths per capita than the US, UK, Spain and Italy. We still have no data about what the longer term effects of all these business closures will be, because the pandemic is ongoing. And at the time the decisions were made it was wishful thinking that a vaccine would be almost upon us by now. This Swedish "failure" is not yet manifest. They are an apparently weak performer, but by no means outside the pack. And the better performers in the pack are suspect - India and China may as well be several different countries packed together by population. Their numbers are a bit unrealistic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...
      - ptaipale 6y ago
        Traditionally, Sweden has compared itself to other Nordic countries, which, as mentioned, share the same cultural/demographic/socio-economic factors. Now the comparison points have suddenly switched to Italy and UK, or I've seen even Peru and Brazil. Which really screams "denialist". https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=earliest..latest&country=FIN~SWE~NOR~DNK~ISL&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... For the note, I don't think it is meaningful to compare these statistics between other countries than OECD members. For instance, the Wikipedia list you mentioned indicates currently 45,000 deaths for Russia, whereas the Russian deputy prime minister has now said that the figure would be 186,000. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55474028 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55474028
        catears 6y ago
        To be honest it sounds pretty denialist to me when someone says you have to compare Denmark, Sweden and Norway, but adding other countries is "not comparable". To me it just sounds like cherry picking. An example of a big difference between Denmark and Sweden is that Sweden has a much more lenient immigration policy (for better or worse). I have heard anectodes from (swedish) friends about how these groups fare worse. I can very much imagine that differences like this make the comparison between the nordic countries less valid, so to me it makes sense not to cherry pick those three countries.
        evgen 6y ago
        It isn’t cherry-picking, it is a standard that existed long before covid. The Nordic countries have always compared themselves to each other and have been lumped into a group externally. They share many similar characteristics and few differences — the immigration straw you are grasping at is indeed weak sauce and not significant-enough to account for the scope and magnitude of Sweden’s covid failures.
        6y ago
    - orbifold 6y ago
      They have higher numbers of migrants and that makes up (part of) the difference (https://apnews.com/article/1d7916cf6e48b7a231b894ef9cda1a19 https://apnews.com/article/1d7916cf6e48b7a231b894ef9cda1a19).
  - cygx 6y ago
    But the worst in Northern Europe, by far.
    - codewithcheese 6y ago
      Which metrics are you using?
      - cygx 6y ago
        Deaths attributed to Covid, or excess mortality in general, take your pick. For example: Sweden: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~SWE&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... Norway: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~NOR&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
    - collyw 6y ago
      UK is worse, Belgium is worse.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - cygx 6y ago
        Being German, I don't consider these countries part of Northern Europe. While the UN might put the UK there (but not Belgium), the way I got taught the terminology, the UK would belong to Nordwesteuropa as a sub-region of Westeuropa, whereas Nordeuropa consists of the Nordics (and maybe the Baltics). Cf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Grossgliederung_Europas.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Grossgli...
        petre 6y ago
        You can definitely consider Scotland part of Northern Europe.
collyw 6y ago
https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Catastrophic? They are pretty average for Europe. Cherry picking countries to compare it to makes little sense, as there are numerous factors other than geographical location that affect the virus. > 50% of the deaths occurred in care homes, as Sweden (like many other countries) sent older patients to them. Which is pretty much the opposite of what was I was suggesting.
- ngrilly 6y ago
  I’d be really curious to know why your fact-based comment is downvoted.
  - jamienicol 6y ago
    Because they claimed that elderly patients were sent to care homes. I guess you could argue this is "fact based" in that it's a distortion of the facts. Because they argued that comparing Sweden to it's similar neighbour is "cherry picking", and yet cherry picked a much less suitable group - the whole of Europe - because it suited their argument. Because they, without any facts, imply that Sweden's high death toll could be avoided by putting the elderly in hotels
    - collyw 6y ago
      Why is the first point a distortion of the facts? You don't give a reason for why the whole of Europe is less suitable than it's immediate neighbours (geographic location is only a small part of the puzzle). I didn't say the third one at all.
  - f6v 6y ago
    There're so many ways to lie with statistics.
- vesinisa 6y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=SWE~NOR~DNK~FIN~DEU~EST&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=new_cases_per_million&pickerSort=desc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... Here is the Swedish COVID death toll per million plotted against comparable countries in Northern Europe. Sweden is a clear outlier, and there is little debate that their lax strategy was the reason. What are you suggesting exactly? That old people with medical issues are quarantined in empty hotels? So we can protect the civil liberties of those who are less vulnerable?
noja 6y ago
> Sweden tried this with catastrophic end results. Tried what? They shut care homes as an afterthought, not as part of a plan to protect people (closing care homes came later).
- vesinisa 6y ago
  Sweden initially tried to achieve herd immunity. It failed because it is impossible to stop the virus from spreading to the vulnerable population.
  - polack 6y ago
    Stop spreading lies. No official source have EVER said they where trying to achieve herd immunity, they have only denied it.
    - vesinisa 6y ago
      Nope, that's what they kind of started saying after the herd immunity experiment failed. Back in May they were still happy to go on record to say that herd immunity was part of the Swedish strategy: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/26/845211085/stockholm-expected-to-reach-herd-immunity-in-may-swedish-ambassador-says https://www.npr.org/2020/04/26/845211085/stockholm-expected-... But by July antibody tests showed that herd immunity was still very far away. Tegnell has since claimed it was never their goal, which to me sounds like hand washing. EDIT: As pointed, Swedish representatives later asked the article to state that herd immunity was not their goal after all - you could almost forgive the journalist for the confusion. Here is Tegnell instead strategizing in private about letting the virus spread in school children to hasten herd immunity: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/swedens-covid-19-strategist-under-fire-over-herd-immunity-emails https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/swedens-covid-...
      - cygx 6y ago
        But note the correction at the bottom of that page: April 27, 2020 An earlier version of this story said the Swedish government is pursuing a strategy of "herd immunity." Swedish officials say their plan was to impose limited restrictions instead of a lockdown but have denied they were purposely pursuing a strategy of herd immunity.
WanderPanda 6y ago
> I am sure no one takes joy in "destruction of civil liberties" Sadly, I am not so sure
- bluescrn 6y ago
  It's sad to see the growing trend of seeing freedom as a "selfish right-wing ideal" (Not just in relation to the pandemic, the opposition to free speech as well as outright anti-capitalism has been growing for a while)
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    Anti-capitalism is usually held exactly from a position of more freedom. In a more free world, your livelihood would not be conditioned by obedience to a totalitarian institution such as a company. Opposition to pure free speech is indeed problematic, though.
  - mns 6y ago
    It's actually sad how this whole thing has progressed. Just look at this thread, anything that goes even in the slightest against the current is downvoted into oblivion. It's so disappointing, you can't say anything any more. And it's just people bringing up mild counterpoints or examples, but it doesn't matter any more, science is a religion, everything is with us or against us, all common sense and proper dialogue is thrown away for this extreme radicalisation.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Why do you consider Sweden’s surrounding countries to be comparable? What specific metrics are you basing that on? To me it seems like this comparison is arbitrary and relies on uncritical readers accepting geographical proximity as an acceptable proxy for all the complexities involved. Sweden’s strategy could well have worked if they committed to it. They didn’t actually go for “herd immunity” as you claim, and had a number of lockdown restrictions in place, although to a lesser degree than some other places. They unfortunately had some early blunders with nursing home protocols, and over half their deaths are from nursing homes specifically. But if you correct for that, they would be looking a lot better. As for isolating the elderly or vulnerable - it’s not a cognitive dissonance. Two different parties both have a right to liberties, the ability to assess risk trade offs for themselves, and agency to make their own decisions. Those who are risk averse can quarantine themselves indefinitely, while those who aren’t can continue with their lives unimpeded. What exactly is the dissonance?
- ptaipale 6y ago
  Sweden's neighbours share similar demographics, climate, legislation, administration, health care system and to a large extent also cultural traits. Swedes do a bit more of greeting people by hugging and even cheek-kissing than Finns or Norwegians do, but they all are a far cry from Italy, France or Belgium in that respect. Thus, with so much similarity in background variables, the policy differences towards the epidemic are highlighted.
  - htfu 6y ago
    Only with a not-yet in effect law, which has been months in the making, will measures even approaching a full lockdown be legal in Sweden. An actual full lockdown would require constitutional level changes which has to go through multiple administrations before coming into effect. There literally hasn't been many possible measures to take beyond those taken. The country is also more devolved into regional administration than the neighbors. So yes, there are major differences in legislation. This is weirdly missing from the rah-rah coming from both sides - it's not even really a tactic, but the outcome of our laws.
cjblomqvist 6y ago
I don't know what you've read or what sources you have. I'm a swede and have been following the Corona situation relatively closely (looking at facts and not media hysteria too much). My parents are retired health care professionals. My sister-in-law works at FHM. I've been in contact with hospitals and health services quite a bit the last year (my wife's grandma died due to cancer, I had a child that was born at one of the largest hospitals in Sweden). At times, the situation has been hard for health workers, having to work more than normal (sadly, the personnel situation was a big problem even before COVID, it just tipped it across the border). But to say that the Swedish health system collapsed is a lie (or at least back it up with data/some facts/sources). I do agree though it'll be interesting to see what the cause for the relatively high amount of excessive deaths was (not bigger than many other western countries, such as Belgium or the US), but still. I'm not saying the Swedish approach was the best one (or even a good one), but let's not spread misinformation. Sweden is so much misused in this debate (on both sides) and that scares the me the most. On that note, several really bad/horrible incidents in the spring where health care workers did strict prioritizations was due to media and mass hysteria - NOT because of health system collapse... Misinformation is really dangerous - life and death dangerous...
- vesinisa 6y ago
  I guess it all depends on your definition of "collapse". I would describe a situation where hospitals are overloaded to the point where they have to choose who gets to live and who has to die a collapse. Sources in English are harder to come by about this, but for example in spring when Stockholm's ICU beds were at full capacity it is implicit that people with better prognosis had to be prioritized. Seniors with severe cases of corona were instead given morphine and sent to die in care homes: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/skarp-kritik-efter-ivo-granskning-av-aldreboenden https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/skarp-kritik-eft... Nothing like this happened in Sweden's neighboring countries with more cautious COVID approach because ICU beds so far never reached full capacity. In a modern Nordic welfare state denying a dying person of care that could save their life is not only a complete failure of the health care system but also a crisis of moral values. I am not sure the Swedish public is yet ready to even admit the latter crisis.
catears 6y ago
As a swede, I want to correct you. There has been a ton of outright mis-information about my country and how it handled the coronavirus so I don't blame anyone for not knowing. The poor journalism that has been conducted is to blame and the resulting mis-information. Misinformation 1: Swedens healthcare system did not collapse on itself. Fact: In the region where most people got sick (Stockholm) the military was called in to set up an emergency hospital. This was never used because the hospitals in Stockholm managed without it. Misinformation 2: Sweden imposed no lock-down. While technically-kinda correct that we did not lock people in their homes, quite quickly it became illegal with public events of 50 or more people. (mid-late March I think). Misinformation 3: Sweden "remained largely the same after the virus". Goodness sake, no. Anyone that claims this hasn't talked to a single swede. Misinformation 4: Swedens strategy was to achieve herd immunity. No. In spring this question was asked at almost every press conference with FHM (ministry of public health). The strategy from the beginning was to preserve the overall health of Swedes as good as possible. During the open questions with FHM they have repeatedly brought up and said that the goal was not to achieve herd immunity. This stuff is complex and poor journalists don't like complex answers. As far as I remember, the reason for this "milder" strategy focused on spreading accurate and correct information about the virus was because FHM (correctly) predicted that we would have to live with the virus for a very long time. They decided that the best way to protect people over a period of possibly several years was by arming them with information on how to protect themselves and others (social distance, wash your hands, work from home if you can). The real issues that caused Sweden to have such high rates of death compared to similar countries like Denmark and Norway are more complex and has to do with lack of information for those caring for the elderly, poor equipment (and especially reserves with unusable equipment), and other systemic failures when it comes to elderly care. Those in care homes were especially vulnerable because they are both older and come into contect with a lot of people. I believe the Swedish healthcare system failed to protect these people, and that is a major contributor to the high death toll.
- ptaipale 6y ago
  Regarding the "lack of information for those caring for the elderly", that sounds fairly implausible, because information about the epidemic has been abundant. The proportion of old people among the dead is not much different in Sweden from other comparable countries; it seems to me that any strategy with "protect the elderly and let the younger people take the hit" is doomed to fail. The more infections there are in the general population, the more infections there will be among the old and weak. And of course even the young and fit will also have a proportion among them who get seriously ill.
cortic 6y ago
Not sure what the 'tried with catastrophic end results' is because the post you replied to has been censored, but; Sweden have done massively better than France, UK, USA, in deaths per million, they have even done better than Switzerland, all the while not treating their citizens like criminals. While the west look to shining examples like North Korea and China as what we should be doing.
- vinay427 6y ago
  > they have even done better than Switzerland Switzerland is only slightly lower than the US in death rate. I'm not sure the "even" is appropriate here for a country with far more deaths per capita than Austria and Germany, especially considering it also experienced a second wave far more fatal than virtually any other country. https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&ratio&places=Austria,Switzerland,USA&alignTo=deceased https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&r...
  - cortic 6y ago
    https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&ratio&places=France,Sweden,Switzerland,USA,United%20Kingdom&alignTo=deceased https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&r... If you had to look at this comparison without knowing; you couldn't tell which country maintained civil liberties. And yes there are countries that fared better, and countries that fared worse. https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&daily&ratio&places=France,Sweden,Switzerland,USA,United%20Kingdom&alignTo=deceased https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&d... Sweden's second wave seems dwarfed by both France and Switzerland in this comparison.. I mean if you have to squint and twist the stats to make Sweden look bad, then maybe we gave up all our rights unnecessarily. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Overall, they have the 25th worst deaths per million on earth, UK is 12th, USA is 14th and France is 16th worst. They didn't do badly. And most all countries that did worse, did so while stripping every right and liberty off their citizens.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  These posts are not censored. If you want to see them, you can turn on the option to see them (‘showdead’)in your settings.
jsight 6y ago
To be fair, their "catastrophic" results is still a lower death rate than the United States. I feel like there are a lot of Americans who willingly accept that level of catastrophe in exchange for freedom.
Felony_Fred 6y ago
> It's practically impossible to shield the vulnerable population from a highly contagious disease that is rampant in the non-vulnerable population - someone after all needs to tend for the vulnerable. Case in point for Focused Protection [0] [0] ; https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ "By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized."

jsnell 6y ago

> several orders of magnitude more deaths than in comparable neighboring countries One order of magnitude, not several.

mahkeiro 6y ago
And not really worst that the rest of Europe...
- evgen 6y ago
  Just dramatically worse than their comparable neighbors who, unlike the rest of Europe, share the same cultural/demographic/socio-economic factors. Nothing screams denialist more than people trying to hand-wave the Swedish failure away by ignoring neighbors and comparing them to some other, bigger, EU covid clusterfuck.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    According to [0] Sweden has better deaths per capita than the US, UK, Spain and Italy. We still have no data about what the longer term effects of all these business closures will be, because the pandemic is ongoing. And at the time the decisions were made it was wishful thinking that a vaccine would be almost upon us by now. This Swedish "failure" is not yet manifest. They are an apparently weak performer, but by no means outside the pack. And the better performers in the pack are suspect - India and China may as well be several different countries packed together by population. Their numbers are a bit unrealistic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_...
    - ptaipale 6y ago
      Traditionally, Sweden has compared itself to other Nordic countries, which, as mentioned, share the same cultural/demographic/socio-economic factors. Now the comparison points have suddenly switched to Italy and UK, or I've seen even Peru and Brazil. Which really screams "denialist". https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=earliest..latest&country=FIN~SWE~NOR~DNK~ISL&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... For the note, I don't think it is meaningful to compare these statistics between other countries than OECD members. For instance, the Wikipedia list you mentioned indicates currently 45,000 deaths for Russia, whereas the Russian deputy prime minister has now said that the figure would be 186,000. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55474028 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55474028
      - catears 6y ago
        To be honest it sounds pretty denialist to me when someone says you have to compare Denmark, Sweden and Norway, but adding other countries is "not comparable". To me it just sounds like cherry picking. An example of a big difference between Denmark and Sweden is that Sweden has a much more lenient immigration policy (for better or worse). I have heard anectodes from (swedish) friends about how these groups fare worse. I can very much imagine that differences like this make the comparison between the nordic countries less valid, so to me it makes sense not to cherry pick those three countries.
        evgen 6y ago
        It isn’t cherry-picking, it is a standard that existed long before covid. The Nordic countries have always compared themselves to each other and have been lumped into a group externally. They share many similar characteristics and few differences — the immigration straw you are grasping at is indeed weak sauce and not significant-enough to account for the scope and magnitude of Sweden’s covid failures.
        6y ago
  - orbifold 6y ago
    They have higher numbers of migrants and that makes up (part of) the difference (https://apnews.com/article/1d7916cf6e48b7a231b894ef9cda1a19 https://apnews.com/article/1d7916cf6e48b7a231b894ef9cda1a19).
- cygx 6y ago
  But the worst in Northern Europe, by far.
  - codewithcheese 6y ago
    Which metrics are you using?
    - cygx 6y ago
      Deaths attributed to Covid, or excess mortality in general, take your pick. For example: Sweden: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~SWE&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat... Norway: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&country=~NOR&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...
  - collyw 6y ago
    UK is worse, Belgium is worse.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - cygx 6y ago
      Being German, I don't consider these countries part of Northern Europe. While the UN might put the UK there (but not Belgium), the way I got taught the terminology, the UK would belong to Nordwesteuropa as a sub-region of Westeuropa, whereas Nordeuropa consists of the Nordics (and maybe the Baltics). Cf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Grossgliederung_Europas.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Grossgli...
      - petre 6y ago
        You can definitely consider Scotland part of Northern Europe.

collyw 6y ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... Catastrophic? They are pretty average for Europe. Cherry picking countries to compare it to makes little sense, as there are numerous factors other than geographical location that affect the virus. > 50% of the deaths occurred in care homes, as Sweden (like many other countries) sent older patients to them. Which is pretty much the opposite of what was I was suggesting.

ngrilly 6y ago
I’d be really curious to know why your fact-based comment is downvoted.
- jamienicol 6y ago
  Because they claimed that elderly patients were sent to care homes. I guess you could argue this is "fact based" in that it's a distortion of the facts. Because they argued that comparing Sweden to it's similar neighbour is "cherry picking", and yet cherry picked a much less suitable group - the whole of Europe - because it suited their argument. Because they, without any facts, imply that Sweden's high death toll could be avoided by putting the elderly in hotels
  - collyw 6y ago
    Why is the first point a distortion of the facts? You don't give a reason for why the whole of Europe is less suitable than it's immediate neighbours (geographic location is only a small part of the puzzle). I didn't say the third one at all.
- f6v 6y ago
  There're so many ways to lie with statistics.
vesinisa 6y ago
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&country=SWE~NOR~DNK~FIN~DEU~EST&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=new_cases_per_million&pickerSort=desc https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToS... Here is the Swedish COVID death toll per million plotted against comparable countries in Northern Europe. Sweden is a clear outlier, and there is little debate that their lax strategy was the reason. What are you suggesting exactly? That old people with medical issues are quarantined in empty hotels? So we can protect the civil liberties of those who are less vulnerable?

noja 6y ago

> Sweden tried this with catastrophic end results. Tried what? They shut care homes as an afterthought, not as part of a plan to protect people (closing care homes came later).

vesinisa 6y ago
Sweden initially tried to achieve herd immunity. It failed because it is impossible to stop the virus from spreading to the vulnerable population.
- polack 6y ago
  Stop spreading lies. No official source have EVER said they where trying to achieve herd immunity, they have only denied it.
  - vesinisa 6y ago
    Nope, that's what they kind of started saying after the herd immunity experiment failed. Back in May they were still happy to go on record to say that herd immunity was part of the Swedish strategy: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/26/845211085/stockholm-expected-to-reach-herd-immunity-in-may-swedish-ambassador-says https://www.npr.org/2020/04/26/845211085/stockholm-expected-... But by July antibody tests showed that herd immunity was still very far away. Tegnell has since claimed it was never their goal, which to me sounds like hand washing. EDIT: As pointed, Swedish representatives later asked the article to state that herd immunity was not their goal after all - you could almost forgive the journalist for the confusion. Here is Tegnell instead strategizing in private about letting the virus spread in school children to hasten herd immunity: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/swedens-covid-19-strategist-under-fire-over-herd-immunity-emails https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/swedens-covid-...
    - cygx 6y ago
      But note the correction at the bottom of that page: April 27, 2020 An earlier version of this story said the Swedish government is pursuing a strategy of "herd immunity." Swedish officials say their plan was to impose limited restrictions instead of a lockdown but have denied they were purposely pursuing a strategy of herd immunity.

WanderPanda 6y ago

> I am sure no one takes joy in "destruction of civil liberties" Sadly, I am not so sure

bluescrn 6y ago
It's sad to see the growing trend of seeing freedom as a "selfish right-wing ideal" (Not just in relation to the pandemic, the opposition to free speech as well as outright anti-capitalism has been growing for a while)
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Anti-capitalism is usually held exactly from a position of more freedom. In a more free world, your livelihood would not be conditioned by obedience to a totalitarian institution such as a company. Opposition to pure free speech is indeed problematic, though.
- mns 6y ago
  It's actually sad how this whole thing has progressed. Just look at this thread, anything that goes even in the slightest against the current is downvoted into oblivion. It's so disappointing, you can't say anything any more. And it's just people bringing up mild counterpoints or examples, but it doesn't matter any more, science is a religion, everything is with us or against us, all common sense and proper dialogue is thrown away for this extreme radicalisation.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Why do you consider Sweden’s surrounding countries to be comparable? What specific metrics are you basing that on? To me it seems like this comparison is arbitrary and relies on uncritical readers accepting geographical proximity as an acceptable proxy for all the complexities involved. Sweden’s strategy could well have worked if they committed to it. They didn’t actually go for “herd immunity” as you claim, and had a number of lockdown restrictions in place, although to a lesser degree than some other places. They unfortunately had some early blunders with nursing home protocols, and over half their deaths are from nursing homes specifically. But if you correct for that, they would be looking a lot better. As for isolating the elderly or vulnerable - it’s not a cognitive dissonance. Two different parties both have a right to liberties, the ability to assess risk trade offs for themselves, and agency to make their own decisions. Those who are risk averse can quarantine themselves indefinitely, while those who aren’t can continue with their lives unimpeded. What exactly is the dissonance?

ptaipale 6y ago
Sweden's neighbours share similar demographics, climate, legislation, administration, health care system and to a large extent also cultural traits. Swedes do a bit more of greeting people by hugging and even cheek-kissing than Finns or Norwegians do, but they all are a far cry from Italy, France or Belgium in that respect. Thus, with so much similarity in background variables, the policy differences towards the epidemic are highlighted.
- htfu 6y ago
  Only with a not-yet in effect law, which has been months in the making, will measures even approaching a full lockdown be legal in Sweden. An actual full lockdown would require constitutional level changes which has to go through multiple administrations before coming into effect. There literally hasn't been many possible measures to take beyond those taken. The country is also more devolved into regional administration than the neighbors. So yes, there are major differences in legislation. This is weirdly missing from the rah-rah coming from both sides - it's not even really a tactic, but the outcome of our laws.

cjblomqvist 6y ago

I don't know what you've read or what sources you have. I'm a swede and have been following the Corona situation relatively closely (looking at facts and not media hysteria too much). My parents are retired health care professionals. My sister-in-law works at FHM. I've been in contact with hospitals and health services quite a bit the last year (my wife's grandma died due to cancer, I had a child that was born at one of the largest hospitals in Sweden). At times, the situation has been hard for health workers, having to work more than normal (sadly, the personnel situation was a big problem even before COVID, it just tipped it across the border). But to say that the Swedish health system collapsed is a lie (or at least back it up with data/some facts/sources). I do agree though it'll be interesting to see what the cause for the relatively high amount of excessive deaths was (not bigger than many other western countries, such as Belgium or the US), but still. I'm not saying the Swedish approach was the best one (or even a good one), but let's not spread misinformation. Sweden is so much misused in this debate (on both sides) and that scares the me the most. On that note, several really bad/horrible incidents in the spring where health care workers did strict prioritizations was due to media and mass hysteria - NOT because of health system collapse... Misinformation is really dangerous - life and death dangerous...

vesinisa 6y ago
I guess it all depends on your definition of "collapse". I would describe a situation where hospitals are overloaded to the point where they have to choose who gets to live and who has to die a collapse. Sources in English are harder to come by about this, but for example in spring when Stockholm's ICU beds were at full capacity it is implicit that people with better prognosis had to be prioritized. Seniors with severe cases of corona were instead given morphine and sent to die in care homes: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/skarp-kritik-efter-ivo-granskning-av-aldreboenden https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/skarp-kritik-eft... Nothing like this happened in Sweden's neighboring countries with more cautious COVID approach because ICU beds so far never reached full capacity. In a modern Nordic welfare state denying a dying person of care that could save their life is not only a complete failure of the health care system but also a crisis of moral values. I am not sure the Swedish public is yet ready to even admit the latter crisis.

catears 6y ago

As a swede, I want to correct you. There has been a ton of outright mis-information about my country and how it handled the coronavirus so I don't blame anyone for not knowing. The poor journalism that has been conducted is to blame and the resulting mis-information. Misinformation 1: Swedens healthcare system did not collapse on itself. Fact: In the region where most people got sick (Stockholm) the military was called in to set up an emergency hospital. This was never used because the hospitals in Stockholm managed without it. Misinformation 2: Sweden imposed no lock-down. While technically-kinda correct that we did not lock people in their homes, quite quickly it became illegal with public events of 50 or more people. (mid-late March I think). Misinformation 3: Sweden "remained largely the same after the virus". Goodness sake, no. Anyone that claims this hasn't talked to a single swede. Misinformation 4: Swedens strategy was to achieve herd immunity. No. In spring this question was asked at almost every press conference with FHM (ministry of public health). The strategy from the beginning was to preserve the overall health of Swedes as good as possible. During the open questions with FHM they have repeatedly brought up and said that the goal was not to achieve herd immunity. This stuff is complex and poor journalists don't like complex answers. As far as I remember, the reason for this "milder" strategy focused on spreading accurate and correct information about the virus was because FHM (correctly) predicted that we would have to live with the virus for a very long time. They decided that the best way to protect people over a period of possibly several years was by arming them with information on how to protect themselves and others (social distance, wash your hands, work from home if you can). The real issues that caused Sweden to have such high rates of death compared to similar countries like Denmark and Norway are more complex and has to do with lack of information for those caring for the elderly, poor equipment (and especially reserves with unusable equipment), and other systemic failures when it comes to elderly care. Those in care homes were especially vulnerable because they are both older and come into contect with a lot of people. I believe the Swedish healthcare system failed to protect these people, and that is a major contributor to the high death toll.

ptaipale 6y ago
Regarding the "lack of information for those caring for the elderly", that sounds fairly implausible, because information about the epidemic has been abundant. The proportion of old people among the dead is not much different in Sweden from other comparable countries; it seems to me that any strategy with "protect the elderly and let the younger people take the hit" is doomed to fail. The more infections there are in the general population, the more infections there will be among the old and weak. And of course even the young and fit will also have a proportion among them who get seriously ill.

cortic 6y ago

Not sure what the 'tried with catastrophic end results' is because the post you replied to has been censored, but; Sweden have done massively better than France, UK, USA, in deaths per million, they have even done better than Switzerland, all the while not treating their citizens like criminals. While the west look to shining examples like North Korea and China as what we should be doing.

vinay427 6y ago
> they have even done better than Switzerland Switzerland is only slightly lower than the US in death rate. I'm not sure the "even" is appropriate here for a country with far more deaths per capita than Austria and Germany, especially considering it also experienced a second wave far more fatal than virtually any other country. https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&ratio&places=Austria,Switzerland,USA&alignTo=deceased https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&r...
- cortic 6y ago
  https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&ratio&places=France,Sweden,Switzerland,USA,United%20Kingdom&alignTo=deceased https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&r... If you had to look at this comparison without knowing; you couldn't tell which country maintained civil liberties. And yes there are countries that fared better, and countries that fared worse. https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&daily&ratio&places=France,Sweden,Switzerland,USA,United%20Kingdom&alignTo=deceased https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&d... Sweden's second wave seems dwarfed by both France and Switzerland in this comparison.. I mean if you have to squint and twist the stats to make Sweden look bad, then maybe we gave up all our rights unnecessarily. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Overall, they have the 25th worst deaths per million on earth, UK is 12th, USA is 14th and France is 16th worst. They didn't do badly. And most all countries that did worse, did so while stripping every right and liberty off their citizens.
tinus_hn 6y ago
These posts are not censored. If you want to see them, you can turn on the option to see them (‘showdead’)in your settings.

jsight 6y ago

To be fair, their "catastrophic" results is still a lower death rate than the United States. I feel like there are a lot of Americans who willingly accept that level of catastrophe in exchange for freedom.

Felony_Fred 6y ago

> It's practically impossible to shield the vulnerable population from a highly contagious disease that is rampant in the non-vulnerable population - someone after all needs to tend for the vulnerable. Case in point for Focused Protection [0] [0] ; https://gbdeclaration.org/ https://gbdeclaration.org/ "By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized."