
Sweden’s Relaxed Approach to Covid-19 Isn’t Working - lilrhody
https://bostonreview.net/politics/adele-lebano-sweden%E2%80%99s-relaxed-approach-covid-19-isn%E2%80%99t-working
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username90
Swedens approach is working. Current number of deaths is still too low to
warrant harsher measures and deaths per day has been going down for weeks now.

300 deaths per million isn't that many really. That means 3000 persons per
death, significantly hurting 3000 persons quality of life for several months
just to save a single life which 90% of the time is above 70 and therefore
doesn't have many years left to live isn't worth it. If locking down 3000
persons for 3 months makes everyone who died live 10 years longer then we say
that 75 years of lockdown is worth 1 year of life. So a person would happily
spend almost their entire life (75 years) in lockdown just to live one year
longer. I don't believe that at all, nobody would make that choice. Just
quitting smoking would save way more with way less effort.

And that example was with 10 years per death, most who are dying were already
on their deaths door with less time left than that. Also we assumed everyone
would survive if we did lock down, which is very unlikely.

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pmiller2
Compare Sweden to Vietnam:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23118554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23118554)

Vietnam's quick action means that they're starting to reopen now, whereas
we're going to be locked down for months yet.

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yeetman21
when people outside of vietnam who are infected travel there, they will have
to shut everything down again, whereas Sweden will have herd immunity faster
than any other country

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pmiller2
Bold of you to think there will be any such thing as lasting herd immunity via
natural infection, when no other human coronavirus induces such immunity.

~~~
yeetman21
if there is so such thing as immunity then waiting for the vaccine is
pointless no? ...so what is the lockdown for again?

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flukus
> if there is so such thing as immunity then waiting for the vaccine is
> pointless no?

The keyword there is lasting, we know immunity exists we just don't know for
how long. If a vaccine could be distributed to enough people in a short enough
time frame (we're talking billions and months) it could still wipe out the
virus. But if that can't be done then mandatory vaccines for travelers could
work.

> ...so what is the lockdown for again?

To keep the number of infections manageable and/or eradicate it entirely, it
was never about stalling time for a vaccine.

~~~
yeetman21
to keep the numbers manageable? all the hospitals are empty, the field
hospitals they built for this have had 80 total patients out of the expected
10 million+ the whole purpose of "flattening the curve" was so that everyone
one would get the virus but at different times, if no-one is getting it now,
then that just means everyone will get it later

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parski
It's way too early to see if it's working or not. It could very well be the
better approach compared to the total lockdown unemployment mental health
disaster that other countries are doing. We don't know this yet but while we
find out I look forward to take daily walks in the spring sun and excersizing
extra care when confronted with other people.

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ferzul
the core of the article was that sweden's approach is damaging to the swedish
culture. i guess it's not possible to say if that's true, short of sweden
becoming hungary or zimbabwe

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IXxXI
How could a nation like sweden which lacks the basic competence to oppose open
borders have a chance of addressing this pandemic?

Sweden's claimed success versus corona is more likely false advertising,
similar to china's, than a reality.

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gnusty_gnurc
I think Sweden should be commended for a relatively level-headed response.
Whereas most other national responses seem panicked, inept, trigger-happy and
all too ready to violate fundamental rights of their citizenry even when they
don't really understand the problem they're faced with.

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tonyedgecombe
It's probably cost them a lot of lives and I'm not sure they are going to be
any better off economically when everything shakes out.

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gnusty_gnurc
> It's probably cost them a lot of lives

Who's measuring the cost of lock-down? I think it's going to show to be very
costly (perhaps net-negative) as time goes on. Cancer, heart attacks, strokes,
deaths of despair, economic disruption, etc.

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yeetman21
Not everything can be measured in deaths. For every one dead in the US, there
are 500~ who lost a job. One death is a tragedy but what about those 30
million families now that have a breadwinner out of work? This virus is
clearly not the plague that it was projected to be. Why are we destroying the
economy and the lives of millions of young Americans just so that the few at
risk people can live 3 months longer?

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m0llusk
In particular the recent increase in deaths in Sweden is not merely some
numbers but a particular phenomenon: The most vulnerable are elderly with
health problems. These people are clustered in care centers. For them to
remain safe they would have to be isolated from the general population, but
unfortunately there have been many clusters of infections in facilities where
sick elderly are concentrated. How this latest rise in deaths might have been
prevented is a different conversation than the more broad issue of how the
rest of society should react.

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yeetman21
I dont know why the at risk group cant just self quarantine themselves since
it is clear that it is not that big of a deal if normal people get it

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macintux
“normal” people like doctors and nurses who are dying from the disease?

That’s among the many problems with this attitude. At what point do we stop
treating healthcare workers as cannon fodder?

Besides which, that ignores the fact that strokes from the disease are killing
people of all ages. And that we don’t know the long-term impact on the health
of victims yet.

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m0llusk
Health care workers get unusually high levels of exposure, so they are kind of
a special case. If you look carefully at the whole numbers the average
COVID-19 victim is over 80 and has at least one major chronic health problem
already. It makes sense to focus mitigation efforts on this group.

