Lots of "Why in this country is?" "This place is doing well because."
And then a few weeks later the data shows that's simply not the case and you realize the concussions in those articles had little to zero data supporting it.
Personally I look forward to hearing about good data years from now about this pandemic.
In the Lombardy region of Italy, they kept the bars and restaurants open and had this Milano non si ferma! (Milan doesn't stop!) campaign. The results are tragic.
In the Veneto region of Italy, the governor listened to some experts, and the results have been significantly better.
We really need to wait a year or two before we can tell which strategy was the best. It is not clear if the countries which managed to limit the infections will do any better in the long run than for example Sweden.
If Sweden has had a fairly sizable amount of deaths – of mainly elderly people, as we see – but its health system has not been overwhelmed for the bulk of the population and the economy has not greatly suffered, then things are arguably working out better than in countries which have minimized fatalities but are dealing with greater economic (and psychological) fallout.
What matters is deaths overall, not deaths per day.
Time's already up.
As I've had to point out many times, "get to herd immunity faster" doesn't just mean let everyone get sicker sooner. The whole "flattening the curve" thing is not about an alternative to herd immunity. It's about getting there in a humane way that doesn't overwhelm health care and disproportionately affect some groups - the elderly, minorities, people with other health conditions, people who have no choice but to work and expose themselves more. "Let the chips fall where they may" is a recipe for excessive and unevenly distributed suffering. And worst of all, it might not even help reduce the total deaths over the long term. That's highly speculative and dependent on other factors.
That has absolutely not been my impression, but they're probably both matters of perspective - who we talk to, what sources we read, and so on. To the extent that people do think of it as an alternative, that makes me sad.
Well, maybe if we had just engaged in a vigorous program of needle sharing and unprotected sex, we'd eventually have gotten there.
That said, the US is a great example of how to handle the situation absolutely terribly - with a major political party probably funding and at least endorsing movements violating the lockdown and terribly unclear messaging.
No, I don't like the US's approach. Canada has had it's good and bad points and Vancouver was basically acting like Florida for a while, but the governments response has been well focused, even if we don't have the resources to throw at the problem that the US does - and the messaging has been extremely comforting and clear.
Deaths per day is on a downward trend right now. Two weeks ago the maximum on a day was 108.
It should be noted that this is just the capital, which currently has something like 10x infection compared to most other areas of Sweden, and almost 20x the number of dead. To give some number, Stockholm has in the latest report 7k infected and 1200 dead. Malmö (or rather the region around it), which is Sweden third largest city, has 600 infected and 60 dead. Population wise, Stockholm has about 2x compared to Malmö.
People are not sure why stockholm has the number it has compared to other regions.
IF you work in Stockholm you probably commute by commuter train and or bus into the city, where in Malmö you can walk through the city center in 15 minutes so biking or owning a car to commute with is the norm.
In Malmö most stores close at 5pm, and malls much earlier than in Stockholm so they are visited on weekends instead of whenever (this also sucks since there is nothing to do after work), FNM starts at something like 15:30.
It's just a lot fewer crowds and situations with close contact in general.
This is the most logical time to take measures, except for maybe the very beginning when it could possibly have been stopped.
They're taking a swing in the dark, with the potential risk of a very high per capita mortality rate. If the duration of immunity is short, they could kill a lot of people for little gain. They're currently running at seven times the per capita mortality rate of Finland.
The death rate per capita in Sweden is not much higher than the US. At ~33x the population the US has ~25x the deaths. Given the US had only double the total cases on March 6 as Sweden that seems like a positive indicator for Sweden's approach. It's like saying it doesn't really matter what you do so you might as well stay open. The timeline of when you started taking things seriously is also a big factor of course. I think it's way too early to declare anything yet, but I think it's good there are different approaches being taken to learn from.
That's the main reason why most of them are out and about, enjoying the spring weather after a long and dark winter.
Once this virus starts affecting people you know, that's when folks will start to react.
Me personally I haven't heard of a single case until last week when I heard that one of my co-workers had it, along with his wife. They had it, and overcame it. But they live in another city and we had already started working from home at that point. So I never saw him other than on Teams.
Where exactly does this come from? Sweden has no need to save face. We've been transparent and had open discussion from the beginning with the spoken assumption that we may, in fact, not be doing the right thing and that we may have to alter course as the situation changes.
The ones who need to save face are the ones which are committing to full lockdown right now. They're the ones who are making a big sacrifice and need to motivate it with the fact that "it's a necessity", seeing Sweden succeed otherwise would be a big blow to their egos and their personal sacrifices.
I will also say that voluntary compliance is still occurring here, which is notable both in what private companies are doing in adapting to the situation, and how the average person has changed their behaviour. This doesn't mean 100% compliance for everyone, which is unfortunate.
That's quite the assertion. The very word quarantine comes to us from when there was a Republic of Venice. The notion of shutting things down in times of plague is an old one.
Yes, it's a very blunt instrument, and you'd hope we could do better these days - and some places like South Korea and Taiwan appear to be managing that - but locking things down works.
This of course is unsurprising. Even random street violence drops during winter, as cold temperatures drives everyone inside and away from each other.
And yeah, people are idiots for going to bars.
I haven't heard a single swedish person utter this nonsense IRL. Sounds like a clickbait headline from Vice or something similar.
So much for the argument that Sweden's approach was working because Swedes are so much better than the rest of world at voluntary compliance. Overall, it looks like Sweden is moving toward doing the same as every other country, but quietly so they don't have to admit it's a change of course.