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This article says, "Our World in Data shows Sweden’s government response stringency never reached 50, peaking at about 46 from late April to early June." and "N
by geofft 6y ago
This article says, "Our World in Data shows Sweden’s government response stringency never reached 50, peaking at about 46 from late April to early June." and "Norway’s lockdown stringency has been less than 40 since early June, and fell all the way to 28.7 in September and October. Finland’s lockdown stringency followed a similar pattern, floating around the mid to low 30s for most of the second half of the year, before creeping back up to 41 around Halloween."
But that doesn't seem to match what Our World in Data is actually showing right now: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=earliest..latest&country=SWE~NOR~FIN®ion=Europe https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index?ta...
Sweden's stringency peaked around 65 and has never dropped below 55. Since early June, Norway has mostly been above 40.
So I'm curious what happened - did Our World in Data change their methodology? Did they add new data?
They also mention that 1) they are aggregating all policies, so this isn't a measure of "lockdown," 2) they are measuring the stringency of policies, not their effect (e.g., "Hard curfew at 10pm unless you're going to/from work" is pretty stringent, but probably less effective than "No indoor dining"), and 3) that they measure the maximum stringency of any subnational unit. I'd be very curious to see how exactly they compute their numbers. For instance, if there's a weak national policy on things like travel and quarantine that causes municipalities to do whatever smaller things are in their power like restricting visits to nursing homes, does that add up to a "more stringent" response in their measurement?
Or put more simply - apart from numbers on this chart, what is it that backs up the claim that Sweden had a more aggressive response than Norway and Finland did?
(Furthermore, FEE is a hard-capitalist advocacy organization and is interested in pushing a narrative around reduced government policies around everything, so their interpretations should be taken with a grain of salt, which is why I'm trying to find the original data. The conclusion of their article offers no policy position other than admitting we are powerless to control the course of virulent disease, which seems ... rather contradicted by history.)