Yeah, but they are also somewhat below the UK, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain, and running consistently neck and neck with my own country (Ireland), without shutting down one business or enacting a single Draconian law. And I think the question remains for countries like New Zealand, well, how are you going to maintain it? Are you going to close your borders indefinitely? How long are you prepared to live in an ultra-Trumpian world of impermeable walls and borders?
4 Likes
33 Likes
We (Australia and New Zealand) are doing just fine on our own thank you very much.
We lose tourists from Europe and the US, but we gain internal tourists.
We lose business travel, but in truth we don’t need that so much.
We can still trade. Goods are unlikely to transmit the virus.
Other countries, like South Korea, can join us.
Under the Swedish model, both my parents may have died by now.
34 Likes
Pfft!! A trifling price to pay for maintaining for others the core values of liberal democracy: human freedom and autonomy!
/s
21 Likes
3 Likes
Hey! I’ve seen this movie!
“In what is considered one of his iconic dispatches, published on 7 February 1968, Arnett wrote about the Battle of Bến Tre: "‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ a United States major said today.”
10 Likes
We’re not maintaining lockdown. We’re opening up bit by bit in a cautious manner and keeping tabs on things.
It’s not really about political theatre, economic theory, or philisophical abstractions for us. I don’t really feel opressed by the lockdown.
We just do whatever it takes, try to keep our loved ones safe, and treat others with respect. We’ll get through, no worries.
25 Likes
So they are sixth in the world in terms of deaths per population, and Ireland is seventh.
8 Likes
If you’re happy closing your borders indefinitely, I guess that’s up to you. But it isn’t fair to say that under the Sweden model specifically your parents may have died by now; your parents are statistically more at risk in various countries which have locked down thus far. Would your parents be safer in the UK or Belgium? Or Spain or Italy? Considering the variability here, it seems that others factors - demographic, environmental - are determining the outcomes, rather than locking down or not locking down.
5 Likes
That’s not how it works. The US west coast states had some of the earliest cases, the quickest and most thorough response, and are starting to re-open gradually and with restrictions. The biggest challenges they face remains lack of testing throughput and lack of tracing. The biggest risk of failure is that there’s nothing to keep infected people from states that did not lock down from traveling to states where the epidemic is relatively under control and not following the restrictions.
Contrast that with the states that were slow to respond, if they responded at all, that are seeing increases in both cases and deaths, and are still on, or revisiting, the exponential growth phase of infection.
Let’s also not lose sight of what it means when you say “slowing down immunity levels in the not-at-risk population,” a.k.a. herd immunity. One, it means literally millions of deaths to get to that point, and two, even “not-at-risk” people have died of this, many more have been left with what is likely to be crippling damage to their respiratory or cardiac function, and three, many of those who survived are left with crushing medical debt from spending weeks in intensive care. Medical debt is the most common cause of individual bankruptcy in the US.
And finally, I find the core values of freedom (from dying) and autonomy (of not carrying an oxygen tank around for the rest of my life) to be more important than the freedom (to get my hair cut) and autonomy (to have other people risk their lives to serve me).
35 Likes
My parents are safer right here. Total deaths from covid in Australia are just under 100, for a population of 26 million.
We have 11% of the planet right here. Adding NZ soon. Then the Kiwi’s will probably want to bring the Pacific islands in.
Our borders are not closed. Its likely that we will be more Oceania focused into the future, rather than South East Asia focused. I can see why you might think our borders are going to be closed but in fact its more of the reverse I think.
6 Likes
I heard on the radio that purportedly 40% of the (± 10 million) swedes have already had covid-19 (the blood antibody tests are not very reliable, but they are apparently usable to get ‘the big picture’ ). If that’s true, the 2700 deaths are actually not so bad in comparison to a lot of other european countries, where there are sometimes even more deaths while the percentage of the people with antibodies in their blood is a lot lower.
Over here where I live, the death toll is higher (but we’ve ‘been at it’ for longer as well). There is a lockdown, but the people in nursing homes still get it.
So Sweden is doing something right because they’re doing no worse than we are, but without lockdown, and as a result a lot more people with immunity. Maybe the Swedes were warned in time to practice voluntary social distancing as opposed to for example Italy? Or sweden was just too darn cold to go outside much anyway?
So while BoingBoing seems to sensationalize this story, if you look at the numbers they’re not doing so bad…
2 Likes
Fair enough, but my question wasn’t whether your parents were safer in Australia than Sweden, but whether they would be safer in most other locked down countries in Europe than in Sweden. And I honestly worry about people’s safety in my own country in the coming years, where we face about at least a decade of economic devastation in which our health system is likely to be eviscerated due to the consequences of the lockdown.
4 Likes
Its not really a question I have much interest in to be honest. For me, Europe is a disaster area. I think countries with high death rates will be paying the cost of that for a long time, due to social factors. I don’t want my son to lose both of his grandparents in the space of a month.
3 Likes
I don’t agree at all with the premise that millions would have to die in order to develop levels of natural immunity, if you were isolating and protecting the at-risk groups rather than the entire population. And I fear that many people are going to die through the isolation of the entire population - through rising suicide rates, addiction, domestic abuse, depression, and so forth - which result inevitably from sustained lockdowns combined with a severe economic downturn.
2 Likes
I appreciate the sensationalist headline on this blog post. Hopefully people critical of the Swedish policy will watch the video to confirm their bias and see a very sensible interview! Thanks Mark! 
3 Likes
Careful, Sweden – Mass Murderer Trump is likely to try hiring this guy away from you.
1 Like
No. That is only the case if your neighbors selfishly choose not to shutdown as well, perpetuating the virus. If everyone could lock down at once (for even 3-4 weeks) you completely stop the spread of the virus. At which point you could go back to life. The herd immunity route of treating an epidemic without a vaccine should only ever be the absolutely last option when you’ve already resigned yourself to millions of deaths. It in no way whatsoever is the inevitable outcome. It is still not the best outcome. Not remotely close.
Maybe not, but there is literally zero evidence to base that belief on. Its risking millions of lives on a completely untested supposition. At this point whether herd immunity could occur at all is still uncertain
18 Likes
What? Herd immunity is the core concept of immunology. It’s how we have always understood immunology to work. It’s how vaccines work. It’s how we’ve survived for hundreds of thousands of years. What there is absolutely zero evidence for is the notion that you can “stop” a virus in 3-4 weeks. Are you serious? Why don’t we stop the regular influenza in the same way while we’re at it?
2 Likes
Fine, but does it work against this virus?
Would it have worked against HIV?
You are speaking in generalities.
14 Likes
