4 ms·

Do you know there is a country named Sweden, that didn't follow lockdown herd mentality and they didn't die?

by slaw 3y ago

ramraj07 3y ago
Please read my post then. I explicitly said it’s not clear what level of lockdowns were the most effective. Further reading about swedens performance as a retrospective: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-c...
- spookthesunset 3y ago
  The thing you miss, and is the most important part of an actual retrospective is to put covid into context. Focusing myopically on only covid outcomes to the literal exclusion of virtually all other issues was one of the big fuckups made. Believe it or not, even back in April of 2020 there was millions of other problems besides covid. Examine only covid outcomes is not a retrospective at all. Examining the sum of all outcomes for all things holistically is a retrospective. And doing that you only arrive at one conclusion: literally every single thing society chose to do for covid was wrong. We could have done nothing at all and been better off. There is more to living than the avoidance of exactly one specific disease. Anything that attempts to focus on only covid outcomes is not a retrospective. It’s a circle jerk.
Sankozi 3y ago
"The Swedish government's approach has attracted controversy. The impact on the country's healthcare system and its reported death toll have been far greater than in other Nordic countries, in part due to its unique strategy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden
- throwaway22032 3y ago
  This is about as obvious as saying that we have more car accidents now than before the invention of the car. The question is whether the cost-benefit analysis stacked up. The overall mortality rate was about 0.2-0.3%, which is... on par with the UK, US, and tons of places that played restriction bingo.
  - Sankozi 3y ago
    This was not obvious to slaw, who did not say anything about cost-benefit analysis.
    - slaw 3y ago
      Are you mind reader?
    - throwaway22032 3y ago
      I'd consider it implicit. Americans drive cars a lot and they're not all dead, despite having higher accident rates than e.g. Sweden. It would be fairly... arbitrary(?) to jump in and state that Americans should just restrict their car use purely to keep accidents down with no consideration of what they'd lose by doing so.
retrac 3y ago
They still modified their behaviour dramatically. It's similar with Japan -- that also did not have much in the way of legally compelled measures. They would not have been constitutional there. But they still gave lots of financial supports to businesses and individuals to shut down offices and stay home. People complied voluntarily, at a large scale. (Japan was the kind of country where people chose, voluntarily, to wear face masks in flu season before COVID.) In hindsight, it seems obvious to me that voluntary supports would have been adequate in a society with strong social cohesion. No one wants to get sick; give them the means to avoid it and they'll do so. Still, there is no control population without extensive social distancing; no large group of humans anywhere in the world went screw it, business as usual, no changes. So we can't say.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  To some extent Florida did? And India too, after “winning” the first wave. As far as I can tell both paid a heavy price. Again with all the nuances of the introduction of delta, no vaccine availability etc.

Do you know there is a country named Sweden, that didn't follow lockdown herd mentality and they didn't die?

by slaw 3y ago

Do you know there is a country named Sweden, that didn't follow lockdown herd mentality and they didn't die?

Please read my post then. I explicitly said it’s not clear what level of lockdowns were the most effective. Further reading about swedens performance as a retrospective: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-c...

spookthesunset 3y ago
The thing you miss, and is the most important part of an actual retrospective is to put covid into context. Focusing myopically on only covid outcomes to the literal exclusion of virtually all other issues was one of the big fuckups made. Believe it or not, even back in April of 2020 there was millions of other problems besides covid. Examine only covid outcomes is not a retrospective at all. Examining the sum of all outcomes for all things holistically is a retrospective. And doing that you only arrive at one conclusion: literally every single thing society chose to do for covid was wrong. We could have done nothing at all and been better off. There is more to living than the avoidance of exactly one specific disease. Anything that attempts to focus on only covid outcomes is not a retrospective. It’s a circle jerk.

Sankozi 3y ago

"The Swedish government's approach has attracted controversy. The impact on the country's healthcare system and its reported death toll have been far greater than in other Nordic countries, in part due to its unique strategy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Sweden

throwaway22032 3y ago
This is about as obvious as saying that we have more car accidents now than before the invention of the car. The question is whether the cost-benefit analysis stacked up. The overall mortality rate was about 0.2-0.3%, which is... on par with the UK, US, and tons of places that played restriction bingo.
- Sankozi 3y ago
  This was not obvious to slaw, who did not say anything about cost-benefit analysis.
  - slaw 3y ago
    Are you mind reader?
  - throwaway22032 3y ago
    I'd consider it implicit. Americans drive cars a lot and they're not all dead, despite having higher accident rates than e.g. Sweden. It would be fairly... arbitrary(?) to jump in and state that Americans should just restrict their car use purely to keep accidents down with no consideration of what they'd lose by doing so.

retrac 3y ago

They still modified their behaviour dramatically. It's similar with Japan -- that also did not have much in the way of legally compelled measures. They would not have been constitutional there. But they still gave lots of financial supports to businesses and individuals to shut down offices and stay home. People complied voluntarily, at a large scale. (Japan was the kind of country where people chose, voluntarily, to wear face masks in flu season before COVID.) In hindsight, it seems obvious to me that voluntary supports would have been adequate in a society with strong social cohesion. No one wants to get sick; give them the means to avoid it and they'll do so. Still, there is no control population without extensive social distancing; no large group of humans anywhere in the world went screw it, business as usual, no changes. So we can't say.

ramraj07 3y ago
To some extent Florida did? And India too, after “winning” the first wave. As far as I can tell both paid a heavy price. Again with all the nuances of the introduction of delta, no vaccine availability etc.