> The controversial approach is relying on individual citizen responsibility.

Practically speaking this approach is what we are relying on in the US, too.

It probably won't work very well in the US though since workers' rights are much weaker in the US than they are in Sweden.

Telling people to stay home if they have any symptoms only works if people are actually able to stay home from their jobs.

> It probably won't work very well in the US though since workers' rights are much weaker in the US than they are in Sweden.

The demographic patterns emerging from this pandemic are already showing a strong skew along lines of existing privilege or lack thereof. In the US, this revolves around the nexus of race, poverty, and lack of regular prior healthcare access which, to your point, also aligns with the kinds of workers who have fewer rights.

To my knowledge, not a single country has declared martial law.

Sweden's approach is controversial because irresponsible individuals put responsible others at risk.

If it was something that affected only those individuals, noone would care. The problem is, that someone else can be irresponsible, and you die because of that.

Yes, we all get that, it's been rammed down our throats for months.

This has always been the case and is a risk of living in human society. Your life may end at any time due to someone else's irresponsible behavior.

Why is that suddenly a problem? We always had it. Most people posing danger to others in one or the other way. Driving a car is the most obvious example but there are countless other

That's why we have drivers' licenses and manslaughter charges for negligent homicide. We don't just shrug our shoulders at the risks.

We take reasonable, targeted measures to mitigate the risks. What we don't do is embark on a grand social program to eradicate freeway crashes, because such a program would involve banning or heavily restricting cars and we feel cars are too important for that.

The car/cancer/heart-disease analogies are inherently flawed because they're not communicable. If my road rage started a chain reaction across the Interstate causing 45K people to die in a month, I think we'd stop driving until we figured out what was going on.

But we do just that.

Every car has to pass a bunch of certifications to be legal to drive on the road. It has to pass a (4-, 2- or 1-)yearly checkup, has to be registered, insurance has to be paid, road tax, etc. Also the driver has to pass a theoretical and a practical exam, has to be of certain age, not be under influence of any of many substances, has to obey a bunch of traffic laws, etc. And we also have check for all that, from police controls, to speed cameras, alco-testers, etc.

Eliminating traffic deaths isn’t a totally unrealistic goal.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/oslo-traffic...

Again going back to the cars example: if you did not "just shrug our shoulders at the risks" each car will be equipped with alcohol detecting interlock at the minimum. Of course the society "shrugs the shoulder" as soon as it inconveniences it a bit too much.

Why do you think speeding and drunk driving is illegal? There's a risk/benefit threshold and society has decided that regular driving is below that threshold but drunk and reckless driving is above it. When a pandemic is in effect some of the activities that would be acceptably low-risk in a normal context suddenly become unacceptably high risk.

"Why do you think speeding and drunk driving is illegal" - so far drunk driving is the leading cause of death for young drivers. I do not see electronic immobilizers installed in the cars by default to prevent those deaths. Care to guess why?

As for "suddenly become unacceptably high risk" - it seems that governments do not have much clue and nearly enough info on this particular subject ( COVID )