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Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

bbc.com

31–40 of 82 posts

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#31

Everyone completely lost the point of lockdowns, which is to simply severely limit the spread of the disease until health care system is reorganized to face the challenge. If your hospitals can accept patients and nobody is left outside to die on their own, because there's no capacity in country, then by no means you can say that you failed. It's absolute insanity to throw your country in the pit of perpetual isolati…

A huge amount of people in care homes died of covid because the government neglected to handle the situation properly according to a Swedish inquiry

https://www.ft.com/content/e66b2d2b-aa70-4866-a9cb-2cd095f4f...

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#32

According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Sweden is the 24th country for deaths per million. They're better off than some countries with strict lockdowns like France, Italy etc

That has more todo with population density and health infrastructure.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#33
post #32

According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Sweden is the 24th country for deaths per million. They're better off than some countries with strict lockdowns like France, Italy etc

That has more todo with population density and health infrastructure.

My point was that the king shouldn't be so gloomy: they don't have more deaths relatively to other countries AND they saved their economy.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#34

Everyone completely lost the point of lockdowns, which is to simply severely limit the spread of the disease until health care system is reorganized to face the challenge. If your hospitals can accept patients and nobody is left outside to die on their own, because there's no capacity in country, then by no means you can say that you failed. It's absolute insanity to throw your country in the pit of perpetual isolati…

The point of lockdown is to bring the total number of outstanding cases way down, so that society can reset, not just hospitals.

If it's out of control, it needs to be brought under control after which time incrementally more open measures can be taken.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#35

According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Sweden is the 24th country for deaths per million. They're better off than some countries with strict lockdowns like France, Italy etc

If you compare them to neighbors with the same initial infection timelines and vectors, similar population density, cultural norms and habits that were relatively the same, as well as matching socio-economic status you will see that Sweden failed miserably at handling Covid.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has more todo with population density and health infrastructure.

My point was that the king shouldn't be so gloomy: they don't have more deaths relatively to other countries AND they saved their economy.

They had significantly higher death rates than their similar neighbors and they DIDN'T 'save' their economy.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#37
post #5

I don't get the criticism of the guidance being "voluntary". The bigger question is more in compliance, no? That is, if they have compliance rates that are comparable to the countries that do have legal recourse, do we have reason to think legal recourse would have gotten them better compliance?

This is a fair question.

Because I really do feel that systematically, it's not legal enforcement that is the issue.

99% of it seems to me would be workplace orders - if all governments spaces (aka public transit) require masks, and most corporations require public masks, then it's going to be hard to go to to many places without them.

Maybe however a lot of individual small restaurants and gyms would flaunt the rules, even under threat of shame, which is maybe understandable since the proprietors are facing basically collapse and losing their entire life's savings etc..

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#38

Everyone completely lost the point of lockdowns, which is to simply severely limit the spread of the disease until health care system is reorganized to face the challenge. If your hospitals can accept patients and nobody is left outside to die on their own, because there's no capacity in country, then by no means you can say that you failed. It's absolute insanity to throw your country in the pit of perpetual isolati…

A huge amount of people in care homes died of covid because the government neglected to handle the situation properly according to a Swedish inquiry https://www.ft.com/content/e66b2d2b-aa70-4866-a9cb-2cd095f4f...

The same thing happened in the US North East, NY, MA, CT, NJ -- the majority (e.g. over 2/3) of deaths are in long term care homes.

That is the problem to solve, lockdown or not, in most countries we have utterly failed to protect our most vulnerable people. In fact I'd go as far as arguing that lockdowns and restrictions for the general population have diverted attention and effort from protecting the LTC homes & the vulnerable.

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#39
post #4

I think it shouldn't be understated the significance of this. It is extremely rare for a constitutional monarch to so publicly undermine the democratically elected government. The Danish Queen and Norwegian King made speeches this Spring, where they were very careful to not undermine the government's strategy, but rather emphasis the significance of the pandemic. Additionally, in Sweden, it is has become pretty recog…

It's maybe time to EU to follow through and admit that both EU and individual countries approaches were a disgrace that costed, and will cost, too many lives.

Wait...what would have been the better approach then?

Re: Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf says coronavirus approach 'has failed'

#40

According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Sweden is the 24th country for deaths per million. They're better off than some countries with strict lockdowns like France, Italy etc

> They're better off than some countries with strict lockdowns like France, Italy etc

That's an apples and oranges comparison. Sweden is far worse off than their neighbors, that are far more similar to it than France and Italy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/world/europe/sweden-coron...:

> Infection numbers and deaths have been rising steadily since October. By Tuesday, Sweden had reached a total of 320,098 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, while its neighbor Finland, with a population about half of Sweden’s, has 31,110 cases, less than 10 percent of Sweden’s.

> Sweden’s total death toll reached 7,667 as of Tuesday. The country now has 74 deaths per 100,000 people, less than the United Kingdom, with 97, but far more than its neighbor Norway, with seven.

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