GUWonder

The long-term is made up of cumulative outcomes from the short-terms within it. With very low/negative interest rates, asset bubbles can boom and then go “kaboom” and bust. There are asset bubbles that are growing, and that price bloating happens because the market has spenders paying higher prices for the assets. Should we call that less spending or more spending?

The fans of Tegnell are trying to have the long-term be the focus so that people downplay and ignore that which has already been realized; and this is but a means to escape meaningful comparison, criticism and accountability in the here and now and later too. 18 months is more than a long enough period to compare.

In the long term, we are all dead.

RedChili

That's actually an area of real concern for Sweden -- I believe there's a real estate bubble which was created by cheap interest rates. Now, when that bubble comes down crashing, it won't be pretty.

"I'm a dead man. Do you realize? You're dead, too. We're all dead."
- Basil Fawlty

nacho

Writing speeding ticket is as good an income as parking ticket - I think a speeding ticket is like 3000 SEK a piece, so 3x of a parking ticket.

The police was detonating a bomb in Malmo last night at Claesgatan - so they are out somewhere doing something. I think in the last week of July there were 2 shootings in Trelleborg happened a couple of days apart. Then Lantbrukhojskolan in Alnarp was burned so more police were investigating there.

We are all going to die eventually, but it doesn't make it right to shorten elderly lives by a year or two.

CPH-Flyer

Today's report was 7 fatalities and 442 new infections. That's what over looks like?

The risk of reporting over at this point is that people will let down their guard, and the good progress will be negated.

GUWonder

For the 2nd quarter of the year — the peak pandemic period in Scandinavia — “locked down” Denmark did economically better than “open for business” Sweden, as per economic output and employment-related figures. Denmark’s economy shrunk by substantially less than Sweden’s in this period, and Denmark also had far fewer deaths per capita from this pandemic than Sweden.

Norway’s onshore GDP numbers are yet to come in for the 2nd quarter. But at least with regard to Denmark, Sweden has economically done worse than Denmark during this period.

oliver2002

Sush, we are not supposed to talk about data...

Most of the new infections detected in arriving pax in Germany have been from people returning from VFR vacations in the balkans... I'm sure the same VFR crowd returning to Sweden will have similar surprises... let see what happens when everyone returns to work and school next week.

Re GDP: Sweden is not an insular economy and a significant portion depends on trade with other countries. Not having a lockdown doesn't really help the economy as trading partners are still suffering from the impact of the pandemic.

nacho

There's no insular economy except North Korea - the world is connected and acting differently doesn't give you any advantage economically IMO.

How's Germany dealing with the backlog for operations and treatments? I saw someone said Austria has cleared 2000 operations that was delayed due to lockdown.

GUWonder

Denmark’s GDP is more highly export-oriented than Sweden and it has a higher proportion of its GDP tied to exports than Sweden has.

nacho

True and Denmark biggest export market is Germany (according to Mr.), so it doesn't work if a company keeps producing when no one is buying.

CPH-Flyer

Denmark has the benefit of exporting food and pharma in large amounts, markets that are less volatile even in a pandemic.

RedChili

When talking about deaths, you're making three mistakes:

1. Deaths are sometimes reported several days after they occur.
2. A death usually takes place 3-6 weeks after the date of infection.
3. The total number of deaths in Sweden has been at normal levels since the end of May.

So, to sum it all up: It's possible that these seven fatalities were infected a long time ago, possibly even in June, and it's possible (maybe even likely) that they died with covid-19 and not of covid-19.

Bingo! The economy is such a complex system that you can't just look at one single factor (the lockdown) and expect that factor to explain everything.

But, as CPH-Flyer rightly pointed out, Denmark's exports are highly concentrated on items such as food and medicines (which have been booming under the pandemic), while Sweden's exports are highly concentrated on transportation such as private cars (which has collapsed). The fact that Denmark has sold lots of medicines, and people stopped buying Volvos, has nothing to do with the Swedish and Danish governments' handling of the covid-19 crisis.

GUWonder

Denmark’s imports segment is also more extensive than Sweden’s, and that was part of Denmark’s better performance than Sweden in the 2nd quarter.

About Danish healthcare industry exports and food exports, note that due to the decline in elective medical procedures and other factors related to medical care and related maintenance, demand for Danish medical products hasn’t been all that inelastic as usual; and food consumption patterns in the world also changed during the pandemic. You can’t sell what you can’t produce when supply chains are disrupted; and you can’t sell what people don’t want to be.

Retail activity within Sweden didn’t seem to hold up much better than Denmark’s during the 2nd quarter. The Scandinavian comparison from across the Oresund speaks to the dynamic of a stronger public health emergency response being tied to a more resilient economic outcome even in the face of downward systemic pressure from public pandemic concerns than when an area is subject to a weak response with more mixed messages from the public show-runners.

Economic performance is tied to consumer confidence.

It will be interesting to see what hay will be made about Norway vs Sweden when August 25th comes around to do the economic comparison for the 2nd quarter.

CPH-Flyer

The delay from infection to detection to potential fatality is a reasonably stable factor. So from achieving a level low enough to indicate that the epidemic is coming to an end, you'd as a minimum need to have that level maintained for a period to reflect this delay. Otherwise the up tick may have happened during the period where the numbers are still on a downward trajectory.


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fransknorge

(enphasis mine).

There are still excess mortality in Sweden above average, here is the EUROMOMO map for week 31:

RedChili

No, that's the map for week 32. In my opinion, it's too early to look at numbers for week 32 as that was only seven days ago, so those numbers are unreliable. Here's the map for week 31. Please note that Sweden is white.