nacho

Some said they were in Ikea at Backarby and it was packed.

Has anyone read this article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/co...C1E5V_VQwGNzio

GUWonder

My own Swedish near and dear ones get uptight when I tell them that Sweden is doing even substantially worse than the US in virus deaths per capita. And when I bring up that Norway, Denmark and Finland collectively have way fewer deaths from this virus, the talk ends up being “the immigrants and poor people working at nursing homes in Sweden are why since they either don’t know how to wash their hands and cough or can’t afford to not work even when feeling a bit sick” ... or something like that. Little
To no comment about lack of PPE for much of this time for those working at nursing homes; and nothing about the fact that care workers in Norway and Denmark and Finland also happen to have staffed such people as care-workers too.

CPH-Flyer

Sweden took a strategy that worked well for Korea and Taiwan. Keep society (relatively) open and keep the outbreak under control. Sweden either ignored or were unaware of the key steps that Taiwan and Korea took to make this feasible. Aggressive testing regimes, identifying chain of contracts, testing contacts of infected people, isolating cases and suspected cases to keep the spread under control.

Singapore tried the same approach, but they forgot the low paid migrant workers, and it showed how quickly the disease can spread if not all bases are well covered in this strategy. Once that happened, Singapore also showed how effective a lockdown can be to get the situation under control. (this should be quite the wake up call on how Singapore treat their migrant workers, but that is for another thread)

Did Sweden manage to flatten the curve compared to just letting it run rampant? Yes. So did Italy by the way.

Could the strategy picked have been successful? Looking at Korea and Taiwan, for sure. Sweden wanted the impact and strain on the population and economy to be minimal (admirable), but did not put the framework in place to contain the situation under those conditions (less admirable).

They key question is why was the decision to keep society relatively open not associated with widespread testing, isolation, and control of the spread? Naivety, incompetence, negligence, overconfidence? Probably the answer is the same as in many other European countries, that the resources and capacity to take the steps of Korea and Taiwan was not in place, but why then stay on a route that requires them?

nacho

It's so double standard - if you say that before the crisis you know you will be called r..... .

GUWonder

It’s the typical blame game and scapegoating done to deflect from accepting that there is something more systematic at play that has made things worse and worse faster in Sweden than has been the case just across the borders from Sweden. And then when highlighting that the care-worker labor force in Norway and Denmark have lots of relatively poor workers who are immigrants and otherwise (and very often from the same backgrounds as found in Sweden), then the talk shifts to “but here in Sweden we have more working here because we are a bigger country, have more immigrants and have better accepted and integrated them, and so that is why they are working in all these places”.

Sweden only reported 16 more deaths yesterday for the virus death reports and moved the total dead in Sweden for this up to 2669. See what a great job Sweden does with numbers on long weekends?

In other developments, saw some soccer games going on outside yesterday and today for pre-teens in Sweden. A minority of people around can’t seem to follow the instructions that these games aren’t to have audiences. And about groups of people keeping a distance the whole time at these games? It’s more like mingling like it’s an outdoor cocktail party where few keep away at a distance the whole time, a party where even the proverbial wallflowers get approached.

nacho

Sydsvenskan reported that region Skane is ready for the battle and I guess people can just go out and have fun

“the immigrants and poor people working at nursing homes in Sweden are why since they either don’t know how to wash their hands and cough or can’t afford to not work even when feeling a bit sick” - think about what happens if anyone from SD said that? I'm sure the reaction will be different and that person will be called names.

Another thing - all these so called "poor and immigrants" are supposed to be trained properly with the "high" Swedish standard before they start working. I guess someone must have an explanation for that.

GUWonder

I guess it depends on who says it or maybe says it first. But as long as the people saying it or using dog-whistles to reference it are in charge, then it gets more widespread buy-in and use without any recognition of the claim being based in stereotypes bereft of evidence except that which is part and parcel of confirmation bias.

nacho

I think it depends on who said it - imagine if the very same statement is coming from anyone who is associated with SD. If you start a discussion why it's the foreigners and poor that didn't do a proper job, one might ask why isn't the manager who is responsible? Unless the manager is also an immigrant or a poor person?

Now Swedish farmers have trouble with their strawberries because the foreign workforce can't come - and the unemployed Swedes don't want to work there because they pay so little. I haven't been buying Swedish strawberries for years because I don't agree with the cartel prices they are charging (in Skane there's a monopoly that most berries are from a particular farm South of Malmo).

GUWonder

The Spanish strawberries seem to make it to the Swedish market. Not sure if that is related to Swedish farmers unable to get enough manual laborers at this time.

I don’t know if it’s on the Swedish end or not, but mail service from the US to Sweden seems to be taking me much longer than usual.

nacho

You always get Spanish Strawberries this time of the year, the Swedish ones won't be ready until late May. The strawberry season in Sweden starts later compared to DMV area.

Mail service is seriously delayed worldwide. Hong Kong post said express mail takes 14 days, some people in HK are queuing outside UPS, DHL to try to send mask to their overseas friends and family. Even those courier have reduced their services.

GUWonder

Sweden's virus death count total was 2769 yesterday, an increase of 90 from Sunday. It will be interesting to see what Sweden's numbers announced today end up being.

While seeing people carrying luggage to go from Malmo to Copenhagen has become way rarer than it used to be in the first week of March, it was more common yesterday than it had been in April. Mask-wearers are still a rather rare sight for passengers on public transit in southern Sweden; perhaps something closer to 1% of passengers ... if even that high.

The Swedish health authorities are trying to look for excuses for why the death count in Sweden rose so high and so fast. In other words, they need to come up with a scapegoat of some sort for why/how so many old people living in elderly care facilities got hit badly with this virus so quickly. That is a sort of stealth admission that the number of Swedish dead from this virus situation has turned out way uglier than they had been expecting. What they can't seem to publicly acknowledge is that the idea of segregating old and vulnerable people while keeping just about everything else open pretty much as usual was a recipe for these deaths.

CPH-Flyer

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All European countries, and the US for that matter, had to go through the realisation and awakening that they were woefully under prepared for something like this; and yes it could happen here as well. For some reason Sweden stayed in denial and let it happen.

CPH-Flyer

Another 85 fatalities today, compared to zero in Finland and zero in Denmark. Norway has not reported a number yet.

495 new cases confirmed for Sweden, Denmark 151 despite conducting 13K test in one day.

GUWonder

Decimation+ of the elderly and other (now) "costly", vulnerable elements of society is one way to reduce longer term expenditures (on such groups) by the government and doing so on behalf of the main taxpayers. I doubt that was the reason, but it may turn out to be a feature of the head-in-the-sand approach driven by insular elements so full of themselves in the country.

It was rather interesting to see how the Swedish diplomats in the US and elsewhere have been playing with the media on Sweden's virus response. One such narrative being pushed by a key Swedish diplomatic figure in the US amusingly involves talk about Sweden being humble while really peddling an arrogant narrative built on a sort of Swedish superiority complex, a Swedish "exceptionalism". For one such example, see what the Swedish ambassador to the US put up with the LA Times (and who knows where else) earlier this month:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...ntary-strategy

What's with the US getting Sweden's most arrogant diplomats?

nacho

Humble