For those touting Sweden as an example

Ora in town

Wed, Jun 03 2020, 8:59 am

amother [ OP ] wrote:

Thank you for posting this.

Aners Tegnell, the Swedish chief epidemiologist was wrong.

He tried to imitate the UK policy - and it went very wrong in UK.

Sweden escaped the catastrophy, probably because it has a much lower population density than UK.

And because the swedish people are socially distanced anyway, it's their culture... Sweden has a very high rate of 1-person-households, they do not hug and kiss, they do a lot of homeoffice anyway...

Travel over Easter weekend was reduced by 90% (as compared to other years) - I.e. the Swedes locked down even without an official lockdown...

He did one thing right: he told people not to go out if they had the slightest symptoms. People followed this recommandation to a point that the flu season was cut short thanks to Corona.

But his motivation to keep the country open was really reckless. he said in an interview in February/March that he followed the british modell, which said: as long as there are not many cases in a country, the population will not understand lockdown measures.

This is really a wrong policy. With a pandemic you should not wait until you have many cases. The sooner social distancing is put in place, the less the spread, the fewer the costs, and of course: the less deaths are to deplore...

This was the result of studies about the spanish flu in 1918-20, and it was confirmed again in 2020. Those countries who reacted rapidly and strongly (Iceland, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Israel, New Zealand) could contain the virus...

If there is an exponatial growth, a few days make a huge difference.

A German study found that germany implemented its measures right at the last minute. Had they done so 1 week earlier, they could have kept their death toll under 1000... Had they reacted a few days later, they would have had the same catastrophy as Italy, France, Spain, UK.

The USA, specially New York, New Jersey, Connecticut are a cautionary tale: they did more or less exactly what one should not do in such a situation...