Originally Posted by
The_Bouncer
You're not getting this, are you?
The billion people losing everything and the 100 million starving to death on the streets don't matter, as long as the lower middle classes in the west can get their 80% salary and virtue signal to their "friends" on Facebook.
The way to save those poor people "losing everything" and "starving to death on the streets" -- whether "in the west" or otherwise -- may well be best done by controlling the spread of this virus. A confident public that is secure is more likely to spend and stimulate demand and all the good (and bad) that comes with it.
When the daily death counts for this virus in Sweden was much higher than it is now, demand in Sweden plummeted -- and in ways plummeted to levels even below that in locked down Norway and Denmark. And this happened in Sweden even as there was little to no government mandate to shutdown at that time. Right now in Sweden, demand has recovered to a substantial degree in parts, but that is because of pandemic fatigue and because the daily death counts for this virus had dropped a lot and stayed pretty low for some months. If the pandemic gets worse and the daily death counts skyrocket, the demand will probably plummet again and even more retail venues in the country will shutdown or (again) further restrict their hours due to limited demand. Even now, the restaurant businesses around the city center office buildings in the big Swedish cities are getting only about 50% of the lunch traffic that they were getting at this time last year. That drop in business is due to the pandemic, not so much due to lock-downs.
If the death counts in Sweden return this winter to levels as bad or worse than was the case in the Q2 in Sweden, Sweden will be a less socially active place then than it is today and that will be largely due to members of the public not wanting to win themselves or their near and dear ones a Darwin Award.