That’s my line m8
The kids must be doing Jennifer’s head in.
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Minding kids and writing opinion pieces for quality broadsheet while trying to balance a double weight forehead on her neck? I don’t know how she does it.
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@ironmoth is Swedish?
Sweden could be done with this in another month, and the rest of us will be in lockdown 18 months from now.
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It’s a gas interview, he’s semi retired and doesn’t give a shit about what he says.
Considering they have had essentially no mitigation efforts, the % infected must be significantly higher than literally every other country. At 150 deaths per million they are doing significantly better than the UK which is at 234 deaths per million, and France with a very strict lockdown for at least the past month is almost at 300.
Maybe they did a much better job protecting the old and frail.
Population density massively different, bar Stockholm are there other big cities?
Hope it works out for them but their death rates wouldn’t inspire confidence so far.
Gothenburg 510K, Malmo 320K, Uppsala 170K, and several others >100K.
It’s a fair point but as time goes on with no mitigation efforts the population density is probably not such a factor, given how infectious it is. What’s surprising is their death rate is so low given their approach.
He makes a few points on this vs other Scandinavian counties;
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care homes are generally bigger in Sweden than the likes of Norway. Once it’s in, it’s impossible to contain
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he says they didn’t do enough to protect care homes - I think that’s relative personally as I’m no sure what other countries have really done well in this regard. A big lesson of this as we learn to live with it is that a lot of testing resources needs to go into daily screening of nursing homes.
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his third point is to look at this in one year’s time and compare rates. His overriding point in this video is that the lockdown measures are unsustainable and you cannot stop the virus. Targeted measures are what is important.
In terms of density, Sweden is definitely denser than the other countries mentioned except for Denmark.
Whilst when plotted on a log map their deaths look worse, that has to be viewed in the context of the predictions of early deaths. 1,500 deaths is not great relative to their neighbours but that is far away from predictions made, the claims that Sweden would need a harder lockdown and for longer are without merit. Incremental deaths will be the longer term key metric out of this.
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It’s also important to note that they are following social distancing guidelines, and culturally they would be more likely to follow them. While schools, restaurants and bars are open, there’s about a 50% drop in public transport usage, and about 50% of the workforce are working from home.
Have Sweden done anything different yo us in relation to border controls or Air Travel allowances?
Yeah it’s not like they’ve done nothing, which has been suggested.
They’ve held their nerve in terms of the measures they think are best. When you compare to the UK it is interesting, fear and the media prompted a total 180 in the U.K.
The Danes locked down quickly but were rational enough once they saw how the virus playing out there to talk about reopening sections of society and actually doing it. There is public discourse and disagreement, but there is a high level of trust there. Despite there being clear signs of the curve being flattened for here for a good period of time here and looking at the example of other countries, we are still taking a wait and see policy, terrified to make a decision now as any deaths will just be blamed on the decision to reverse that. Trump is also now terrified of that and leaving it up to individual States, a cop out.
It probably speaks to the general lack of trust in Anglo American countries on this. The Scandinavians are to be admired generally- not in the hard left wing taking the free things they give and demanding them for their country sense, but how they make decisions and react to things. It’s not all governed by a shrieking mob or crazy media.
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explain this one
I guess Sweden have the advantage of a functioning healthcare system, which we do not. We are buying ourselves time really
Population density per country can be a misleading figure anyways. Sweden wouldn’t be far off Norway overall population density wise but the geography of the countries means there are big differences. Norway’s population is clustered in high density pockets around the coasts with absolutely nobody living in the mountainous inland. Sweden would have a more moderate density over a greater area in the flatter south of the country, but the north is empty.
Some restrictions but not like other Scandinavian counties. The chap is scathing of them at the start actually.
Well he states there that they have tripled ICU capacity so they obviously weren’t sure themselves.