Sweden bans public events of more than eight people

Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by bpodgursky on Monday November 16, 2020 @03:43PM (#25116763)

The overarching goal has never been herd immunity. Sweden has always, and is continuing to pursue, sustainable social distancing and curve flattening. They have never significantly changed that course.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by ceejayoz on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:01PM (#25116942)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/17/swedens-covid-...

> However, email exchanges obtained by Swedish journalists under freedom of information laws show Tegnell discussing herd immunity as an objective in mid-March, days after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by Xevi on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:30PM (#25117204)

That discussion was in an email conversation with, among others, Finland, where they stated that they've had the same thoughts about herd immunity. All countries have discussed herd immunity at some point.

However, herd immunity was never the goal, as you can read from the email exchanges in the original source the article links to. It was merely a discussion about a possible side effect of the actual goals, which was to prevent a collapse of the Swedish healthcare system, and to prevent side effects that lockdowns have (because they're not a silver bullet either).

Now, if they were successful is another question. I'm a Swede and I do not agree with our strategy.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by polemic on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:22PM (#25117140)

This is getting down-voted but it is something of a myth that Sweden ever had herd immunity as an officially adopted policy. Yes it was discussed at high levels but it is not true to say this was the strategy adopted and implemented by the government.

This is not a defense of the strategy they did follow, which appears to have failed badly.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53498133

> Sweden's authorities never said achieving herd immunity was their goal, but they did argue that by keeping more of society open, Swedes would be more likely to develop a resistance to Covid-19.

https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-coronavirus-didnt-see...

> Speaking to Times radio on Sunday, Torbjörn Sohlström said that Sweden’s maverick no-lockdown coronavirus response did not seek to boost the number of infections and reach a critical mass of infected to stop the virus from spreading.

etc.

(It might help to consider what a "herd immunity" strategy would actually look like, vs the extremely light touch they actually took.)

Final edit: this was a good look at the handling from a NZ journalist talking to a Swedish researcher from Lund University who looked at the international media coverage. Worth a listen if you want to understand how the "Sweden herd immunity" meme spread https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/the-detail/story/2018769007... _and_ how that's hiding some of the negative aspects of the Swedish approach you might not have heard about.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by brnt on Monday November 16, 2020 @05:55PM (#25118155)

It's a feature present in all anglosaxon jurisdiction: nothing can be discussed in terms other than their political implications. Discussing the validity of the herd immunity argument is equivalent to considering a sort of genocide, and cannot be an honest and sincere discussion of a scientific theory. Fortunately Swedish gov didn't see much merit in the argument, as there isn't.

It's good to know some jurisdictions haven't lost the ability to discuss things on scientific merits just yet.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by Grustaf on Monday November 16, 2020 @03:52PM (#25116856)

Exactly. And they have always been at war with Eurasia.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by yxhuvud on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:17PM (#25117091)

Well, Russia IS the traditional enemy of Sweden.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by dredmorbius on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:28PM (#25117188)

Trivium: Rus itself seems to have been the Finnish name for Sweden, meaning "land of rowing" (as in boats), carried by Swedes to Kiev in the 9th century.

Long history.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/Russia

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by pc86 on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:21PM (#25117126)

This is just not true.

Edit: To the downvoters, see sibling comments. Just because it doesn't fit whatever narrative you want to have doesn't change the facts.

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Re:Sweden bans public events of more than eight people by mrkeen on Monday November 16, 2020 @04:54PM (#25117468)

For a country-wide strategy I think you need to do a bit better than digging discussions out of a guy's email. If herd immunity was the plan, then when was Tegnell going to let us co-conspirators in on it?

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