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Many conservatives are in love with the idea of Sweden’s approach—no lockdown. They don’t take into consideration that half of Swedes live alone, or that they have a top-notch universal healthcare system. They just think “no lockdown” is a better response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
If nothing else, Sweden’s alternative response to the virus was … a good control group. And what we’re learning now is that failing to shut down hasn’t just led to more deaths, but—surprise surprise!—it also didn’t prevent its economy from tanking. In fact, Sweden is poised for more economic pain than its neighbors.
Sweden is quickly rising up the ranks of the world leaders in deaths. Here is the world ranking of deaths per million residents, excluding micro-nations:
Sweden (like the United States) has been quickly moving up this horrid chart and will overtake the Netherlands sometime this weekend for the sixth spot in the world. Meanwhile, its neighbors following more standard shutdown protocols are looking pretty okay:
Remember, the horror of horrors, Sweden is a socialist country (Sarcasm intended) Yet conservatives want to follow their model.
Actually, socialism has been very much on decline i Sweden for many decades. Since about 1990 Sweden has subscribed to Neoliberalism and current high death rates could maybe be explained be the outsourcing of health care, but that we will have to wait a few years to be able to analyze.
It is quite Amazing how reporters are in a hurry to come to conclusions on this and that concerning this virus. Here we see Another example elaborating on a snapshot in time. It will take Another 2 years or so Before we have sufficient data to analyze the strategies of different countries. E g when comparing Sweden to its neighbourgs one has to consider different these are in terms of dependency on export.