GUWonder

This summer may be an exception, even with a huge proportion of global condom manufacturing capacity taking a brieak due to this coronavirus situation. STDs being temporarily down may be an upside of the “social distancing” measures.

nacho

I understand their behaviour (not that I agree) - if someone heard the news back in January or even late February when FHM said everything is ok and there will be no community outbreaks here, the news helped people to establish their opinion that "everything is alright". Not everyone is like us following the news, knowing what's going on in other parts of the world. FHM said so many things since - and the government also said many things since. It's confusing and complicated for some people to change their behaviour.

It's perfectly makes sense to have different information as the situation changes over time. However, I don't think those changes work well if people have made up their minds to follow whatever "version" of recommendation from an authority.

There are a lot of articles showed by fans of Anders Tegnell saying that Swedes are highly disciplined people and they follow rules. Therefore, there's no need to lockdown the country because people will do their part to protect everyone from getting the virus. I found the claim amusing when an Italian guy was driving around Malmo last Saturday and he made this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSL1...3EmeTLsqBLPe4Q

I'm reading a book called "machine learning" and the author wrote something that fits the situation of coronavirus:

RedChili

This is not ideal, but in real life, it would be next to impossible for the bus driver to count the number of people who are aboard the bus at all times. The ban applies to settings where it's easy to regulate how many people are actually present, like in a theater, where you sell tickets.

This kind of thinking makes sense. The reason for the cabin ban in Norway is that many small municipalities don't have the necessary health care facilities to take care of double or even triple the number of people in the local population, and that's why they have banned people from staying overnight in cabins outside their own municipalities. But going to your cabin during the day is okay.

GUWonder

I mention the buses being packed not to show that the buses aren’t regulated for passengers count — as they are somewhat more for the more visible strollers — but to show that social distancing is being ignored in substantial part and there is a lot of business as usual continuing that runs up the risks of the spreading and how it’s spreading. So very predictably for Sweden, many are trying to “other-ize” who is at risk from this and why the death counts from within the health care system is running up and should not be considered too alarming unlike some other stuff.

Since this is happening even when the deaths are generally increasing in pace in recent days and are now well over 100 in Sweden within just a handful of days, it will be interesting to see what happens when the numbers skyrocket not only in Stockholm but also in Sk�ne and around Gothenburg. Will Sweden wake up before or after the 2020 death count from this exceeds the national number of annual murders by 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x, or 20x?

CPH-Flyer

So, Aftenposten is trying to argue that Swedes are capable of thingking for themselves, and thus there is no need to put bans and restrictions in place. There is also no law against eating "flugsvamp" poisonous mushrooms.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/a/50qmd6

The one difficulty I have with that parallel is that people do actually eat poisonous mushrooms (let's ignore the funny ones), but when they do it only have consequences for themselves. However, for the ones that do not understand how to behave with Covid-19 it can have quite broad impact. So while I generally subscribe to the approach of the Scandinavian countries where we expect people to be able to think, and leave them to carry the consequences of their own actions (and stupidity), I do believe that this outbreak has shown that we can't manage it that way. I was initially quite on the side of the Swedish course action, however I have read too many reports of people behaving recklessly and causing widespread harm.

nacho

The problem with a packed bus means people are very close to each other, that completely goes against social distancing. If the authorities want people to practice social distancing, they have to make sure that people can do that - e.g. setting up max. capacity of passengers in each bus. It seems that we get no support from the government, they told everyone something at 14.00 and expects everyone to follow without even try to make sure people can follow their recommendations.

RedChili

Completely agree, but how do you enforce such a rule on a citybus where people get on and off at each bus stop?

nacho

I saw some footage on TV when they introduced it, there was a staff making sure no more than 10 people getting onto a bus from its first stop. I guess any driver should be able to count to 10.

GUWonder

Bus drivers in Sweden have been trying to shift passenger entry and exit through just the middle and or back doors of the bus. That gets in the way of counting passengers .... especially when the bus turns out to be close to full or full enough to impair aisle visibility to the back.

There are plenty of coughing people on the Swedish buses — at least by measure of what seems to have gone on at some Swedish bus stops this morning. And most of them seem to be working age or retirement age locals who don’t get commonly perceived here as “immigrants” just by looks.

The notion that Swedes don’t play fast and loose with the rules is amusing, especially in the land where punishment for wrongdoing is a borderline joke .... more of a joke for some than for others. The “rule” at various places is “if the person has symptoms, don’t show up here for 2 days” or something like that. But people try to toy with that too, as with the following example:

Using medicines to try to mask symptom is even being done to kids to send them off to school and daycares; and once the parents drop them off or the kids otherwise get to school, many of the parents/guardians just claim they cannot pick up kids until close to the usual pick-up times .... and the backup contact — usually a Swedish grandparent or aunt/uncle — may say they are unavailable or self-isolating. More likely to happen on the predictable days of the week.

I would love nacho’s take on what happens if daycares are closed in Sweden for the virus situation and it coincides with when the weather is bad. Maybe the demand for anti-anxiety medications would skyrocket from people who can’t handle kids despite fully milking the Swedish system related to kids in a country where the practical burden of raising children is so little for so many?

No surprise that Systembolaget seems to have managed to be one of the highest traffic stores during this time, although I would be surprised if they aren’t struggling too.

JR67

How foolish to be surprise by this! The only thing more important in Sweden than toilet paper is booze!

GUWonder

I have no more cheap �champagne� in stock here or anything else of the sort except for some very poorly stored red wines that I wouldn�t even give Anders Tegnell. But I have plenty of toilet paper .... and a nearby woods with plenty of leaves about to come out for emergency use, scouts� style.

JR67

Bring toilet paper, we have champagne. Talk about a messed up barter economy....

CPH-Flyer

Champagne is the item I stocked up on. I the end I'd not worry about being able to buy sustinence of some kind. But I could worry about running out of champagne.... Imagine having to get US sparkling wine, oh the horror.

fassy

Not a great fan of the Guardian in general anymore but this article sums it up pretty good:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ockdown-europe

JR67

“People are starting to ask: are others stupid and paranoid? Or is Sweden doing it wrong?”

Yes. On both counts.