GUWonder

Right before Christmas, Sweden's GDP was expected to have shrunk by about 2.9% for 2020. In 2021, the expectation for the 2020 GDP decline was revised in such a way that it made it seem like Sweden had done better than a 2.9% decline.

SCB.se says that Sweden's "GDP in the full year of 2020 decreased by 2.8 percent." I recall some estimating it to be perhaps closer to just a 1.7% drop, but the 2.8% drop is straight from officialdom's mouth.

My take has been this: Sweden's and Denmark's GDP got hit about the same in 2020; but the damage on the Swedish employment scene in 2020 is actually worse in ways than it is in Denmark and that the structural damage on the employment scene will be more costly for far longer in Sweden than in Denmark.

nacho, did you see the Trelleborg housing market gains? Amazing gains during the latter part of this pandemic. Hard to count on such nice SEK returns on capital in the area again. While coastal Skane's housing market around the more urban centers -- Trelleborg, Helsingborg, Malmo -- has done very well in the latter part of this pandemic at least, Stockholm's housing market has been rather flat in comparison. The Danish effect on Sweden?

GUWonder

In 2021:

For March 17-30, Denmark had 9321 positive cases.
For March 17-30, Skane had 6438 positive cases.

Skane's population is around 1.34 million people.
Denmark's population is around 5.8 million people.

In other words, for the most recent two weeks, Skane's positive case count per capita are 3x Denmark's number. And that is even as Skane is less densely populated than Denmark.

A chunk of those Danish positives are probably from people living in Skane. It's way more frequently the case that border-crossing Swedes get tested in Denmark than border-crossing Danes get tested in Sweden.

GUWonder

Tegnell, in recent days, has come around to publicly acknowledging that children do spread this virus. So much for the "children are like bats" (with super high metabolic rates to manage virus hosting) theory.

Apparently the pandemic in 2020 came with Sweden having the highest level of criminally lethal violence in 20 years.

Some healthcare employers in Sweden have had to tell hospital staff that their Easter work leave was being denied due to how Covid-19 was keeping the facilities busy.

Swedish rules on a variety of things have been extended to beyond what was to have been their expiration dates.

The Swedish entry ban applicable to travelers from Denmark has an expiration set for March 31st. I haven't heard about this ban being extended, but the Swedish police were still working passport control functions on the bridge and at Hyllie station into the 31st evening.

GUWonder

Swedish authorities are saying that Sweden won't get around to being able to vaccinate all its willing adults until the middle of August -- which basically means they won't get to that point until after the Swedish summer vacation period is over. Norway is saying it will accomplish it by around the middle of July.

It seems like Scandinavians will be reliant upon J&J vaccines to get them vaccinated on that kind of schedule.

Danish Covid-19 testing and vaccination sites seem to have become targets for vandals in recent days.

the810

What a beautiful combination of articles on SVT's website today

Im a new user

Who cares what the authorities say? The authorities can't make the factories make more vaccines. It's all in the hands of Pfizer, Astra and other companies.

CPH-Flyer

I guess you are trying to hint that usage of masks does not increase protection as both articles are about an increase. I guess I can understand why you skipped giving the link to the articles, as the statistics about mask usage really just goes from abysmal to bad. So it actually helps substantiate why infections keeps increasing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.svt...ander-munskydd

​​

GUWonder

The people responding to the survey are either not being entirely accurate about their habits in Sweden or they are not anywhere close to fully representative of the behavior of the people going out and about in public across Sweden. The proportion of masked passengers at peak times at the biggest public transit stations outside of Stockholm in March was well less than 10%. The proportion of masked customers at the 3 big Swedish malls in March beyond Stockholm during the peak parking lot occupancy times was also well under 10% in most of March. Even in Stockholm, the majority haven't seemed to be wearing masks in March. The lead up to the March infection spike did follow the drop in mask use in 2021 to a level below what was happening in a small part of late 2020.

People may tend to hyper-inflate how frequently and/or for how long they are wearing masks. When I was asking for activity-based metrics at one place where I wanted a lot more productivity for my buck, the gap between the information supplied by respondents to the survey about how often and how much time they spend on specified activities on the job was very different than what actual live activity recording time data ended up showing. People usually seem more capable to relatively accurately determine if they are doing something more frequently now than before but they struggle with self-reporting accurately about the scale of a noticed change in their own activities.

Obviously enough people care that the authorities had to revise their schedules and even make some kind of public comment about the slowed-down schedule. The schedule isn't entirely at the whims of vaccine manufacturers, it's just a huge part of the picture at this point because of what went on earlier with these very same authorities.

CPH-Flyer

People tend to be less than honest when they feel uncomfortable with the real state of affairs. Take the early boom of Dansk Folkeparti, or Sveriges Demokraterne. People did clearly not say to the opinion polls that they were going to vote for them, a bit of the same effect here.

GUWonder

For quite some time this past winter, Swedish health authorities had said there was no connection between the winter sports break and the infection scene in Sweden -- and that was their line despite what has actually happened with the spread in Sweden.

This week, the same authorities have shifted the language to say that there were not "serious" infections tied to those winter break holidays. That's a preview into the same kind of cover-your-flanks language that could be had if Sweden's daily case count scene doesn't turn out all that great following the Easter break. Especially since these authorities are playing the mixed messages game to sort of encourage holiday travel/socializing.

nacho

I wonder the speeches Lofven and another minister saying that SD is a threat to democracy will make Swedes vote for SD.

It seems the restriction ended on March 31, a lot of Danish cars at the bridge towards Sweden. Saw one staff in Willys wearing mask and a handful of people with masks on. Some of my kid's classmates are skiing and travelling right now so it's not just Swedes that do that. Not sure how they follow the quarantine after they come back.

GUWonder

Yes.

There was way more Danish being heard at the Emporia mall at Malmo-Hyllie grocery stores on Friday than has been typical for the place during nearly all of this year. Mask use there also appeared to be marginally higher within the past 48-72 hours than it was last weekend, but it's still a small minority of customers using masks.

GUWonder

Sweden still has passport control checks in place today for traffic coming via at least train from Denmark into Sweden. 1-2 people per train have been turned around within some hours this afternoon. It could be the pre-pandemic border control checks that Sweden's had for much of the time since the last few months of 2015, but clearly Sweden hasn't ended the staffing assignments.

nacho

We parked next to a Danish car in Emporia - there were more Danish cars than usual.

GUWonder

Didn't seem to be the Glad Pask crowd keeping it busy, but still I'm just amazed how packed that mall seems to get inside on weekends even when the weather is nice and sunny like it was today. Finding shoppers there wearing face-masks took real effort. Maybe people just don't want to pay for them.