There is no convincing evidence that Sweden’s approach has led to a materially worse outcome, and in fact if you look at the overall health of the country considerable evidence that outcomes will be much better in the long term.
Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns.
It seems to me that the experiment is countries trying to eradicate the virus through lockdown as opposed to just slowing it down, with no evidence that this is working or could ever work.
NoW that the virus is better understood and we know that the people at risk are mostly people at the end of their life the continued tyrannical lock down Of the general population in many countries is a failure of leadership, not a success.
The large number of hysterical articles condemning the Swedish approach reflects the fact that people don’t want to admit that they made a mistake and want to desperately justify doing something really stupid.
«Adopting the Swedish approach» after three months of expanding test capacity, ensuring PPE availability, instituting WFH routines where possible, adopting slightly-inconvenient disinfecting routines and having everyone know to keep distance and report cold symptoms, is not following the Swedish approach. It is something completely different.
The R number will be lower at this later stage than they were in an early-hit country with no preparation.
The biggest mistake Tegnell did for Sweden, was wasting the first month of the epidemic out of hubris. This laid the groundwork for the persistent epidemic they have today, which stands in obvious contrast to their neighboring countries — most of which now have a daily life similar to Sweden, except with the epidemic under control.
10x per capita difference in deaths as compared to Norway, 5x to Denmark. Similar for other markers. Initial conditions similar, except for different response from leadership.
I am skeptical about the methodology and the results of the paper.
It does not make sense to me, and it looks like the authors knowingly chose to increase the YLL with the choice of their data sets and how they analyzed the correlation between covid deaths and comorbidities.
I’m happy to admit that I might just not fully understand it.
> It seems to me that the experiment is countries trying to eradicate the virus through lockdown as opposed to just slowing it down, with no evidence that this is working or could ever work.
It seems to be working in Vietnam, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, and others ... even China probably.
Those countries have achieved local elimination or very close to it and are reopening (or never locked down) and have not yet had to (re)turn to wholesale lockdown.
So "Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns" is, at best, not proven.
Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns.
It seems to me that the experiment is countries trying to eradicate the virus through lockdown as opposed to just slowing it down, with no evidence that this is working or could ever work.
NoW that the virus is better understood and we know that the people at risk are mostly people at the end of their life the continued tyrannical lock down Of the general population in many countries is a failure of leadership, not a success.
The large number of hysterical articles condemning the Swedish approach reflects the fact that people don’t want to admit that they made a mistake and want to desperately justify doing something really stupid.